No update today.
Somebody commented during my small break last week that I should try and insert breaks in, say, a day or so every week or two weeks, which I think I will try and do - though they might be irregular (i.e. on different days).
Happy International Day for Biological Diversity!
Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Mislav Kolakušić, Member of the European Parliament, Croatia:
Dear colleagues, dear citizens. It is an incredible lie and hypocrisy that sanctions against Russia and a ban on Russian oil and gas are, in fact, sanctions against Russia and a ban on financing the war. The sanctions are indeed directed against half a billion citizens of the EU and against millions of citizens of the rest of Europe. If this were true, if we really wanted to prevent the financing of the war we would immediately impose the same sanctions on Saudi Arabia, which has been waging war in Yemen for several years. We would not import oil and gas from the US, which has been involved in more conflicts than any country in Europe and the world in recent decades. The only ones who will suffer are the citizens of the European Union. Let's stop making these crazy decisions, thank you.
:joker-troll: :gigachad:
I gave my libs so much shit about invoking the idiotic "whatabouttism" argument, they do not dare mention it again.
How? Well, they were going "but what about..." all the time, so I would be there dunk on them mercilessly for it.
it is may 22 2022 and america is a fascist state founded on genocide and oppression
America isn't fascist (yet). They did all that just with regular old liberalism.
I'm not personally sure if we're ever gonna see something as explicitly fascist as Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, at least in "developed" countries. Like, I feel like the capitalists went way overboard in those two cases and then the rest of the world's capitalists were just like "Woah woah woah, there's no need to go THAT far, we can do the same thing but with liberalism, and we can make ourselves seem outwardly good to the world!"
Maybe if shit REALLY hits the fan and there's a genuine communist movement sweeping the west made up of tens of millions of people in the US and the US has to do the Business Plot and one day there's just a military general on TV in the oval office declaring that everything's fine and cool and there's no need to worry but there's gonna be a couple changes to the system. But even then, maybe all our capitalists will be relatively feckless failchildren by then and they'll all flee to New Zealand while the whole country is on fire, both from forest fires and molotovs.
I'm sure there's already been a hundred different discussions on here about this very topic.
Aime Cesaire argued that fascism was colonialism turned back on Europe. A settler colony like America or Australia or South Africa or Israel is always already fascist.
:rosa-salute: we need @wombat's daily reminders but for the US. next we need one for Britain
This soldier fought for Finland, Nazi Germany and U.S. Special Forces, by WaPo
That's so weird! How could one man fight for three so completely and entirely different causes!?
In 1939, an officer in the Finnish army helped defend his country against a Soviet invasion, earning two Medals of Liberty for his actions.
In 1941, a soldier fighting for the SS joined Germany’s war against the Red Army, commanding a tank platoon in the Karelia offensive.
In 1963, a member of the U.S. Special Forces earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in Vietnam and undertook a reconnaissance mission to search for the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.
All three soldiers were the same man: Lauri Törni.
Across his various postings for three countries, Törni’s apparent motivation — to keep Russian aggression at bay — is one that seems to be shared by the majority of today’s Finns. Conflict with Russia was a reality for Törni, not just a fear. When he volunteered for military service in September 1938 and the Red Army moved to occupy Finland, he and his countrymen found themselves overwhelmed by Soviet manpower.
Nazi Germany offered the Finnish forces arms and assistance in return for passage into their country. When Finland sent a voluntary battalion to SS Division Wiking, Törni — restless from time away from the battlefield, and having fallen into brawling and heavy drinking — was among the volunteers onboard a ship of 289 recruits.
He was promoted to the rank of Untersturmführer, but his prospects for further advancement were limited. Men who did not get along with the Germans were sent back. Törni was one of them. When a second conflict between Finland and the U.S.S.R., the Continuation War, broke out on June 25, 1941, Törni was given command of a machine gun platoon. He was promoted to lieutenant and awarded a third-class Cross of Freedom medal for his leadership. He was also able to form his own company, Detachment Törni. The company’s work behind enemy lines involved hogtieing Soviet troops, disabling transport and sowing terror among the Russians. It earned Törni a German Iron Cross from his occupying commanders, and a 3-million-mark bounty on his head from the Soviets.
A further honor — the second-class Mannerheim Cross, which Törni received on June 9, 1944 — came with a 50,000-mark cash prize, most of which Törni drank away with his comrades. With his homeland in turmoil and the threat of Soviet occupation still hovering, Törni boarded a U-boat for Germany in 1945, seeking action after having been refused permission to join the Lapland War in the north of his country. But World War II was drawing to a close, and the 1944 Moscow Armistice — signed by Finland, Russia and the United Kingdom — had ordered the Finnish government to expel the occupying German troops.
Lauri Törni changed his name to Larry Allan Thorne. With his SS tattoo removed and a wealth of combat experience to draw on, he received postings at Forts Dix, Carson, Benning and Bragg. He was selected for training as a Special Forces officer, and in 1963 began his first tour of Vietnam, setting up a base camp near the Cambodian border. Thorne helped build schools and hospitals, and would return to Fort Bragg with Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals.
But when faced with an old enemy — civilian restlessness — he volunteered for a second tour with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (Studies and Observations Group), a top-secret unit not officially recognized by the government, and tasked with recon missions across the border into Laos. Thorne’s long-range patrol skills developed during the Continuation War could once again be called upon. On Oct. 18, 1965, the former Finnish Civil Guard, ex-Untersturmführer and serving Special Forces major boarded an unmarked helicopter tasked with finding the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a communist supply route. It disappeared in bad weather. More than 50 search missions failed to find Thorne or his comrades, each made difficult by the fact he was never officially in Laos. Thorne was declared dead on Oct. 19, 1966.
At no point does the article do any "well, perhaps the causes were flawed, BUT fighting those goddamn Ruskies makes him a hero" hedging. I think this is just honest-to-god Nazi propaganda.
That’s so weird! How could one man fight for three so completely and entirely different causes!?
RLY MAKS U THNK :thinking-about-it:
In 1939, an officer in the Finnish army helped defend his country against a Soviet invasion, earning two Medals of Liberty for his actions.
In 1941, a soldier fighting for the SS joined Germany’s war against the Red Army, commanding a tank platoon in the Karelia offensive.
WOW SO WEIRD HOW THAT HAPPENS! ANYWAY, GOOD THING THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN LEARN FROM THIS! :matt-jokerfied:
Something that is worth nothing with this guy, is the fact that he fought against the communists 3 different times, and lost every single war. So not only is this guy a nazi, he is a fucking loser.
pro NATO Finns and Swedes are more likely to be older and wealthier
I have 3 Finnish friends. Kinda odd, I know, as the population of Finland is just over 4 dozen. Anyhow all three have clearly moved to the right this year, and the Russian thing isn't helping. Previously they were pretty lefty and American skeptical. I know the canned answer is "demsocs not against alliances with Fascism". Ya this is true, but it hurts with close mates.
Unrelated, but Finns are like the opposite to the Americans I complained about... Not snarky and mean, totally humble, talk about real shit.
But the decision to join NATO does not just rely on a hollowed-out discourse of solidarity; it is also presented as a vital act of self-interest – a defensive response to the ‘Russian threat’. In Sweden’s case, we are asked to believe that the country is currently facing greater security risks than during both World Wars, and that the only way to address them is to enter a beefed-up military alliance. Although Russia is supposedly struggling to make headway against a much weaker opponent in Ukraine – unable to hold the capital, hemorrhaging troops and supplies – we are told that it poses an imminent threat to Stockholm and Helsinki. Amid such confected panic, genuine threats to the Nordic way of life have gone ignored: the withering away of the welfare state, the privatization and marketization of education, rising inequality and the weakening of the universal healthcare system. While rushing to align with ‘the West’, the Swedish and Finnish governments have shown considerably less urgency in tackling these social crises.
(emphasis mine)
Umberto Eco: “[…] the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
The USSR couldn't take Finland in the last world war, so I doubt Russia would even try today
The USSR eventually fucking rolled the Finnish fascists in the continuation war and should have continued stomping the damn bastards all the way into the ground to allow the Finnish-Karelian SSR re-assume governance of Finland and fly the flag of the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic in Helsinki
How I'm earning $1 MILLION dollars a week without working at all
spoiler
exploited labour :porky-happy:
I'll have you know that the number of risks Musk makes on a daily basis is more than you do in a year, which justifies why he should make more money in half an hour of taking plane rides and committing sexual assault than you'll make in a lifetime of grinding, backbreaking labor
The transition from there aren't nazis to azov is small and powerless to azov used to be nazis but now they aren't anymore and Russia is actually nazis is the stupidest shit and libs have parrotted each talking point every step of the way. Some of the smarter anarchists and chomskyites have started to see through it at least. Even Amy Goodman has shown some incredulousness lately about the situation.
All any of these people had to do was use the date range feature of any search engine.
My recent favorite is backpedalling from "Ukraine is winning" to "It will be a long war".
Ukraine is using phosphorus artillery shells on their own civilians, residents say
Nothing graphic here thankfully beyond the usual war-torn landscape. Also nothing too graphically descriptive as well.
Ukraine has been using phosphorus munitions on civilians since 2014
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that liberals are rehabilitating nazis
I already saw variations of this on couple other places:
"Former Ukrainian defensive positions are full of abandoned corpses of their soldiers; They are left there to rot on purpose, by orders from above, both to hide loses and avoid paying money to their families. Without bodies, these soldiers are simply lost in action, and for such they don't have to pay a dime. There is a bunch of similar stuff on Telegram "
[translated from Russian source - https://voenhronika.ru/publ/vojna_na_ukraine/morpekhi_s_kamchatki_zasnjali_ogromnye_poteri_vsu_poslednie_svodki_s_ukrainy_utro_22_maja_16_video/60-1-0-12170]
Russian telegram:
"According to the German TV channel N-TV, Europe depends on the supply of enriched uranium more than on oil or gas. It buys about 40% of nuclear fuel from Russia and Kazakhstan.
At the same time, the EU receives not only raw materials from Russia, but also technologies.
"Over the past years, the Kremlin has invested billions in improving the technological process of uranium enrichment and has been able to achieve success: Russian installations are considered among the best in the world," the @ino_tv channel quotes.
In addition, there are 18 countries in the EU where Russian nuclear reactors are located: two in Bulgaria, six in the Czech Republic, two in Finland, four in Hungary and four in Slovakia.
Journalists draw attention to the fact that Rosatom has not yet been sanctioned, although it is a state concern and a very suitable target for restrictive measures."
Also:
"Turkey Should Veto NATO Expansion for Next 20 Years — Retired General
Turkey should take full advantage of the historic opportunity provided by Finland and Sweden's bids to join NATO, retired Turkish Brigadier General Naim Baburoglu said."
Thanks to its veto power, Turkey has now received a strategic card, which must be used to make sure than not only Helsinki and Stockholm, but all NATO members, designate the PKK as a terrorist organization, Baburoglu told a Turkish outlet.
“Who has the most interest in Sweden and Finland being in NATO? It's the US because it wants to surround Russia from the northern Baltics. Therefore… Turkey should discuss this matter with the US in the first place,” he said."
Haavisto suggested that Finland could provide assurances to Turkey that any possible links to PKK terrorism will be monitored more closely.
"We can certainly give such guarantees to Turkey. Since the PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation in Europe, it's important that we do our part not to allow any preparations for terrorist activity on Finnish soil," he said.
:shrug-outta-hecks:
So western democratic liberals are readily sacrificing the values they claim to uphold, the moment it benefits them politically? I'm shocked, absolutely shocked!
Sorry we had to chose between Kurds or Ukros, and only one of them is the victim of the week
Am I reading this right? Turkey just wants NATO members to be even more oppressive of communist parties? Seems like a trivial ask but I'm guessing it's much more complex.
that would change things. I hear "workers party" and my US brain jumps to comparative conclusions
What do you base this on? I know very little about them but after a short look around their leader and their original manifesto seem to be Marxist Leninists. Maybe they have changed over the years but they seem pretty based to me.
They were originally ML, but abandoned it after the destruction of the USSR. This is coming from Hakim, from his video on Kurdish nationalism and a couple Deprogram episodes iiirc. If you want it in their own words, you'll find plenty of attestation if you just google it. "Democratic confederalism" is their thing now, and it seems very light on socialism. They seem to be mostly concerned with Kurdish nationalism at the moment. Which may or may not be based; I'm not trying to make a value judgement here, just clarifying.
So Democratic confederalism does seem to still be ML based but its an alternative to state based socialism. They want to make pockets of socialist communities within other nation states. They are trying to break out of the Ethno-state idea even though that is how they started. They are extremely environmentally aware and theoretically every political job has a male and a female position as a way to combat patriarchy? Interesting stuff. Obviously they are going through some teething but it seems like their hearts and minds are in the right place.
Long Covid Is Dangerous. The Fear of It Still Shouldn’t Rule Your Life. NYT
Since the initial Omicron wave receded and inflation replaced Covid-19 in the headlines, the debate over reopening has largely been settled in favor of the reopeners. But the debate over the wisdom of reopening and unmasking hasn’t gone away. As Covid cases rise again, there is still a vocal constituency that thinks too much normalcy is a public health mistake.
Of late, this constituency has shifted its focus somewhat, from the dangers of death (diminished by vaccination and immunity) to the peril of long Covid, the potentially debilitating chronic form of the disease. In a recent Washington Post essay, the health-policy expert Ezekiel Emanuel wrote that “a 1-in-33 chance” of long Covid symptoms (assuming that for the vaccinated, which he is, about 3 percent of Covid infections turn chronic) is still enough to keep him in an N95 mask, out of indoor restaurants and off trains and planes as much as possible.
I am, since vaccines became generally available, a pandemic dove who happily tore off my mask once planes no longer required it, which should make me primed for skepticism about long Covid. But at the same time, I also have extensive knowledge about chronic illness and its controversies, based on extensive personal experience, which made me a long Covid believer from the start: Its scope is uncertain, but it’s clearly real and often terrible.
From Emanuel’s perspective, I shouldn’t hold both of these positions. I’ve experienced in my own flesh just how bad a chronic infection can become: What am I doing eating out, flying planes barefaced, writing this column unmasked in a coffee shop?
Because you're a treat-addicted hogman?
It’s an interesting question, and it inspired me to do some back-of-the-envelope math about a different kind of risk — the risk my family takes by still living in Connecticut, a hotbed of Lyme disease, my own unwelcome chronic visitor.
...
Maybe this is crazy, and we should have moved to Arizona. But the lesson I’ve taken from my Lyme-earned knowledge is that infection-mediated chronic illness may be so commonplace that to lead any kind of normal life is to expose yourself to risk.
For instance, we have new evidence suggesting that multiple sclerosis is linked to the extremely common Epstein-Barr virus; estimates of M.S. cases in the United States range from 400,000 to just under a million. Likewise, chronic fatigue syndrome may well be touched off by viral infections; estimates of its victims range as high as 2.5 million. Start tallying up the myriad other chronic conditions that might have some infectious root, and you could make a case for Emanuel’s level of caution just based on pre-Covid threats.
Yeah, you could!
But that’s not how human civilization has traditionally dealt with chronic dangers. We take unusual precautions during unusually deadly outbreaks, but where dangers are persistent, we look for ways to treat and cure while otherwise trying to live our lives as normally as possible. Certainly we don’t look back at images of an 18th-century court or coffeehouse, when the risks from infectious disease were greater than anything we know, and say: “Why aren’t those people wearing masks? Why did they ever leave the house?”
BECAUSE THEY HAD TO WORK OR STARVE. JUST LIKE TODAY, YOU CODDLED LITTLE JOURNALIST FUCK.
Chronic illness is a great scourge, which long Covid has helped bring into the light, and it cries out for better diagnosis and better treatment. But doing the math and knowing the danger won’t keep me from showing my face on planes and in restaurants or my kids from walking — carefully, I hope — in Connecticut’s state parks.
"Doing the math" is such a pernicious phrase when supporting an argument because it sounds like you're doing some objective reasoning but in fact just rationalizing actions you've already decided to do. And curiously enough, his math doing fails to include the risk he's imposing on other people against their will, but the alternative is the horror of having to wear a mask on an airplane so clearly he's the bigger victim.
I've done the math, and robbing people at gunpoint at night and then running away before the cops show up is a sound strategy to make a lot of money.
I am, since vaccines became generally available, a pandemic dove who happily tore off my mask once planes no longer required it, which should make me primed for skepticism about long Covid. But at the same time, I also have extensive knowledge about chronic illness and its controversies, based on extensive personal experience, which made me a long Covid believer from the start: Its scope is uncertain, but it’s clearly real and often terrible.
DIE :stalin-gun-1::monke-rage:
I was thinking - who do you think knows that Russia is winning but has to keep up the image that Ukraine still has a chance? The West's intelligence agencies? Zelensky? Stoltenberg? Biden? Macron, Scholz, Boris? Leyen?
If yes to all, at what level does that knowledge run out - does Boris' cabinet all know? Biden's admin? Senators?
I think intelligence agencies know. I'm also confident that journalists and most politicians are absolutely delusional.
I think top the US leadership is full of shit and well aware that all the Ukraine is accomplishing is to have their conscripts ground into mush. They know what they're doing and hope to isolate and cannibalise western Europe while Russia will be kept occupied fighting an insurgency in the Ukraine fueled by constant supplies from the MIC.
As for Zelensky I find it more believable that he's deluding himself into believing that he's winning. Otherwise he would be aware that he was feeding his people into a meat grinder for the must cynical of reasons. Something nobody wants to believe about themselves.
Western European leaders all seem to be high on pure ideology and unaware how they are being fucked over.
I think this is pretty close but I feel like more politicians know what is up but they don't care because they are getting theirs.
I think the closer you get to the places where decisions are made, the more of reality you know.
I still think backbencher-level politicians in great imperial powers as well as the leaders of lesser European countries, those Russia with some grain of truth are dismissing as American protectorates, are completely delusional.
At a minimum, Ukraine cannot win - the country has been wrecked, much of its economic activity rests in occupied areas, and the West is incapable of doing a Marshall Plan 2 as they shifted most of their industry abroad. Maybe China goes in there with its BRI, but that's a decades-long project. The only way that Ukraine can meaningfully not lose is to indefinitely hold back Russia using an endless supply of western weaponry and trained troops, which has sorta, kinda worked for the last month at great human cost to their Ukrainian military - but the front line is now cracking, and the weaponry is not endless. A few European countries have already had to stop (Greece, Netherlands), have meaningfully stopped (Portugal sending WW2-era weaponry), or are sending it in laughably few quantities, too late (15 tanks from Germany coming in July). The US will, sooner or later, be the only power sending weaponry in, but it doesn't even seem to work terribly well, as the Ukrainian authorities have banned criticism of western weaponry on social media.
If you take the totality of the situation, economic, military, diplomatic, on a domestic and global scale - Ukraine has already lost and Russia already won. All Ukraine can do is try and salvage what's remaining of their country, and, with an arm and a leg cut off, point and laugh at Russia for giving it a bloody nose.
Meh, ukraine according to zelenskiy has 700 k thousands soldiers already, and endless logistical support from the west. I don’t see why they couldn’t win, they are training 300 thousand in the western part to handle weaponry. They can have bigger army in 3 months than russia has right now, while sacrificing recruits to slow them down. Currently surrendering small groups are territorial defense forces without training, not artillery crews. The speed of incapacitating the army is slower than army growth in size for ukraine, so to me it seems they are favored unless this new part of army fail in some offensive
I don’t see why they couldn’t win
Yeah countries that lose like 50% of its population in the first months of the war usually don't win. Ten million "Ukrainians" (or at least, like, their territory) will soon be Russian citizens, makes a net loss of 25% of your population right there. Then add the 6 million refugees that are in the EU. Add another million or so who fled to Russia. I'm well aware that there's intersections between these sets, but I would need some really convincing reasoning on why the rump "Ukraine" that's still blue on those war maps currently has more than 25 million inhabitants.Probably less, I'd guess.
Also don't forget the 50-100,000 people who've lost their lives for the cokehead of Kyiv, and at least the same number in wounded, including plenty of amputees and people who will require a wheelchair for the rest of their lives....naw man, Ukraine is down and out, and for a long time too.
Hard to recover from this, even will all the Western weapons in the world (which are very limited, too - as we're beginning to see more and more).
But they didn’t lose 50 percent of population, they lost like 2-3 million in the russia controlled territories and 6 millions to immigration (like 14 percent). Recruitment in chernigov/sumy is going right now for ukraine, for example.
If they have 30 million, at least 5 million are “militarily aged” men. As Russia continues to treat this as not a war, but an operation, they don’t mobilize themselves, so their manpower losses are much more problematic. Latest usa aid includes patriot systems, so air defense capabilities will soon rise for ukraine, and logistical system of ukraine will remain intact after that, and then you’ll have 200 thousands vs 500 k thousands well supplied troops on both sides. Kherson would be first prime target for these newly western forces, where logistical supply line is thinnest for russia
I have little faith that Zelensky is telling the truth about anything, nor that any amount of conscripts who were forced and dragged off buses to remain in the country can turn the tide. Unless you're suggesting that Ukraine is now doing the simple calculus of hoping that the number of Ukrainian conscripts is larger than the number of Russian bullets.
This is what, the fourth, fifth time that the United States has sent in weaponry that promised to turn the tide? Javelins - virtually no footage of their success, and Ukraine DEFINITELY wants footage of their success for propaganda and to boost MIC sales. Stingers? Somewhat effective during the first week, then Russia learned to fly low and now they don't do anything. Switchblades? Not a single success video. Phoenix Ghost? Haven't seen anything there either. The artillery on the front lines right now is largely towed, which almost every military in the world has long since moved past for good reason, favouring self-propelled. The heavy artillery, I have no idea if it's being useful, but there is footage of the destruction of batteries of them, and they're hard to transport in to the front - and if Ukraine had significant amounts of them, they'd be using them instead of the shitty towed artillery. At this point I just don't believe that the Ultra-Peepee MegaFreedom McMissiles will do anything significant. Either they'll be destroyed before they reach the front, or they'll be useless when they get there.
And Ukraine's fuel logistic system isn't getting any better by the day, if the fuel shortages throughout Ukraine are anything to go by.
If I was Ukraine, and I didn't want to give up, what I would do is set up a gigantic defense in depth as quickly as I could with all the western weaponry that's too difficult to get to the front, and simultaneously retreat my troops (who now have combat experience and so are much more useful than recruits and conscripts) completely out of Donbass rather than sacrificing them en masse to blunt the Russian advance for a couple weeks, and send them to defensible positions on the other side of the river, and then blow up every bridge along the Dniper in front of me so that Russia couldn't advance without great hardship past that point. Ukraine is unwilling to do this because of how bad it would make them look to lose that much territory, even if it might win them the war - whatever that even means for Ukraine at this point. Killing as many Russians as possible? Bringing their negotiators to the table? Either way, they know they aren't getting Donbass back, and even if they hypothetically could, imagine the absolute headache that would cause them on a daily basis.
They are doing defensive lines though, in the cities in the east and nikolaev, why would they sacrifice them for cheap? Not mentioning all the fortified villages.
If/when poland introduce peacekeeping force in the west, western ukrainian army will be liberated for offensive. I don’t think they can recapture donbass, but Kherson? Losing it and executing “collaborationists” will end any hope of taking future cities without resistance for russia. Why would you chill as zaporozhie, if you know that russians can be beaten, and you’ll get got over working with them?
Nothing zelensky says is truthful. The Ukrainian national forces has extremely low morale as they're being sent to die with no support. Also, the forced conscription thing.
Low morale of cannon fodder, the question is morale of prepared army/artillery teams. As I’ve mentioned, artillery works well for ukraine, and they don’t surrender
Does the proxy have to win? I've been thinking that it might not be a big deal to them as long as there's no unconditional surrender or anything. The severance of Europe from Russia has happened, so in a way the US has won, at least in the short-term.
As for the outcome of the war, it would probably suck for Russia to try to hold the western parts of Ukraine, and pushing them back from Donbass or Crimea would be pushing the nuclear equipped bear into a corner, so neither option seems desirable for anyone involved. Europe is probably expecting to drain as much of Russia's resources as possible and then try to negotiate an armistice that more or less goes back to the pre-escalation status quo.
Whatever happens on the ground in Ukraine, they can just spin it as a loss, or at most a Pyrrhic victory for Russia that shows how weak they are.
The severance of Europe from Russia has happened
It has not happened. They have only achieved a splitting of Europe into uncertain and shaky factions. There are three blocks forming, UK/Poland/Ukraine plus smaller nations are one block forming into a wing that is trying its hardest to do America's bidding, FrancoGermany are resistant and avoiding taking part in this block while being somewhat neutral diplomatically between Russia and the US, meanwhile Greece, Hungary, Serbia, Turkey and a number of others are resistant to the US and quite clearly unhappy.
This situation has a lot of ways it can play out. Calling Russia split from Europe is incorrect, the more accurate thing to say is that Europe itself has been split and is in a destabilised state. This is the US doctrine of the middle east ported to Europe, their target isn't simply Russia, their target very much includes the member states of the EU which they saw as dangerously close to forming relationships with both Russia and China which the US simply can't compete with due to the geographical fact that all can do well together as one land block.
Polish PM Calls on Norway to Share Oil and Gas Profits Windfall Bloomberg
Norway should share the “gigantic” profits it’s recently made as a result of higher oil and gas prices, especially with Ukraine, said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
Morawiecki, answering a question about his government’s energy policy Sunday at a meeting of a youth group, said coal-reliant Poland plans to switch to renewables and nuclear energy, while shedding oil and gas deliveries from Russia and at some point from “Arab” countries as well.
“But should we be paying Norway gigantic money for gas -- four or five times more than we paid a year ago? This is sick,” he said. “They should share these excess profits. It’s not normal, it’s unjust. This is an indirect preying on the war started by Putin.”
Sharing excess profits? That sounds a little like... communism!?
Poland was one of the loudest and most rabid supporters of the economic warfare that made the prices explode. And now they are whining about energy prices?
Poland as a country has to be the world record holder for Olympic medals in shooting yourself in the foot.
I would definitely watch an Olympics with Shooting Yourself In The Foot as a category
My Lunch With President Biden, by Thomas Friedman, writing in the NYT
Hold on to your hats, you're about to see some real dipshittery. I just read through it again and I don't think there's a single even vaguely correct paragraph in this. I'm not sure what universe he's in but it's sure not this one. It's actually genuinely impressive that his accounting of the last few months, years, and decades is so diametrically opposed to reality. That takes true hard work and consistency, to maintain a world view that doesn't even accidentally have correct points or facts.
dipshittery within
For all you knuckleheads on Fox who say that Biden can’t put two sentences together, here’s a news flash: He just put NATO together, Europe together and the whole Western alliance together — stretching from Canada up to Finland and all the way to Japan — to help Ukraine protect its fledgling democracy from Vladimir Putin’s fascist assault. In doing so, he has enabled Ukraine to inflict significant losses on Russia’s invading army, thanks to a rapid deployment of U.S. and NATO trainers and massive transfers of precision weapons. And not a single American soldier was lost.
It has been the best performance of alliance management and consolidation since another president whom I covered and admired — who also was said to be incapable of putting two sentences together: George H.W. Bush. Bush helped manage the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, without firing a shot or the loss of a single American life.
Alas, though, I left our lunch with a full stomach but a heavy heart. Biden didn’t say it in so many words, but he didn’t have to. I could hear it between the lines: He’s worried that while he has reunited the West, he may not be able to reunite America.
It’s clearly his priority, above any Build Back Better provision. And he knows that’s why he was elected — a majority of Americans worried that the country was coming apart at the seams and that this old war horse called Biden, with his bipartisan instincts, was the best person to knit us back together. It’s the reason he decided to run in the first place, because he knows that without some basic unity of purpose and willingness to compromise, nothing else is possible. But with every passing day, every mass shooting, every racist dog whistle, every defund-the-police initiative, every nation-sundering Supreme Court ruling, every speaker run off a campus, every bogus claim of election fraud, I wonder if he can bring us back together. I wonder if it’s too late.
I fear that we’re going to break something very valuable very soon. And once we break it, it will be gone — and we may never be able to get it back. I am talking about our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately, an ability we have demonstrated since our founding. The peaceful, legitimate transfer of power is the keystone of American democracy. Break it, and none of our institutions will work for long, and we will be thrust into political and financial chaos. We are staring into that abyss right now. Because it is one thing to elect Donald Trump and pro-Trump candidates who want to restrict immigration, ban abortions, slash corporate taxes, pump more oil, curb sex education in schools and liberate citizens from mask mandates in a pandemic. Those are policies where there can be legitimate disagreement, which is the stuff of politics.
But the recent primaries and the investigations around the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol are revealing a movement by Trump and his supporters that is not propelled by any coherent set of policies, but rather by a gigantic lie — that Biden did not freely and fairly win a majority of Electoral College votes and therefore is an illegitimate president. Thus, their top priority is installing candidates whose primary allegiance is to Trump and his Big Lie — not to the Constitution. And they are more than hinting that in any close election in 2024 — or even ones that aren’t so close — they would be willing to depart from established constitutional rules and norms and award that election to Trump or other Republican candidates who didn’t actually garner the most votes. They are not whispering this platform. They are running for office on it.
In short, we are seeing a national movement that is telling us publicly and loudly: WE WILL GO THERE. And that terrifies me because: I HAVE BEEN THERE. My formative experience in journalism was watching Lebanese politicians go there in the late 1970s and plunge their frail democracy into protracted civil war. So don’t tell me that it can’t happen here. Not when people like Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano — an election denier who marched with the Jan. 6 crowd at the Capitol — just won the G.O.P. primary to run for governor. Have no doubt: These people will never do what Al Gore did in 2000 — submit to a decision of the courts in an extremely close election and recognize his opponent as the legitimate president. And they will never do what principled Republicans running for office or acting as elections officials did after the 2020 election — accept the votes as they were tabulated in their states, accept the court orders that confirmed that there were no significant irregularities and permit Biden to legitimately take power.
It is stomach-turning to watch the number of Trump Republicans running for office affirming his Big Lie, when we know that they know that we know that they know that they do not believe a single word of what they are saying. That’s Dr. Oz and J.D. Vance and so many others. Nevertheless, they are ready to hitch a ride on the Trump train to gain power. And they do it without even blushing. It reached its nadir, in my view, when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, so obsessed with becoming speaker of the House at any cost, actually lied about telling the truth. McCarthy publicly denied the fact that immediately after Jan. 6 he explicitly (and on tape) told his Republican colleagues that he expected Trump to be impeached for inspiring the insurrection and that McCarthy intended to tell him he should resign. Who in your life have you ever encountered who lied about telling the truth?
And this brings me back to my lunch with Biden. It clearly weighs on him that we have built a global alliance to support Ukraine, to reverse the Russian invasion and to defend core American principles abroad — the right to freedom and self-determination of all peoples — while the G.O.P. is abandoning our most cherished principles at home. That is why so many allied leaders have privately said to Biden, as he and his team have revived the Western alliance from the splintered pieces that Trump left it in, “Thank God — America is back.” And then they add, “But for how long?”
Biden cannot answer that question. Because WE cannot answer that question.
Biden is not blameless in this dilemma, nor is the Democratic Party — particularly its far-left wing. Under pressure to revive the economy, and facing big-ticket demands from the far left, Biden pursued expansive spending for too long. House Democrats also sullied one of Biden’s most important bipartisan achievements — a giant infrastructure bill — by making it hostage to other excessive spending demands. The far left also saddled Biden and every Democratic candidate with radical notions like “defund the police” — an insane mantra that would have most harmed the Black and Hispanic base of the Democratic Party had it been implemented.
To defeat Trumpism we need only, say, 10 percent of Republicans to abandon their party and join with a center-left Biden, which is what he was elected to be and still is at heart. But we may not be able to get even 1 percent of Republicans to shift if far-left Democrats are seen as defining the party’s future.
And that is why I left my lunch with the president with a full stomach but a heavy heart.
How does this guy continue to get paid to write??? I know the answer, but the fact that he makes a shitload of money doing this is always the first thing through my mind when I see shit he's written
For all you knuckleheads on Fox who say that Biden can’t put two sentences together, here’s a news flash: He just put NATO together, Europe together and the whole Western alliance together — stretching from Canada up to Finland and all the way to Japan — to help Ukraine protect its fledgling democracy from Vladimir Putin’s fascist assault. In doing so, he has enabled Ukraine to inflict significant losses on Russia’s invading army, thanks to a rapid deployment of U.S. and NATO trainers and massive transfers of precision weapons. And not a single American soldier was lost.
:warf-wtf:
Because it is one thing to elect Donald Trump and pro-Trump candidates who want to restrict immigration, ban abortions, slash corporate taxes, pump more oil, curb sex education in schools and liberate citizens from mask mandates in a pandemic. Those are policies where there can be legitimate disagreement, which is the stuff of politics.
Reminds me of the, "I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at..." meme
