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Turkey’s President Erdoğan has officially withdrawn Ankara’s objection to the addition of Finland and Sweden to NATO membership, with the three countries signing a trilateral memorandum at a NATO summit in Madrid.
The removal of Erdoğan’s objection was reportedly obtained via significant natsec concessions from the other two nations largely geared toward facilitating Turkey’s ongoing conflict with regional Kurdish factions, and it removes the final obstacle to Finland and Sweden beginning the process of becoming NATO members. Finland’s addition will more than double the size of NATO’s direct border with Russia, a major national security concern for Moscow.
“Sweden and Finland moved rapidly to apply to NATO in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reversing decades of security policy and opening the door to the alliance’s ninth expansion since 1949,” Axios reports.
So the western empire will be expanding NATO again in response to a war that was predominantly caused by NATO expansion. Brilliant.
Biden Says US Will Beef Up Military Presence in Europe as NATO Summit Begins in Madrid
NATO is set to agree on an expansion of its forces in Eastern Europe
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #NATO #NATOSummit #Ukraine #Russia #Europe https://t.co/JBMKIQh9UI pic.twitter.com/EkBjhvym9m— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) June 28, 2022
At the same NATO summit, President Biden announced plans to ramp up US military presence in Europe in response to the Ukraine war.
“Speaking with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Biden said the US will increase the number of US Navy Destroyers stationed at a naval base in Rota, Spain, from four to six,” Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports. “The president said that this was the first of multiple announcements the US and NATO will make at the summit on increasing their forces in Europe, steps being taken in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
This news comes out as a new CNN report tells us that the Biden administration does not believe Ukraine has any chance of winning this war, yet still won’t encourage any kind of negotiated settlement to end the bloodshed.
From CNN:
White House officials are losing confidence that Ukraine will ever be able to take back all of the land it has lost to Russia over the past four months of war, US officials told CNN, even with the heavier and more sophisticated weaponry the US and its allies plan to send.
Advisers to President Joe Biden have begun debating internally how and whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should shift his definition of a Ukrainian “victory” — adjusting for the possibility that his country has shrunk irreversibly. US officials emphasized to CNN that this more pessimistic assessment does not mean the US plans to pressure Ukraine into making any formal territorial concessions to Russia in order to end the war.
This would confirm what I and many others have been saying since Russia invaded: that this proxy war is being waged not with the intention of saving Ukrainian lives by delivering a swift defeat to Moscow but with the intention of creating a costly, gruelling military quagmire to weaken Russia on the world stage.
This is further confirmed by a new Politico report that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has discouraged France’s President Macron from facilitating a negotiated peace settlement between Moscow and Kyiv, which would support an earlier Ukrainian media report that Johnson had discouraged President Zelensky from such a settlement during his visit to Kyiv in April.
Confirms that Ukrainian Pravda story from a couple of months ago. Angloid political elites don't want this war to end until they're satisfied enough Russians are killed to kneecap Russia as a rival—no matter how many dead Ukrainians it takes to do so.https://t.co/alKLzwy7DF
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) June 27, 2022
These revelations emerge in the wake of western officials admitting that Ukraine is crawling with CIA personnel and special forces operatives from the US and other NATO countries.
“As usual it appears that the administration wants to have it both ways: assure the American people that it is being ‘restrained’ and that we are not ‘at war’ with the Russians, but doing everything but planting a U.S. soldier and a flag inside Ukraine,” writes Responsible Statecraft’s Kelley Beaucar Vlahos of this admission. “The Russians may not see the distinction and consider this news as further evidence that their war is more with Washington and NATO than with Ukraine.”
The empire is guided by so little wisdom in its escalations against Russia that the US congress is now pushing expensive ship-launched nuclear cruise missiles on its naval forces even as the US Navy tells them it doesn’t want those weapons and has no use for them.
Like hey, just take the nukes anyway. What’s the worst that could happen?
Today in our extremely rational Pentagon budget: Congress funds nuclear weapon the Navy doesn't even want https://t.co/aOndUGdqDI
— John Carl Baker (@johncarlbaker) June 28, 2022
We need to really start taking seriously the possibility that a nuclear weapon could detonate as a result of misunderstanding or malfunction amid the chaos and confusion of all these frenzied, foolish escalations and lead to an exchange which ends our entire world. This nearly happened on multiple occasions in the last cold war, and there’s no rational reason to believe we’ll get lucky again.
The only sane course of action here is de-escalation and detente, and all the major players in these escalations are pointed in the exact opposite direction.
This is so much more dangerous than most people are letting themselves consider. It’s being sustained by psychological compartmentalization, emotional avoidance, and a profound lack of wisdom.
As David S. D’Amato recently remarked, “If our species does find a way to survive into the distant future, our descendants will look at right now as the near miss; they’ll think, ‘Wow, that was close.’ How do we convince people in power to preserve that future?”
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66 responses to “Empire To Expand NATO In Response To War Caused By NATO Expansion”
For now Heaven is holding back the wind of the WW3. This war, however, is maturing. Moses has already written: “And ships from the direction of Kittim [US Navy], and will afflict Asshur [Russia] and will afflict Eber [remaining enemies, including Iran and China].” (Numbers 24:24a) It will be suicidal mission. This armada will be destroyed forever. (Numbers 24:24b) This will be a mutual slaughter and world war not only by name. And the great power sword will be used. (Revelation 6:4) Jesus characterized him in this way: “A frightening things both and extraordinary (related to unusual phenomena) from sky powerful will be.” (Luke 21:11) Because of the use of these terrible weapons there will be significant tremors along the length and breadth of the regions [of strategic importance] and famines, and pestilences. Some ancient manuscripts contain the words “and frosts”. The Aramaic Peshitta: “and will be great frosts”. (Luke 21:11) We call this today “nuclear winter”. In Mark 13:8 there are also words of Jesus: “and disorders” (in the sense of confusion and chaos). The Aramaic Peshitta: “and confusion” (on the state of public order). The global nuclear war, (this will be the fulfillment of the sign of Jesus), will start with an ethnic conflict: “For nation will rise against nation”, like as in 2008 in Georgia. (Matthew 24:7) It won’t be Armageddon. “But all these things are a beginning of birth-pains.” (Matthew 24:8, DLNT)
Russia and China has sovereign supply lines – militarily and domestic – The West does to a certain extent but look at how the West has Not been able to keep supply lines going in just Ukraine alone. And I believe both Russia and China have an agreement to help each other , whether in war or peace. It will take years for the West to secure these supply lines – if the greed doesn’t overrule the process.
The fact is, regular people have absolutely no idea if this is a ‘WAG THE DOG’ type war or not. We are taking MSM narratives as facts, which anyone with a brain knows is a huge red flag. Sure there’s likely a ‘war’ but how controlled it might be we simply don’t know.
Emporer Xi, you’ve outdone yourself! Of the dozens of glass-canyon pedestrian supsencion bridges in the clouds that you have built for no other reason than to bring joy to your citizens, this one is my favorite!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJyQQSgPj0s
Just outstanding. The Yin Yang symbol in the middle is a lovely touch.
Also, you are to be commended for erecting this record shattering bridge across a mountain divide to better link with the Yi people in the autonous prefecture of Liangshan Yi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXmlGyUki-o
Well done. Linkages are clearly something you and your nation are very adept at. Over here in my country, we believe in unlinking, especially as it pertains to the relationship our government has with its citizens.
We call this concept, freedom.
They sure let their creative genius have expression, besides giving regular folks something to be bedazzled about.
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When was the last time we put up something equally challenging and gratifying? Perhaps works like the GG Bridge, Mount Rushmore, Georgia’s Stone Mountain, the Empire State Bldg… They’re all well in the past. Most recent thing was possibly a modest glass arch that juts out aa few feet over a piece of the Grand Canyon. Now we’re more about tearing down statues, and possibly even civic temples like the Jefferson Memorial.
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China seems a forward and positive thinking civilisation. America is morose, backward looking and vengeful.
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I think we might see more creativity in places like Russia and Iran set loose if the entire West were not trying to crush them in every way imaginable. I mean, even the Gulf State Arabs have tried to express the ascendency of their culture through great architectural works.
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Big whoop, America gets things like bizarre airports in Denver meant to hide massive nuclear bunkers for the military and the privileged. Even Yellowstone Park feels disrespected and would be justified in blowing its top!
That’s a civilisation that the United States would have to overrun and occupy in order to realistically “WIN” the glorious world war envisioned by our leaders. Think about it.
Not happening. Not even an amphibious landing on Taiwan. What’s the staging area? How do you even get there unimpeded? Just blowing up the whole damned world with nukes does not count as a win. Similarly, they are not coming here to put America under new management.
If we don’t use nukes, the only thing we could do to cut China deep is blow up the Three Gorges Dam. That’s about it.
But the nukes would absolutely fly if we resorted to that.
If we fight “fair,” maybe we might be able to severely damage their Navy, but then again, they might be able to cripple ours. Who knows? No one has clue what an all-out convention missile war would look like between the superpowers, because there has never been one.
So for shits and giggles let’s say we missile the hell out of their Navy. Then what?
“What’s the staging area?” Exactly. And for what? To invade the mainland? Have Steve McQueen and a bunch of Marines march at the double-quick into Beijing to declare Emporer Xi their prisoner?
It’s ridiculous, the whole notion of taking on China militarily, the only idea more ridiculous would be to take them on economically.
Besides, China is ready for -in depth! – home defense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKWLIomt-U8
I’ve come to the conclusion that China does military uniforms better than anyone.
The dispute between Turkey and Sweden/Finland is all about nuanced interests. All wars are fought over interests (ie power). But power is an illusion, that is why all empires eventually face the very war they seek to avoid: their own destruction.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
Twisted, insane, U.S. Oligarchs believe ‘they’ should rule the world and we should all suck it up and do exactly as they tell us to ‘and like it’.
‘All power corrupts, Absolute power, corrupts absolutely’
These people are ADDICTS for MORE Money, Power & Control with no end in sight.
They see only the worst ways forward for humanity and we are feeling the pain of it.
It’s come to this. There was a prediction once that no two countries that had McDonalds would go to war with each other. McDonalds and Starbucks diplomacy has failed. Mind you, Belgrade had McDonalds when NATO bombed it. The declarations that these companies are ‘pulling out’ of Russia – is crap. The shops are still open, selling the same products – name changed, yes but Capital does not give up on winners.
Yet no Capital is investing in Ukraine – from day one they knew it was a loser. From day one!
Ukraine is being supplied… wait for it… by socialism. That’s right. Public money. Call it enforced socialism, an elite command to the proletariat hip pocket. YOU… the West is paying for this. Out of health expenditure, infrastructure and education, transportation and the fragile Supply Chain. YOU are paying for the propaganda that’s being fed to you.
I know I’m paying almost double for fuel, electricity up 30% – and I’m told it’s “Putin’s fault”. What absolute bullshit. Australia’s ABC is churning out non attributable pro US/Ukrainian stories – yet one look at a map shows that they are lying. The ABC is fully publicly funded – then why is their news so laden with falsehoods?
The war in Ukraine is about civilisation. As Rosa Luxembourg said “Socialism… or Barbarism”. The US led capitalist system is a hungry demented wolf – it’s eaten its own children and is still ravenous. Russia has said ‘no’, no further!
Choose your side. Socialism… or Barbarism.
As I read the pundits, the one point that stands out is that the Western military powers have greatly under-estimated the Russians. This is due to arrogance and hubris. And the result? The West is doubling down not believing the Russians can do anything in retaliation. From military to gas imports. More and and moret the West will react even to the point of nuclear war.
Russia will eventually cut all oil and LNG to europe ptobably this winter. The EU will then implode.
“How do we convince people in power to preserve that future?”
How do we convince a madman to act sane?
Power freaks are insane. Look at Bojo asking jokingly at the Nato summit if they should all take their shirts off to look as tough as Putin! Is that a dignified attitude for a statesman or does it look more like a pissing contest at some kindergarten?
Conquerors want to conquer. Politicians are well known for an insatiable appetite for the conquest of women and studies have shown that they’ve got a particularly strong sex drive. Hence the alpha males that we also find among other mammals. All this is very animal. What can we do?
Alexander the Great was set on conquering as much land as he could see and was only stopped in his tracks because his soldiers said to him on the bank of the Indus River: “Now look here matie, we’ve been fighting for you for ten years, have amassed enough booty for four generations, now we’re homesick and we’re going back to Macedonia, with or without you. Besides, them elephants… For Chrissakes! Zeus knows what these guys will come up with next!”
They didn’t really say “for Chrissakes” actually because this was 323 years before Christ was even a twinkle in God’s eye but it’s the general idea.
It would be bold to assume that this is what killed Alexander but he died of a fever in Babylon on the way back at age 32. Low morale and getting drunk every day to drown his frustration probably didn’t help.
When I visited Chichen Itza, my guide told me that the local Maya kings held some kind of football games there every year played by two teams of the bravest young aristocrats led by the bravest of them all. The captain of the winning team would then be beheaded as the greatest honor that could be bestowed on a man. By getting sacrificed, he would gain entry into a glorious afterlife reminiscent of the Christian martyrs of the Antiquity and the modern Muslim version with the seventy virgins et al.
If we look under the tree of this Maya tradition, what do we see? The guys in power eliminated every year the young guy most capable of rising up against them and taking power for himself. Did they care that they were thus weakening their tribe and jeopardizing their future? Not in the least! That’s probably what happened though. Not much is known about their fall but archaeological data indicate that Chichen Itza declined as a regional center as far back as 1100, long before the Spanish conquest.
Power freaks will do anything to conquer and keep power – power abuse being the natural bent of power and the reason why power freaks are addicted to it.
What can we do about it? Well… nothing except overthrow them, in which case the power is immediately seized by another bunch of power freaks. It’s in their genes.
“Is that a dignified attitude for a statesman or does it look more like a pissing contest at some kindergarten?”
I’m going to go with the latter, that it looks like a kindergarten pissing contest.
Kindergarten. That word is being thrown around a lot lately, and rightfully so! It’s not like the activities of our leaders here in the West resemble anything I remember from 1st Grade. Looking back, my classmates and I were Middle-earth’s Council of the Wise in comparison.
our* genes.
Every European and American wolf are out in the woods hunting. It is impressive to rediscover that the old order of templars, freemasons are aligned with the old first order which came after the fall of the Roman Empire and gave birth to the crusades, ethnical cleansing of millions of native indigenous in south, central and North America. More impressive is to realize they still finding a lot of people to join their cause to make all mankind corralled into a prison. Safe and sober yet dulled beyond reason and sapped of all spirit.
This Russian sees it. If Putin the Reluctant can get his shit together, and finally come to the realization that the West will never allow him – or his nation – to fully participate in the merry insanity of the Western neo-liberal games, then Mother Russia can become a paradise, instead of the backward, half-assed neo-liberal shithole it is now.
Jesus H. they’ve got fucking everything. More oil than Saudi Arabia. They’ve got the gas, the coal, the timber and mineral wealth up the kazoo, and land a plenty to grow export grains for the world!
They’ve got it all, the lucky bastards. The only thing missing, is sovereignty.
Which they foolishly dispensed with, and never bothered to recover because their newfound elites were too busy getting rich. Becoming Modern Lords of the Global Realm.
Sergey Glazyev:
“What should be the control system? There is no need to guess here. We see examples of the established new system of governance in China and India. This is, of course, a mixed system of government, where the main setting works towards the goal of increasing public welfare. The state is engaged in strategic planning.”
https://russtrat.ru/analytics/16-iyunya-2022-0010-10743
China IS the template if you are SOCIALIST, or if your not, China is also the template if you have any interest, at all, in avoiding a Great Filter event.
China seeking ultimate greatness, in my opinion it has – more or less – already achieved it, and this greatness has nothing to do with war, or domination and subjugation of nations and peoples via other means, but has everything to do with proving that it alone has figured out the way forward, the necessary Sovereign Synthesis, and it wishes to share this knowledge with the rest of world, for the good of all, to be sure, but far more importantly, before it is too goddamn late.
Unfortunately, I for one believe it is too late. We waited too long, we human, and our collective dawdling will prove to be not only to China’s great misfortune, to finally realize its 5,000 year old dream of becoming the most magnificent of civilizations in such a post-historical time, but to all life as well.
There is are simply too many simultaneous shitstorms coming at carbon based life for it to survive every last one of them.
But I could be wrong. For instance, maybe just maybe the US won’t petulantly fire off its nukes as it descends into the madness that will proceed its final death throes.
A process that seems quite evident is fully underway?
You have notably keen focus at the bloodiest edge of credible reports emanating from the war front. What think you of this one, claiming mass liquidation (by incineration) of foreign mercenaries by the Ukies at the Azovstal steel works rather than allowing them to be taken as POW’s and interrogated by Russian intel. There seemed to be hundreds? (or more?) of charred corpses, some with American ID on them. Could this have been an American viper’s nest of CIA? Apparently, Ukie dead were preserved for burial. Desperate cover-up of who the mercs really were. There will be no news at eleven about this on American TV.
http://thesaker.is/foreign-mercenaries-were-burned-to-the-ground-as-unnecessary-witnesses-at-azovstal/?inmoderation
There were at least one dozen attempts by the Ukies to fly helicopters into the Azovstal area in the final weeks of the seige, so we know someone was desperate to get some major-domos the fuck out of there.
And all but one or two of those rescue flights were shot down, so almost everyone they were trying to “liberate,” ended up stuck there.
I don’t know man. How bad would it have been to allow CIA and other top level operatives, Nato general officers and such, to be captured and interrogated by the Russians?
To take the propaganda loss, and the humiliation. and embarrassment that would go with it?
To watch them be put on trail for their lives before world wide audience?
Enough for the Pentagon, or Langley, or Bicycle Joe, to order their deaths?
Maybe.
It would have been a tough order to carry out, if no other reason than I suspect none of those major-domos would have volunteered to be shot and fried by their Nazi underlings.
It was the great mystery of the Mariupol mini-campaign. Was their really some very important Nato cadres hanging with the Nazi’s to the bitter end, and if there were, why didn’t a single one of them show up on the post-battle POW rolls of the Russians?
“There will be no news at eleven about this on American TV.”
Lmao … Can you imagine? This the kind of stuff that could put a quick end to an exciting and lucrative proxy war.
Dammit, we now have no choice but to report our freedom fighters are not who we thought they were!
Ben Norton interviews the reviled American pariah, Michael Hudson.
http://thesaker.is/michael-hudson-interviewed-by-ben-norton-multipolarista/
More of the same. If the US (which doesn’t even exist in any real sense, imo…lmao) can’t have it’s way, it will simply nuke everyone with extreme terminal belligerence.
It’s a ridiculously prosiac concept when one considers the Grande Scheme of the Universe, but humans will go extinct if they don’t start practicing public banking for the commons* at the global level. This neo-liberal private banking shit is going to get us all killed.
Or “killed quite dead” as my Dad used say, and the greatest – and final – conceit of the humans is that even if they suicide themselves off this tiny orb through sheer stupidity, they won’t drag all the other life forms with em.
This notion is incorrect. For better or worse, at the very minimum, We the Sapiens need to survive for the sake of the “Animal Kindom,” which is wholly innocent in these celestial matters.
*I would use MMT but is has been conflated so often with Fed printing and so on and so fucking forth that it is just one more term I have to let go of … and very much against my will.
Sorry MMTers. I know it’s a joke. Hell, the closest you ever got to power in the West was having a single ecomonist in the Bernie Sander’s 2020 election camp, and they smashed him for it. Smashed little campaign that couldn’t to smithereens.
Why not change the name to PBT, Public Banking Theory? That might put a scare into em. Afterall, anything that sounds even remotely communty friendly frightens the living beejesus out of those neo-liberal fucktards.
@ Realist: “What think you of this one, claiming mass liquidation (by incineration) of foreign mercenaries by the Ukies at the Azovstal steel works rather than allowing them to be taken as POW’s and interrogated by Russian intel”.
There’s no indication that these corpses were incinerated before death. It could be that the Ukies simply burnt foreign mercenaries’ corpses at the call of Nato to avoid recognition.
The comments of the forensic experts below the video are very interesting in explaining why the remains of a spade weren’t not necessarily a spade to start with.
Interviews w/ captured American mercs from Lisichansk
Evidence here that Ukies abandoned American mercs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5978YM2Hoa8
Paid $3500/mo (cheap for your life)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9YScQwdqaw&t=183s
Putin is reluctant and is as docile as a flower. He’s a greedy capitalist- just like Bojo and ‘bomb Belgrade’ Biden. Don’t forget, he’s Yeltsin’s man and Yeltsin was the CIA’s man. One can only hope that Putin will be overthrown by his own people and there’s a better chance of that happening than us overthrowing our own evil leaders.
What do you mean by “post-historical”?
Perhaps all the countries of Europe should be united in some organisation to protect them against their common enemies. However, based upon those who have benefitted and those who have suffered in this recent decade-long go round with Russia over the case of Ukraine, what becomes crystal clear is that their certain enemy and their potential friend have been entirely mis-identified.
They have received nothing of any help or substance from the American hegemon in Washington, in fact, their economic and political health have been seriously eroded as a consequence of the policies that the hegemon has demanded by way of sanctions, seizures, shut-downs, expulsions, blockades, quarantines, breaking of contracts, piracy and bald-faced theft. And, most importantly, they have been put at increasing risk of nuclear Armageddon by the pack of raving warmongering fanatics that inhabit Washington who seem to think that all influence and diplomacy today should be at the point of a gun, and so they force all others up against a wall to force their compliance and accuse THEM of aggression if they fight back in defense.
Russia, in contrast, never started wars in the Middle East which drove millions of migrants, many less than savory, many recruited terrorists, into the heart of Europe upending its social order in many countries. Russia never demanded tribute in the form of men, arms and money from them as vassals of what is basically an American foreign legion called Nato. Russia only offered to sell them the most important coveted commodities in today’s modern world at fair prices, particularly energy in the form of gas and oil, but also grains, fertilizer and mineral resources of all sorts. It went so far as to build brand spanking new multi-billion dollar pipelines to accommodate the flow of the petrol products. Without this energy and the other raw products the manufacturing base of Europe will erode and ultimately fail. Ever the predatorial vulture capitalists, American business assumes it can replace Russian suppliers to Europe, but at vastly inflated prices.
Were the Eurotrash grateful in any way? Did they even act in their own self-interest? NEVER!! All their succumbing to the dictates, sanctions and other acts of aggression against Russia were orchestrated as the perfect force multiplier by their ruthless American overlord and all they could say in return was, “thank you sir, may I have another?” One must wonder what powerful form of blackmail the fascists in Washington must be perpetrating against the Eurotrash buffoons in Nato to get them to betray their own people so consistently and thoroughly. I really hate to see a people so downtrodden and exploited by the forces of such malevolence, especially when its origin is my own country, the world’s leader in organised violence, mass murder, deceit and hypocrisy.
“Russia only offered to sell them the most important coveted commodities in today’s modern world at fair prices … ”
Yup. One of repeating themes in Putin’s interviews over the years, as the West’s sanctions kept piling up, especially after 2014, is that Russia had never failed to sell its gas to Europe at rates way below global market rates, even though in most cases it wasn’t legally obligated to do so, and despite it being treated like a lap dog that should be grateful for having the opportunity to take losses that numbered in the 10s of billions.
It was toward the end of this process, by perhaps 2019 or 2020, that he would invariably answer another of the same stupid questions he always faced with his own question for the hundred or more journalists in attendance:
“Have you all gone deaf, dumb and dyslexic?”
Apparently so.
It’s being sustained perhaps by belief. The strategists believe the pressure applied to Russia is not existential and would not result in willingness to self-destruct. They must also believe that the resulting economic hardship will not disturb the political status quo outside of a change in administration. If they’re wrong, in a hundred years, mutant Obamas, Trumps and Clintons will be battling giant cockroaches.
Biden’s at least wrong enough to have flushed his presidency, insofar as he had a choice. And you have to wonder where the US “strategists” think the Russians are going to go, and whether they’re going to take their 6000 nuclear warheads with them. What is the end game supposed to be, or is the game itself the end?
the same strategists that blundered us into Iraq think what?
Yes, their attitude towards Russia is based on angry speeches and bigoted assumptions. To call this a religious crusade would not be much of an exaggeration.
And the icing on the shitcake is the Kurds get thrown under the bus to wave along WW III, and they call it diplomacy.
Russia’s victory isn’t a revelation, it’s a foregone confirmation. There was never a chance a country with four times the population, ten times the firepower, air dominance, and the strategic initiative would lose. Americans need to have it beaten into them that their politicians are liars or fools or both.
I’m reminded of WW I, the classic unstoppable sequence of events meme. Maybe, maybe events will escalate slow enough for public pressure or elections to avert catastrophe, but it didn’t happen in 1914. Being in NATO isn’t going to keep any houses warm this winter, so maybe if we make it to that point people or even politicians will manage a rethink, or maybe an event short of full scale nuclear war will scare everybody away from the brink. Guess we’ll see.
I grew up in the Cold War where we huddled under our desks in practice for a nuclear attack–no one ever told us how that would help except for the glass blown out from the windows by the blast wave.
My 12 year-old daughter fasted for a week protesting for nuclear disarmament.
Although nuclear threats never went away, we benignly forgot about them since the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis and a few helpful treaties.
Now, the treaties are gone, the Russians are on high alert, I imagine the Americans are, too.
Sometimes I think the neoliberal elites are so confused by the climate catastrophe that they just throw up their hands and decide to solve climate by nuclear holocaust.
Never mind what lands Ukraine has lost…The bigger worry should be the financial burden left to future generations to repay all the financial ‘help’ Ukraine is receiving. This ‘financial help’ is NOT a gift…
I have wondered about that since the US never ‘gives away’ anything. In the longer scheme then, Ukrainian assets will be up for sale to pay the debt; perhaps this is why they do not want the Ukraine to lose as the most valuable assets are now in Russia’s possession.
Today, Zelensky the Grifter has “demanded” $5 billion per month for every year his war goes on (in other words, an additional $60 billion/year) from the G7. He’s already received rather more than that this year alone. Now he’s asking for over twice Russia’s annual defense budget. There is no limit to the waste (and undoubtedly greed). We could have settled Mars and given Ukraine their own colony up there, far removed from Russia’s proximity, for the money they have sucked from the West.
In the beginning, I thought Zelensky was begging because his country was so poor that he didn’t have the money to buy himself a suit.
Now, after the $55 billion, seeing him meet the duly suit-and-tied cream of Nato with still the same dirty green T-shirt, I wonder…
Better yet, let’s rally all the world leaders: Biden Bojo, Trudeau, Zelensky, Putin, all the CEO’s, all the bankers, all the wall st. ppl and all the billionaires and let’s send them on a one way trip to Mars
Ever think about how 30 or 40 trillion dollars of federally owned American assets (energy and mineral rights, arable land, fresh water aquifers and all kinds of public infrastructure you will pay to use going forward) will be up for sale to cover the incredible national debt when inflation takes the petrodollar to the current value of a dime, the economy collapses and America defaults on its national debt. Don’t think it’s not already planned. What easier way to privatize the last of the commons. You will still have nothing but the ultrarich will have enough to own not only you but the entirety of the country.
The third world followed by the West will soon begin defaulting on all this fiat debt. It will never be repaid.
@ Realist : “You will still have nothing but the ultrarich will have enough to own not only you but the entirety of the country”.
Seems pretty obvious to me too! Just a massive devaluation impeding people from paying their taxes on properties and we’ll have massive foreclosures.
They’ll own everything (but won’t be happy :o) and they’ll issue money out of thin air. And if there’s protest in spite of the censorship, a little virus scare and everybody will get in line to get the jab – which will be programmed to kill the weak and old anyway, aka “useless eaters” as a response to WEF’s Yuval Noah Harari: “What shall we do with those people?” and to Christine Lagarde while chair of the IMF : “Old people live too long and this is a risk for the global community!” Bell: the average Covid death profile is 82 yo with comorbidities :o)
“If our species does find a way to survive into the distant future… ”
The distant future is but a delusional fantasy of the current regressing state of mind of man, apparently derivative of the only mind he is capable of knowing right now!
Continuing to behave as he does today, ‘right now’ is all the future there is.
So far, tragically, it has always unfolded like this, and will continue in this manner, into infinity, with or without the human species; as infallible as we think we are, unconscious of the immediate necessity to radically change the systemic heart.
Wouldn’t it be nice if western governments held referendums as to whether or NOT the country should continue to be a member of NATO. I’d love to see the results of such a referendum.
Don’t hold your breath…
There were 70,000 people in the streets of Brussels though Monday 20th asking for a change of the suicidal policies against Russia and the end of Nato, so the wind is rising.
Every time I see someone online laughing at Russias nuclear threats I wonder what Russia hasn’t done so far to make them so confident. How many cities need to be leveled before the US and Russia stop provoking WWIII? A few more at least apparently.
Stop putting the aggressor (U.S.) and the victim (Russia) on the same moral plane. Russia isn’t “provoking” anything; Russia is merely defending itself and its legitimate interests from the cult of demon-possessed, devil-worshiping madmen that run the Satanic U.S. “government.”
BINGO!!! Well stated.
“Empire To Expand NATO In Response To War Caused By NATO Expansion”
All too true! I only wish I were reading this in The Onion.
It proves that the Ukraine is just the beginning of a long running tension between the West and Russia. The West’s long time intentions of dismembering Russia aren’t going away any time soon as much as we might be lucky and not experience a nuclear exchange for now. The writing has always been on the wall that the West would not take anything short of seeing the Russia that they want, a vassal state which supplies them with what they need for next to nothing. They have done it all over the world, why can’t they do it with Russia? At the same time, Western Europe is failing to understand that the US under another president, who is mostly likely to be a MAGA president, they will be left on they own probably once and for all. Basically, Western European rulers are behaving like brainless creatures when confronted with crucial matters of national and continental sovereignty and survival.
The few smart people in the Biden regime that understand the facts of the military and economic situation must be aware of the extent of the self-inflicted damage to the West, and correspondingly, the limited but manageable damage to Russia. Clearly, Russia is not just managing it, but profiting from it as the same time, while the West is doing the exact opposite.
Sometime I can’t help wondering how much of the self-inflicted damage is deliberate – not for supposedly ‘Great Rest’ / Klaus Schwab stuff, but for power and profit.
According to the BBC, China overtook the US as the EU’s major trading partner:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56093378
This war may be more about China than it is about Russia, by uniting the EU under the US/ NATO security umbrella, thus making it easier to influence and move the EU away from China.
It will take some time to take away the power from the US-UK empire to make wars. They are doing a fine job in this direction without Russia having to do anything at all. Let them spend all money available first. It will be an epic winter in Europe this year.
NATO is cancer.
Seems you are following Chambelain, “I have here a piece of paper”, – didn’t work then, wouldn’t now, bullies sometimes have to be stopped.
Russia can’t be ‘knee capped’ what a silly thing to think.
America wants to get out of Europe and concentrate on China, – and now Europe is stepping up it can do so.
Of course it wants to leave behind something better than Afghanistan, although the Republican party in the USA seems to want to treat American women the same as do the Afghani men the Afghani women, – makes you sick.
Nato can look after Europe, and it will now.
Australia will have a Mutual Defence agreement like Nato once it is providing electricity to all the islands, inc Indonesia and Singapore and Malaysia.
Mutual Defence is the way to go.
what is going to stop the US bully then? Europe is not stepping up, it is rolling over like a pack of poodles.
>> Chambelain, “I have here a piece of paper”, – didn’t work then,
>> wouldn’t now, bullies sometimes have to be stopped.
Tangentially, let’s please stop repeating this meme that Chamberlain was a fool.
UK-US facilitated the rise of the Third Reich. The point was to raise a pit bull to attack Russia. The UK figurehead of state presumably knew what he was doing. He played the role.
The meme is dangerous because it’s used by war propagandists to sell the idea “we must do something to stop this next Hitler!”, when we should instead look more critically at what’s presented.
What you contend is true for Western barbarism, not necessarily so for Asian enlightenment.
As a linguist, I always try to correct language use.
‘Aghan’ is the adjective form for any relationship to Afghanistan.
‘Afghani’ is the unit of currency of the Afghan state.
Why was it that until we got into wars or diplomatic set-to’s with them, Iraq was always pronounced ear-rock and Iran was always pronounced ear-on?
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Once the American military entered the daily picture on the evening news, most Americans have called them eye-rack and eye-ran, as though some form of Appalachian dialect is now the standard.
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Perhaps “The United States” should now be pronounced “The Great Satan” or whatever demeans it most?
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Linguists have fascinating things to tell us about ourselves, like do we call the fizzy stuff “soda” or “pop.”
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I do hope that linguists have noticed that the English language as spoken in Chicago has totally changed since, after growing up there, I moved away for good at age 22 in 1969. Many of the current humorous chides would never have been relevant back in the day, and many key idiosyncrasies have been lost.
Any stories from August ‘68, with the Convention in town?
I answered you, but someone took it down.
Someone is playing games. Now they put it back up. Go figure.
That’s unfortunate and hard to figure. I presume, at age 21, you were about to enter your 3rd or 4th year of University. Don’t know if you were even in town during the Convention…but was interested in your impressions, thoughts….
you can’t convince the autocrats. you have to replace the autocratic system with a democratic one. by all means available.
Well, maybe you’re right. but, then, which country has the wealth and capability to do that. certainly no the U.S., which is not now, nor has it ever been, a democracy.
May we can resuscitate ancient Greece. The could probably do it.
Which part. Athens or Sparta.
Ancient Greece was never a democracy with a third to a half (there’s no precise data) of the population being slaves. And when Socrates exercised freedom of speech, they bought him a hemlock drink. Not even speaking of the fabulist Aesop who was sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of temple theft because he allegedly insulted the Delphians and thrown from a cliff.