Going to be doing a special Callin tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. EST with old friend and former Moscow Times editor Matt Bivens about “Let’s Have a War,” and America’s history of bungling foreign policy in both Russia and Ukraine. Come by: link here.
Russia has a rational geopolitical interest in not having a NATO member on its border. NATO has tried to include Georgia at the of the Bush 2 administration, and Russia responded militarily to support its goal. In 2014 the West helped depose a leader of Ukraine who has not hostile to Russia. Russian responded again militarily and annexed the Crimea, notably including Sevastopol, a key military port that was part of Russia and then the USSR until 1991. Russian also set up the separatists in the two Donbas republics. In 2020-21, NATO gave Ukraine a special status, and nationalists in Kiev are again courting NATO. Hence Russia’s latest moves.
In other words there is a clear pattern of Russia escalating in response to NATO/Western actions in border countries that go against it’s interests.
I do not believe Russia has the will or capability to take over the Ukraine. The goal is a negotiated commitment for Ukraine to remain independent from NATO. The critical European nation, Germany, does not wish to get involved with Ukraine as it depends on Russia for energy. Putin thus is facing an EU that is not united. In the US there is a loud pro Ukraine cabal — Vindman and Fiona Hill types — plus the usual neocons who are spoiling for intervention particularly after we left Afghanistan. These types are pressuring the Biden crew to deploy troops, and Biden would love to have another topic in the news to distract from domestic failings, but I bet that in the end he will not send troops.
The 1990 Baker quote is accurate. And you'll look in vain for any gainsaying of it, or debate about the policy of refraining from NATO expansion, until many years after the fact.
Nonsense. Putin is an autocrat with absolute power and doesn’t think like us. Putin won’t be satiated. He will press on to undo the liberal international order for as long as he remains in power. Demanding his right at Normalizing annexation, denying sovereignty to neighbors, undermining liberal ideas and democratic societies, and dissolving NATO are future goals.
Unlike realists, Putin does not view countries as unitary actors; he looks within countries to distinguish between dictatorships and democracies. Not without reason, Putin believes that U.S. support for democracy abroad threatens his autocratic rule. During Putin’s reign, most crises in relations with the United States have been triggered not by NATO expansion, but by democratic mobilizations — Putin calls them “color revolutions”, when people demonstrate against autocrats like him.
My wife is Russia born and dislikes him intensely as he’s a narcissistic psychopath.
I'm Canadian, my wife is Russian, and she loves him, as does the vast majority of Russians, regardless of where they live in the world. This is because he "repatriated" the assets of Russia, reversing their theft, facilitated by idiot Yeltsin, from the clutches of the West. This includes saving the Russian oil and gas industry that Khodorkovky, via Yukos, had fraudulently conveyed. Persons who respect Putin include the recently fired German Navy Admiral Kay-Achim Schoenbach, who obviously, has a completely different take on Putin than you or your wife does.
Do an online search of the current approval ratings of Putin.
For fun, compare those ratings to Biden's or Johnson's.
The "international order" is supposed to be governed by the UN Charter.
Last I checked, it was the US that had repeatedly breached that by invading and/or sanctioning Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Nicaragua, etc... the list goes on.
Currently, the US is illegally sanctioning Venezuela, and still is attempting to install a non-elected puppet, Guido.
"Fuck the EU" Nuland literally admitted in a public speech that the USA had invested $5 Billion in Ukraine towards "democracy". "Democracy" has destroyed the Ukrainian economy to the point that it has now the lowest standard of living in "Europe".
US "democracy" celebrates US domestic intelligence agencies illegally spying against its own citizens, russia-gate and false charges against Assange and Snowdon.
To end all of this crisis in Ukraine, Ukraine has only to comply with the Minsk Agreements. Zelensky was elected on the basis that he would do so and end that conflict. Once elected, he immediately reversed that position. Pretty obvious to anyone that the US is interfering with that process, which the majority of Ukrainians want to be fulfilled.
There is not a politician in the USA who has had those ratings and you can go back for years. Propaganda...I like him because he is not letting these trannys take over his country. Rachel Levine will not be welcome in Moscow.
Must be nice to so easily accept a malignant narcissistic psychopathic strong man, and simply forget what he’s doing and accept him. But why are you in Canada?
Of course a lot of what your saying about the US and it’s parasitic aggressive capitalism is quit true, but again your in Canada not Russia, why?
Much of the rest of my wife’s family has relocated to Ukraine from the Russian Far East in the 1960s, after the military had went there at the end of WWII to where many Russian intellectuals had been forcibly relocated. They have a more realistic view of Russian govs from there. Less propaganda. This family were actual Russian Patriots awarded for their military service, which dislike & don’t accept asshole murders like Putin.
I'm Canadian, that's why I live in Canada. I'm guessing your wife's family is living in the western part of Ukraine around Lviv or Kiev, right?
My wife is 1/2 Ukrainian and 1/2 Russian and she moved here with her family 30 years ago, long before I ever met her. Grandma was born and lived her whole life in Donbass and my wife grew up in Rostov-on-Don.
I say Grandma lived, past tense, because she's dead from an Azov bomb gardening in her yard in 2015 while she was being "liberated" by them when they suddenly and randomly bombed her neighbourhood without any warning. She survived WW2 but she couldn't survive "liberation" by her own compatriots.
How's that for a "realistic" view? Why don't you explain "realism" to my wife and her family?
Why don't you explain realism to the Odessan's burned alive in May 2014 and again to those torched in Mariupol a week later?
Those were neoNazis hated by many. Hell some of them are from here. Some American state dept people tried to use them. Ukraine hasn’t been much of a priority
No, family are Russian speakers from Dneiper area and further east. One has a dairy farm too near the war zone. Russians will destroy that 1st second. People are fooled by Russian promise propaganda and remember when area was a Russian high priority high tech & mining area. People want it back, just like American miners want everything back. Wife has PhD & worked at missile factory & had own engineering co until collapse. You all need to understand Putin will help nothing & is truly a psychopath, but think what you want—your being conned just like trump conned Americans.
Acknowledged, your family is from the west and not from the Donbass.
Frankly, you equivocating your wife's family's relocation after WW2, in support of rebuilding USSR after its destruction, to the Donbass, and ethnic Russians being bombed and slaughtered is ridiculous. Your ad hominem attacks on Putin's personality, without any proof, as an argument against any of the historical facts, policies and issues raised by me, reveals that you are the one who has been conned into taking a position without any real critical reasoning.
Can't you see past the classic US regime change psy-op? It begins with the vilification of the leader they want to depose. Go back and look at every single instance in the last 20 years that the US has started an attack on any country. Russia, Syria, Libya, Iran, Venezuela, Belarus. It doesn't matter how popular the leader is. Gaddafi, Maduro, Putin etc. First they start feeding the media with stories about how they're illegitimate, despotic, tyrannical, perverted, evil, etc. They create caricatures of that individual so that the US population, and marginalized sections, (doesn't matter how small of a percentage) of the targeted country can now "personalize" their frustrations and focus upon the leader, and not that target's population. They plant fake news stories. They pay NGO's to stir things up. Nuland admitted the US spent $5 Billion in Ukraine for "democracy" training pre Maidan. She handed out cookies.
They manufacture consent.
They gave Ukraine an impossible choice, Russia or Europe, but nothing in between. Russia couldn't let Ukraine continue have the same preferred trade partner benefits that it enjoyed before it chose the Europe route, as it would have undermined Russian trade, and security policies with Europe, and Ukraine would simply have become a conduit to Europe for artifically cheap goods and Russia's defence technologies.
It's pretty obvious that Russia has no interest in occupying Ukraine, and it never had any interest in attacking it. That being said, it does have a right to peaceful borders, and the insistence by Ukraine in arming itself, with Russia as the enemy, is not acceptable. Crimea and the Donbass are ethnically Russian and they peacefully chose Russia. Russia has helped the Donbass defend themselves. They have been subjected to serious breaches of their constitutional rights. As you know, in Ukraine, the Russian language has been banned in business, media and schools. Not to mention they have been bombed, and the water has been shut off to Crimea.
In Canada, we have dealt with this same issue, and we have two Official languages, French and English. Although some small-minded people have grudges against the other, the vast majority of the population respects the cultural differences between themselves, and even enjoy them.
You need to take a sophisticated examination of the big geo-political / economic picture, and not at any one person. Ask yourself, why is that leader so popular in his/her own nation if that leader is so evil? Go behind the rhetoric, and look at the real issues, energy security, defence security, trade etc. Stop being duped into believing that they're evil dictators, and that the US has your interests at heart. Ukraine is to the US and Europe, simply a spot on the map for another military base. They have no economic interest in Ukraine, and Ukraine has nothing to provide to them of any significance economically. Hence, the collapse of Ukraine's economy.
Let's hope we're all together on the "we" side of this proposed revolt, and that "we" win, due to our superior intellectual, persuasive, and combative abilities.
Putin may be an "autocrat", "psychopath", etc. but this does not counter the facts regarding Russia's geopolitical desire to have a neutral buffer state on the largest part of its western border. r the fact that Russia has responded with military intervention only when the West has tried to bring direct border states (Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO). Even then, Russia did not "conquer" Georgia or Ukraine, and there is no evidence that he wishes to do so with Ukraine now.
You do not have to like a nation or its leaders to objectively assess its geopolitical interests and its means of defending them.
The fair, rational, de-escalating thing for the victorious Western coalition to do in the aftermath of the Cold War victory should have been to disband NATO and replace it with a different framework of mutual agreements- one that de-emphasized increasing arms arsenals and expanding the territorial locations of intermediate-range missiles- and a different, explicitly stated set of goals that included Russian input into the negotiations. We could have gotten back to negotiating more the sort of agreements that Ronald Reagan sought with Mikhail Gorbachev, a trust-but-verify pact on defensive weapons measures to assure mutual national security so that no nation great of small faced the prospect of vulnerability to military aggression. An agreement that extended that right of protection even to Russia.
Instead, the West- most crucially the "indispensable nation", the US- continued to press their advantage and maximize geopolitical leverage in ways that took for granted that Russia was the Inconsequential Loser Country.
I'm reminded of the Versailles agreement following the victory of the US-UK-France alliance in WW1. The process has been very different, and there were no terms of surrender and reparations overtly imposed on Russia, as there were with Germany. But the dismissive arrogance of the victors is the same. The patronizing put-you-in-your-place attitude of the victors is the same. The unstated justification for the onerous, one-sided consequences of victory is the same: "we're so good that we can push you around and make sure you never get your head above water again." All the while crafting a narrative that everything the victors do is in good faith. A narrative more recently believed by Libya's Omar Qaddaffi, who for a brief time accepted the West's invitation to alliance and friendly relations- another national leader who, while not an exemplar of stainless virtue, was not the rape-brigade sociopath of Western propaganda, and who deserved a better fate than having his erstwhile big-power friends turn on him, abandon him, and leave an "Arab Spring" militia to execute him after sodomizing him with a sharp object. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/globalpost-qaddafi-apparently-sodomized-after-capture/
To speak of another NATO-sanctioned hit. Where was "national sovereignty" then?
That's no way to build a reputation for trust with people. (You know- our brothers and sisters in the Global Community.) It doesn't matter if you're the Cool Kids Clique. You might meet up with some of the same people you misuse while you're on top, on your way down. You might call out for a hand, and not get it. Heaven forbid, someone might double-cross you.
The blithe ignorance of imagining that the West can cut deals with a different set of gangsters is another one of the new features that depart from the Versailles analogy. What the militarist faction in NATO appears to have in mind for Putin is regime change; they'll be satisfied with nothing less. But the deposing of Putin implies a power vacuum, and the requirement for a leader and a leadersip faction to replace Putin. And, whether the Ivy League brain children inside the Beltway realize it or not, it's terribly unlikely that the successor will be some anti-corruption pro-democracy idealist that the NATO hegemonists (mostly non-Russians, with no real stake in the game) might be championing to their press outlets as the rising star to lead Russia to a bright, progressive, pro-Western tomorrow. The smart money says that the NATO Risk Gamers will merely settle for a kleptocrat and gangster that they imagine that they can do easier business with.
Putin might be a gangster- probably is a crook and a grafter, although I found Luke Harding's indictment of his regime, Mafia State, to be pretty thin gruel as these things go. But some gangsters are better than others; Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa was much better for his people than an unadulterated crook like Frank Fitzsimmons, for example. Putin is no worse as a national leader than, say, Ferdinand Marcos (better, in my opinion, based on my limited readings; but I'll allow others to argue the proposition...please, let them those commenters be more knowledgeable than myself.) And the US backed Marcos to the hilt for decades, until his Use Impunity ran out.
The bottom line is that Putin's rule should be a Russian matter decided by the Russian people- not by self-interested hypocritical outsiders White Knighting on their behalf, a pose that looks more phony all the time to me. It's similarly weird for me to hear American mouthpieces White Knighting for the inviolable principle of "national sovereignty" on an issue like a nation joining a 29-nation military alliance that just happens to coincidentally breathe down the neck of the autonomous agency of the nation of Russia to maintain its national security.
Very well written and quite right. We have been at this game for some years now. South America has had lots of our dealing with our philanthropy ..ie John Perkins " The Economic Hitman"... The same thing that happened in Honduros in 2014...Equador...Bolivia...Venezuela. I could tell you first hand on the situation in the Phillipines. The list is long. At this point I think we are loosing Europe. France has spoken out for Russia and so has Germany. I think the NATO stronghold is coming apart. Germany put itself into a tight spot with no Nuclear, coal plants and they needed natural gas. Russia worked the deal with low prices and a constant supply. It was Germany's call wether or not they signed on the dotted line without the interference of us butting in to sell them LNG at a much higher price.
I'm on Substack already. "Iconoclasms." Just getting underway. I have a few other priorities to manage before I can apply the attention required to post regularly and prolifically on my own Substack page. lol, as opposed to getting involved in protracted debates in the comment pages of other Substack writers. If you start me up, I never stop...
Unbelievable...i'm That Guy. As if the fate of the world were in my hands, etc. The more mundane explanation for my presence here is Work Evasion, and no one knows better than myself exactly how accurate that interpretation is. So if you notice that I've gone dark for a while, that's most likely evidence that I'm (re)committed to making progress in doing other stuff. The possibility that my silence might actually be due to Writer's Block is remote.
So if I have it right because your wife is Russian origin and she hates Putin we should start a nuclear war or at least conduct the brinksmanship that could get us there. I sincerely hope you don't live in a large US city. They will be the first on the list of targets for the missiles. No but seriously, you really think that Putin's position of insisting on friendly, or at least non threatening neighbors, cannot be a serious motivator for him in spite of lot's of evidence provided even here in this comment section? I guess we live in a post truth world and we are just waiting for the end.
The threat of inter continental nuclear war is obsoleat and a red herring. Russia has nothing to fear from "the west". It should be more worried about china crawling up it's ass. They have disputed boarders and the incentive. Putin's gambit is to use the west as a straw dog while waving his version of a maga flag in order to keep the lumpen proletariat milling around his flag in order to preserve the new feudal state he and his buddy oligarch lords and barons have installed.
He's a desperate man now caught in his own web. A game of chicken with the west keeps his subjects minds off him killing his own people who push back.
"The threat of inter continental nuclear war is obsoleat and a red herring."
I so fervently wish for that to be the case. But if it's so, then why doesn't everyone dismantle their nuclear weapons arsenals?
The US certainly isn't doing that. The US government is currently in the process of spending hundreds of of billions of dollars on "modernizing" our atomic weapons systems...yes, I know what I just typed.
"...The Congressional Budget Office is required by law to project the 10-year costs of nuclear forces every two years. This report contains CBO’s projections for the period from 2021 to 2030.
If carried out, the plans for nuclear forces delineated in the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) fiscal year 2021 budget requests, submitted in February 2020, would cost a total of $634 billion over the 2021–2030 period, for an average of just over $60 billion a year, CBO estimates.
Almost two-thirds of those costs would be incurred by DoD; its largest costs would be for ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. DOE’s costs would be primarily for nuclear weapons laboratories and supporting activities.
The current 10-year total is 28 percent higher than CBO’s most recent previous estimate of the 10-year costs of nuclear forces, $494 billion over the 2019–2028 period..." https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57240
Additionally, for decades, the strongest cudgel in the antinuclear armory has been that "no private insurer will cover a nuclear power plant", and the US government would have to pick up the tab in the event of a hypothetical nuclear power plant disaster (not nearly the risk in Gen III and Gen IV reactor designs that it is for water-cooled designs- but the only interest that the Antinuclear Bliss Ninnies have in those projects is in stopping them.) As if the Federal government doesn't already do that with disasters that are practically guaranteed to happen every so often, like hurricanes and floods. But the claim of "no private insurer will underwrite nuclear power" has proved to be reliably effective at shutting down further discussion on the spot.
Meanwhile, what was the budget for modernizing the US nuclear arsenal, again? $634 billion, 2021-2030. A number that bears repeating:
$634 billion, 2021-2030.
I haven't heard anyone in Congress or the Senate publicly challenging this as a funding priority. What up?
Speaking of "uninsurability", who's to be expected to pick up the tab in the aftermath of an "exchange" of nuclear weapons? Yet no one in the Corridors of Beltway Power or the Prestige Media addresses any skepticism toward spending over $600 billion on a project whose best possible outcome will be that the weapons are never used. That's the best case scenario- that we spend nearly 2/3 trillion $$$ to maintain a massive high-tech nuclear arsenal that never gets used.
Any other case scenario, and we're looking at a disaster that- at minimum- dwarfs the worst consequences from a Gen I nuclear reactor meltdown (a la Fukushima, crippled by its inexcusable flaws in location and design.) Yet there's no emphasis on nuclear disarmament, and the same people who throw a fit over Yucca Mountain simply edit out the existence of the massive "nuclear storage facilities" that host top-shelf weapons grade radioactive elements in the warheads of missiles and bombs.
But nuclear reactors- oh, no! Uninsurable! Too risky! Suicidal terrorists might attack a reactor and cart off the plutonium rods in hijacked 18-wheelers, something something! Diabolical!
This is why I can't take the Green Party and the knee-jerk antinuclear movement seriously- even though I get ecology and ecosystems, and share their stated concerns about the health of the natural world. I'll get back to the Greens when they get real.
BTW I think that Halford Mackinder with his heartland theory vs the maritime lands was correct. If England and our USA could they would try to keep them off balance by dividing them but that is not working now.
Everything you write is wrong. Let's leave it at one thing: the US has never supported freedom and democracy abroad, nor cared about the lives of people, not even in its own country. It wants to own all the resources in the world, and make all the people in the world slaves to its wealthiest rulers (MIC, corporations, banks.)
"U.S. support for democracy abroad". I had chuckle at that. You would do well to study the history American foreign policy. Start with Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, el Salvador, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Indonesia/East Timor, Vietnam, Iran, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Honduras. Or just read the book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"; or "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens.
Don't forget Honduras, Ecuador, Ukraine, with sights on Russia. BTW, Putin is not a dictator; quite the contrary. He had a huge bureaucracy behind him and it works horizontally. Russia is huge. Hear Scott Ritter on this subject.
Of course Putin doesn´t think like us - I mean, he´s the goddam devil! So there is that. And being the devil he has successfully outsmarted America AT EVERY TURN. We should obviously just kill him (or find some intelligent leaders who aren´t playing the game to enrich THEMSELVES).
Spot on. The US is the bad actor here. We started the Cold War due to our paranoia over communism and then we were only concerned with the privatization of state owned assets after the Soviet Union broke up. We never cared to understand Russia's concerns and so here we are, as you discuss.
"...nationals in Kiev are again courting NATO." You should have said, "...Nazis in Kiev ..." NATO was founded by Nazis and soldiers there have swastikas on their helmets. As for Germany, the minute the Nord2 is certified, Germany will tell the US to go to hell, a great idea.
We are in an economic war with China. Wall Street, big tech and media corporations, and the political establishment get richer.
We are in an "heath emergency" war with the health bureaucrats. Wall Street, the big pharma corporations, and the political establishment get richer.
The are trying to start a war with the global warming zealots. Wall Street, the big alternative energy industry corporations, and the political establishment would get richer.
They are also trying to start a military war with Russia. Wall Street, big defense contractor corporations, and the political establishment would get richer.
Why, oh, why, must we always have this Russian “ Bogeyman”? SSDD. And btw, how many Americans know that RUSSIA is no longer the USSR? Whatever your guess, it’s lower.
It seems that the eastern Ukraine (the Donbas) part of this problem could have been settled years ago if the US and Europe had held the Ukraine to abide by the minsk 2 agreement.
My understanding is that the Ukraine signed onto the Steinmeier formula which is part of Minsk 2. It called for an election in the Donbas to determine if they wanted autonomy within the Ukraine.
The Ukraine added conditions before the election could be held. The conditions were basically that Russia should cease support for the separatists and totally withdraw.
Does anyone know about this? It is not covered at all in the US media.
I don't have an iPhone so I cannot ask this question in the callin.
My son is an army artillery officer, and a few of his friends have received orders to deploy to Ukraine - one of them got the orders in December, so the planning has been in place over a month.
BTW I was based in Moscow in the mid to late 90s, I remember the two Matts as editors of their respective papers. I even went to a couple of Exile parties.
I have an apple product and I tried to download but the install failed so I missed this event entirely. There must be an app that is ubiquitous and simple to use for everyone.
Currently in Canada there is a truck convoy protesting Trudeau's inane Covid policies. Trudeau has called this a "small, fringe minority" on their way to Ottawa who "hold unacceptable views."
When the front part of the convoy was entering Ottawa the back end was entering Manitoba. That is roughly 1,176 miles of trucks. 600 American trucks joined them. Unity is a beautiful thing. Unless you're in the ruling class. They seem to really fucking hate that.
Call me crazy but it's beginning to appear that Trudeau is the "small, fringe minority" who holds "unacceptable views."
Maybe Trudy should have read his de Tocqueville.
“When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
“Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
In conclusion I'd like to offer a tribute to ex-hippy Neil Young who obviously didn't learn a damn thing over the years.
OK, anti-vaxxers are stupid people, the vaccines are proven safe and effective, period, there is no other side to those facts. That small fringy minority is a group of really stupid people, which you have to be to have an ideological argument against a vaccine that would help reduce the risk of severe illness and death in certain people. Getting the vaccine would also help reduce transmission and thus end the pandemic as those that either had Covid-19 or got vaccinated don't appear to transmit enough viable virions to infect others (see the latest episodes of This Week in Virology at microbe.tv/twiv, real science from actual researchers).
That said, these idiots made their decision to not get vaccinated and should be allowed to suffer the consequences, we, the vaccinated and recovered should be allowed to move on with our lives, unmasked.
I've been unmasked for a while. Maybe you're just a sissy.
Were you one of those overly compliant little yes-men cowering in your house, Purell covered & masked up though alone, binge watching Netflix while you waited for some low paid Doordash dude to bring your food?
I think it broke you.
I think that if "the real science" told you to slather on dog shit instead of Purell you'd be on a nightly Fido hunt.
Sounds like lots of “projection” going on here….who are you to judge other people’s motives for doing what they do? In your world do you really judge how “macho” somebody is by wether or not they’re wearing a mask?
Gosh isn't "projection" the #1 diagnosis leveled by cheese ball half baked psychologist wanna-be nudniks that populate the Internet like rapacious little cockroaches?
Hey, look on the bright side Jack, no one will ever accuse you of being original.
Sorry but it is projection. Makes no difference. The proof is in the pudding. As they say, if it looks like duck, and quacks like duck, most probably it's a duck. Projection is the number one tool of MAGA heads. Whatever I do I accuse you of doing. That way you are neutralized before pre-emptively before the debate starts.
Yeah, it does. No one would ever accuse you of having a valid, relevant point in an argument nor of being smart because you're an anti-vaxxer moron for purely stupid, ideological reasons.
You're one of those morons, having to prove your manhood by not listening to warnings about real risks. I bet that you don't wash your hands before you eat just to prove how sissy worrying about e. coli is. You're that stupid.
Nothing in your stupid post is about any valid, relevant fact about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, its transmission, Covid-19, how policy was developed, the competency of policy makers, etc, it's all about your pathetic political ideology. You are just like one of those stupid people who have died from Covid-19 for their own stupid, political, ideological reasons, such as they have the "freedom" to not act in their own best interest, to ignore experts in preference of absolutely irrelevant political and ideological points.
Like I said, anti-vaxxers made their choice, let them live with it and we should stop trying to protect them from themselves. I haven't been sick from anything since 2018 and I love it. But you're a tough guy, so go ahead, don't wash your hands before you eat, get real close to people so that you inhale their spittle, don't worry about open wounds and infection, etc. It's your way, tough guy.
I love left wing "Karens." One little prod and the spittle starts flying.
What do they call left wing Karens anyway? Moonbeam? Sunshine?
It's a mystery.
Here's your sister raising havoc amongst those anti-vaxxer subnormals whose death you obviously gherkin jerk over every night like a good little ghoul.
Personally Jeffy I don't give a flying fuck about your hygiene protocol. You can roll yourself in hot butter and bake the germs off on a barbecue for all I care.
I do see that you've taken to the MSM narrative like a retarded duck would take to a piss puddle.
More power to ya Jeffy.
I honestly don't know why you're so whiny about the unvaxxed anyway. I've no doubt the thought of a booster #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 etc., is your go too foreplay thought before gherkin jerkin' to the unvaxxed obits for the day so their existence guarantees that you'll have access to your primary fetish tool for many moons. Or Moonbeams I suppose.
By the way, your appearance on British TV was awfully cute.
Chuckie, from the looks of those jowls & that double chin I'm going to assume that you picked up your psychic powers at one of those Chuckie Cheese cheese-a-thons you so obviously love.
Let me explain something to you Kreskin, I paid my $60, just like you, so if I want to type out directions for a game of competitive ball sack snuffling, always a liberal favorite I might add, I will do it.
If I want to detail the exact number of ass hairs that currently reside in my crack I shall do so also.
If little Chuckie Cheese doesn't approve, little Chuckie Cheese can find a nice rusty nail studded 2x4 & project that up his wattled booty.
Then again liberals seem to get all moist & frisky over censorship so just petition to have me removed.
You're just stupid. Nothing that you post has anything to do with Covid-19 or the vaccines, you would drink water from an open sewer if the authorities told you not to just to prove your stupid point.
The single relevant and only important issue with the stupid anti-vaxxers is that they negatively affect others as they overwhelm hospitals and get in the way of others with more important problems, such as forcing people to wait for hours when they fill up ERs and force hospitals to cancel surgeries.
Understand that I don't care about the anti-vaxxers, they made their decisions and should accept the consequences without unduly affecting others, but they don't, they get in the way. You have no right to do that, you should suffer your decisions alone, affecting no one else.
Only little Jeffy have smart noodle. One big massive smart noodle that defies the most dedicated of milliner artisans to fashion a hat that fits correctly.
Consequently Jeffy is prone to brain freeze in winter.
To battle this errant birth defect Jeffy has taken to inserting his massive melon into his derrière at every available opportunity. After the initial orgasm Jeffy's head settles into its warm butt cocoon while Jeffy waits for spring.
This has been a public service announcement from the 'Nature & All Its Freakishly Weird Aberrations" podcast.
I have had the three shots. But I understand why some don't want them. How can Americans trust our for profit pharmaceuticals and for profit healthcare after we with taxes pay for their crimes against us? As soon as this virus spread, I said I will wait for Cuba's vaccine. Not a single Cuban doesn't want her/his shots. Why? Because they trust their free healthcare system and their scientists and know for certain they work for the people.
I can't understand any of the anti-vax nonsense, not even the Big Pharma conspiracy theories. The fact is that the development of the mRNA vaccines is public knowledge, the research is out there, unfortunately with the pay wall of the publishing journals in some cases. So, while Big Pharma has played a role, much of the fundamental research and development was also provided by the taxpayer.
The "trust" issue is due to Americans not knowing much. They haven't taken any courses, such as Vincent Racaniello's Columbia University virology lectures on his youtube channel, they haven't read about microbiology, etc. Big Pharma is what it is because enough people do not take care of themselves nor had listened to their doctors to create a wellness system and made it a disease maintenance system. I'm on no meds, but I took advantage of the vaccine.
Most Americans don't know where Ukraine is. I was born there. Russians don't have man power to take whole country. They can take up to Odessa.
Having said that, we need to deter potential Russian assertiveness because if we back off, China will unify Taiwan very soon. After that real chaos will start. Putin knows we will not send troops to defend corrupt, disfunctional failing state that Ukraine is becoming. Europeans will not fight for Ukraine either.
This has nothing to do with Taiwan. And the Ukraine has no real national interest value for the US or Europe. Neither did Kosovo, but we went to war there. same with Iraq. Same with Iran. The neolibs want war, they do not care who it is with. I was deployed to Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan during the Obama surge. Both were obvious from day one to be a colossal waste of time. But, some folks made a shit ton of money. Which is what it is all about, always. Those making the money do not fight. Ever.
Ukraine does have something to do with Taiwan indirectly. If the US military does not back up Biden's belligerancy, China may be emboldened with respect to Taiwan, while Biden is still in office.
I don't argue with that, I just don't see them related, they are separately related to Biden's ineffectiveness as a leader vis a vie Afghanistan withdrawal. Either way, China is going to get Taiwan and corporate America will be fine with it, especially the NBA.
What do you think would have happened in Afghanistan had the national govt being involved in the withdrawal plans. They weren't if you remember. They were left out instead of having a say. The original deadline was may 1st set by 45. This administration also emptied the prison of 5k people hostile to the country. It was going to be a shit show after those things happened no matter. The soldiers that died from the bombing might be alive if the prison hadn't let the worst out to get us back regardless of their beef with us. I'm not saying whose to blame,just pointing out what's not being talked about as far as Afghanistan.
I have lots to say about the Afghanistan and plan an article about it. I served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Couple of things: One is the sovereign government of Afghanistan was the Taliban when we invaded. There was never a real democratic government elected there after we were in control. Any real election there would have elected Taliban. That is just the reality in over three quarters of the country, including where I served. OK, the key to a proper withdrawal (and I think we should have withdrawn a year after our invasion) was holding on to Bagram. That is it. Easily defended and a runway capable of handling any size aircraft. We could have brought everyone we needed to get out of Afghanistan to Bagram and evacuated from there. After that, we could have kept Bagram like we did "embassy" enclaves in Iraq or just left entirely. Instead, we left Bagram in the dead of night in July and didn't even tell our Afghan allies there. Totally shameful. A private could have done it better than Austin, Milley, Blinken, and Biden.
Why? The cost obviously outweigh any benefit. It's to the Emperor Xi's interest to reel them in slowly, which will occur automatically as China rises and the US declines.
just pointing up absurd sense-free warmongering. Yes,
China and its rebel island (which only survived for internal US political reasons in Truman era) have an intimate relationship, massive flows of money and people between them
Interesting but it seems a limited analysis focusing the 1990 non-expansion agreement in the reunification negotiations to the Baker-Gorbachev meeting 2/9/90. When the GWU NatSec Archive in 2016 declassified a compendium of U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents it was found a "cascade" of assurances given Soviet officials by a host of Western leaders throughout the 1990 negotiations.
Worthwhile reads for a broader review are (1) GWU's NatSec Archive Briefing Book, "NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard" by Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton, published 12.2017, https://bit.ly/3Az5VTy
and (2) Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson's analysis "Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion" published April 2016 in International Security, MIT Press. https://bit.ly/3Az5VTy
This discussion is going to be great! One thing I learned in university is that Russia has always liked to buffer itself with friendly countries. Some countries might be outright conquered. But, also It would invite into Russia and hand out (usually non-contiguous) estates to nobles of neighboring countries. A really different idea of securing borders by making them more permeable. So imagine how they feel about the possibility that Ukraine (which includes lots of ethnic Russians) would join NATO?
Probably. It developed much later and differently. But, yes, it is a kind of friendly buffer. Of course, there is the Monroe Doctrine. And the oceans. And, of course, the U.S. has dominated American countries to the south of us mostly for our benefit and the of our business class, so the friendliness is nuanced.
Exactly. You get the point. There is no doubt Canada and to a lesser extent Mexico, have benefited tremendously from trade with US but that is mainly because the those economies are tightly integrated. Central America was certainly short changed by US policies. Small countries with small but violent elites that resort to any level of violence, mafia style, to reach their ends. South America is a mixed bag. Brazil, Argentina and Peru have faired as well as they could given their realities. Chile did fairly well but was much under US influence during military regime. Colombia has always been difficult because of geography. Venezuela would have been better if it never had oil but that is what it is. I guess this is a long winded way of agreeing with you.
Matt: In the call-in, would you and your guest please comment on the principal similarities and differences of Putin's claim to part or all of Ukraine as a geographical and ethnic Russian buffer zone compared to Hitler's claim in 1938 to Czechoslovak's Sudetenland and its 3 million ethnic Germans as a buffer zone for Germany. And, as a corollary, would you please discuss Chamberlain's negotiating posture with Hitler as a suitable model, or not, for negotiating and settling with Putin. Look forward to your always interesting and stimulating discussions. Richard
My Ukrainian co-worker is currently living in Kiev, near the Belarus border; her mother has some kind of friends connected w/the government and said a lot of people are leaving -- my co-worker is trying to come up with some kind of escape plan or something. Madness. Really grateful for your coverage! For you in general. TY
I listened to several minutes of the discussion which were consumed with old stories of the speakers' experiences in Russia. I left because did not want to spend time listening to that. I hope the speakers eventually talked about the topic of foreign policy towards Russia and Ukraine.
I was very good friends with a Macedonia person when Clinton bombed Serbia. First he felt , America would never bomb Serbia, but than he thought Russia would protect them. The ties with Russia are very strong in old Yugoslavia
Bivens: "Why do we need NATO?" Yet, we have Putin massing troops on Ukraine's border, massing troops in Belarus , a supposedly independent state, and Taibbi and Bivens think NATO is a threat.
That's an example of the simple-mindedness of choosing to view history entirely based on a lack of perspective drawn from only considering the last one or two events that happened.
fwiw, the government of Belarus is close to the Putin government and not being coerced into allowing Russian troops into the country (although I suspect that you know this good and well, and are merely using that misleading factoid to take advantage of ignorance on the part of the readers.) I doubt that the Belarus regime even needed to be bribed (although Belarus can certainly use more economic activity, and tourism from a friendly army is bound to generate at least a few rubles.)
Belarus is an independent state, full stop. The Belarus government's voluntary decision to allow Russian troops into its territory and permit them to be stationed there does not relegate the nation to the status of "supposedly" (the obvious inference being "not really") independent.
The Hitler-Chamberlain analogies are well taken, and Team D.C. seems to be right on schedule. Biden makes Chamberlain look like a piker when it comes to giving away the farm, and Putin's ego should be as inflated as Hitler's was after all his cost free "victories" pre-Poland. Germany was obviously looking to encroach on our good thing, until Hitler started a war he had no hope of winning, and just so Putin should be done away with sooner rather than later. Letting the Europeans fight to near exhaustion will probably work again, then shuffle in and clean up. The gas shut off is a nice touch. Give Russia a black eye while we drain Europe's gold reserves. We can make them a deal they can't refuse. Central Asia beckons, the ultimate redevelopment program.
A caller mentioned the low ages for marital consent in the South after the Civil War. I just want to point out that, right now as I type, it is legal for 14-year-old males and 12-year-old females to marry -- in Massachusetts. New Hampshire, 14 and 13. I guess they want to be prepared in case Sherman marches through. As for New York, they raised the age from 14 to 18 way back in, let's see, last summer.
Louisiana? Can't get married until 16, no matter if you have parental consent or not. At age 16 and 17, you can marry with consent of the parents and a judge -- but even then not to someone more than three years older.
The caller was making a point about loss of life in war and intended no insult. But, man, the crazy things people come up with about the South...
Well said and statistically interesting. Thanks for taking time to write. Personally, I've I've more or less accepted the inevitable. "No hope knows no fear."
The people in the south after the civil war let there girls marry young to have babies so there would be youth to do the work. And the girls didn’t eat at home anymore. You guys must be romantics
"What is Nato"? "OK it has a parliament". Seriously this statement was made on the Callin w/o objection by Taibbi. Nato is not the EU. Good grief. I think Taibbi and his guest have spent so much time in Russia or studying Russia that they have warped their perspectives. Plus they think that given Taibbi's living there back in the 90s and Bivens connection including his wife, narrows their perspective precisely the way they both claim "the West" does. There is a threat to the countries abutting Russia. Vlad would just love to force them to kneel. But neither Taibbi nor Bivens seem to get this.
The last thing I'd like to see is a war with Russia - by the US, by Nato. But, hey, by Ukraine, too.
Taibbi just said, in reference to Cuba and America's refusal to accept Russian weapons in Cuba, that why should we find problematic Russia's "refusal" to accept NATO weapons in the former USSR states. What shallow thinking. Clearly they are dupes for Russia.
"Turn Ukraine against [Russia]". That was Bivens. Are you serious? Ukraine, the geography of Chernobyl. OF Russian cyberattacks. This is beyond stupid.
"Taibbi just said, in reference to Cuba and America's refusal to accept Russian weapons in Cuba, that why should we find problematic Russia's "refusal" to accept NATO weapons in the former USSR states. What shallow thinking."
Outline the differences, in principle, between Russian national interest c.2022 in regard to intermediate range missile bases on its borders, and US national interest c.1961 in regard to intermediate missile bases on its borders, as in the historical example of the Cuban Crisis and its resolution.
If you can't do that, you're the shallow thinker, making an unsupported claim. (As is this one: "Clearly they are dupes for Russia.") Whatever the case, by all means, stick around and comment. I have no objection to anyone determined to show that they're out of depth in a given topic discussion. As long as they refrain from hogging column inches with copy-and-paste spamming, or showing up in a swarm, like the Nazis I used to debate on the Atlantic website (in their now-defunct and vanished article comment sections.)
The founders of NATO were Nazis. If you don't believe me, ask Ben Norton. NATO is NOT a peacekeeper; it's an aggressor for the US/UK, always has been. It was supported by Nazi Poland in it establishment. NATO shouldn't be anywhere, let alone on Russia's borders.
1) NATO, which has never acted aggressively towards Russia and is made up of countries with no backbone for a fight OR
2) ordinary Russians getting ideas after watching their "brotherly" Slavic neighbor overthrow their own corrupt Putin puppet dictator by popular revolt, have free and open elections, become more democratic and free? Once Yanukovich was deposed the Ukrainians scheduled elections for 3 months later in May 2014. Since then they have had another election and voted in a new president - while over in Russia Putin continues to poison, imprison, or murder his political rivals.
Russians were told by Putin from the beginning that Ukraine was taken over by Nazis and, like their grandparents in the Great Patriotic War, it was Russia's duty to stop them. The NATO excuse is a smokescreen. Putin isn't afraid of NATO, he is afraid of suffering the same fate as Ceausescu.
"NATO. which had never acted aggressively toward Russia.." Are you kidding. It's SURROUNDING Russia's borders, pointing nuclear weapons toward Moscow. If that's not aggression I don't know what is. The US has NEVER kept its word about anything. I notice orher countries aren't so corrupt. Iran, for example, never broke the agreement. America did. Our presidents and secs. of state are ALWAYS liars. Yanukovich wasn't "deposed." He was taken down in a US coup. And, yes, the Nazis in Ukraine show swastikas. The US don't care. All they want is to Install the corrupt NATO in Ukraine and Belarus. Then they feel they will own the area outright. Then on to China; already they are surrounding it. Gawd, don't you just hate this country.
Never have I seen the MSM so negligent, acting as government lap-dogs on this issue. And I got so tires of responding to friends with piecemeal responses to questions like "So, you think it's OK that Putin invaded the Ukraine"; or "Took over Crimea?". And I started responding those kinds of questions by saying "read this" (the link below) and then get back to me (with better) questions. It's my (hastily put together) mini-primer on the basic events that I think you have to know before one can even ask intelligent questions about "The Ukraine Crises". If I had to title it I would call it "Everything you SHOULD know about the Ukraine but the media has failed to tell you". Hope it helps. any. I welcome any comments and corrections of fact.
Thanks, Mr. Webb, for providing this. You brought information about the Crimean election and polls that was very helpful. Much more needs to be revealed about the overthrow of Yanukovych and the involvement of the US and European countries. Victoria Nuland et. al. Your report could be improved by providing footnotes citing sources.
The problem with this type of narrative is European borders are not neatly drawn according to ethnic identities because the borders have moved so many times. There are Russians in Ukraine, Poles in Ukraine, Germans in Poland, and a whole mess of similar situations in Southeast Europe, just to take a few examples.
In a situation like this, it can't work to have the principle that one country can unilaterally invade another just to "protect" its ethnic people. Even if some portion of a country might want to vote to join another country, that decision has to be left up to the central government. If every other country did what Russia claims the right to do, it would be chaos. I hate to invoke Poe's Law, but this "protecting our ethnic people inside other borders" rationale is exactly what started WWII.
That being the case, setting the "context" that Crimeans or Eastern Ukrainians are ethnically Russian is a red herring. A sensible solution might well be to split Ukraine into pro-Western and pro-Russian halves, because clearly there are different factions, but Russia doesn't get to enforce that at the barrel of a gun.
I was not proposing a solution; and to say I was "setting the 'context' that Crimeans or Eastern Ukrainians are ethnically Russian" in order to do so misses the point. The only real point I was trying to make was "given what is at stake, How could 99% of americans not know this". And I know they don't.
'..... the principle that one country can unilaterally invade another just to "protect" its ethnic people.' I have read and heard a lot about this Ukraine/Russia problem but never heard that about it, not saying it wasn't. I have heard it many years ago when the US said that it will invade any country to protect American lives even if it is only one person which the US has used in the past.
matt, I realize you'll probably not see this post, but I say it anyway. I for one am working and often cannot participate due to time constraints, not to mention, no Apple devices of any kind. Your choice of platforms was a poor one for callins, there are plenty of platforms for this sort of thing. Additionally, IMO, the choice to go with live callins at all with half of your subscribers not eligible, even if they didn't have time constraints makes things worse. I haven't looked yet, so I hope at the very least there are transcripts conveniently available, or archived audios (not Apple proprietary formats, please). Bottom line, rethink this please.
My God Matt do you know "The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia" paperback, used, is going for $4,165.10 on Amazon! Guess I'm not the only one with a youthful past (way past) that had a fondness for 'assholes' and an high bar for 'misogyny' :)
What don't you agree with (not being facetious or argumentative, truly want to know). Do you not agree with Erik's hope? Do you not agree that Putin should be blamed? Do you not agree that Biden should not be blamed?
Aaron Maté spoke about this on Useful Idiots this week. Paraphrasing what the head of the German Navy recently said, “Russia isn’t actually going to invade, Crimea is never going back to Ukraine because of it’s importance to Russia’s security interests, and that basically all Putin really wants is respect.” I agree with that. I also find it insanely frustrating how anxious the U.S. is to ratchet up the tension with Russia. The crap the Democrats and their buddies on CNN have been saying for the past week, It’s lowbrow warmongering.
Exactly right. Look back to Clinton years and how the US dragged Russia around by the hair. Putin understands national interest very well and he has generally abided by his instincts in this regard. Nothing more, nothing less. Biden is an idiot and should be blamed for making foolish moves.
Yes, the Democrats created such hatred in their base for Russia when Trump won that they cannot ratchet this back. Also the traditional neocons hated Trump and opposed him viciously because he questioned Germany’s financial commitment to NATO and in his campaign was not hawkish towards Russia.
past week? How about the past 5 years? We "formally" declared war on Russia when Obama imposed sanctions; informally with the US-sponsored coup in Ukraine 2014 (tried in 2004 but that didn't go as planned...this time really put the country in the shits..think Burkina Faso shits!)
Don't be a knucklehead. Its idiotic to say you want the one who didn't create the situation to be blamed and not the one who, even while as veep and carpet bagging crook, just happens to have his finger on the big red switch.
How could Putin be blamed "for starting this mess".? We lied. We always lie. We made a deal not to go west...we started right away to encircle them with all the little countries using cash to grease the skids. We want their stuff. They have massive land with minerals and forests and clean water. The Stans have massive mineral wealth...interesting how we started the "color revolution" in Kazakistan. We are presently encircling our "new enemy" China and Russia and all the stans. However we have a military that is more concerned with CRT or BLM rather than fighting. That makes me sleep good at night. Biden is a joke and you know that the rest of the world, including Europe, is looking at us shaking their heads. Our weakness is palpable. I think we should think about the three statements at the Oracle of Delphi...Know thyself....Nothing in Excess....Surety Brings Ruin. The last is where we are now.
Russia has a rational geopolitical interest in not having a NATO member on its border. NATO has tried to include Georgia at the of the Bush 2 administration, and Russia responded militarily to support its goal. In 2014 the West helped depose a leader of Ukraine who has not hostile to Russia. Russian responded again militarily and annexed the Crimea, notably including Sevastopol, a key military port that was part of Russia and then the USSR until 1991. Russian also set up the separatists in the two Donbas republics. In 2020-21, NATO gave Ukraine a special status, and nationalists in Kiev are again courting NATO. Hence Russia’s latest moves.
In other words there is a clear pattern of Russia escalating in response to NATO/Western actions in border countries that go against it’s interests.
I do not believe Russia has the will or capability to take over the Ukraine. The goal is a negotiated commitment for Ukraine to remain independent from NATO. The critical European nation, Germany, does not wish to get involved with Ukraine as it depends on Russia for energy. Putin thus is facing an EU that is not united. In the US there is a loud pro Ukraine cabal — Vindman and Fiona Hill types — plus the usual neocons who are spoiling for intervention particularly after we left Afghanistan. These types are pressuring the Biden crew to deploy troops, and Biden would love to have another topic in the news to distract from domestic failings, but I bet that in the end he will not send troops.
“Not one inch eastward” of NATO James Baker famously promised Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/
The 1990 Baker quote is accurate. And you'll look in vain for any gainsaying of it, or debate about the policy of refraining from NATO expansion, until many years after the fact.
Nonsense. Putin is an autocrat with absolute power and doesn’t think like us. Putin won’t be satiated. He will press on to undo the liberal international order for as long as he remains in power. Demanding his right at Normalizing annexation, denying sovereignty to neighbors, undermining liberal ideas and democratic societies, and dissolving NATO are future goals.
Unlike realists, Putin does not view countries as unitary actors; he looks within countries to distinguish between dictatorships and democracies. Not without reason, Putin believes that U.S. support for democracy abroad threatens his autocratic rule. During Putin’s reign, most crises in relations with the United States have been triggered not by NATO expansion, but by democratic mobilizations — Putin calls them “color revolutions”, when people demonstrate against autocrats like him.
My wife is Russia born and dislikes him intensely as he’s a narcissistic psychopath.
I'm Canadian, my wife is Russian, and she loves him, as does the vast majority of Russians, regardless of where they live in the world. This is because he "repatriated" the assets of Russia, reversing their theft, facilitated by idiot Yeltsin, from the clutches of the West. This includes saving the Russian oil and gas industry that Khodorkovky, via Yukos, had fraudulently conveyed. Persons who respect Putin include the recently fired German Navy Admiral Kay-Achim Schoenbach, who obviously, has a completely different take on Putin than you or your wife does.
Do an online search of the current approval ratings of Putin.
For fun, compare those ratings to Biden's or Johnson's.
The "international order" is supposed to be governed by the UN Charter.
Last I checked, it was the US that had repeatedly breached that by invading and/or sanctioning Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Nicaragua, etc... the list goes on.
Currently, the US is illegally sanctioning Venezuela, and still is attempting to install a non-elected puppet, Guido.
"Fuck the EU" Nuland literally admitted in a public speech that the USA had invested $5 Billion in Ukraine towards "democracy". "Democracy" has destroyed the Ukrainian economy to the point that it has now the lowest standard of living in "Europe".
US "democracy" celebrates US domestic intelligence agencies illegally spying against its own citizens, russia-gate and false charges against Assange and Snowdon.
To end all of this crisis in Ukraine, Ukraine has only to comply with the Minsk Agreements. Zelensky was elected on the basis that he would do so and end that conflict. Once elected, he immediately reversed that position. Pretty obvious to anyone that the US is interfering with that process, which the majority of Ukrainians want to be fulfilled.
our enemy is Biden not Putin
There is not a politician in the USA who has had those ratings and you can go back for years. Propaganda...I like him because he is not letting these trannys take over his country. Rachel Levine will not be welcome in Moscow.
Bruce Ottawa,
Thanks for a perfect comment. Much appreciated. Rob
Must be nice to so easily accept a malignant narcissistic psychopathic strong man, and simply forget what he’s doing and accept him. But why are you in Canada?
Of course a lot of what your saying about the US and it’s parasitic aggressive capitalism is quit true, but again your in Canada not Russia, why?
Much of the rest of my wife’s family has relocated to Ukraine from the Russian Far East in the 1960s, after the military had went there at the end of WWII to where many Russian intellectuals had been forcibly relocated. They have a more realistic view of Russian govs from there. Less propaganda. This family were actual Russian Patriots awarded for their military service, which dislike & don’t accept asshole murders like Putin.
Hi Don,
I'm Canadian, that's why I live in Canada. I'm guessing your wife's family is living in the western part of Ukraine around Lviv or Kiev, right?
My wife is 1/2 Ukrainian and 1/2 Russian and she moved here with her family 30 years ago, long before I ever met her. Grandma was born and lived her whole life in Donbass and my wife grew up in Rostov-on-Don.
I say Grandma lived, past tense, because she's dead from an Azov bomb gardening in her yard in 2015 while she was being "liberated" by them when they suddenly and randomly bombed her neighbourhood without any warning. She survived WW2 but she couldn't survive "liberation" by her own compatriots.
How's that for a "realistic" view? Why don't you explain "realism" to my wife and her family?
Why don't you explain realism to the Odessan's burned alive in May 2014 and again to those torched in Mariupol a week later?
Those were neoNazis hated by many. Hell some of them are from here. Some American state dept people tried to use them. Ukraine hasn’t been much of a priority
No, family are Russian speakers from Dneiper area and further east. One has a dairy farm too near the war zone. Russians will destroy that 1st second. People are fooled by Russian promise propaganda and remember when area was a Russian high priority high tech & mining area. People want it back, just like American miners want everything back. Wife has PhD & worked at missile factory & had own engineering co until collapse. You all need to understand Putin will help nothing & is truly a psychopath, but think what you want—your being conned just like trump conned Americans.
cheers
Acknowledged, your family is from the west and not from the Donbass.
Frankly, you equivocating your wife's family's relocation after WW2, in support of rebuilding USSR after its destruction, to the Donbass, and ethnic Russians being bombed and slaughtered is ridiculous. Your ad hominem attacks on Putin's personality, without any proof, as an argument against any of the historical facts, policies and issues raised by me, reveals that you are the one who has been conned into taking a position without any real critical reasoning.
Can't you see past the classic US regime change psy-op? It begins with the vilification of the leader they want to depose. Go back and look at every single instance in the last 20 years that the US has started an attack on any country. Russia, Syria, Libya, Iran, Venezuela, Belarus. It doesn't matter how popular the leader is. Gaddafi, Maduro, Putin etc. First they start feeding the media with stories about how they're illegitimate, despotic, tyrannical, perverted, evil, etc. They create caricatures of that individual so that the US population, and marginalized sections, (doesn't matter how small of a percentage) of the targeted country can now "personalize" their frustrations and focus upon the leader, and not that target's population. They plant fake news stories. They pay NGO's to stir things up. Nuland admitted the US spent $5 Billion in Ukraine for "democracy" training pre Maidan. She handed out cookies.
They manufacture consent.
They gave Ukraine an impossible choice, Russia or Europe, but nothing in between. Russia couldn't let Ukraine continue have the same preferred trade partner benefits that it enjoyed before it chose the Europe route, as it would have undermined Russian trade, and security policies with Europe, and Ukraine would simply have become a conduit to Europe for artifically cheap goods and Russia's defence technologies.
It's pretty obvious that Russia has no interest in occupying Ukraine, and it never had any interest in attacking it. That being said, it does have a right to peaceful borders, and the insistence by Ukraine in arming itself, with Russia as the enemy, is not acceptable. Crimea and the Donbass are ethnically Russian and they peacefully chose Russia. Russia has helped the Donbass defend themselves. They have been subjected to serious breaches of their constitutional rights. As you know, in Ukraine, the Russian language has been banned in business, media and schools. Not to mention they have been bombed, and the water has been shut off to Crimea.
In Canada, we have dealt with this same issue, and we have two Official languages, French and English. Although some small-minded people have grudges against the other, the vast majority of the population respects the cultural differences between themselves, and even enjoy them.
You need to take a sophisticated examination of the big geo-political / economic picture, and not at any one person. Ask yourself, why is that leader so popular in his/her own nation if that leader is so evil? Go behind the rhetoric, and look at the real issues, energy security, defence security, trade etc. Stop being duped into believing that they're evil dictators, and that the US has your interests at heart. Ukraine is to the US and Europe, simply a spot on the map for another military base. They have no economic interest in Ukraine, and Ukraine has nothing to provide to them of any significance economically. Hence, the collapse of Ukraine's economy.
Russia has drawn the line.
We are a no longer much of a democracy but a woke dominated shithole, until we revolt.
Rhetoric about armed uprising in the US is even more stupid than warmongering in Ukraine.
It is not about an "armed uprising"but about winning elections and then coldly and efficiently canceling the woke once and for all time.
Let's hope we're all together on the "we" side of this proposed revolt, and that "we" win, due to our superior intellectual, persuasive, and combative abilities.
Putin may be an "autocrat", "psychopath", etc. but this does not counter the facts regarding Russia's geopolitical desire to have a neutral buffer state on the largest part of its western border. r the fact that Russia has responded with military intervention only when the West has tried to bring direct border states (Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO). Even then, Russia did not "conquer" Georgia or Ukraine, and there is no evidence that he wishes to do so with Ukraine now.
You do not have to like a nation or its leaders to objectively assess its geopolitical interests and its means of defending them.
Exactly.
The fair, rational, de-escalating thing for the victorious Western coalition to do in the aftermath of the Cold War victory should have been to disband NATO and replace it with a different framework of mutual agreements- one that de-emphasized increasing arms arsenals and expanding the territorial locations of intermediate-range missiles- and a different, explicitly stated set of goals that included Russian input into the negotiations. We could have gotten back to negotiating more the sort of agreements that Ronald Reagan sought with Mikhail Gorbachev, a trust-but-verify pact on defensive weapons measures to assure mutual national security so that no nation great of small faced the prospect of vulnerability to military aggression. An agreement that extended that right of protection even to Russia.
Instead, the West- most crucially the "indispensable nation", the US- continued to press their advantage and maximize geopolitical leverage in ways that took for granted that Russia was the Inconsequential Loser Country.
I'm reminded of the Versailles agreement following the victory of the US-UK-France alliance in WW1. The process has been very different, and there were no terms of surrender and reparations overtly imposed on Russia, as there were with Germany. But the dismissive arrogance of the victors is the same. The patronizing put-you-in-your-place attitude of the victors is the same. The unstated justification for the onerous, one-sided consequences of victory is the same: "we're so good that we can push you around and make sure you never get your head above water again." All the while crafting a narrative that everything the victors do is in good faith. A narrative more recently believed by Libya's Omar Qaddaffi, who for a brief time accepted the West's invitation to alliance and friendly relations- another national leader who, while not an exemplar of stainless virtue, was not the rape-brigade sociopath of Western propaganda, and who deserved a better fate than having his erstwhile big-power friends turn on him, abandon him, and leave an "Arab Spring" militia to execute him after sodomizing him with a sharp object. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/globalpost-qaddafi-apparently-sodomized-after-capture/
To speak of another NATO-sanctioned hit. Where was "national sovereignty" then?
That's no way to build a reputation for trust with people. (You know- our brothers and sisters in the Global Community.) It doesn't matter if you're the Cool Kids Clique. You might meet up with some of the same people you misuse while you're on top, on your way down. You might call out for a hand, and not get it. Heaven forbid, someone might double-cross you.
The blithe ignorance of imagining that the West can cut deals with a different set of gangsters is another one of the new features that depart from the Versailles analogy. What the militarist faction in NATO appears to have in mind for Putin is regime change; they'll be satisfied with nothing less. But the deposing of Putin implies a power vacuum, and the requirement for a leader and a leadersip faction to replace Putin. And, whether the Ivy League brain children inside the Beltway realize it or not, it's terribly unlikely that the successor will be some anti-corruption pro-democracy idealist that the NATO hegemonists (mostly non-Russians, with no real stake in the game) might be championing to their press outlets as the rising star to lead Russia to a bright, progressive, pro-Western tomorrow. The smart money says that the NATO Risk Gamers will merely settle for a kleptocrat and gangster that they imagine that they can do easier business with.
Putin might be a gangster- probably is a crook and a grafter, although I found Luke Harding's indictment of his regime, Mafia State, to be pretty thin gruel as these things go. But some gangsters are better than others; Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa was much better for his people than an unadulterated crook like Frank Fitzsimmons, for example. Putin is no worse as a national leader than, say, Ferdinand Marcos (better, in my opinion, based on my limited readings; but I'll allow others to argue the proposition...please, let them those commenters be more knowledgeable than myself.) And the US backed Marcos to the hilt for decades, until his Use Impunity ran out.
The bottom line is that Putin's rule should be a Russian matter decided by the Russian people- not by self-interested hypocritical outsiders White Knighting on their behalf, a pose that looks more phony all the time to me. It's similarly weird for me to hear American mouthpieces White Knighting for the inviolable principle of "national sovereignty" on an issue like a nation joining a 29-nation military alliance that just happens to coincidentally breathe down the neck of the autonomous agency of the nation of Russia to maintain its national security.
Very well written and quite right. We have been at this game for some years now. South America has had lots of our dealing with our philanthropy ..ie John Perkins " The Economic Hitman"... The same thing that happened in Honduros in 2014...Equador...Bolivia...Venezuela. I could tell you first hand on the situation in the Phillipines. The list is long. At this point I think we are loosing Europe. France has spoken out for Russia and so has Germany. I think the NATO stronghold is coming apart. Germany put itself into a tight spot with no Nuclear, coal plants and they needed natural gas. Russia worked the deal with low prices and a constant supply. It was Germany's call wether or not they signed on the dotted line without the interference of us butting in to sell them LNG at a much higher price.
Mascot, you might consider writing articles and submitting them as such to substack yourself. Rob
I'm on Substack already. "Iconoclasms." Just getting underway. I have a few other priorities to manage before I can apply the attention required to post regularly and prolifically on my own Substack page. lol, as opposed to getting involved in protracted debates in the comment pages of other Substack writers. If you start me up, I never stop...
Really, from my point of view, my current presence here as an active poster here is a vice https://cdn.drawception.com/images/panels/2014/11-23/yYXwjXEczB-6.png
Unbelievable...i'm That Guy. As if the fate of the world were in my hands, etc. The more mundane explanation for my presence here is Work Evasion, and no one knows better than myself exactly how accurate that interpretation is. So if you notice that I've gone dark for a while, that's most likely evidence that I'm (re)committed to making progress in doing other stuff. The possibility that my silence might actually be due to Writer's Block is remote.
@Mascot very well said. And that cartoon is the brilliant.
Good to hear your news. Great cartoon!
So if I have it right because your wife is Russian origin and she hates Putin we should start a nuclear war or at least conduct the brinksmanship that could get us there. I sincerely hope you don't live in a large US city. They will be the first on the list of targets for the missiles. No but seriously, you really think that Putin's position of insisting on friendly, or at least non threatening neighbors, cannot be a serious motivator for him in spite of lot's of evidence provided even here in this comment section? I guess we live in a post truth world and we are just waiting for the end.
The threat of inter continental nuclear war is obsoleat and a red herring. Russia has nothing to fear from "the west". It should be more worried about china crawling up it's ass. They have disputed boarders and the incentive. Putin's gambit is to use the west as a straw dog while waving his version of a maga flag in order to keep the lumpen proletariat milling around his flag in order to preserve the new feudal state he and his buddy oligarch lords and barons have installed.
He's a desperate man now caught in his own web. A game of chicken with the west keeps his subjects minds off him killing his own people who push back.
Wrong.
"The threat of inter continental nuclear war is obsoleat and a red herring."
I so fervently wish for that to be the case. But if it's so, then why doesn't everyone dismantle their nuclear weapons arsenals?
The US certainly isn't doing that. The US government is currently in the process of spending hundreds of of billions of dollars on "modernizing" our atomic weapons systems...yes, I know what I just typed.
"...The Congressional Budget Office is required by law to project the 10-year costs of nuclear forces every two years. This report contains CBO’s projections for the period from 2021 to 2030.
If carried out, the plans for nuclear forces delineated in the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) fiscal year 2021 budget requests, submitted in February 2020, would cost a total of $634 billion over the 2021–2030 period, for an average of just over $60 billion a year, CBO estimates.
Almost two-thirds of those costs would be incurred by DoD; its largest costs would be for ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. DOE’s costs would be primarily for nuclear weapons laboratories and supporting activities.
The current 10-year total is 28 percent higher than CBO’s most recent previous estimate of the 10-year costs of nuclear forces, $494 billion over the 2019–2028 period..." https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57240
Meanwhile, the Bliss Ninny Greens are throwing a fit over the prospect of $3.2 billion devoted to nuclear power plants for peaceful energy, over a span of 5 years. Oh, the hand-wringing rhetoric about that https://www.nirs.org/billions-for-nuclear-rd-could-cost-us-the-climate/
Additionally, for decades, the strongest cudgel in the antinuclear armory has been that "no private insurer will cover a nuclear power plant", and the US government would have to pick up the tab in the event of a hypothetical nuclear power plant disaster (not nearly the risk in Gen III and Gen IV reactor designs that it is for water-cooled designs- but the only interest that the Antinuclear Bliss Ninnies have in those projects is in stopping them.) As if the Federal government doesn't already do that with disasters that are practically guaranteed to happen every so often, like hurricanes and floods. But the claim of "no private insurer will underwrite nuclear power" has proved to be reliably effective at shutting down further discussion on the spot.
Meanwhile, what was the budget for modernizing the US nuclear arsenal, again? $634 billion, 2021-2030. A number that bears repeating:
$634 billion, 2021-2030.
I haven't heard anyone in Congress or the Senate publicly challenging this as a funding priority. What up?
Speaking of "uninsurability", who's to be expected to pick up the tab in the aftermath of an "exchange" of nuclear weapons? Yet no one in the Corridors of Beltway Power or the Prestige Media addresses any skepticism toward spending over $600 billion on a project whose best possible outcome will be that the weapons are never used. That's the best case scenario- that we spend nearly 2/3 trillion $$$ to maintain a massive high-tech nuclear arsenal that never gets used.
Any other case scenario, and we're looking at a disaster that- at minimum- dwarfs the worst consequences from a Gen I nuclear reactor meltdown (a la Fukushima, crippled by its inexcusable flaws in location and design.) Yet there's no emphasis on nuclear disarmament, and the same people who throw a fit over Yucca Mountain simply edit out the existence of the massive "nuclear storage facilities" that host top-shelf weapons grade radioactive elements in the warheads of missiles and bombs.
But nuclear reactors- oh, no! Uninsurable! Too risky! Suicidal terrorists might attack a reactor and cart off the plutonium rods in hijacked 18-wheelers, something something! Diabolical!
This is why I can't take the Green Party and the knee-jerk antinuclear movement seriously- even though I get ecology and ecosystems, and share their stated concerns about the health of the natural world. I'll get back to the Greens when they get real.
BTW I think that Halford Mackinder with his heartland theory vs the maritime lands was correct. If England and our USA could they would try to keep them off balance by dividing them but that is not working now.
Mascot, I wasn't writing, "Wrong." to you, but probably Teetzel.
I know. I did upvote your "wrong."
It's tough to keep the comment margins straight sometimes. But I usually manage. If I lose the subthread, I usually refrain from posting.
Everything you write is wrong. Let's leave it at one thing: the US has never supported freedom and democracy abroad, nor cared about the lives of people, not even in its own country. It wants to own all the resources in the world, and make all the people in the world slaves to its wealthiest rulers (MIC, corporations, banks.)
Is that not the definition of Empire?
Yes. I was responding to Don, not Mile, BTW.
"U.S. support for democracy abroad". I had chuckle at that. You would do well to study the history American foreign policy. Start with Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, el Salvador, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Indonesia/East Timor, Vietnam, Iran, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Honduras. Or just read the book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"; or "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens.
David Webb,
Don't forget Honduras, Ecuador, Ukraine, with sights on Russia. BTW, Putin is not a dictator; quite the contrary. He had a huge bureaucracy behind him and it works horizontally. Russia is huge. Hear Scott Ritter on this subject.
"has" not "had"
She must really dislike our psychopaths here...we got Russia outdone on that issue.
Of course Putin doesn´t think like us - I mean, he´s the goddam devil! So there is that. And being the devil he has successfully outsmarted America AT EVERY TURN. We should obviously just kill him (or find some intelligent leaders who aren´t playing the game to enrich THEMSELVES).
Spot on. The US is the bad actor here. We started the Cold War due to our paranoia over communism and then we were only concerned with the privatization of state owned assets after the Soviet Union broke up. We never cared to understand Russia's concerns and so here we are, as you discuss.
"...nationals in Kiev are again courting NATO." You should have said, "...Nazis in Kiev ..." NATO was founded by Nazis and soldiers there have swastikas on their helmets. As for Germany, the minute the Nord2 is certified, Germany will tell the US to go to hell, a great idea.
Let's have a war
So you can go and die!
Let's have a war!
We could all use the money!
Let's have a war!
We need the space!
Let's have a war!
Clean out this place!
It already started in the city!
Suburbia will be just as easy!
There's so many of us
There's so many of us
There's so many
Let's have a war!
Jack up the Dow Jones!
Let's have a war!
It can start in New Jersey!
Let's have a war!
Blame it on the middle-class!
Let's have a war!
We're like rats in a cage!
It already started in the city!
Suburbia will be just as easy!
There's so many of us
Let's have a war!
Sell the rights to the networks!
Let's have a war!
Let our wallets get fat like last time!
Let's have a war!
Give guns to the queers!
Let's have a war!
The enemy's within!
I didn't expect to see Fear make it into a discussion on geopolitics vis a vis post-Soviet US policy towards Russia. Well done.
Thanks for this delightful, free, entertainment! Respectfully
Tom Waits had a good one....
"Put down that cross, we can use the wood."
From Come on Up to the House.
We are in an economic war with China. Wall Street, big tech and media corporations, and the political establishment get richer.
We are in an "heath emergency" war with the health bureaucrats. Wall Street, the big pharma corporations, and the political establishment get richer.
The are trying to start a war with the global warming zealots. Wall Street, the big alternative energy industry corporations, and the political establishment would get richer.
They are also trying to start a military war with Russia. Wall Street, big defense contractor corporations, and the political establishment would get richer.
See the pattern?
Why, oh, why, must we always have this Russian “ Bogeyman”? SSDD. And btw, how many Americans know that RUSSIA is no longer the USSR? Whatever your guess, it’s lower.
It seems that the eastern Ukraine (the Donbas) part of this problem could have been settled years ago if the US and Europe had held the Ukraine to abide by the minsk 2 agreement.
My understanding is that the Ukraine signed onto the Steinmeier formula which is part of Minsk 2. It called for an election in the Donbas to determine if they wanted autonomy within the Ukraine.
The Ukraine added conditions before the election could be held. The conditions were basically that Russia should cease support for the separatists and totally withdraw.
Does anyone know about this? It is not covered at all in the US media.
I don't have an iPhone so I cannot ask this question in the callin.
My son is an army artillery officer, and a few of his friends have received orders to deploy to Ukraine - one of them got the orders in December, so the planning has been in place over a month.
BTW I was based in Moscow in the mid to late 90s, I remember the two Matts as editors of their respective papers. I even went to a couple of Exile parties.
On Thursday nights
Why is Callin only an apple app ): wish I could join 😪
I have an apple product and I tried to download but the install failed so I missed this event entirely. There must be an app that is ubiquitous and simple to use for everyone.
Pretty sure you can use a browser too
Thanks Matt. As usual you are in the thick of things!
Currently in Canada there is a truck convoy protesting Trudeau's inane Covid policies. Trudeau has called this a "small, fringe minority" on their way to Ottawa who "hold unacceptable views."
When the front part of the convoy was entering Ottawa the back end was entering Manitoba. That is roughly 1,176 miles of trucks. 600 American trucks joined them. Unity is a beautiful thing. Unless you're in the ruling class. They seem to really fucking hate that.
Call me crazy but it's beginning to appear that Trudeau is the "small, fringe minority" who holds "unacceptable views."
Maybe Trudy should have read his de Tocqueville.
“When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
“Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
In conclusion I'd like to offer a tribute to ex-hippy Neil Young who obviously didn't learn a damn thing over the years.
Hey hey, bye bye
Spotify told Neil to fly
There's no more Neil
On Spotify.
Hey hey, bye bye.
Can’t believe I used to love that whiny schmuck’s music
OK, anti-vaxxers are stupid people, the vaccines are proven safe and effective, period, there is no other side to those facts. That small fringy minority is a group of really stupid people, which you have to be to have an ideological argument against a vaccine that would help reduce the risk of severe illness and death in certain people. Getting the vaccine would also help reduce transmission and thus end the pandemic as those that either had Covid-19 or got vaccinated don't appear to transmit enough viable virions to infect others (see the latest episodes of This Week in Virology at microbe.tv/twiv, real science from actual researchers).
That said, these idiots made their decision to not get vaccinated and should be allowed to suffer the consequences, we, the vaccinated and recovered should be allowed to move on with our lives, unmasked.
I've been unmasked for a while. Maybe you're just a sissy.
Were you one of those overly compliant little yes-men cowering in your house, Purell covered & masked up though alone, binge watching Netflix while you waited for some low paid Doordash dude to bring your food?
I think it broke you.
I think that if "the real science" told you to slather on dog shit instead of Purell you'd be on a nightly Fido hunt.
Sounds like lots of “projection” going on here….who are you to judge other people’s motives for doing what they do? In your world do you really judge how “macho” somebody is by wether or not they’re wearing a mask?
Does it Jack? Does it really?
Gosh isn't "projection" the #1 diagnosis leveled by cheese ball half baked psychologist wanna-be nudniks that populate the Internet like rapacious little cockroaches?
Hey, look on the bright side Jack, no one will ever accuse you of being original.
Sorry but it is projection. Makes no difference. The proof is in the pudding. As they say, if it looks like duck, and quacks like duck, most probably it's a duck. Projection is the number one tool of MAGA heads. Whatever I do I accuse you of doing. That way you are neutralized before pre-emptively before the debate starts.
Wonderfully projected as MAGA doing what the establishment does on a daily basis! Kudos!
Yeah, it does. No one would ever accuse you of having a valid, relevant point in an argument nor of being smart because you're an anti-vaxxer moron for purely stupid, ideological reasons.
You're one of those morons, having to prove your manhood by not listening to warnings about real risks. I bet that you don't wash your hands before you eat just to prove how sissy worrying about e. coli is. You're that stupid.
Nothing in your stupid post is about any valid, relevant fact about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, its transmission, Covid-19, how policy was developed, the competency of policy makers, etc, it's all about your pathetic political ideology. You are just like one of those stupid people who have died from Covid-19 for their own stupid, political, ideological reasons, such as they have the "freedom" to not act in their own best interest, to ignore experts in preference of absolutely irrelevant political and ideological points.
Like I said, anti-vaxxers made their choice, let them live with it and we should stop trying to protect them from themselves. I haven't been sick from anything since 2018 and I love it. But you're a tough guy, so go ahead, don't wash your hands before you eat, get real close to people so that you inhale their spittle, don't worry about open wounds and infection, etc. It's your way, tough guy.
I love left wing "Karens." One little prod and the spittle starts flying.
What do they call left wing Karens anyway? Moonbeam? Sunshine?
It's a mystery.
Here's your sister raising havoc amongst those anti-vaxxer subnormals whose death you obviously gherkin jerk over every night like a good little ghoul.
https://gettr.com/post/pq8uc91b77
Personally Jeffy I don't give a flying fuck about your hygiene protocol. You can roll yourself in hot butter and bake the germs off on a barbecue for all I care.
I do see that you've taken to the MSM narrative like a retarded duck would take to a piss puddle.
More power to ya Jeffy.
I honestly don't know why you're so whiny about the unvaxxed anyway. I've no doubt the thought of a booster #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 etc., is your go too foreplay thought before gherkin jerkin' to the unvaxxed obits for the day so their existence guarantees that you'll have access to your primary fetish tool for many moons. Or Moonbeams I suppose.
By the way, your appearance on British TV was awfully cute.
https://gettr.com/post/pp2btt6e73
Biss is now a regular troll on these comment pages. Generally I counsel ignoring him, but you comment was great trashing of him!
Why do you post when you have nothing to counter anything that I write?
Spiderbaby is a bonafide Troll. Don't argue with him as he/her is of bad faith.
Chuckie, from the looks of those jowls & that double chin I'm going to assume that you picked up your psychic powers at one of those Chuckie Cheese cheese-a-thons you so obviously love.
Let me explain something to you Kreskin, I paid my $60, just like you, so if I want to type out directions for a game of competitive ball sack snuffling, always a liberal favorite I might add, I will do it.
If I want to detail the exact number of ass hairs that currently reside in my crack I shall do so also.
If little Chuckie Cheese doesn't approve, little Chuckie Cheese can find a nice rusty nail studded 2x4 & project that up his wattled booty.
Then again liberals seem to get all moist & frisky over censorship so just petition to have me removed.
Either way darling I don't give a fuck.
K?
K.
You're just stupid. Nothing that you post has anything to do with Covid-19 or the vaccines, you would drink water from an open sewer if the authorities told you not to just to prove your stupid point.
The single relevant and only important issue with the stupid anti-vaxxers is that they negatively affect others as they overwhelm hospitals and get in the way of others with more important problems, such as forcing people to wait for hours when they fill up ERs and force hospitals to cancel surgeries.
Understand that I don't care about the anti-vaxxers, they made their decisions and should accept the consequences without unduly affecting others, but they don't, they get in the way. You have no right to do that, you should suffer your decisions alone, affecting no one else.
Jeffy say, "You stoopid. Everybody stoopid...stoopid, stoopid, stoopid."
Only little Jeffy have smart noodle. One big massive smart noodle that defies the most dedicated of milliner artisans to fashion a hat that fits correctly.
Consequently Jeffy is prone to brain freeze in winter.
To battle this errant birth defect Jeffy has taken to inserting his massive melon into his derrière at every available opportunity. After the initial orgasm Jeffy's head settles into its warm butt cocoon while Jeffy waits for spring.
This has been a public service announcement from the 'Nature & All Its Freakishly Weird Aberrations" podcast.
I have had the three shots. But I understand why some don't want them. How can Americans trust our for profit pharmaceuticals and for profit healthcare after we with taxes pay for their crimes against us? As soon as this virus spread, I said I will wait for Cuba's vaccine. Not a single Cuban doesn't want her/his shots. Why? Because they trust their free healthcare system and their scientists and know for certain they work for the people.
I can't understand any of the anti-vax nonsense, not even the Big Pharma conspiracy theories. The fact is that the development of the mRNA vaccines is public knowledge, the research is out there, unfortunately with the pay wall of the publishing journals in some cases. So, while Big Pharma has played a role, much of the fundamental research and development was also provided by the taxpayer.
The "trust" issue is due to Americans not knowing much. They haven't taken any courses, such as Vincent Racaniello's Columbia University virology lectures on his youtube channel, they haven't read about microbiology, etc. Big Pharma is what it is because enough people do not take care of themselves nor had listened to their doctors to create a wellness system and made it a disease maintenance system. I'm on no meds, but I took advantage of the vaccine.
Most Americans don't know where Ukraine is. I was born there. Russians don't have man power to take whole country. They can take up to Odessa.
Having said that, we need to deter potential Russian assertiveness because if we back off, China will unify Taiwan very soon. After that real chaos will start. Putin knows we will not send troops to defend corrupt, disfunctional failing state that Ukraine is becoming. Europeans will not fight for Ukraine either.
This has nothing to do with Taiwan. And the Ukraine has no real national interest value for the US or Europe. Neither did Kosovo, but we went to war there. same with Iraq. Same with Iran. The neolibs want war, they do not care who it is with. I was deployed to Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan during the Obama surge. Both were obvious from day one to be a colossal waste of time. But, some folks made a shit ton of money. Which is what it is all about, always. Those making the money do not fight. Ever.
Ukraine does have something to do with Taiwan indirectly. If the US military does not back up Biden's belligerancy, China may be emboldened with respect to Taiwan, while Biden is still in office.
I don't argue with that, I just don't see them related, they are separately related to Biden's ineffectiveness as a leader vis a vie Afghanistan withdrawal. Either way, China is going to get Taiwan and corporate America will be fine with it, especially the NBA.
What do you think would have happened in Afghanistan had the national govt being involved in the withdrawal plans. They weren't if you remember. They were left out instead of having a say. The original deadline was may 1st set by 45. This administration also emptied the prison of 5k people hostile to the country. It was going to be a shit show after those things happened no matter. The soldiers that died from the bombing might be alive if the prison hadn't let the worst out to get us back regardless of their beef with us. I'm not saying whose to blame,just pointing out what's not being talked about as far as Afghanistan.
I have lots to say about the Afghanistan and plan an article about it. I served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Couple of things: One is the sovereign government of Afghanistan was the Taliban when we invaded. There was never a real democratic government elected there after we were in control. Any real election there would have elected Taliban. That is just the reality in over three quarters of the country, including where I served. OK, the key to a proper withdrawal (and I think we should have withdrawn a year after our invasion) was holding on to Bagram. That is it. Easily defended and a runway capable of handling any size aircraft. We could have brought everyone we needed to get out of Afghanistan to Bagram and evacuated from there. After that, we could have kept Bagram like we did "embassy" enclaves in Iraq or just left entirely. Instead, we left Bagram in the dead of night in July and didn't even tell our Afghan allies there. Totally shameful. A private could have done it better than Austin, Milley, Blinken, and Biden.
Xi would obviously invade Chinese Taipei while America was fucking up another war on the other side of the world
Why? The cost obviously outweigh any benefit. It's to the Emperor Xi's interest to reel them in slowly, which will occur automatically as China rises and the US declines.
just pointing up absurd sense-free warmongering. Yes,
China and its rebel island (which only survived for internal US political reasons in Truman era) have an intimate relationship, massive flows of money and people between them
Here is some useful background:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-historical-dispute-behind-russias-threat-to-invade-ukraine
Interesting but it seems a limited analysis focusing the 1990 non-expansion agreement in the reunification negotiations to the Baker-Gorbachev meeting 2/9/90. When the GWU NatSec Archive in 2016 declassified a compendium of U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents it was found a "cascade" of assurances given Soviet officials by a host of Western leaders throughout the 1990 negotiations.
Worthwhile reads for a broader review are (1) GWU's NatSec Archive Briefing Book, "NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard" by Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton, published 12.2017, https://bit.ly/3Az5VTy
and (2) Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson's analysis "Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion" published April 2016 in International Security, MIT Press. https://bit.ly/3Az5VTy
The National Security Archive link for your first entry (both links in your post are identical; not sure if that was intended) is reliable, and extensively well-footnoted. The most informative account that I've read on the sequence of events at that time. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
I encourage people to read the article in its entirety; then they can draw their own conclusions. Including objections, if they have any to post.
This discussion is going to be great! One thing I learned in university is that Russia has always liked to buffer itself with friendly countries. Some countries might be outright conquered. But, also It would invite into Russia and hand out (usually non-contiguous) estates to nobles of neighboring countries. A really different idea of securing borders by making them more permeable. So imagine how they feel about the possibility that Ukraine (which includes lots of ethnic Russians) would join NATO?
Would you call Mexico and Canada, heck the whole of the Americas as a friendly buffer?
Probably. It developed much later and differently. But, yes, it is a kind of friendly buffer. Of course, there is the Monroe Doctrine. And the oceans. And, of course, the U.S. has dominated American countries to the south of us mostly for our benefit and the of our business class, so the friendliness is nuanced.
Exactly. You get the point. There is no doubt Canada and to a lesser extent Mexico, have benefited tremendously from trade with US but that is mainly because the those economies are tightly integrated. Central America was certainly short changed by US policies. Small countries with small but violent elites that resort to any level of violence, mafia style, to reach their ends. South America is a mixed bag. Brazil, Argentina and Peru have faired as well as they could given their realities. Chile did fairly well but was much under US influence during military regime. Colombia has always been difficult because of geography. Venezuela would have been better if it never had oil but that is what it is. I guess this is a long winded way of agreeing with you.
Well worth watching
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
Yes, excellent, Mearsheimer is always insightful and interesting.
I recently saw this with Vladimir Pozner: https://bit.ly/3Az0zaS
I'll always miss Stephen Cohen, his passing was a great loss for realists. Thankfully there's a lot of his work to refer to.
cj,
Yes, I miss Stephen F. Cohen every day and mourn his loss, as I do Bob Parry. We hate to see the good ones go.
Matt: In the call-in, would you and your guest please comment on the principal similarities and differences of Putin's claim to part or all of Ukraine as a geographical and ethnic Russian buffer zone compared to Hitler's claim in 1938 to Czechoslovak's Sudetenland and its 3 million ethnic Germans as a buffer zone for Germany. And, as a corollary, would you please discuss Chamberlain's negotiating posture with Hitler as a suitable model, or not, for negotiating and settling with Putin. Look forward to your always interesting and stimulating discussions. Richard
My Ukrainian co-worker is currently living in Kiev, near the Belarus border; her mother has some kind of friends connected w/the government and said a lot of people are leaving -- my co-worker is trying to come up with some kind of escape plan or something. Madness. Really grateful for your coverage! For you in general. TY
My enemy is not Putin but BIDEN and his slimy minions.
I listened to several minutes of the discussion which were consumed with old stories of the speakers' experiences in Russia. I left because did not want to spend time listening to that. I hope the speakers eventually talked about the topic of foreign policy towards Russia and Ukraine.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/01/27/is-lockheed-martin-dictating-politicos-war-propaganda-articles-in-secret-hell-no-theyre-doing-it-right-out-in-the-open/
Is Lockheed Martin Dictating Politico’s War Propaganda Articles in Secret?
Hell No–They’re Doing it Right Out in the Open
I was very good friends with a Macedonia person when Clinton bombed Serbia. First he felt , America would never bomb Serbia, but than he thought Russia would protect them. The ties with Russia are very strong in old Yugoslavia
Bivens: "Why do we need NATO?" Yet, we have Putin massing troops on Ukraine's border, massing troops in Belarus , a supposedly independent state, and Taibbi and Bivens think NATO is a threat.
That's an example of the simple-mindedness of choosing to view history entirely based on a lack of perspective drawn from only considering the last one or two events that happened.
fwiw, the government of Belarus is close to the Putin government and not being coerced into allowing Russian troops into the country (although I suspect that you know this good and well, and are merely using that misleading factoid to take advantage of ignorance on the part of the readers.) I doubt that the Belarus regime even needed to be bribed (although Belarus can certainly use more economic activity, and tourism from a friendly army is bound to generate at least a few rubles.)
Fwiw, I wrote that Belarus was a “supposedly independent state”. Not a misleading comment and not a “factoid”.
What was your point, again?
Belarus is an independent state, full stop. The Belarus government's voluntary decision to allow Russian troops into its territory and permit them to be stationed there does not relegate the nation to the status of "supposedly" (the obvious inference being "not really") independent.
The Hitler-Chamberlain analogies are well taken, and Team D.C. seems to be right on schedule. Biden makes Chamberlain look like a piker when it comes to giving away the farm, and Putin's ego should be as inflated as Hitler's was after all his cost free "victories" pre-Poland. Germany was obviously looking to encroach on our good thing, until Hitler started a war he had no hope of winning, and just so Putin should be done away with sooner rather than later. Letting the Europeans fight to near exhaustion will probably work again, then shuffle in and clean up. The gas shut off is a nice touch. Give Russia a black eye while we drain Europe's gold reserves. We can make them a deal they can't refuse. Central Asia beckons, the ultimate redevelopment program.
Hot damn! Taibbi and Bivens together. If I manage to call in, it will be like a Make-a-Wish event.
A caller mentioned the low ages for marital consent in the South after the Civil War. I just want to point out that, right now as I type, it is legal for 14-year-old males and 12-year-old females to marry -- in Massachusetts. New Hampshire, 14 and 13. I guess they want to be prepared in case Sherman marches through. As for New York, they raised the age from 14 to 18 way back in, let's see, last summer.
Louisiana? Can't get married until 16, no matter if you have parental consent or not. At age 16 and 17, you can marry with consent of the parents and a judge -- but even then not to someone more than three years older.
The caller was making a point about loss of life in war and intended no insult. But, man, the crazy things people come up with about the South...
It's saturday the 29th. This am news is US China spat re taiwan.
Losin air in the covid balloon. We need more sizzle. So right after the superbowl we'll bomb the shit outa them! Now's as gooda time as any!
Mascot
Well said and statistically interesting. Thanks for taking time to write. Personally, I've I've more or less accepted the inevitable. "No hope knows no fear."
The people in the south after the civil war let there girls marry young to have babies so there would be youth to do the work. And the girls didn’t eat at home anymore. You guys must be romantics
On the Callin:
"What is Nato"? "OK it has a parliament". Seriously this statement was made on the Callin w/o objection by Taibbi. Nato is not the EU. Good grief. I think Taibbi and his guest have spent so much time in Russia or studying Russia that they have warped their perspectives. Plus they think that given Taibbi's living there back in the 90s and Bivens connection including his wife, narrows their perspective precisely the way they both claim "the West" does. There is a threat to the countries abutting Russia. Vlad would just love to force them to kneel. But neither Taibbi nor Bivens seem to get this.
The last thing I'd like to see is a war with Russia - by the US, by Nato. But, hey, by Ukraine, too.
Taibbi just said, in reference to Cuba and America's refusal to accept Russian weapons in Cuba, that why should we find problematic Russia's "refusal" to accept NATO weapons in the former USSR states. What shallow thinking. Clearly they are dupes for Russia.
"Turn Ukraine against [Russia]". That was Bivens. Are you serious? Ukraine, the geography of Chernobyl. OF Russian cyberattacks. This is beyond stupid.
"Taibbi just said, in reference to Cuba and America's refusal to accept Russian weapons in Cuba, that why should we find problematic Russia's "refusal" to accept NATO weapons in the former USSR states. What shallow thinking."
Outline the differences, in principle, between Russian national interest c.2022 in regard to intermediate range missile bases on its borders, and US national interest c.1961 in regard to intermediate missile bases on its borders, as in the historical example of the Cuban Crisis and its resolution.
If you can't do that, you're the shallow thinker, making an unsupported claim. (As is this one: "Clearly they are dupes for Russia.") Whatever the case, by all means, stick around and comment. I have no objection to anyone determined to show that they're out of depth in a given topic discussion. As long as they refrain from hogging column inches with copy-and-paste spamming, or showing up in a swarm, like the Nazis I used to debate on the Atlantic website (in their now-defunct and vanished article comment sections.)
Mascot, I'm getting quite fond of you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Parliamentary_Assembly
The founders of NATO were Nazis. If you don't believe me, ask Ben Norton. NATO is NOT a peacekeeper; it's an aggressor for the US/UK, always has been. It was supported by Nazi Poland in it establishment. NATO shouldn't be anywhere, let alone on Russia's borders.
Which scares Putin more,
1) NATO, which has never acted aggressively towards Russia and is made up of countries with no backbone for a fight OR
2) ordinary Russians getting ideas after watching their "brotherly" Slavic neighbor overthrow their own corrupt Putin puppet dictator by popular revolt, have free and open elections, become more democratic and free? Once Yanukovich was deposed the Ukrainians scheduled elections for 3 months later in May 2014. Since then they have had another election and voted in a new president - while over in Russia Putin continues to poison, imprison, or murder his political rivals.
Russians were told by Putin from the beginning that Ukraine was taken over by Nazis and, like their grandparents in the Great Patriotic War, it was Russia's duty to stop them. The NATO excuse is a smokescreen. Putin isn't afraid of NATO, he is afraid of suffering the same fate as Ceausescu.
Chuck C,
"NATO. which had never acted aggressively toward Russia.." Are you kidding. It's SURROUNDING Russia's borders, pointing nuclear weapons toward Moscow. If that's not aggression I don't know what is. The US has NEVER kept its word about anything. I notice orher countries aren't so corrupt. Iran, for example, never broke the agreement. America did. Our presidents and secs. of state are ALWAYS liars. Yanukovich wasn't "deposed." He was taken down in a US coup. And, yes, the Nazis in Ukraine show swastikas. The US don't care. All they want is to Install the corrupt NATO in Ukraine and Belarus. Then they feel they will own the area outright. Then on to China; already they are surrounding it. Gawd, don't you just hate this country.
Never have I seen the MSM so negligent, acting as government lap-dogs on this issue. And I got so tires of responding to friends with piecemeal responses to questions like "So, you think it's OK that Putin invaded the Ukraine"; or "Took over Crimea?". And I started responding those kinds of questions by saying "read this" (the link below) and then get back to me (with better) questions. It's my (hastily put together) mini-primer on the basic events that I think you have to know before one can even ask intelligent questions about "The Ukraine Crises". If I had to title it I would call it "Everything you SHOULD know about the Ukraine but the media has failed to tell you". Hope it helps. any. I welcome any comments and corrections of fact.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UnLOmFrhgJqo3FSk3wrKefZXySp6QGIZITWO2ZfJi80/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks, Mr. Webb, for providing this. You brought information about the Crimean election and polls that was very helpful. Much more needs to be revealed about the overthrow of Yanukovych and the involvement of the US and European countries. Victoria Nuland et. al. Your report could be improved by providing footnotes citing sources.
The problem with this type of narrative is European borders are not neatly drawn according to ethnic identities because the borders have moved so many times. There are Russians in Ukraine, Poles in Ukraine, Germans in Poland, and a whole mess of similar situations in Southeast Europe, just to take a few examples.
In a situation like this, it can't work to have the principle that one country can unilaterally invade another just to "protect" its ethnic people. Even if some portion of a country might want to vote to join another country, that decision has to be left up to the central government. If every other country did what Russia claims the right to do, it would be chaos. I hate to invoke Poe's Law, but this "protecting our ethnic people inside other borders" rationale is exactly what started WWII.
That being the case, setting the "context" that Crimeans or Eastern Ukrainians are ethnically Russian is a red herring. A sensible solution might well be to split Ukraine into pro-Western and pro-Russian halves, because clearly there are different factions, but Russia doesn't get to enforce that at the barrel of a gun.
I was not proposing a solution; and to say I was "setting the 'context' that Crimeans or Eastern Ukrainians are ethnically Russian" in order to do so misses the point. The only real point I was trying to make was "given what is at stake, How could 99% of americans not know this". And I know they don't.
'..... the principle that one country can unilaterally invade another just to "protect" its ethnic people.' I have read and heard a lot about this Ukraine/Russia problem but never heard that about it, not saying it wasn't. I have heard it many years ago when the US said that it will invade any country to protect American lives even if it is only one person which the US has used in the past.
Tomorrow meaning Thursday or Friday?
matt, I realize you'll probably not see this post, but I say it anyway. I for one am working and often cannot participate due to time constraints, not to mention, no Apple devices of any kind. Your choice of platforms was a poor one for callins, there are plenty of platforms for this sort of thing. Additionally, IMO, the choice to go with live callins at all with half of your subscribers not eligible, even if they didn't have time constraints makes things worse. I haven't looked yet, so I hope at the very least there are transcripts conveniently available, or archived audios (not Apple proprietary formats, please). Bottom line, rethink this please.
My God Matt do you know "The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia" paperback, used, is going for $4,165.10 on Amazon! Guess I'm not the only one with a youthful past (way past) that had a fondness for 'assholes' and an high bar for 'misogyny' :)
There is no real problem. The world isn't run that way, except for the plebs to manage and control, and pretty much extract from them.
I hope Putin will be blamed for starting this mess, rather than Biden just because he happens to be around.
Uhhh idk if I agree with that.
What don't you agree with (not being facetious or argumentative, truly want to know). Do you not agree with Erik's hope? Do you not agree that Putin should be blamed? Do you not agree that Biden should not be blamed?
Aaron Maté spoke about this on Useful Idiots this week. Paraphrasing what the head of the German Navy recently said, “Russia isn’t actually going to invade, Crimea is never going back to Ukraine because of it’s importance to Russia’s security interests, and that basically all Putin really wants is respect.” I agree with that. I also find it insanely frustrating how anxious the U.S. is to ratchet up the tension with Russia. The crap the Democrats and their buddies on CNN have been saying for the past week, It’s lowbrow warmongering.
Exactly right. Look back to Clinton years and how the US dragged Russia around by the hair. Putin understands national interest very well and he has generally abided by his instincts in this regard. Nothing more, nothing less. Biden is an idiot and should be blamed for making foolish moves.
Totally correct.
Yes, the Democrats created such hatred in their base for Russia when Trump won that they cannot ratchet this back. Also the traditional neocons hated Trump and opposed him viciously because he questioned Germany’s financial commitment to NATO and in his campaign was not hawkish towards Russia.
This all reminds me of Joel Andreas’s book “Addicted to War” (1991)
past week? How about the past 5 years? We "formally" declared war on Russia when Obama imposed sanctions; informally with the US-sponsored coup in Ukraine 2014 (tried in 2004 but that didn't go as planned...this time really put the country in the shits..think Burkina Faso shits!)
Don't be a knucklehead. Its idiotic to say you want the one who didn't create the situation to be blamed and not the one who, even while as veep and carpet bagging crook, just happens to have his finger on the big red switch.
innerCynic, I don't think Zachary knew Erik was just kidding.
How could Putin be blamed "for starting this mess".? We lied. We always lie. We made a deal not to go west...we started right away to encircle them with all the little countries using cash to grease the skids. We want their stuff. They have massive land with minerals and forests and clean water. The Stans have massive mineral wealth...interesting how we started the "color revolution" in Kazakistan. We are presently encircling our "new enemy" China and Russia and all the stans. However we have a military that is more concerned with CRT or BLM rather than fighting. That makes me sleep good at night. Biden is a joke and you know that the rest of the world, including Europe, is looking at us shaking their heads. Our weakness is palpable. I think we should think about the three statements at the Oracle of Delphi...Know thyself....Nothing in Excess....Surety Brings Ruin. The last is where we are now.
I hope you said that in jest. Sarcasm is always fun, though you have to be careful no one takes you seriously. .
Where's my reply to Erik?