War and Imagination The Hudson Review
The Varieties of Bullshit Peter Ludlow
Meeting of Romantic Minds American Scholar
How the first ever pop star blazed a trail of innovation BBC
Elusive Big-Nosed Blobby Frog Found in Peru TreeHugger
Climate change, COVID loom over Alaska’s 50th annual Iditarod Sled Dog Race Reuters
#COVID-19
Coronavirus: Beijing ramps up response to Hong Kong’s raging fifth wave, bringing Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan into anti-epidemic efforts South China Morning Post
***
Covid pandemic sparks steep rise in number of people in UK with long-term illness Guardian. KLG25 highlighted the following text:
More than a third of working-age people in the UK now suffer from a long-term illness, with new figures showing a dramatic rise since the pandemic began. Post-Covid conditions, including long Covid, breathing difficulties and mental-health problems, are among the causes, according to disability charities and health campaigners.An Observer analysis of the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) labour market status of disabled people figures shows that nearly 14.2 million people in the UK aged 16 to 64 said they had a health condition lasting for at least 12 months in 2021 – a rise of 1.2 million during the two years of the pandemic.
Levels of long-term ill-health had been rising more slowly before the emergence of Covid, at an annual average of about 275,000 cases a year between 2014 and 2018, but the rapid increase over the last two years highlights the health problems facing the UK, says the disability charity Scope.
California Retools Its Fight Against COVID, Pledging Equity Capital & Main
Truckers protesting Covid mandates are amassing outside the capital. NYT
New York Governor Drops By Brooklyn Bar to Hype Up To-Go Cocktails Eater NY
Mayor Eric Adams Lifts Restaurant Vaccine Checks. Some Owners Might Keep Them Anyway The City
New Not-So-Cold War
Newspaper headlines: ‘Merciless Putin’ and PM’s six-point plan BBC
Ukrainian refugees near 1.5 million as Russian assault enters 11th day Reuters
Russian Forces Pound Civilians, as Putin Likens Sanctions to a ‘Declaration of War’ NYT (David L)
Visa and Mastercard suspend operations in Russia FT
Sergey Karaganov: Russia’s new foreign policy, the Putin Doctrine Signs of the Times (MH). From February 23; still germane. By Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow
The Point: What’s the endgame in Ukraine? YouTube (MH). Interview with Sergey Karaganov.
India’s moment to shine Gilbert Doctorow
Amid Tussle Between Russia & Ukraine, Is The West Fighting A Proxy War? | Arnab LIVE YouTube. Today’s must watch video. The tussle, aka shouting – and I mean that literally, not metaphorically – starts about 12 minutes in. Boy, do I miss Indian tv. Yes, I am aware this is Arnab Goswami, and that his Republic TV is a reliable BJP mouthpiece. In fact, that’s precisely why I’m linking to these videos. Goswami wouldn’t be pressing his arguments if they weren’t squarely aligned with Modi’s neutrality policy (which enjoys strong support across the Indian political spectrum, including from the opposition). You’ll see nothing like this on mainstream US television – including Goswami raising Biden’s son’s Ukrainian business connections around minute 42. Goswami followed this segment with a second, equally riveting segment #Westdon’tpreach,Why Should India Not Be Pragmatic About Its Policy On The Ukraine Crisis? | Arnab LIVE YouTube. He minces no words in condemning US policy. As well as shredding guests who try to misrepresent India’s UN position.
For a small taste of Goswami on the latter theme (from another program, I’ve not managed to locate the complete clip):
India respond to pressures by US and UK to force India supports the condemnation and sanction of Russia by using threats and sanctions on India! pic.twitter.com/uklDaENAGJ
— Conan4thepeople (@4thepeople15) March 5, 2022
Getting the Hook: The Met Cancels Opera Singer for Refusing to Condemn Putin Jonathan Turley
Valery Gergiev and the Nightmare of Music Under Putin New Yorker
Too Close to Putin? Institutions Vet Artists, Uncomfortably. NYT
‘War destroys everything’: Russian culture workers denounce war in Ukraine France 24
Thomas Tuchel says Chelsea fans should not have chanted for Roman Abramovich at Burnley BBC
Greek in Mariupol: “The fascist Ukrainians would kill me, they don’t let us leave the city” (VIDEO) Greek City Times<
Turkey on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: It’s complicated Responsible Statecraft
Europe Fears It Could Be Too Late to Shake Off Russian Gas Addiction WSJ
Will war fast-track the energy transition? Deutsche Welle. Magical thinking.
US and allies preparing for a Ukrainian government-in-exile> Al Mayadeen
Iran Nuclear Deal Threatened by Russian Demands Over Ukraine Sanctions WSJ
Lawmakers in both parties see limits on US help for Ukraine The Hill
US works with Poland to provide Ukraine with fighter jets FT
White House weighs three-way deal to get fighter jets to Ukraine Politico
U.S. Officials Travel to Venezuela, a Russia Ally, as the West Isolates Putin NYT
Hacktivists Stoke Pandemonium Amid Russia’s War in Ukraine Wired
Why Are There So Many Indian Students in Ukraine? The Diplomat
Avoid Unnecessary Risk, Evacuation of Students From Sumy India’s Priority: MEA The Wire
Ukraine: 21 Indian sailors stuck on ship in port, maritime company says there are other vessels too Scroll
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no millionaire’s son, no no
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one, nohttps://t.co/2kKBQiKsIC https://t.co/fPaHyvidqI— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) March 5, 2022
My only disagreement with Cory is that it’s *always* a good time to revisit the special relationship between UK (and US) elites and Russian oligarchs. https://t.co/aB9nBnJp9C
— John Rogers (@jonrog1) March 4, 2022
France
Spirited, disruptive, impotent? Five years of Macron on the international stage France 24
Sports Desk
Master of illusion: Ball of the Century perfectly captured Shane Warne’s art and his legend The Indian Express
Shane Warne: the showman who could do hard graft espn cricinfo
Waste Watch
California wants to eradicate microplastics. Will a new strategy be enough? Guardian
Climate Change
‘Unscientific’: Morrison government wanted IPCC to say Great Barrier Reef ‘not yet in crisis’ Guardian
Fractured majority allows government to withhold information on torture at CIA black sites SCOTUSblog (fresno dan). Hoisted from comments.
Class Warfare
Why do corporations greenwash? Al Jazeera
Calling Both Sides ‘Spoiled’ in Baseball Lockout Ignores How Owners Forced Labor War FAIR
Antitrust Cops Put Handcuffs for CEOs on the Table BIG. Matt Stoller.
India
Doctors Beyond Borders: The Crisis Facing Medical Students Studying Abroad The Wire
India aims to rival China in quantum computing Asia Times
‘The shops are gone’: How Reliance stunned Amazon in battle for India’s Future Retail Reuters
Syraqistan
Ignoring the Taliban won’t make them go away Responsible Statecraft.
The Taliban are not an absolute evil, they are just another less than ideal entity ruling a country. By obsessing over what is and how it came to be, we pay little heed to making the current reality better. The current humanitarian crisis, civil rights of Afghans, and the threat of terrorism that should be cause enough to push the world into a meaningful engagement with the Taliban.
usa usa is on to a new mess long in the making……..but look at the NEW! IMPROVED! NATO!
Russia Removed From Apple Maps Babylon Bee (chuck l)
Antidote du Jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
305 comments
Comments are closed.
SPY ‘EXECUTED’ Ukraine peace negotiator shot dead ‘defending the nation’ amid claims he was a ‘double agent’ working for Russia
What’s the bet : He was a spy working for Russia, a spy working against Russia, or just the first guy to say, “Guys, this isn’t working out for us, perhaps we have to talk about surrender.”
‘pour encourager les autres’.
That thesun.co story doesn’t make any sense but at least confirms that the incident happened. On saker they are speculating that he was shot down on the streets of Kiev by the neo-Nazis and also claiming that there have been assassination attempts on Zelensky. More fog of war?
Might just be the guy chosen to motivate Ze… *When you realize they are writing Z on their tanks so he knows where to run* :O Russian, gallows humor, lol
Some readers may think the person who wrote “Getting the Hook” is a turkey. I don’t. He is, however, a “Turley.” :-)
Oops! Sometime the software “fixes” what it deems to be an error. I didn’t catch that but I’ve now corrected the mistake.
Turley: May the inventor of autocorrect spend eternity in hello.
One of my favorites, and revising Turley to Turkey is a classic IMO.
Tested this myself and autocorrect came through!
from the article:
Netrebko has publicly stated that “I am opposed to this senseless war of aggression, and I am calling on Russia to end this war right now to save all of us. We need peace right now.” Even that statement should not be necessary as a condition for her to perform.
…
When many artists opposed the Vietnam War, there was widespread support for their free speech rights in opposing blacklisting. The same was true during the McCarthy period. Now, the very same people who celebrate such struggles as defining moments in our history are seeking to cancel artists for their political views. In this case, Netrebko is not even being targeted for saying something offensive but rather for not repeating the position of the majority on the war. Years ago, I wrote that there was a dangerous trend toward compelled speech: “The line between punishing speech and compelling speech is easily crossed when free speech itself is viewed as a threat.” We appear to have crossed that line.
Millions for hypocrisy and not one cent for reason.
I can see it now: “Visa and Mastercard suspend operations in Texas due to their recently passed abortion and voting laws”.
Not the best way to promote a cashless economy.
‘India respond to pressures by US and UK to force India supports the condemnation and sanction of Russia by using threats and sanctions on India!’
Wow. He does not hold back. What a little ripper. But you want to know the sad bit? You will never, ever see a guy like this on the TV in the US, the UK, Oz or most other western countries as it would not be allowed. The guy is actually bringing up events from the 70s for chrissake. How many ‘talking heads’ in the west do something like that? Gunna have to listen to that longer Indian TV video tonight.
I guess that guy doesn’t watch CNN or Western media. Someone should correct him and explain to him the facts. Facts like this:
“The Whole World” is US, Canada, UK, parts of Europe, Australia, and Japan.
China most populous nation at 1.5 billion is not part of “The Whole World.”
India second most populous nation at 1.4 billion is not part of “The Whole World.”
Russia largest nation of all is not part of “The Whole World.”
Africa is not part of “The Whole World.”
Latin America is not part of “The Whole World.”
On a similar note, US public seems fine that are being censored by Russian sources being blocked. Is this a sign of US weakness?
On a different topic regarding sanctions: does it make sense for the US with it’s dependence for business on patents and copyrights (which can be copied/re-engineered/broken/ignored to various degrees) to think it can “win” a sanctions war?
timbers
if there is any silver lining to this fiasco, maybe its that a number of countries will look at honoring patents and copyrights and start evaluating the value of those rules with regard to their OWN self interest. Its been obvious for quite some time that the US patent system is corrupted, to protect and enhance profits, and not to spur inovation. How else to explain the mickey mouse (pun intended) rules of the patent and copyright system
I think that it will happen given that western weapons are flowing to Ukraine and even if there is a cease fire, Russia has thrown out of the club
Putin gave a vague statment that he will remove restrictions on business at his latest public appearance
US public seems fine that are being censored by Russian sources being blocked.
All these censorship efforts are doing is pi$$ me off and cause me to work harder to dig up the information that I’m not supposed to see. Couldn’t get RT (directly) again without a “403 Forbidden” message this morn, so I took some of the following steps below (from RTs website):
How to access RT.com
If you can’t get news from RT due to government restrictions, here are some alternative ways to access our content
Serious attempts have been made in Western nations to silence RT, following Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine. The EU Commission has given regulators in the bloc’s nations powers to ban the media outlet. If you’ve faced difficulties accessing RT’s content due to those restrictions, here are some steps you can take to bypass them.
1. If you’re reading RT on your smartphone, you can use our Android app, which can be downloaded via this link.
2. On your PC, you can use the Tor browser, which can be downloaded here. RT’s website address in Tor remains the same: http://www.rt.com. If Tor doesn’t work for you, or is unavailable via regular means, you can resolve this issue by sending an empty email to gettor@torproject.com and you will be sent the necessary link.
3. Another way of circumventing restrictions is to use the Psiphon censorship-bypass tool, which can be downloaded for Windows, Android, and other systems. (Windows download here, direct Android download here, and other options here). Alternatively, you can use a VPN service of your choice.
4. You can also stay in touch with RT through Telegram by subscribing to RT’s soon-to-be-reborn channel there.
Yeah, a lot of Usaians want pre-digested newsish to consume, but still many of us would puke on the servers shoes if they try feeding us that garbage. I hope that this censorship enjoys all the success of Reefer Madness.
Using tor is not without its own risks, as has been mentioned here in the past.
Nothing makes sense except that when Putin–whatever other kind of villain he may be–calls us the “empire of lies” he is telling the truth. Some of us have been complaining about this for years.
Mearsheimer calls Putin a “nineteenth century man.” Mearsheimer means that Putin believes in balance of powers but perhaps it also means that he harks back to when overt lying was considered a bad thing. Isn’t this Putin’s fundamental beef–that when we swore not to expand Nato we were lying?
Pompeo, “We lie, we cheat, we steel.”
Putin, “When Russian businessmen negotiate, they all come armed, but there is no bullshit.”
From everything I have read about it in the last 5 years, the Russians feel totally betrayed by the expansion of NATO. I believe Russians, as do many other cultures, believe a verbal promise is as binding as a written, signed and sealed contract.
This seems to be one of the reasons they apply the term “недоговороспособны” to the USA.
“What that word means is literally ‘not-agreement-capable’ or unable to make and then abide by an agreement. While polite, this expression is also extremely strong as it implies not so much a deliberate deception as the lack of the very ability to make a deal and abide by it”.
The Iranians probably have the equivalent term in Farsi.
Is Ukraine accelerating an energy transition? Magical thinking.
Is Ukraine accelerating a reserve currency transition? You bet! And with disability ramping massively in the working age population of the soon to be quondam reserve area.
This is shaping up to be a World War of secondary effects and unintended consequences. As the west shuts down all circulating narratives outside its orthodox delusion it ensures it’s own powerlessness in the face of all the other stories, however loosely tied to reality as they at least maintain some respect for a world outside their own bubble.
gas over $6 by next friday imo…
I’ll be looking at the futures market this evening unless some miracle cure is found for the conflict.
tegnost
https://notthebee.com/article/lol-this-gas-station-says-they-remove-up-to-6-joe-biden-i-did-that-stickers-from-their-pumps-every-day
Don’t worry though, the dems will expend all their dry powder to argue against an excess profits tax on oil companies…because the oil companies need money to keep the financial gears lubricated, and though I engage in daily self lubrication, nobody in Washington cares if I have money or not…
It’s the new graffiti…
When i returned from the link there was some kind of “checking your browser for connecting to some donbass thing”, i closed the window asap,
I’s hopeless. Where’s my bunny slippers and that old bottle of Everclear…
I believe that is the website itself protecting itself from a potential denial of service attack. It’s just does something for a minute and then passes me through
6$ a gallon would cause a tremendous amount of pain in most of the US. People would not be able to afford to go to work. They wouldn’t be able to afford to not go to work. That would be a “gillet jaune” moment in our country IMO.
Yes, those poor people in their Ford 150’s with the spotless cargo beds, I feel for them.
Duke De Guise
Don’t forget the tow package, the heavy duty suspension, the auto-step tailgate, the double rear wheels. They all add to that spotless beauty. And in Canada at least, don’t forget also the two big Canadian flags, flapping in the breeze as they speed down the road to the “Freedom” protest, where they can sit idling in warm comfort, or crawling the protest route, while remaining spotless as the gas tank drains.
What are you talking about?
Average commute time in US prior to the pandemic had increased to nearly 1 hr. Average fuel economy for vehicles in the US is not great. Add in bad roads, poorly maintained vehicles, and increasing tolls, and the real cost of getting to work becomes prohibitive as gas prices increase. Especially now that most are being forced to return to the office.
$6 a gallon hurts poor people. If you had 40k$ to afford a premium vehicle like a truck odds are good you’re not a gig worker who will be harmed by high gas prices.
Does this mean the end of the RV industry, and the nomad lifestyle supposedly adopted by many thousands of Americans in these troubled times? Hold on to your hats, folks…
What about America’s driving season?
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is not going to make a dent in fuel prices based on what I’ve read.
One possibly re-election gambit to quell civil unrest would be a declaration of a state of emergency to nuke all federal and state fuel taxes, tolls, etc. No idea how feasible this is. I imagine it would further galvanize anti-Russian sentiment. The taxman is no longer the boogeyman in pricing. It’s just those damn commies trying to destroy America.
Of course, this would blow up the budgets of local and state governments. Property taxes would have to spike. And since THOSE increased, clearly we need tax breaks on all of it. SALT limit is gone.
Grover Norquist’s bathtub becomes the legacy of this dust up?
Remember a lot of people in Northeastern US still use heating oil. The EIA says average price per gallon was almost 4$. We’re still in the heating season. Plenty of people will need to top off their heating oil reserves now. Wait until we’re dealing with people who can’t afford to heat their homes and are suffering with problems like frozen pipes too.
The only thing I can really be sure of is that whenever my government opens its mouth, it is lying. And not just about foreign policy either. Let’s talks about vaccine safety, CDC drug recommendation, etc.
Each of the videos is well worth your time. And you’re right, as far as I’m aware, there’s nothing like this on mainstream TV in the US, UK, Oz, or most other western countries. I am missing Indian TV very much – although all the shouting does take some getting used to.
My 8:09 response is directed at The Rev Kev’s points. As to timbers, the second longer Goswami segment linked to above, #Westdon’tpreach, could be seen as his response.
Thanks…gonna check it out.
The expert ,Brahma Chellaney, on Why Should India Not Be Pragmatic About Its Policy On The Ukraine Crisis? was also interviewed very recently, here:
https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/551013-india-balance-russia-us/
What shocked me most in this interview was when Professor Chellaney explained that the purpose of Biden asking congress for $6.2 billion for Ukraine and the reason EU nations were now sending masses of weapons into the Ukraine was, to engineer Afghanistan 2.0 against Russia
around 22:30. But the whole interview is excellent. How sickening.
What shocked me most in this interview was when Professor Chellaney explained that the purpose of Biden asking congress for $6.2 billion for Ukraine and the reason EU nations were now sending masses of weapons into the Ukraine was, to engineer Afghanistan 2.0 against Russia
The “invasion” is pretty well over, well all but the fighting. Russia needs to bring in a few more troops but if the kettles especially in Eastern Ukraine work, then what’s left of the Ukrainian army will cease to exist in a day or two, except for the mob up.
That means Biden is not likely to be shipping in tanks as the Russians will turn them into dust bunnies about 10m inside the border. The US seems to think they can do an Afghanistan 2.0. The Russians have probably gamed this one out a dozen times at minimum.
Thank you for these links! I’ve watched the first one and have just started watching the second one and yes, they are incredibly interesting! You are right – there is nothing like this in western media.
I’ve been boning up on Eastern European history this weekend and sad though it is, Ukraine has always been caught between superpowers and has always suffered for that. This war isn’t something all that different than what has happened to it in the past. To figure out who is ‘at fault’ would require taking part a Gordian knot of old hurts. Remember that Europeans have much longer memories than those in the US. India does too, so I respect its position to stay neutral.
My hope is that the general revelation of how naked all the Western emperors are with respect to what they really can do here, coupled with the understanding that the West enabled all of these awful oligarchs, leads to significant changes. In both foreign and domestic policy.
I’d say it also shows how dangerous our weapons program is and how much of a good idea it would be to resurrect nonproliferation treaties. But I’m not that optimistic. I think we’ll smack a bank like Credit Suisse for their chuminess with Russian billionaires long before we back off on our weapons programs. But maybe if we lose the covering of a “coalition of the willing” in these affairs we’ll force our leaders to realize the costs of their proposals. And we’ll get the American people to understand we won’t be “leading from behind” anymore. It will be our children dying if we engage in these adventures because Germany, France, Poland, India, and China, will not be supporting us.
I’m probably being naive. But I can hope.
Ukraine has been too close and too intermingled with Russia, and had the Galician graft on it that really poisoned the well there very badly. It is like a much, much bigger Chechenia, with big “grievances” against Russia.
Best part so far is when he renders that boob Anders from London speechless. After he tries to say that NATO isn’t moving east, it’s east that’s moving towards NATO (whatever the hell that word salad is supposed to mean – I always assumed cardinal directions were not ambulatory), and tries to deny that it’s a proxy war, Goswami asks straight up “Why send arms if you’re not willing to fight?” and is met by a long silence at about the 25:00 mark that is not a result of technical difficulties.
So far the debaters representing the pro-Western side come across as intellectual featherweights. Not being familiar with Indian media, I’m wondering if this was a deliberate Hannity and Colmes situation where one side was chosen to be the punching bag, but then when I look at the actual Western “leadership”, I’m guessing maybe this was the best Goswami could find.
Even if this is a pro-Modi mouthpiece, who I’m not a fan of, it’s a far better debate than anything you’d ever see on mainstream US media.
“Why send arms if you’re not willing to fight?”
Surely that’s exactly why. Because they’re not willing to fight but would still like one side to do better, and giving them weapons is a way to achieve that. It seems like a question that contains its own answer.
“east…moving towards NATO”
There’s been comment here on NC suggesting that it was Eastern European nations wanting to join NATO (rather than the West pushing for it) that led to NATO expansion eastward. Not saying this is what happened but it may be what’s being referred to. Even if it’s true, you’d think NATO had the choice of saying “No”…
If they don’t want to join, they get putsched until they do!
I just watched the first video, and boy, were my confirmation biases triggered! It was a struggle to keep them under control and be as objective as I can when listening to arguments from both sides. I’m worn out.
In a different vein, it seemed to me that Goswami was allowing “my guys” a little more airtime than the opposing views. Does anyone else think that? If that’s the case, then it must have been a shock to those speaking what they consider to be the “correct” views to hear so many opposing views that aren’t allowed in “proper” discourse here in the U.S.
Working link for “Turkey on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: It’s complicated” article at-
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/03/04/turkey-and-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-its-complicated/
This site is interesting IMO for on the ground reports from the DPR – photos & videos etc. One video I watched & wish I hadn’t reputedly showing escaping civilians who had been shot as they fled the chaos. Much of the reporting is from a female French journalist on the ground named Cristelle Neant.
Popped up the local shop earlier & scanned the hysterical headlines – Ukrainains We Will Never Give Up !!!
I was reminded of a certain Black Knight – ” Tis but a flesh wound “.
https://www.donbass-insider.com/2022/03/05/donbass-dpr-peoples-militia-take-control-of-a-factory-in-northern-mariupol/
Calling Both Sides ‘Spoiled’ in Baseball Lockout Ignores How Owners Forced Labor War FAIR
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The national pastime’s time is slipping away, the aged fan base won’t be wooed back after the strike similar to what happened with juiced players hitting record amounts of dingers in the 90’s, this time the ‘bulking up’ is only in regards to money on the field of means.
It’s a funny game in that it’s too slow for younger people, in spite of 100 mph fastballs…
It will be remarkable to see where MLB stands during the next 10 to 20 years. Absent a comet hitting planet earth or the gigantic tsunami flooding coastal cities, I just don’t forecast a revamped popularity for watching the right fielder in every ball park scratch at his nether parts.
We are far removed from one of the best World Series I recall, and the 1991 pivotal game 7, and a starting pitcher going the distance for 10 innings.
That’d be Jack Morris of the Twins, who was matched pitch for pitch by a youngster named John Smoltz. I’ve always called the 1980s a golden age of baseball, but the most emblematic “game of the 80s” was indeed game 7 of Twins vs. Braves.
If anyone would like a little background listening, enjoy Jack Buck calling that game here.
Smoltz is an all time favorite of mine. Always enjoyed how competitive he was. There were other remarkable* WS after that one, of course, but that year’s playoffs was so much fun for Braves fans.
*I do like to bookmark that however unlikely this franchise performs on the field now, the Marlins won twice in their brief history as major league team.
That Atlanta era of teams was fun. They only won World Series, but they hit a few buzzsaws and never just bowed out. We did miss the ’94 Montreal Cleveland World Series.
great game. later on i got a autographed baseball from jack morris. the ink kinda spread, my wife asked him if he could resign it, and he did. perfect gentlemen.
Ah, yes! That would be the World Series during which Kent Hrbek pulled Ron Gant off the bag at first base, and the dipsh*t AL (IIRC) umpire called him out. Yes, as a Georgia boy who was a Little Leaguer when the Braves moved to Atlanta, that call still rankles ;-)
My kid played Little League for 5 years and then quit because it was “so boring”…that was playing not watching. He switched to playing soccer which of course is moving all the time and which be has stuck with thru high school.
He doesn’t watch sports much at all and only follows a few.
Despised baseball when I played it as a kid — most boring game imaginable. As a spectator, the game died for me in 1981 the day Rick Monday homered off Steve Rogers …
India responds to US & UK pressure.
Wow! A performance of fact and appropriate a wonderfully gradual amplified emotion I’ll remember for a long time. And he got snipped as soon as he said that word which must not be said. It was near flawless citation of India’s memory of US opportunistic throwing her under the bus PLUS a perfect, gradual upward cadence to near screaming level moral outrage at US behavior! And he got this line in too: “India does not forget history that the West forced this war on Russia” or words to that affect.
My dentist watches CNN. He brought the subject up. I was ready. But CNN propaganda is working in general is what I gather.
I wish I had found the full original uncut clip. I will continue looking. Because Arnaab Goswami is a leading Indian news anchor and doesn’t get snipped on his own show – which you’ll see if you have a chance to watch even a bit of either of the longer segments linked to above. Each starts with a short – 10 minute or so intro by reporters on the ground, and then the main debate follows. Goswami minces no words with his guests.
Didn’t he get into a row with Gilbert Doctorow the other day?
Trying to bring nuance into a discussion of Ukraine right now reminds me of trying to explain why invading Afghanistan was a bad idea back in 2001. Got called a traitor, saddam-coddler, and a pinko then. Pretty much the same now.
I’m close to giving up on trying to have these conversations. Too many buy into the myth of America as world savior and refuse to accept any complexity to foreign policy situations. That the past twenty years of catastrophic failures and lies (if not Vietnam, Iran-Contras, and other past military misadventures) hasn’t shaken their faith in our media narratives and political intentions then nothing will.
We seem to have relations with war similar to an addict with heroin. We’ll destroy ourselves for the high.
Geo, I need to stop, too. Someone posted an “Our soil Our oil USA!” meme, and I tried to explain, and got accused of wanting to fund Russia’s war and that I have a green agenda. There’s no point.
Got into a discussion with the dartful codgers in our over the hill ski group last month in regards to Putin, and except for one of them who leans a bit right, they’re all liberals. They all had standard issue ‘Putin is a bad man, wish him into the cornfield!’ feelings…
None had ever heard or seen one of of Putin’s multi hour question & answer gigs where he talks extemporaneously, and I implored them to do so, and only 1 that I know of actually watched and was blown away, he had no idea of the lies being proffered to the public by our mainstream media-always in lockstep, were oh so very misleading.
Good heavens man! A “Twilight Zone” reverence? (I just caught the typo, but it’s good enough to keep.) That is paleo-liberal ideology there. We can’t have the merely “good” (writing that is,) be the enemy of the “Official” (ideology that is.)
I have seen a similar “hardening of the heart” in the general population around here vis the ‘Russian Menace.’
The old playbook; works every time. Have a domestic disaster threatening your grip on political power? Start a war!
[I hope that you picked up a couple of those AK style rifles tossed from moving vehicles at the edge of town you mentioned recently. The Sierras may be a defensible position and all, but you need the ‘tools’ to carry out those “defensive” activities.]
Stay safe. Bunker in!
As if that would ever happen in these United States where so many people’s sense of self worth is tied up in a weapon…
I know a few gun nutters who are in constant financial trouble, but if they were to sell their gats, it would prove that they weren’t worthy of owning them in the first place, so it’d be doubly bad-the loss
One of the problems with used firearms is a lot of gun nutters think that they are gunsmiths, and then proceed to modify their firearms until they are unreliable. Like aftermarket car components, a lot of aftermarket firearms parts are more marketing than engineering.
A joke among professional gunsmiths is that there should be licencing requirements to own a Dremel tool. Another is that with a used firearm you may be buying someone else’s troubles.
Agreed. It’s wonderfully clarifying to see how the ‘ownership’ of “big macho toyz” “compensates” for basic self-worth issues. (This applies not only to gunz, but also other “high status” items.)
The end game of all this is something to keep an eye open for. As in, if one cannot persuade others to adopt one’s own points of view, kill them. that has been the default position of socio-political groupings since the beginning ot time.
Get your defenses in order!
Going long on body armor. Retired to small mountain tourist town in Colorado last year. Wasn’t prepared for endless news coverage of murders in Colorado Springs and Pueblo – mostly drug and gang related but too many reports of ‘spray and pray’ shootings. Don’t go there often and don’t hang out at night, but still…
Wife is retired pastor but at one point in 2017 our church in our very red previous state had to hire private security due to Trumper threats: she had a nasty habit of preaching the Gospel which for some reason offended a few of our ‘Christians’.
Too old (and cheap) to do the Concealed Carry dance, but good body armor runs about the same as a decent 9mm so… going long on body armor.
Get a trauma kit too. There are small kits that increase your survival rate. The only good thing that ever comes out of military conflicts is better medical products and techniques. Look for a product called Combat Gauze (or similar) and what goes with it.
There is a growing number of states that now allow what’s called Constitutional Carry.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20the,without%20a%20license%20or%20permit.
It may get a little “Wild West,” but remember that local mores generally defined what was ‘allowed’ socially.
What many jurisdictions do not have are laws mandating training in the handling of weapons. We have that for automobiles, which kill a lot of people yearly. why not firearms? Who knows? The whole thing has generally been political since at least the early nineteenth century.
See: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-180968013/
Do notice that up in Canada, some Provinces also regulate the possession of body armour.
> Constitutional Carry
I keep my package inside my pants. After all, I don’t want to frighten people.
The way things are going, you’re lucky you weren’t in the cornfield. Kudos for getting someone to read into it more, though.
When I talk to well-intentioned liberals, and they bring up Putin Bad, I tell them, “Of course, he is the head of a powerful state. that is who they are. Biden has more blood on his hands from the attack on Iraq than Putin does, even today.” That usually meets with slow agreement, and then you can really talk. Sometimes you have to make a brief tour through Biden’s denial he supported the war, then through his support as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Once you can get their agreement that heads of state are not what any of us in our daily lives would consider morally normal people, that usually stymies any propagandistic use of moralism, and you can go on to talk about what is really going on.
after the past 6 years or so, I get it.
I see how we got every ugly event in human history, the Cultural Revolution, Kristalnacht, Salem witch trials, Red Scare, the Catholic/Protestant massacres, the pogroms, the massacre of Danes in Anglo-Saxon England
i understand now.
Yes, agreed. It is fascinating from a psychological and historical perspective. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t read so much history. It’s like watching a train wreck happening in real time, or being caught in a whirlpool or rip. Full speed ahead.
On another point, premium gas here(northern NH) is up to $4.099 and diesel is at $4.139. So everything up about 10 cents/gal since Fridayish.
$4.05 for regular unleaded yesterday in “hillbilly country” (slightly north of Petal).
FWIW I’m seeing fewer Ukraine related posts across my feceborg feed this weekend. Along with having no knowledge of history or appreciation for nuance, Americans have a short attention span.
If I see the “our soil our oil” meme pop up I’ll be sure to note the similarity to “blood and soil” before seeing myself out.
Drill, baby, drill, and open those pipelines! Or else you’re a green Russia Putin-loving commie traitor.
You win the Internet Prize for today!
“The Green Manace!”
A worthy successor to “The Red Menace” of times gone bye. [Perhaps that should be; “..of Times gone bye.”]
It’s been interesting to see Biden uniting people this past week or two.
Premium is $5.69 a gallon at a local shell station this morning, $7 a gallon by July 4th wouldn’t surprise me.
Under $ 2 dollars a gallon in Russia. That’s probably after the decline in the value of the rouble though.
Refining and being able to take delivery matter when dealing with oil. I would suspect the issues will be in Europe more than anywhere outside of the initial surge here. Will Europe pay higher gas prices if their natural gas is climbing and they are jumping their mlitary budgets?
I saw $5.99 today in the suburban East Bay… if you bought a car wash. Thus I also saw my first $6.xx (same station, no car wash). July 4 will be early this year, methinks.
Some gas station in LA had it at nearly $7 a gallon so I would not be surprised to see it hit $10 before too long – especially when the Russians start their counter sanctions.
Hear hear!
It’s not a hopeful situation
@ Louis Fyne
You got that right. I too now have a better understanding of some of the crazy things that I came across reading up on history. People in the future are gunna think that we were nuts – and they will be right.
Don’t think about it too much. People in the future will be nuts in their own way, in ways we’d never imagine/in ways we’ve always known.
Seconded. Thanks, Jeri-Lynn.
And I strongly encourage America’s neocons to take every opportunity to represent their point of view on international media.
Something about it helped me notice one aspect of the new order among nations. For the first half my life, the world was divided between “free” and Communist. After that, it was USA World Empire. Now which nation is playing the role of mediator if not judge? It’s certainly not USA World Empire. And it appears that Washington is having a hard time recognizing its new role. Threatening India with sanctions? Lunacy. Taking photos to Xi prior to the invasion trying to convince him of what a bad boy Putin is, only to find Xi shared the photos with Putin as they were planning their meeting at the Olympics? Idiocy.
I’m afraid we’re at the point I’ve been worried about since Bush/Cheney. Will the people in charge of our nukes be as sane as the Soviets were as their state crumbled?
“Hacktivists Stoke Pandemonium Amid Russia’s War in Ukraine”
You think of hacktivists and you might think of someone living in California but I think that it is more likely that they actually live in Virginia or Maryland. Just earlier I went to RT and it was the Arabic version of RT which came back until I was able to switch to English. The ability to do that does not sound like the work of some kid working from their basement. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that different governments went to hackers and told them that they were busted. But if they did stuff for their government from time to time, then that other stuff might be forgotten.
Re: Guardian on Long Covid
The guardian writes: “More than a third of working-age people in the UK now suffer from a long-term illness, with new figures showing a dramatic rise since the pandemic began.”
Certainly the majority of those suffering from Long Covid have been vaccinated. I wonder why the Guardian doesn´t think through the obvious questions? Here in Germany the vaccine injured don´t get recognition for their injuries. Only when they claim “long covid” do they get specialised treatment.
Its tough to tease out what is being measured here. The pandemic, quarantines, turning family members against family members, etc is having extensive effects on mental health. Since mental health issues are included in this 1/3 “long term illness”, we cant conclude it is all due to longcovid
Would also be useful to know the proprortion of the UK that had long-term illnesses prior to covid in 2019
Do these measures distinguish between mental health illness resulting from Omicron, from issues resulting resulting from permanent exposure to media propaganda?
I do not know what were these numbers were, in UK or elsewhere, prior 2019 — but since end of February 2022, albeit not being a physician nor a statistician, I am pretty sure that these mental health illness measures shot to the moon.
Per the article, the absolute number is 14.2 million, which is an increase of 1.2 million from pre-pandemic numbers. The typical annual increase is 275,000 per year so this is about double normal.
It also stated there were 1.5 milion people who had Covid symptoms for longer than four weeks (presumably this wouldn’t be included in the above) and 685,000 lasting more than a year (which seems like it would be). That last number is pretty close to the increase over the 2 year average.
It’s a bit difficult to extrapolate from only 2 years of data, or to parse out exactly what this means. To give one example, if people suffering from, say, long term cardio issues started dying suddenly in large numbers, it would reduce this stat, so it can’t be taken as the whole story on its own. As you noted, the baseline isn’t consistent and it’s conflated with effects from anti-Covid measures, the general environment, Brexit etc. Also ‘longer than a year’ by definition can’t include Omicron or all that much of Delta. So we are looking at the beginning of a curve that could take a number of different shapes in the future. It’s safe to say the early trend is concerning, though.
“A battle over water was already raging in Chicago’s suburbs and exurbs.”
https://www.salon.com/2022/03/05/americas-largest-inland-port-is-running-out-of-water_partner/
This is a fascinating and in-depth look at the intersection of industry, climate, and politics on a dwindling water supply that is already causing some turmoil in this city. Still digesting all the info and don’t really have any worthwhile thoughts to share other than I think others here may find it worth the read.
A battle for water was also one of the main cause for the present war in the Ukraine-
https://www.eurasiareview.com/16042020-the-water-crisis-in-crimea-analysis/
I fully expect to see water wars break out between nations in the next coupla decades.
My biggest investment is in water, and as luck has it perhaps a million gallons flows by me each and every day on the all cats & no cattle ranch on one of the few river systems in the south of the state.
I often wonder what 20 million people in SoCal divorced from local sources are gonna do when the big reservoirs up north go tilt?
Didn’t know that. Thanks for the link!
Well they should take caution when it comes to fighting a gasoline fight….like at a fuel station…
Sadly Derek Zoolander was the last male model standing…
https://youtu.be/ZnZ2XdqGZWU
I’m thinkin US Foreign Policy has got a new official mascot: The Big-Nosed Blobby!
(I’m probably gonna get in trouble for this one huh?)
“Visa and Mastercard suspend operations in Russia”
It is not only those two or PayPal that have stopped operations. People going on the Moscow Metro suddenly discovered that they could no longer use Apple pay or Google pay to buy metro tickets with and so had to scramble for actual cash. I think that at this stage that those corporations can kiss goodbye to any chance of ever getting any sort of market share in Russia ever again. And I am sure that other countries right now are paying attention and seeing how vulnerable they are to these card and tech corporations and learning their lessons. Puts me in mind of all those Canadians who reconsidered their banking when they learned that their government could shut them from their money at a whim. I bet that a lot of the big banks there lost a lot of customers-
https://www.buzz.ie/news/world-news/apple-pay-google-pay-no-26352481
Too late for those western corporations now. ‘On Sunday, several Russian banks announced plans to start issuing cards using the Chinese UnionPay card operator system.’–
https://www.rt.com/business/551352-russia-banks-china-union-pay/
We would all be better off if NO ONE could use Google Pay and Apple Pay, everywhere. Those punks have as much legit purpose in finance/banking as banks have in speculation and insurance. Perhaps if we called it the Sergey Silo Act rather than Glass-Steagall we could get it reenacted in the current spastic political environment.
Yeah, i’m not going to cry for someone who uses their surveillance/tracking device as a payment tool as well…shades of the dystopian future that is sought by the financiers/patent crowd
To clarify: Visa/MC cards issued by Russian banks will continue to function normally inside Russia, but not abroad. Similarly, Visa/MC issued by non-Russian banks will no longer function inside Russia. Well-to-do Russians usually have bank accounts abroad, so the only people to suffer from this will be ordinary Russians traveling abroad (or foreigners visiting Russia) who will have to carry wads of cash. Yay yay, USA.
Russia already has its own Mir card system; all state employees and pensioners have had Mir cards for several years already. Mir and UnionPay will probably be the default from now on for newly issued Russian bank cards. UnionPay is widely accepted worldwide, though not as much as Visa/MC. I suspect that’s going to change now.
https://news.yahoo.com/freeze-lifted-bank-accounts-linked-201526794.html
I really don’t know what to make of this – it sounds alarmist but he’s also the Democratic chair of the house Agricultural committee…
Congressman David Scott (D) – chair of the house agriculture committee on March 2nd: “We could very well be on the verge of a hunger crisis, all over this world…” Rep. Scott goes on to cite alarming statistics about the global food supply disruption owing to the Ukraine conflict.
The video is titled “Fed Chair Jerome Powell delivers semiannual monetary policy update to US House” and was streamed live on YouTube on channel “Yahoo Finance” on March 2nd(?), 2022.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hkYp67HoVSY&t=4904s
Don’t worry, raising interest rates will make more wheat magically appear
So stop feeding grain to animals and there will be plenty for humans.
an aside: Joe Rogan short clip about corporate food production. utube. 12 minutes.
The Corporatization of Food
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmIdT42728g
So Lambert late yesterday (1:10pm) mentioned (disdainfully) those who advocated paying more for gas to support Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine!
Now, this is from when dinosaurs ruled the earth (ironic, as they are oil now) but I can remember this in the dim, cluttered, and confused recesses of my brain, where there would be proponents of a – and this is radical, dare I say it, INCONCEIVABLE – an excess profits tax on oil companies! – during such an emergency We must ALL make sacrifices…
Can you even imagine???
SO, has any politician, anywhere in the US, broached the subject? I mean, don’t those oil companies want the excess cash flow to support freedom??? Ukraine???
Excess profits tax! Excellent idea. Revive it. I can think of a number of pejorative names for such a tax, but then “markets.” How could I entertain such an idea: attacking the sanctity of profit.
Can someone explain to me why all these people who are so happy to pay higher prices for gas, oil and bread “to punish Putin” are the same people who “”need” the SALT limits removed so that they can reduce their taxes?
How about a “tax surcharge” on all incomes over $1 million – I’ll bet those Ukrainians lose a lot of support real fast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_and_Expenditure_Control_Act_of_1968#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20%27%20Revenue%20and%20Expenditure%20Control,them%20to%20end%20in%201973%20instead%20of%201969.
Snark alert!!!/
Silly! If “budgets” become strained by overdemand, then just raise the financial limits of the means test regime. What are all those newly disenfoodized going to do? Stop donating to the Political Action Committees?
Millionaires play a vital role in “our” economy. They must be protected from disruption in carrying out their appointed tasks, at any cost, to the poors.
Snark off./
I see it as a sign of the times that I must prepend a Snark with a warning tag. Previously, something so ‘ridiculous’ would have been instantly recognized for what it is. Today???
$5.39 Gallon!
Handmade sign near gas station-
“We voted against Newsom,
his gas taxes & Biden.
Did you?”
I wonder what percentage of all the people whinging over the price of gas are also rooting for war in Ukraine?
OK. It turns out a great advantage of advancing age (I will be 75 in just over a month) is remembering the experience of earlier events directly, events these days forgotten or impossible to imagine. Those “golden” 1950s and 1960s so blissfully invoked by free market right wingers NEVER EVER mention that back then the top tax rate on top earners was over NINETY PERCENT!!!!! Sorry, but that is the truth. Yet, those super rich still could not spend all they made and lived like kings and queens, but back then there were funds for social programs, highways, and even running a war in Asia we called Vietnam.
When the energy crisis – excuse me, ENERGY CRISIS – struck in 1973 I was on Cape Cod working as a fisherman, and the only way to heat your cottage was using Number 2 diesel oil. Back then it was about 30 cents a gallon. Seriously. (Even more seriously, in 1971 if we were paid 9 cents a pound for codfish that was a great price but we were also paying 11 cents a gallon for diesel fuel). There was a national panic. Lines at gas stations. Even shootings. A couple years later a President came on wearing a sweater to urge conservation and renewable power. That was a half century ago, people. But what ALSO happened then was the imposition of fuel price limits, controls of what companies could charge for fuel. By the late 1970s there were New England fuel dealers shipping fuel by truck and barge to Canada and then reimporting it back to New England for more money, for God’s sake, some kind of way they could evade the price limits. There were many scams, everywhere, but price limits there were.
There was bad inflation, too, of course, initially driven by that energy shock. In the 1970s the idea of price limits, price rationing, was accepted, maybe because in the 1970s most of those who were born before or in the Depression and World War 2 were still with us and remembered the hardship, the scarcity, and the years of rationing and price controls during the War. Nobody talks about this but we basically went into a totally socialistic (as in government-run) economy throughout the War. Yet, we did not all become communists, or socialists. We survived that. Maybe we even needed to do that to survive. And after that War rich people paid ninety cents of every dollar after reaching a certain income (in today’s dollars 1.7 million for a single and twice that for married couple – source https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/nov/15/bernie-sanders/income-tax-rates-were-90-percent-under-eisenhower-/ ).
So when commenters begin bleating about the horror of excess profits taxes, or the outrage of raising individual tax rates on the wealthy, and these same people and groups are in full-bore braying bellowing about supporting the Ukrainians with arms and help and committing billions to aid yet refusing to place boots on the ground or changing the tax structure to pay the bill, something feels amiss. Wrong. Magical thinking. If we are really already in World War 3 then everyone better understand things are going to change and damn fast – rartioning, limnits, tax increases, much more government control, and of course placing our 760 billion a year military directly in harm’s way. If we are not willing to go there, then what are we doing funneling arms to a country we encouraged to fight Russia but which we will not expend our own treasure on? All this will do is kill Ukrainians and Russians (at least) and end up with the Ukrainians feeling betrayed by the West – as they will have been.
How is it so hard for us to on the one hand puff out our chests about how we stood firm during the Cuban missile crisis (which I also remember) and not understand that Russia has felt in exactly the same position for years with NATO’s unceasing expansion? All the voices understanding history and the past are silenced on MSM, all of them.
The scariest part of all this is I know there are forces within our society and government who are firm in a belief that NOW is the time, if ever there is one, to “win” against Russia, that the Russians will not go the total nuclear option but instead leave us to “win” using conventional and tactical nuclear weapons….
Actually that TV commercial showing a dinasaur being sucked into gas tank on a car isn’t good Geology. The oil we extract now was formed millions of years earlier by a series of ancient sea sedimentation that entrapped massive algal growth.
In any case, gas at the pump is over $5/gal in my city.
“Master of illusion: Ball of the Century perfectly captured Shane Warne’s art and his legend”
What can you say about Shane Warne. A very highly talented bowler who was fabulously flawed which was why he was never trusted to have the Captaincy of the Australian Cricket Team. The guy was always one PR event away from a disaster of his own making. He is due to be given a State Funeral when his body is returned but the Thais are insisting on doing an autopsy first and I don’t blame them. They probably don’t want to be blamed and held responsible for his death due to a dodgy prawn or something. I heard that blood was found on his carpet and some towels which sounds like justification enough. But tonight they said that he was on a 14 day fluid-only diet in spite of having heart trouble. So even in death, controversy will follow him.
Yes, when I saw Jerri-Lynn was on duty today, I hoped she would include a link on Warne. Apparently the lastest claim is that he had been on a 14-day extreme diet. Wonderful wonderful bowler with a play hard, party hard mindset. A sad loss as he was also a very astute commentator.
Wikipedia says he was on a ventilator for covid last August. The only time I was ever drawn to watch cricket was by his performance in the 2005 Ashes: a game of chess in which you can get your head broken.
In a sport that has been around for so long to come up with a new twist [flipper] and be the only one to do it is a thing in its self. Baked beans and Vegemite soldiers as a meal for an elite sports man … ha ha aaa.
Anywho … what a joy watching him set up top batters only to see the look on their faces when bowled out … with little idea of what just happened – looking at teammates for confirmation. Then again just the sound the ball would make with the amount of spin he could put on it – fat red angry hornet – coming at you.
Seems extremes caught up with him finally, but he did have some good innings whilst he was around.
I’m a little downbeat after reading the article about the first ever pop star. No it was not Elvis Presley.
Remarkable factoid, the subject of the article wrote a four volume(!) autobiography. Can’t say I ever heard of the name Charles Dibdin before reading that.
War and Imagination The Hudson Review
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I could tell you most everything that happened from September of 1939 to August of 1945, but hit me up with what happened of historical importance in 1937 or 1946, and i’ll sadly know next to nothing.
War takes on an oversized importance compared to the mundane process of living in peacetime, especially in WW2 where technology leapfrogged what might have taken decades or a century to do, all in the space of 6 short years.
There’s also the idea of legalized murder, combined with the display of carnage and dead humans (when was the last time you saw a grizzly photo of somebody who died horrifically-on the news during a time of peace?) that is so much forbidden fruit normally.
It’s kind of similar in some fashion to a horrible car crash on the freeway that causes other drivers lengthy delays, and when we finally get to the wreck, you can’t help but gawk at the twisted metal, glass & rubber remains, even though none of us knew who the driver was or how the accident occurred.
Wuk, there has been a whole trend in history publishing the last twenty years of books appearing focused on or at least titled with the digits of those ‘preface’ and ‘afterword’ years you pointed out that bookend major wars and conflicts (also done for years key to the story of Western and Chinese exploration of the globe, a separate subgenre). As I recall Dave Halberstam’s The Fifties (1993) actually begins by covering some of 1946-49. Am intrigued by a well-reviewed 1946 (2014) by one Victor Sebestyen, will be reading it soon. Gore Vidal wrote a terrific essay beginning with life in NYC in ’46 and discussion the way postwar opportunity was pissed away – can’t locate the title right now (helpful, huh?). 1938 specifically as opposed to books on the second dip of the Depression appear to be thinner on the ground (which proves your point: postwar 1946’s main marker is of course war). The great northeastern U.S. storm and the European Great Aurora seem prominent. You can probably find others by pumping the year(s) in question into DuckDuckGo or whatever.
Oh, i’ve read a few things from 1946 such as John Hersey’s Hiroshima and the Red Sox lost the World Series to the Cards, but peace just doesn’t have the same pull as war.
That is because war is clarifying and rapid. Specific events in specific years aren’t as important as social trends. I’m assuming we both learned in school about the Seneca Falls Declaration. I argue that the dalliances of wealthy people were less important than Mormon wives exerting political pressure as they controlled the means of production in the movement towards voting rights. Congress rescinded the right of Utah women to vote. On the other hand, if Mustafa Kemal woke up with stomach ache on some day in 1915 near Gallipoli, the British operation may have been a success.
If Teddy Ball wasn’t hit by a pitch in batting practice, maybe, the Sox win and Dan Shannessy doesn’t create the Curse of the Great Bambino myth, but other than that, what really changes? The Yawkeys still run the team for decades. The Red Sox still have an inferiority complex and sign washed up guys too often, increasing the disadvantage with the Yankees. They likely don’t call the Leonard B. Zakim Bunker Hill memorial bridge probably isn’t referred to as the Bill Buckner bridge for years.
You need years and dates because they often tell different stories than officialdom reports, but for the most part, peace isn’t as clarifying or there is time to go back in peace.
This is war year, but its a good question. Did Lincoln free slaves in rebellious areas with the Emancipation Proclamation, OR was he putting an official seal on what soldiers and slaves were already doing and couldn’t be stopped from doing in the course of the war? The Emancipation Proclamation was signed January 1st, 1863. Specific years and actors simply aren’t as consequential as our American education system likes to pretend.
Getting into years is often missing the forest through the trees.
> Did Lincoln free slaves in rebellious areas with the Emancipation Proclamation, OR was he putting an official seal on what soldiers and slaves were already doing and couldn’t be stopped from doing in the course of the war?
From the National Park Service:
So the answer to your question is that “putting an official seal on what soldiers and slaves were already doing,” but that was a good thing, especially internationally. Remember that international recognition was a strategic objective for the Confederacy, and the Emancipation Proclamation made that more difficult.
Tragedy and Hope by Carrol Quigley gives a good overview of the interwar period.
Gives good background on the Anglo American ruling elites and their various machinations.
It is a bit of a slog though, being quite dry.
I have just seen on television a reporter talking about the men who have come from other countries to fight for Ukraine and are being taught how to use a rifle in Lviv. The reporter is in the same room with these men and most of them are too young to die and yet we know that it will be a profound accident if they live through their war. The Hudson Review article is what we need to read but it doesn’t help our reality at this time.
It’s a reverse ‘Lincoln Brigade’ event.
Notice that NATO is except for Ukraine, the continental boundaries of the occupied Third Reich?
Speaking of the Lincoln Brigade, I meet a gentleman at the park in my neighborhood whose father was in the brigade. He was a lifelong leftist (his father) and recalls the FBI knocking on their door. We need more in that vein these days. Thanks to NC we are the closest to that.
Sidenote, I have been sharing links re Ukraine with my roommate, he has bought the propaganda from MSM. Oh, the masses and lack of critical thinking.
To your last point; I am convinced that this is the reason for the rise of the “teach to the test” regime in public “education” in recent years.
I am really amazed at how many cashiers I encounter pull out their “device” to figure out change from a dollar. We do not ‘do’ Mentats here.
Years ago, I worked at a small store near UPenn for a hot second. I used to have to explain a four button scale to the students who came in. I would see them standing at it looking confused and irritated. When I showed them how to use it, they would grow angry at their obvious display of ignorance and snap at me. I would just smile.
Rueful hilarity on the ABC morning news today. Someone discovers that Russia has oligarchs. So the intrepid spokesmen on camera in our local ABC affiliate step up to explain what an oligarch is to their US viewers. It is safe to assume that the guys in front of the camera were not capable of connecting the dots, but I wonder how many of their viewers have such strong blinders. If an oligarch is someone who controls the government, making it unresponsive to the wishes of regular citizens, how many people watched that broadcast this morning and did see the implications. Okay, lemme see, in Russia there are rich people who have so much control of the government that regular people don’t have voice … wait a minute …
I enjoyed David Mason’s essay too. Taking junkets of my own, like: do other social species engage in war? We humans come together to survive and then we also come together to kill each other. Very flexible. And then we ruminate on how confusing it all is and we put it in the category of “art”. The urge to art; to define. Communication is an urge that needs to be constantly honed; like remembering and discovering. On down the Links was one Sergey Karaganov on Russia’s new foreign policy: “Destructive Construction.” Which conflates with the Hudson Review nicely. The artful evolution of human society. Do we want ‘democracy’ or do we want (more specifically) human rights, security, prosperity and etc? New art forms. Yes please.
“Genocide is as human as art or prayer. This is not because humans are a uniquely aggressive species. The rate of violent death among some monkeys exceeds that among humans – if wars are excluded from the calculation; but as E. O. Wilson observes, ‘if hamdryas baboons had nuclear weapons, they would destroy the world in a week’.”
Straw Dogs, John Gray
Coming from E.O. Wilson, that is really an interesting comment about our dear cousins, the baboons. He must have had a counterpoint to make that we humans, so far, seem to be able to avoid nuclear annihilation. So far.
I see Gonzalo Lira goes live on YouTube at 10EST but I think I’ll continue to spend my Sunday morning as planned, watching the gorgeous weather in France and the Paris-Nice race.
“Getting the Hook: The Met Cancels Opera Singer for Refusing to Condemn Putin”
It was not enough that Anna Netrebko denounced the war publicly. They gave her the ultimatum that she also had to personally denounce Putin as well. What was next? That she had to go on stage and sing the Ukrainian national anthem while wearing a yellow and blue dress? Take a knee for the Ukraine at the beginning of each performance? She was always going to be fired and this was just the excuse found. She was Russian and that was reason enough-
‘Xenophobia’
/zɛnəˈfəʊbɪə/
noun: xenophobia
Dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries.
e.g. “The resurgence of racism and xenophobia is off the charts.”
Having the voice of an angel isn’t much of an offense against the dogs of war in a forceful game of cancel culture run amok…
Anna Netrebko / A. Dvořák – Rusalka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwuNqcKUxto
Exquisite! Thanks for posting this clip.
Here’s another dollop of Dvořák, and i’ve just come back from the silent woods, the only sound being my skis moving back and forth as I sashayed around gigantic columns of red…
Dvořák, Silent woods, by Yo-Yo Ma and Seiji Ozawa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6z4hA3JzZ4
Paul Robison
there should be an e not an i in that name (smacks forehead)
https://www.blackfilm.com/read/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Paul-Robeson.jpg
What I want to know is when are going after those traitorous Russian tomatoes. Paul Robeson, Black Sea Man, Cosmonaut Volkov…
Actually, this year we are growing Cosmonaut Volkov. I will make sure to make a toothpick sized Ukrainian flags and stick them in each tomato so people know I am not a lackey for Putin.
As far as these public denunciations go does she have family in Russia?
“First they came for the Russian cats …”
I’m reminded of two historical nuggets:
1) the firing, internment and eventual deportation of Boston Symphony conductor Karl Muck in 1918, under the *exact* same circumstances and in the same xenophobic environment;
2) the especially shameful situation with the Met and Anna Netrebko reminds me of something historian Robert Dallek once said about Hubert Humphrey distancing himself in from LBJ in the closing act of the 1968 campaign: “if he’d urinated on a portrait of Nixon in Times Square on prime-time television, the media would have asked why he hadn’t done it sooner.”
What a disgusting, petty, insignificant culture ours has become.
I’m wondering if there is more to this story. Could it be that the Met wanted her out and used this as an excuse?
Netrebko is 50 and, I assume, highly paid.
I haven’t seen a recent picture of her, but after the birth of her child, she had put on weight, and I remember there being some “discussion” about her weight gain.
Body-shaming in the opera world:
https://www.france24.com/en/20181101-star-soprano-warns-rampant-body-shaming-opera-world
I don’t think the Met really cares what Netrebko’s political views are. The are trying to avoid the possibility that protesters will disrupt the performance—something that has happened before in NYC. The company is in a fragile financial condition after the pandemic and is trying to bring back its audience.
I also suspect there is more to the story but mostly this opinion was written by J. Turley who can’t possibly frame any event except in anti-liberal culture warfare.
In the meantime Baldrick Johnson has a cunning six point plan to defeat the dastardly Putin.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10581667/PM-announces-six-point-plan-defeat-Putin-amid-threats-sanctions-declaration-WAR.html
The deviser of that “cunning plan” fully deserves to receive the “Order of the Golden Turnip.”
Fitting since I fear that the lowly turnip, along with it’s cousins, both vegetable and mineral (“…good old Georgia red clay…”) will be a large part of the diet of Britons for the forseeable future.
Even if Johnson stood outside 10 Downing Street and announced “Let them eat turnips”, people would still vote for him, even if the turnips had to be eaten raw because the masses could no longer afford the cost of fuel to cook them.
And that right there shines a light on one problem with modern ‘Western’ politics; the lack of a ‘serious’ opposition Party.
It almost makes me wish that the ‘Tankies’ take over what’s left of Labour.
Raw is the only way to eat turnips imho. But I will take anyone’s brussel sprouts…
I recall when brussel sprouts were not so popular and dirt cheap (.69 lb) now they go for 3.99 lb!
I worked at a process plant for them here in Santa Cruz in the late 70’s. We called them monkey turds.
Try raw brussel sprouts in your salad! Cut em up small…
If one needs fertilizers to grow turnips, they may be some issues this year…
ukraine army decides it’s best to leave everything behind than face the Russia army.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef7VATrCga4
I have now been banned at common dreams and new cold war sites for calling out the propaganda.
When CD went big D, I went circle A and met the same fate– oh, so sad. But now my circle A gotos are embracing the blue-and-yellow… …now what? I’m assuming that websites for nihilists blow-up themselves before they can be added to web registery, so short of painting myself in ashes and blood while building a cabin in the woods so I have a place to complete my manifesto, I guess that leaves this space.
One thing about CD, is many commentators buck against the party-line and don’t get busted-out, so whatever you did, it must have been good!
Can you share the gist of it?
I noticed that that video has a banner beneath saying “RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government” with a link to Wikipedia
> I have now been banned at common dreams and new cold war sites for calling out the propaganda.
Good job
“Greek in Mariupol: “The fascist Ukrainians would kill me, they don’t let us leave the city” (VIDEO)”
And you have to read about this in the Greek City Times! Lots of them live in Donetsk Oblast and they are particularly concentrated around the city of Mariupol apparently. I came across a translated tweet/video from the Russian Defence Ministry so you have to take it for what it is worth. But as they are Russian speakers in Mariupol, I can well and truly believe it-
‘Despite all the efforts and the humanitarian corridors by @mod_russia, the Neo-Nazi combat units in Mariupol’ prevent civilians from leaving the city, using them as human shields…Only few families manage to escape. Here’s a first-hand account’
https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1500113696969875457
Its starting to look like the West has over stressed The Mighty Wurlitzer, or it could be my latest batch is making me overly optimistic.
When it comes to propaganda, the dial goes up to Eleven.
I’m looking forward to the Netflicks bio pic “Zelensky Hero-Saint of the Ukraine” narrated by HRC and with expert commentary by that famous expert on the Ukraine Hunter Biden.
Executive Producers – Barack and Michelle Obama
It must be Emmy time. It will be just as fake as his Nobel Peace Prize.
Related to that is that I had to explain what the acronym ‘PMC’ meant to one of our neighbors, who is a low level example of same.
Her reply; “It all depends on context.”
I retired from the field as gracefully as I could.
Jeez, a week of MSM coverage of the barbaric Russian hordes violating teddy bears ( And worse!) while Heroic Ukrainian Grandmas and Girl Scouts man the barricades in Kiev…and Biden’s approval rating is only 47%.
47%.
I’d bet that badass Joe’s advisers promised a bigger bump.
November is a long way away and I suspect that 47% approval rating is the high point, there are a few issues at home that people will pay attention to…
Like regular at $5.15 per gallon and long covid.
And retail inflation in the prices of staples.
America might not have exactly an ‘Arab Spring’ this November, but I would not be surprised to see an ‘American Sunset’ moment.
“The sun never sets on the American Empire.” Sound familiar?
I’m still missing the “Russians throwing babies out of incubators” square in my War Bingo card.
Biden’s little bump–
I think these bouts of Code Red in our media work like vaccine boosters and roller coasters. Each bump up reaches a lesser altitude than the last and each slide down goes lower.
Way back in ’03, Bush got a big rise, but before ’06, it was gone. Remember even Trump got a little pop from firing a few missiles into the Syrian desert?
It was a brief trip up for Biden. Now begins a long slide down.
Actually, according to the morning news today it is already over $7/gal in Los Angeles. Gas station owner said he expects it to ratchet up to $9/gal within a couple of months.
The Hermitage museum in Amsterdam has severed ties with the Hermitage in St Petersburg. It closed the exhibition of Russian art around the tie of the Great Russian Revolution on Friday and will go on independently as the financial art institution that it has become. Ironic that, Russian art is may be even more villainous than President Putin might be. The opera singer in NYC, the orchestra conductor in Rotterdam and even Dostoyevsky in Milan (?) where a university course on his work has been postponed. The Stupid is having a major field day.
I have been meaning to go to the Victoria and Albert museum in London where the Faberge Eggs are on temporary display but now wonder if that is also now closed. The Eggs could even end up like the Crimea gold treasure on loan in Amsterdam, that a Dutch court has blocked from being returned to Crimea. Very messy.
‘”Unscientific’: Morrison government wanted IPCC to say Great Barrier Reef ‘not yet in crisis’”
Scotty from Marketing is just annoyed that he cannot order them to suppress that report. You have to understand. The present Coalition government has climate change denial in their DNA. It is part of their identity since before they were voted in years ago. They cannot give it up. And as for the Great Barrier Reef? They will use the Yes Minister approach here-
-In stage one, we say nothing is going to happen.
-Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
-In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.
-Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.
Do you think the idea that Morrison is an evang who values events on this good earth as chopped liver, compared to the glories possible only after we’ve left this mortal coil behind, as his reasoning for driving the Earth into a deep ditch sooner, rather than later?
Marketing = lies
H G Wells on that subject. (Plus an attempt to “normalize” it.)
See: https://medium.com/@chandlerkaradsheh/all-advertising-is-legalized-lying-b353ac700721
It’s Sunday so it is time for the Sunday Funnies! This link takes you to a page with classic Kliban cartoons such as The Birth of Advertising, Business On Parade, and half-way down, my own favorite, Merchandising. Kliban
The media got what they want, Trump called the war a crime against humanity at his CPAC speech.
with rhetoric like that the US is lurching to war against Russia regardless of who wins in 2024
That is inevitable. Orange Man Bad was punked by the intelligence agencies throughout his term and if he wins again it will be the same story.
However, the NYT piece about the US trying to mend relations with Venezuela so as to access their oil reserves is interesting. Will the Americans suddenly become agreement-capable? Will the Bank of England release Venezuela’s stolen funds? Will Guaido retire to Martha’s Vineyard? This is a story worth following since it reflects the difficulties the US and EU now face, having created so many enemies.
Gonna be tricky considering our side literally burned those bridges.
https://theintercept.com/2019/03/10/nyts-expose-on-the-lies-about-burning-humanitarian-trucks-in-venezuela-shows-how-us-govt-and-media-spread-fake-news/
> However, the NYT piece about the US trying to mend relations with Venezuela so as to access their oil reserves is interesting.
Maybe if Biden sends some family members to live in a comfortable but guarded compound in Caracas, a la Game of Thrones?
“Why Are There So Many Indian Students in Ukraine?”
I think that “The Diplomat” is being diplomatic here by not asking why those Indian students are still there. Russian President Putin said on Thursday that more than 3,000 Indian citizens are being kept at the Kharkiv train station in eastern Ukraine by the Ukrainian military. And footage has emerged of Ukrainian military forcing back foreign students from the border so I guess that they will be more useful in the Ukraine as potential victims.
And then there’s Peter Hitchens ( yeah, late and latterday warmonger Christopher Hitchens’ brother ) in the Daily Mail:
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2022/03/peter-hitchens-one-glorious-day-in-sevastopol-12-years-ago-i-saw-what-was-coming-thats-why-i-wont-jo.html
Hitchens and in the Daily Mail at that ! Whatever happened to the Grauniad ?
I think the absence of public discourse on the Western side meant people weren’t super up on the last three months of activity. For most, the only story is Russia just invaded with no knowledge beyond that. Hillary Clinton openly said the Soviets invaded Afghanistan which means she believes (she isn’t that bright, so this invaded possible) or she knows enough people don’t know enou that invaded stats okay to say.
Polling is against troops but for a no fly zone. Most people have no clue how no fly zones are established clearly.
Grauniad seems to have folded after GCHQ turned up at their offices in 2014 to oversee the ritual of their editorial staff taking an angle grinder to the hard drives that contained the data from Snowden’s leak. I believe one of that staff was then appointed to the D-notice board, whereby representatives of national media outlets become a formal part of the voluntary censorship process on matters of national security – The Graun had up till then steered clear of involvement. It used to be Murdoch’s Sunday Times that got slagged off as MI6’s staff newsletter, but The Graun has become a foghorn of fakery for the spooks.
I’m open to correction on the details, but that’s the gist of it.
Hitchens gets pretty steamed about Syria too, and is unique among UK columnists in his scepticism over the Skripal spy games.
Don’t see this reported yet, but Twitter says all gas exports to Germany have been halted Sunday morning Russia time.
The re-nazification/militarization of Germany will not be televised.
Took a look at Der Spiegel International, top three stories about brave Ukranians.
On a whim, translated the German version. Top story is ‘Londongrad’, those dastardly Brits washing Russian billionaires money.
I just read through “The Varieties of Bullshit” by Peter Ludlow from the link and it’s well worth reading. It brought to mind interactions I used to have on Twitter (I have abstained from Twitter since December), esp. with market fundamentalists.
Near his conclusion, this is the most general definition for bullshit that Ludlow offers:
“In the end, in its most general form, bullshit is some action or event or product thereof that fails to follow the applicable norms for something of its kind, in a way that conflicts with someone’s interests.”
That has some merit, I think.
Yes, thanks JL for linking to that. I’d never have found it otherwise and it is totally up my street. His four maxims of communication just gave my BS detector a wider detection angle.
One question : who the heck i s EJ Spode ? the essay/paper seems to be bylined by both EJ Spode and Peter Ludlow. Now one can look up Peter Ludlow – but he already has a pseudonym that he sometimes uses so that doesn’t seem to be it.
I checked on anagrams of “ejspode” and nothing come up that makes sense to me.
Is it an in-joke, like the ones in Private Eye that I used to ‘get’ – o so many moons ago ?
“who the heck i s EJ Spode ?”
This was to the left of the article; maybe Ludlow has more than one pseudonym.
EJ Spode
Writes about Philosophy, Crypto Anarchy, Cryptocurrencies, DeFi, Generative Linguistics. More info: https://sites.google.com/site/peterjludlow/
“Orwell was a warning, not an instruction manual” – Amfortas the hippie
“It all depends on context.”
Orwell
I should have a tee shirt made for myself to wear.
“I am not the homicidal maniac you are looking for. Move along.”
context!
orwell, the slippery slope.
who knew?
“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
— George Orwell, 1946
Interesting commentary from Paul Craig Roberts:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/03/05/ukrainian-update-5/
I did a double-take at Roberts’ last sentence!
I admit that my “Inner Cynic” agrees with him.
This might be the time that the Preppers have been preparing for.
I feel good. The White House said it wouldn’t stop European countries from sending planes just before Poland officially said no. The White House is already leaving European countries out to dry.
You mean the sentence that reads, “Washington will continue to call the shots in Europe, and the provocations will continue, eventually ending in nuclear war.”
Seems pretty likely, especially as the MSM are deliberately looking the other way. The question is, will it be an all-out war followed by a nuclear winter (global warming solved!) or “city swapping” as the Pentagon used to plan for in bygone, happier times?
I don’t think it’s possible to seize country like Ukraine just in two days, unless there is no opposition from army or anyone else and it’s free drive from border straight to capital. Even just bombing the shit from air can’t be done that fast, the Serbia campaign took two months. So saying “Russia needed to demilitarize Ukraine in 48 hours” doesn’t seem like realistic scenario.
Thanks for the link, Flora. One thing that stood out to me is the following:
I think Lavrov is an astute observer of people, and I think it is more likely that he is merely pointing out the differences between what Zelensky, in this case, says he wants and his actual actions. In other words, “Gosh, everyone says they want to resolve things, so why on earth aren’t they showing up to negotiate?”
I can easily be wrong in my assessment, but I’m pretty sure that Lavrov holds no illusions about who Zelensky is representing.
One assumption I may have gotten wrong is the US as the primary source of pressure. Zelensky is also hostage to the Ukrainian far right wing, aka the neoNazis. They are only 2% of the population but they are violent. They make our far right look like cosplayers.
Zelensky was told if he didn’t fall in line his office would be ransacked, and the implication was things wouldn’t stop there. Another Ukrainian pol wound up in the hospital thanks to a far right wing beating.
Thanks, Yves. That was in the back of my mind, but I didn’t mention it. My bad.
Many of our far right are cosplayers, it’s true. However so were the Nazis themselves, or at least they had a definite flair for costumes, pageantry and a certain clownishness as well, what with the goose stepping and all that. So don’t let that lull you into a false sense of unseriousness about it all. History has shown that it can become very serious, very quickly.
Surely the fascists were not the singular force with the monopoly on violence. I find it curious that as the Grayzone points out that in November 2021the fascist Yarosh , cofounder of the Right Sector(man who openly threatened to lynch Zelensky if he implemented Minsk), becomes an advisor to the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a position created by Zelensky and staffed by him in 2020. Who in turn answers to the Minister of Defense, who is also appointed by Zelensky. Im curious to know if the balance of power within the Ukrainian State was such that it really prevented Zelensky from taking on the fascists. Did he really feel so insecure in his position that he did not even attempt to smash or at least weaken the position of the fascist elements within the State but strengthened them instead? Was he instead being advised to get in bed with the fascists by his oligarch supporters as well being pressured to do so by the US. Im thinking of how Biden refused to get on the phone with Zelensky for a full year until Zelensky in march 2021 turned the dial up on the hostilities by announcing Ukraine would take back Crimea and of course later in the year announcing they would retake Donbas and accordingly increased the shelling on Donbas.
Oh, I am not disagreeing that the US was a huge factor, and if the local thugs weren’t sufficiently persuasive, the US would have been. But the point was that the US may not have had to lean as hard as most assume.
My understanding is that after Maidan, the fascists got 15% of positions in the administration (when the most they’ve gotten in the legislature is 2% of the seats, and the commentators I know think it is a reasonable assumption that they are only 1-2% of the population). But my understanding is that the 15% includes heading and having key positions in the domestic security forces, as in police. I do not know the balance of forces, as in how important federal police are v. local police. But my sense is they are more important than in the US. If the fascists had control of them or had significant representation in their ranks, tell me how Zelensky could rout them out? He faced the same denazification problem the Russians have.
I fully agree the local dynamics on the ground likely played a significant role.
Certainly not trying to pin it all on the US, apologies my post came off like that.
Its just that I have read that the fascist contingents are small but armed and not afraid to use violence. In fact have used plenty of violence to get what they want in the political arena. Im just wondering if Zelensky and his backers within Ukraine genuinely wanted a resolution with Russia from the start why they did not remove the fascists from those senior positions within the security services immediately. By whatever means necessary, i would think they had far more armed men at their disposal and know who the fascists are. Instead later on we see the General which Zelensky appointed to position of Commander in Chief of Armed Services goes onto bring the fascist Yarosh on as an advisor. I guess at that point in the timeline perhaps to them a conflict with Russia was inevitable and they were consolidating the forces and getting on the same page and gearing up to attack Donbas. Im thinking maybe the ranks of the fascists within the rank and file are not as small as I may have hoped.
At some point Zelensky government became hostage to the fascists, but it had seemed, likely incorrectly to me that came to be after the moment to smash them had passed. They never attempted to get rid of the nazis or disarm them. Maybe because people around Zelensky still saw them useful down the line or as you said there were just too many of them in too many important positions to risk that fight. Maybe even attempting it would have opened up another front in the civil conflict spiraling out of control into even more of a full blown civil and proxy war.
I suggest you look at the latest ConsortiumNews video. If you skip forward to where Scott Ritter starts speaking, he explains how deeply embedded the Banderite fascists are in the military and police. Your scenario doesn’t appear to have been an option even if Zelensky had been willing to consider it.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/04/watch-cn-live-ukraine-update/
Thanks for the link!
Could it be that every time Zelensky tries to actually move to negotiate, the come along he is attached to the end of gets jerked hard by the US tractor?
> Could it be that every time Zelensky tries to actually move to negotiate
No. Follow the money.
I think failing to include China as a major player has led Paul astray.
PCR may be onto something. This armchair general has always felt that Russia should have gone shock and awe from day 1. Western imperialists only understand brute force.
She’s running. She wants to do for America what she’s done to Haiti.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/bill-clinton-announces-relaunch-of-global-initiative-amid-war-in-ukraine
She really is. I’m betting the third times a charm will be her best slogan despite reminding people of her record because it will be the least offensive. What is Ukrainian for grandmother? Hillary is your babushka but not a Russian one will likely be her worst slogan.
I believe it’s babushkiyv.
Ugh. Go long Trump election memorabilia in 2024 I guess.
And, right on cue, I got a fundraising email from the Democratic National Committee. I unsubscribed and reported that email as spam.
That felt GOOD!
Time for me to finish my “Hillary fur Fuhrer” poster design. It should be popular in ’24.
Why do I think of Gloria Swanson doing the famous “Alright Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.” scene when I imagine Hillary running again?
See, the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIcC8YJrevQ
I had a better time than you I think, I replied to the DNC with blistering curse words about how corrupt they were, that I would never send them any money after what they did to Bernie, and that I was now registered Independent – and it clearly hurt their feelings, as I never heard back.
I reserve my blistering curse words for snail mailings. Why? Because most of them require that I pay the return postage. If I’m doing that, the mailers are going to get the most colorful of my vocabulary words.
The above being said, I fully agree with you, Late Introvert. I don’t like what was done to Bernie. I had to re-register as a Democrat — twice — so I could vote for him in the Arizona primaries of 2016 and 2020.
No more. I’m going to be an Independent until I die.
Not content to just run pay-to-play from the State Dept, HRC prepares to run pay-to-play from the White House.
Of course, the Epstein associate was just suicided. Now, Bill is stepping out again.
I am fantasizing about Hilary as the D nominee debating Tulsi as the R nominee. This has a less than snowball’s chance in hell of happening…on both sides.
Bill and Hillary both have novels out, co written Patterson? and Louise Penny.
Grifters gotta grift and these two don’t miss a trick.
More like Clinton seeing a grifting opportunity and taking advantage of it. Any notion of running is pure projection.
From Greenwald:
“It’s not as if people are suddenly inventing or dredging up these claims about Zelensky’s massive wealth being laundered and hidden throughout the west through his ties to the Ukrainian oligarch funding Azov. Read this, from 2021 on the Pandora Papers:”
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1500478327949340672?cxt=HHwWgMC9qdzF4tIpAAAA
(note: just trying to add some counterpoints with this that might be of interest to some.)
Throwing the red flag:
> Mearsheimer is obsolete verbalism.
“obsolete verbalism” ? The irony. What’s next? Someone claiming reason and rationality are obsolete constructs of oppression? / ;)
I wish that was funny.
That’s been done, I can’t find the video but there was a talk with some idiotarians about how reason and logic are all the work of the standard cis-normative-transphobic-binary gendered comic book villains. Another video featured a quartet of black teachers in Chicago talking about how white people are all coldly rational etc. but black “folks” (I hate that godd@mned weasel word!) are more, you know, intuitive and laid back and other profoundly racist tropes.
@flora
I just realized you were probably being sarcastic! :]
> intuitive and laid back
Hence the dancing and singing ….
“Metaphysics— the white mythology which reassembles and reflects the culture of the West: the white man takes his own mythology, Indo-European mythology, his own logos, that is the mythos of his idiom, for the universal form of that he must still wish to call Reason. Which does not go uncontested.”
— Derrida, “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy” (1971)
Re The Putin Doctrine–That’s quite an essay. If one wants to know their thinking or–if you prefer–their rationalizations then here they are. Whether or not Putrin and his colleagues are “like a fox” they are definitely not crazy. One might even say they are too rational. That approach doesn’t come easily to our American politicians.
Mearsheimer:
https://theintercept.com/2022/03/06/russia-john-mearsheimer-propaganda/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine
An hour with Mark Sleboda — great insights on Ukraine.
Taiwan looks ripe for the taking, and could our esteemed media corps handle a couple of propaganda wars at once?
And unlike Russia where the only imported retail consumer goods for sale in the USA are vodka and obscure Russian breeds of felines, we really couldn’t afford to demonize the Middle Kingdom, but we’ll do it anyway.
> Taiwan looks ripe for the taking,
Does make you think about that stockpiled grain…..
Thats exactly the thought that occurred to me.
“Antitrust Cops Put Handcuffs for CEOs on the Table” BIG. Matt Stoller.
I’m just wondering how bad it has to continue to get before they actually make these moves.
Clock is ticking. Alot of businesses aren’t going to survive as the effects of utility, housing, gas, food, and healthcare inflation continue on unabated.
And there will be less pressure on the monopolies to lower prices and more pressure for them to keep raising prices as they try to make their quarterly profit numbers with consumer spending getting more concentrated into depending on fewer and fewer that have disposable income.
I think doing even a minor amount of anti-trust actions could make a big difference so I hope these are pursued.
Quite frankly, the fish rots from the head down. People that are appalled by petty theft from drug stores should realize that white collar crime is so common place and visible now that any concerns about societal norms must be addressed by demonstrating that American justice also applies to the rich and powerful. Obama pretty much made it OK for the rich and powerful to cheat and steal and get a free pass after 2008, and this has certainly damaged America’s societal norms almost beyond repair.
I had the stomach turning misfortune of accidentally catching a minute of Jimmy Kimmel Live! this morning on Youtube. A sneering, go-along get-along mediocrity hand fashioned by the gods to be a professional sidekick to power. He was making a “joke” about how because it’s Ash Wednesday, there is even more ash in L.A.’s air than usual. Cue Pavlovian applause.
It struck me that the role of such “comedians” is to normalize disaster, rationalize violence, and solidify political consensus group-think. All of which buttresses the sociopathic ruling classes. Let’s all have a chuckle about the carcinogenic air you have to breathe. Relax, bro. It’s all good. Here comes a celebrity to remind you how great things actually are. Tell us about her Maserati, signature NTF’s, and how climate change is really bad.
I know this is nothing new. I know mass-produced “culture” is a form of soft, sometimes hard, propaganda. I know the intelligence community has it’s hooks deep in the entertainment industry. It was just one of those moments when it hits you between the eyes.
Headed out to ski by the Karl Marx tree in the Giant Forest, got maybe 6 inches of fresh snow the other day and the Sun is out after hiding for a spell…
enjoy it while it lasts
Oh, I don’t think the Sherman Tree is going anywhere, and here’s the backstory on the old name:
We had a utopian socialist group called the Kaweah Colony in the 1880’s and they had filed about 75 contiguous 144 acre homesteading claims including the Giant Forest.
They found the biggest tree and seeing as they were followers of Marx & Engels, they dutifully named it after him.
This is where it gets interesting, a fellow named Joel Wolverton claimed to have been in Sherman’s unit in the Civil War and so the story goes, was the inspiration for the naming of the Sherman Tree.
A friend is a dogged historical researcher and she found out that Wolverton was actually a deserter and hadn’t even been with Sherman’s unit, and he also doesn’t show up in Sequoia NP until the 1890’s-not the mid 1870’s as had been claimed.
Socialism was a dirty word even 125 years ago, can’t have the largest tree in the world sporting a name like that…
https://www.yoresequoia.org/blog/j-wolverton-and-the-ghastly-end-3/
“Doctors Beyond Borders: The Crisis Facing Medical Students Studying Abroad” The Wire
“…Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “Our children today are going to small countries for study, especially in medical education. Language is a problem there. They are still going. Can our private sector not enter this field in a big way?”
“…The preferred destinations are China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and, more recently, the Philippines. The estimated numbers are quite large and the students who travel are mostly from southern and western Indian states….”
“…The entrance to medical schools in India is constrained by numbers, quality and cost. Nearly 60% of medical colleges are in the private sector at the national level. The proportion of private colleges are higher in the southern and western states compared to the northern and eastern…”
Hey, Modi, it sounds like the private sector has already entered the field in a big way.
This rather small (so far) war has kicked open so many previously intact ant hills than I can’t possibly keep up with the revelations. Couple that with the Maoist self-criticism sessions demanded of Russian artists, and I keep asking, “What next?”
Amfort was wrong. Orwell was neither a warning nor an instruction manual; it was pure description like the Gulag Archipelago or Gulliver’s Travels.
So far this is “The Guns of August” as done by Monty Python, except for a few regrettable deaths among the extras and the stage crew. Let’s hope it stays that way and 24 months from now we are on to the next earthshaking crisis and occasionally reading about preliminary ruling in reinsurance contract disputes.
Not so much “The Guns of August” as done by Monty Python but more like the 1969 film “Oh What a Lovely War”-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQWxxa3P6ro (4:19 mins)
DC convoy update
A lot of vehicles at the Maryland gathering place as of last night. Different numbers floating in twitter, includes trucks, pickups, rv’s, cars. Possibly several 100 big trucks.
Rally and meeting last night, and discussion into today. To drive around the Beltway and/or go into DC or not? 2 (I think) organizers have dropped out. Questions about the status of all the funds that were raised.
Today a subset of vehicles has driven to DC. Now circling the Beltway.
https://twitter.com/LCRWnews On the ground, currently traveling with the group going to the Beltway, photos
It will be interesting to see how this effects the war effort, especially regarding the msm. At a time when national unity is at its closest or at least portrayed that way on TV, left and right in lockstep against devil’s spawn Russia(x3!), will they destroy the illusion?
Then again, with the green light for normal life back on, through the immaculate infection routine still upstage right of the global poo-storm stage, maybe the paraders protest too much. We don’t need no stinkin’ passports, we got Rona herself on our side.
Thanks very much.
Hasn’t the Biden Administration essentially capitulated to their demands?
I enjoyed Taleb back in the Black Swan days and have tried to like him since, but he has really become insufferable. Here he is on Snowden, calling the US empire a “transparent and benign system” – https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1498293611057848324 Perhaps he’d like to check with some of his fellow Middle Easterners who were vaporized in drone strikes.
He really has become just another wealthy elitist who loves the sweet aroma of his own flatulence.
aaargh – meant as a reply to Steve H above
His friend and colleague Yaneer Bar-Yam seems still an honest player, and has called him out at least once.
Ughh. He gets worse down below-
‘2) Whistleblowers can be part of the error correction process, except that in Sownden’s case he was an agent in the Kremlin’s strategy: bring distrust of institutions in Western countries. Structural not tactical distrust.’
> bring distrust of institutions in Western countries
Is nothing sacred?!
https://buchanan.org/blog/is-a-russia-nato-clash-over-ukraine-ahead-159149
When Hungarian rebels arose in 1956 to overthrow the Communist regime imposed by Joseph Stalin, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. forces to aid the Hungarians.
Ike would not take America to war with Russia over a small country in Central Europe.
…
Though a nation of 44 million and almost as large as Texas, Ukraine is neither a vital U.S. interest nor a member of NATO.
However, were Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Estonia, whose population is 3% of Ukraine’s, America would be obligated to go to war with Russia.
Does this disparity make strategic sense?
….
In 1948, President Harry Truman refused to use force to break Stalin’s Berlin Blockade. In 1956, Eisenhower refused to intervene to save Hungary. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy refused to use force to stop the building of the Berlin Wall.
In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson refused to intervene when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the pro-democracy “Prague Spring.”
….
Yet, today, America’s leaders do not have the same freedom not to act as did Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. We are obligated to act. Why?
Because, since the end of the Cold War, we have expanded the membership of NATO, and there are now 28 nations of Europe we are obligated to defend if they are attacked.
Ukraine is not one of them, but five of them that border Russia or Ukraine — Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia and Estonia — are currently providing Stinger or Javelin missiles to Ukraine to destroy Russian tanks, down Russian aircraft, and kill Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
If Putin retaliated against any of these countries for these arms transfers that are killing Russian soldiers, the U.S. would be obligated, under Article 5 of NATO, to fight Russia on behalf of these NATO nations.
============================================
The US is like someone bailing out their bother in law no matter how much of an imbecile the guy is. Foolish for bother in laws, disasterous with regards to nations…
RE: “Getting the Hook: The Met Cancels Opera Singer for Refusing to Condemn Putin”
I’m wondering if there is more to this story. Could it be that the Met wanted her out and used this as an excuse?
Netrebko is 50 and highly paid.
I haven’t seen a recent photo of her, but after the birth of her child, she had put on weight and there was “discussion” of her weight gain.
Body-shaming in the opera world:
https://www.france24.com/en/20181101-star-soprano-warns-rampant-body-shaming-opera-world
Truckers protesting Covid mandates are amassing outside the capital. NYT
Does no one at the NYT know that amassing is a transitive verb?
It’s up to the verb to decide if it identifies as transitive or not…the pronoun’s choices are made for them though.
Thanks for the hearty laugh, jr. I’m glad I didn’t have coffee in my mouth.
Though not from the NYT, Mr. Webster opines that ‘amass’ is also intransitive in the sense of ‘gather together’, ‘assemble’.
Incorrect; Webster gives a transitive and intransitive definition. Intransitive definition is:
to come together : assemble
I have now hated the unvaccinated and I am so tired of that. Now I have to hate the Russians? Not even having a break in between? I need some vacation.
You could reduce your hate-load but still meet your opobligations by hating only unvaccinated Russians.
Good thinking there HotFlash. Thank you. Intersectionality-guided hate must be the right thing to do, right? Gotta find my Venn-diagram-kit. What was that with Godwin’s law in set-theory discussions: how fast does someone drop Gödel? Gotta refresh my Gödel too… Exhausted! But as Baerbock said “we are ready to pay any price!” Guess I have to carry my cross of hatred then for the greater good.
This was funny exchange to me, even if underlying events aren’t funny at all. May be some cynicism is the only valuable possession we can have in store. Maybe this is was what the psychologist recommended to keep one’s mind sane.
Man, I hadn’t even finished saying “Gödel’s incompletess theorem” before some classical logicians were screaming that intuitionistic logicians are Putinists because they do not they do not include the law of the excluded middle and emphasized that we need to be unified in an unambiguous hatred towards a binarily odontological situation and also cancel all that are not with us. Do I have to hate the formalists too now?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-feud-between-mail-carriers-wild-turkeys-comes-to-a-deadly-climax-near-sacramento/ar-AAUEqoP
On Monday, one of the mail carriers actually had some kind of a stick or something in his vehicle,” said Capt. Patrick Foy, a spokesman for the department’s Law Enforcement Division. “And when one of the particularly aggressive male turkeys attacked him, he smacked it and killed it.”
….
The turkeys seem to have been targeting delivery workers in the neighborhood since October, when the postal service began reporting the situation to wildlife officials. Foy said the attacks had also disrupted deliveries from FedEx, UPS and other carriers.
….
Even more odd was the fact that the birds seem to spare the neighborhood’s residents and non-delivery personnel from their wrath.
“I can’t explain it, but the aggressive turkeys do not appear to be worried at all about the residents of this community,” Foy said. “I watched it myself.”
===========================================
I don’t think we can get to the bottom of this until the body cam video is released.
As usual, there is much to unpack, even as, the one enduring harsh reality, cloaked in a certain idealism, make believe, and nationalistic romanticism (“He went to fight wars for his country and his king. Of his honor and his glory the people would sing.”) remains deliberately obscure and relatively unacknowledged,
“You were supposed to die heroically, inspiringly, movingly, from inner conviction and for a great cause. But what is death in reality here? Here they croak, starve to death, freeze to death—it’s nothing but a biological fact like eating and drinking. They drop like flies; nobody cares and nobody buries them. Without arms or legs and without eyes, with bellies torn open, they lie around everywhere. One should make a movie of it; it would make “the most beautiful death in the world” impossible once and for all. It is a death for beasts; later they will ennoble it on granite friezes showing “dying warriors” with their heads or arms in bandages.”–‘War and Imagination’ by David Mason
Beyond that obvious ground level barbarian savagery, are the theoretical behavior modifiers that exist in the form of economic sanctions. The extent of their usefulness, discounting the blowback in the form of spillovers and unintended consequences that are surely to occur in the form of higher prices and shortages for everyone (First the earthquake, i.e., military conflict, followed by the tsunami of economic shocks, because “Broad sanctions should not be used as an expressive tool in a manner not justified by a careful accounting of likely costs and benefits. Again, sanctions are serious business. Sanctions are a form of intervention.”) and not just the target state, has already been questioned. For further consideration, see for example,
“We remember the League of Nations as a failure because it failed to stop a second world war. But in its early days, its sanctions seemed to work to preserve peace. Twice in the 1920s, blockade threats were effective in stopping border skirmishes in the Balkans from escalating into wider war. But after the economic shock of the Great Depression, this sanctionist strategy backfired. The global slump emboldened nationalist movements that preached self-reliance and militarism and attacked liberalism, international cooperation, and peace. By trying to stop aggressors with threats of sanctions, League governments only accelerated this trend. Sanctions made economic interdependence appear more dangerous than protectionism. Ultimately, Nazi Germany and imperial Japan embarked on campaigns of conquest to secure vital resources like oil, grain, and metals. In pursuit of their desire to become impervious to Anglo-American pressure, these fascist regimes brought on another world war.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/20/keynes-warned-the-world-against-using-economic-sanctions-his-alternative-is-worth-considering
The general unpredictability of chaotic systems suggests that the expected and desired results may very well not materialize as intended and instead the results that do occur may turn out to be both unwanted and undesirable, for everyone involved, in both the short term and the long term.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/596775-senate-gop-passes-resolution-to-nix-covid-19-emergency
Senate GOP passes resolution to nix COVID-19 emergency
Just vote the pandemic away.
> able to exploit Democratic absences
In other words, Schumer let the Republicans do the dirty work for him. He controls the calendar, can count, etc.
Can’t remember if I saw this here at NC already, but makes you wonder why China, with only 20% of the world’s population, is holding 60% of the worlds grains.
Maybe they’re getting ready to do something that will get them sanctioned.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Datawatch/China-hoards-over-half-the-world-s-grain-pushing-up-global-prices
Wild — when ya gotta feed 1.4B people in a world whose climate is changing rapidly, you do this China’s Evolving Food Security Strategy
And my analysis says you also do this: For seafood, China has created a three prong fleet: hundreds of thousands of fishing ships; the world’s largest coast guard; and the world’s second largest navy. And it has developed, trained and demonstrated global integrated coercive grayzone fishery operations with that fleet.
When those fisheries collapse due to overfishing, they will have some hard choices to make.
> When those fisheries collapse due to overfishing, they will have some hard choices to make.
As will all of us.
The Chinese leadership has this strange combination of short and medium term thinking with a lack of long term thinking; destroying their environment, which creates a massive health penalty, damages farming, and emptying out the ocean of its fish not only of the open areas, but also in the waters of other countries is extremely foolish. Long term starvation for short term gain and the enmity of those countries whose fish were stolen.
Does anyone here still watch TV news with any regularity? If so, can they tell me if the mainstream media is really presenting things as plucky Ukraine either winning or at least nobly slowing down the enemy? My interactions with people in the real world leads me to believe this is how most people are thinking about things. That the citizen freedom fighters of Ukraine just need to keep making and throwing Molotov cocktails and hold on until the West sends more planes for the Ghost of Kiev to fly and then the nefarious Asiatic hordes of Rooskies will be thrown back.
Whereas my reading of events is that things are largely proceeding according to Moscow’s preplanned timetables. Yes, I know, they would say that, but it’s hard to look at the maps (and ignoring the Russian provided maps, even the neocon maps paint a grim picture for Ukraine: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-4) and come to any other conclusion. And it really does look like Russia is fighting with one or both hands tied behind their backs and are restraining themselves. They could have probably ended this in a week or less by just blanketing Ukrainian units with rocket barrages, if they didn’t care about civilian casualties.
> And it really does look like Russia is fighting with one or both hands tied behind their backs and are restraining themselves
In Kharkiv, electricity is on, water is on, Internet is on. Same in Kyiv, IIRC. So, yes.
Crude Oil
126.78
up an easy 10% to open….
and room to run,
Just opened $135
https://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?p=d1&t=CL
Wheat isn’t looking too pretty either. All of North Africa depends on Russian wheat. I think we are going to need bigger guns.
https://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?p=d1&t=ZW
Are you sure that we aren’t going to surrender first?
Gasoline in my neighborhood jumped 10% overnight. From $5.10 per gallon to $5.70 per gallon.
To Soredemos–March 6, 2022 at 6:31 P.M.
For what it is worth, one of the few analysts who correctly predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Michael Kofman, recently observed the following:
1) Russia assumed it could achieve its political goals through a military invasion with relatively limited blood shed.
2) This Russian assumption has proved to be wrong–consequently Russian military means will no longer get them to their political objectives/ends.
3) Russian military objectives and its political objectives are no longer in alignment.
4). Both Russia and the U.S. can now be viewed as Great Powers who are their own worst enemies.
5). Inter-State conventional war will still be with us and most analysts tend to fly blind because of a status-quo bias.
The notion of having “predicted the invasion” as a great political insight which should be rewarded with credibility is tiresome. Putin has been saying since 2007 in Belgrade that he would not sit still if NATO crossed the line with Ukraine and NATO finally crossed a clearly demarcated line which everyone knew existed. Most of the predictions against an invasion that are now pointed to in this pundit game of gotcha, were happening before Zelensky mentioned nukes and the prediction which us intel gave before that even – Kyiv would fall within days and 50,000 civilians would be killed – has not materialized (which is not to diminish the deaths that have occurred). https://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-intel-50k-casualties-russian-invasion-ukraine-2022-2
i.e. Evryone knew that Putin would invade if they pushed him far enough.
I’ve heard Kofman mentioned before as a legit voice but have not read his opinions beyond what you’ve outlined. However, the CIA analyst who got Iraq right when everyone else didn’t, might, I think, beg to differ. I could be wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6NnUlhpxR4
Alastair Crooke explains how the sanctions blunderbuss may have exploded in the EU face. They thought their loophole would work.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/03/06/burning-globalist-structures-to-save-the-globalist-liberal-order/
I believe this person is very accurately predicting recent events. In other words, we’re already there.
I had a conversation with my father-in-law and brother-in-law this weekend in which they were both talking about how they top up their gastanks everyday because they know gas will only be more expensive tomorrow. I pointed out that this behavior is a sure sign of hyper-inflation. They looked at each other, then started talking about ways to live off-grid, as in prepping for emergency, not to be eco-conscious or anything. These are main-stream Swedes who would have laughed at me six months ago if I had brought up living off the grid.
All of this putzing around and death by a thousand cuts is so annoying. Let’s all go out in a mushroom cloud of glory and initiate the Great Reset. it’s inevitable anyway, so let’s get on with it.
When the world becomes uranious /
We will all go simultaneous …
https://youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs
How the Manhattan DA’s Investigation Into Donald Trump Unraveled
Ben Protess, William K. Rashbaum and Jonah E. Bromwich
Sun, March 6, 2022, 9:25 AM
just admit to nafta billy clintons disastrous policies and apologize, you might get some voters back.
otherwise trump will come back, and the nafta democrats are heading into a small regional party status.
Maybe Biden should nominate Putin for the Noble prize since the latter apparently ended the pandemic just in time for the war, which Joe so desperately needed, to start.
Why isn’t there a Nobel Prize for Public Relations? Surely, if Economics gets one….
The West no longer has conscript armies. Germany doesn’t even have a working military. The EU and the Euro subjected neighboring nations just fine.
Today is like the 1930s when WWII was already underway but Poland hadn’t been invaded yet. Without crash building a Maginot Line around all of Ukraine, at some point, Russia will tire of fighting a guerrilla war with Ukrainians and will invade NATO to stop the resupply of arms and mercenaries.
Since 2006 the intention of neo-con-liberals, NGOs, and war profiteers was to add Ukraine and Georgia to NATO to destabilize Russia and gain western access to their resources. Since then, if it ever inconveniently percolated into their consciousness, the plan to deal with Russia’s response is to use tactical nuclear weapons on their invasion forces.
Apparently, to keep their sanity, the Establishment assumes that Russia would accept defeat and humiliation and wouldn’t launch their ICBMs and destroy the Northern Hemisphere and themselves. Except, every wargame indicates that they will.
The only alternative, to assure the continued flow of Russian natural gas, avoid escalation and an economic depression at the same time, is a peace treaty that partitions Ukraine and Russia gets its written agreement on a European Security Agreement.
This is correct. I think its already dawning on most of Europe (see Polands refusal to let the Ukrainians use their airfields) that a long term conflict in the Ukraine would be a disaster for Europe. It would bleed Europe dry and inevitably lead to war spilling over into its neighbours. The US would be happy for this, Germany, Poland, Romania, etc., will do everything to stop it.
Europe wants Russia defeated in the Ukraine. But once its clear this will not happen (if it hasn’t happened already), they will accept an ‘agreement’ that will prevent further war on their borders, if at all possible (its not certain that its possible, as elements in Ukraine may simply refuse to surrender). They will lick their wounds and spend more on future defence. What the US will say to this is irrelevant. There is no appetite for a longer term war in Europe.
Yep but by putting themselves in a maximalist rhetoric, European leaders have now a difficult task to save face and don’t look as the self-interested cowards they are. So they might be waiting and wanting to see real absolute blood baths in Ukraine, preferably of civilians, to sell themselves as the humanitarians who arranged an agreement to stop the bleeding.
Another nugget from the stupidity mine. So the British home secretary, alongside representatives of the US, Canada, Australia & New Zealand, have demanded the suspension of Russia from Interpol. So that will mean no cooperation on international criminal gangs, drug-dealers, terrorists – just zip and everybody cross their fingers that there is no blowback-
https://www.rt.com/russia/551387-uk-requests-russia-suspension-interpol/
Ulp. We’re apparently already further up the escalation ladder than most seem to realize. Believe nobody, but attention-getting claims from G. Doctorow. Maskirovaka, maybe, but to what extent? We will see —
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/03/07/you-wont-know-what-hit-you-and-why/
‘…EU Member States are waging an Information War… The victim is the European public, which, if bad turns to worse, will not know what hit them and why when cruise or hypersonic missiles descend on NATO bases or infrastructure….
.2) There are also Ukrainian fighter jets that left the country and are now parked in Romania and other neighboring countries. If these planes are allowed by local authorities to take off from Romania, etc. and enter Ukrainian air space, Russia will consider the country from which they took off as a co-belligerent and will take appropriate action against them. The subtext is that Russia is ready to make missile strikes against NATO airfields that transgress the rules of war.2
‘3) Russia is now about to destroy all military industrial complex factories in Ukraine and has formally warned all employees of these factories to leave the premises and stay away
‘4) Russia has received documentation from Ukrainian health authorities on the production of biological weapons (anthrax, Siberian plague and much more) by Ukrainian labs in Kharkiv and elsewhere in cooperation with the United States. Stocks of such weapons were being stored in direct violation of international conventions. On 24 February, in advance of the start of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, the Ukrainian health authorities destroyed these illicit biological weapons. However, Russia has obtained the official documentation certifying this destruction of what should never have been there. Moscow is now studying this documentation, which indicates United States participation in the development of the biological weapons and will publish the incriminating documents, starting from yesterday.
‘5) Russia has also obtained documentation proving that Ukraine, in cooperation with the United States, was since the presidency of Petro Petrushenko, actively developing nuclear weapons, including “dirty” nuclear devices using readily available fuel from its reactors. Such activity was going on in the Zaporozhye nuclear plants, and it is very likely that the fire reported at a ‘training unit’ adjacent to an active reactor two days ago related to destruction of incriminating papers, if it was not otherwise a ‘false flag’ operation to allege a Russian attack on the power station, in violation of international law.
…’From this list, the most threatening to European peace in the immediate days ahead is point 2, regarding Ukrainian aircraft based outside of Ukraine and being assigned missions to fly back into Ukrainian air space to thwart Russia’s ongoing military offensive….’