I knew the Ukrainian offensive was ultimately doomed because of the ludicrously unfavorable balance of forces (a country with no meaningful military infrastructure left against a vastly bigger country that has been effectively untouched), but I didn’t at all anticipate it would go as staggeringly badly, or as quickly, as it has over the last few days.
First they conducted what were ostensibly ‘probing attacks’ (I have real doubts that these weren’t actually serious assault attempts) which themselves were severely mauled. Then, presumably having scouted out the Russian lines they…proceeded to attack the strongest Russian positions. They made little, if any attempt to suppress the Russian artillery (not that they would have had much success, but they don’t seem to have even really tried). They have no air force to speak of. They don’t seem to have much air defense left, not even man-portable weapons (or if they do they’re incredibly ineffective). Their columns are advancing as literal columns: lines of vehicles. The lead gets taken out by artillery, or an air strike, or it hits a mine, and the rest of the line gets trapped and slaughtered. And this keeps happening; it isn’t just a one-off situation. Some genius on the Ukrainian/NATO side seems to have been convinced Russia doesn’t have night vision technology and so attacking in the dark would be safe. But Russia does, and it wasn’t.
I’ve seen commentary calling this Kursk 2.0. But that really only works in the first as tragedy, then as farce’ sense (not that the Nazis losing the first one was tragedy, that’s not what I’m saying). That original assault in WW2 had meaningful artillery and air support, and a robust armor component. It managed, against all odds, to penetrate two of the three defense lines before finally being stopped. Whereas this current offensive is getting slaughtered (just absolutely butchered; there’s numerous extensive video and photo documentation of the Russians having a turkey shoot, especially Russian aviation) miles from the actual fortifications of even just the first defense line.
For a couple days the argument could be made that these were fodder forces and Ukraine was holding the best troops and equipment back to strike the crucial blow. But, putting aside that this is sort of counter to the narrative that its the ‘Russian Orcs’ who use brutal human wave tactics, that isn’t actually happening. Ukraine is committing their ‘best’ units, the ones with months (literal months!) of training on their fancy NATO gear, to the assault. And they keep getting slaughtered. Leopard tanks and Bradley armored vehicles are dying and getting captured by the dozens. The crack units are being sent in as the tip of the spear, and that spear is being completely blunted.
Now maybe everything I’ve typed above will be proven wrong. Maybe it’s just a temporary setback, and I’ll go to sleep, and when I look again in ten hours or so maybe Ukraine will have finally achieved a crucial breakthrough somewhere. But I’m not exactly betting on it. Offensives tend not to amount to much if they spend too long in a grinding phase, especially if that happens in the opening stages. As of right now Ukraine is throwing in reserves to try and punch a hole, but those reserves were intended to be used to exploit holes already punched.
There’s a popular YouTube channel showing Seattle streetwalkers plying their trade in broad daylight on one of Seattle’s main business thoroughfares. They look less crack-whorish and more anybodies-daughterish. There’s another channel showing Seattle’s downtown homeless, who do look messed up but not anything like the cartoonish street bums from days of old. The videos make it look like there’s a lot of these people all over the place, with much commentary waxing nostalgic about better days gone by.
Disturbing to me are the number of comments blaming the Democrats, the progressives, anything “the left”, as if the American impoverishment which is highest in red states and readily visible in small towns all across red county America isn’t really real, as if this desperation thing only happens in blue cities.
There is some commentary pushback, but it seems mild and far too forgiving of the PTB who are the primary cause of all this. I’ve lived the change and I’ve done the homework. Their naively tribalistic loud and proud “The left ruins everything!” repeated mantra has gotta go. Bet replaced with reality. I’ll focus group here a few pithy YouTube comment ideas:
So you actually think trickle down works? From what, all the millions of good jobs and technology our so-called corporate betters sent overseas?
Where are all our wealthy when all this is going on? Oh that’s right. Employing undocumented blue and white collar workers flowing en masse through our borders and airports.
Back then we saw the USA as leading the world in practically everything, while we now know it as leading the world in national rate of incarceration. We used to do most of the inventing and got most of the patents, and now we do most of the random shooting.
I’m old enough to remember when big ticket items like college, health care, and housing were affordable for most. I also knew a college drop-out who paid for his house and new boat with a grocery store job. But that was 1980. I think I saw him in (the homeless) video.
I’m old enough to remember economic patriotism. Now it’s all “I’ve got mine f-you if your job got automated away and f-your Democrats too”. As if Republicans even have a plan.
I remember when greed was a deadly sin. Now it’s considered a virtue. People used to call out price gouging for what it was. Today it’s called “late-stage capitalism” or “greedflation”.
A glimmer of hope for Russian democracy (as reported in the Guardian), from this article: ‘Three months ago, this wasn’t possible’: exiled Russians dare to dream of Putin’s fall”
For more than a year the Ukraine War has been a “war of narratives” taking place against a background of disinformation and secrecy so thick and deep that no one knows anything for sure from the news media.
I have been waiting to see if any undeniable facts emerge to break anyone’s preferred narrative.
The absence or obscurity of reliable facts combines with “puzzles” like who blew the dam or who blew the pipelines to set people up for cognitive exhaustion and deep uncertainty. To form an opinion or estimation is made to seem easy if you go with the flow of propaganda or choose a team to cheer, but hard, very hard if you want to start by accounting for facts or employ a sound moral sensibility.
The power plays underway in domestic politics in the U.S. are alarming. Prosecuting Trump? That is banana republic fascism — from the very people warning us of the risk of banana republic fascism. And it appears to be part of a general effort to impose authoritarian censorship and political suppression.
If the counter offensive fails, looks like NATO could get involved. As a WSWS reader, their critique was the plan in the beginning would eventually include NATO, grab Ukraine, and go for Russia. We, the working class will pay for the whole thing. We will be getting austerity from our ‘New American Century’ government.
We’ve still got Covid
Still got war
Death and destruction accelerating
Commentary too
“Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong “
Resignation is nihilism’s baby
Nobody cares anymore or cares too much about too little and not much about the big stuff
Look, what’s that over there?
Where?
Over there bloodshed in your face thank god it isn’t your own
But
Leonard Cohen from his novel
Beautiful Losers
God is Alive, Magic is Afoot
Just look at the wonder in a young girl’s eyes, and you’ll believe in magic
Spielen is a good thing.
Jugando
while nadando con tiburones
swimming with sharks . . .
I saw clips of Chris Christie campaigning. Almost zero chance he’ll get elected, but he implied that Jared Kushner got that $2B gift from the Saudis in exchange for Middle Eastern military secrets in Trump’s possession. If true, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Trump himself has made some serious offshored coin selling US military secrets regarding nuclear and conventional strategies and capabilities. All he’s gotta do is copy and fax, since the Justice Department just keeps making the docs out to be more and more legitimate and deadly serious.
And speaking of never locking Her up, there’s all those Trump clips from his 2016 campaign making the rounds, where he declares Hillary a traitor for her own classified carelessness. Maybe he’ll lock up Biden instead?
So, sure. Let’s give Trump another chance. He seems trustworthy. And if not, well, we’ve never had an Oval Office operating from a prison cell before.
It is being reported the leader of Saudi Arabia and the leader of Russia have agreed to cut oil production. It is implied that this was done by the Saudis to help the Russians and hurt the US. Some of us may have been waiting for the US empire to strike back against the Saudi leadership.
But there is another possible explination for the cut in Saudi oil production. The other possibilty is that Saudi production is now in permanent decline. If that were the case the Saudi leadership would have much more confindence in thumbing its nose at the big brothers in Tel Aviv and Washington DC. If Saudi Production is is permanent deciline replacing the entire Saudi Arabian Royal Family will not lead to an increase in Saudi oil production.
None the less this change in policy by the Saudi leadership did destroy my belief that the Saudi Royal Family were complete puppets of the US MIC. Perhaps they had been complete puppets. But then the question is how did they free themselves from the situation that they were in. Of course an additional question is how long this new found apparent independence will last.
Another important question is that if the Saudis are capable of freeing themselves from the empire why can the German leadership not do so? I would think that it would be much easier for the German leadership to do so, if they wanted to.
NR: Trump is being prosecuted under a law he himself signed. So any “banana republic fascism” here can ultimately be traced back to him.
You are like sticky-tape for foolish talking points. And, no, he did not sign the Espionage Act.
After years of Russiagate, which you no doubt believed in as fervently as you believed that the vaccines would end transmission of COVID-19, the national-security state has form and Trump’s partisans will have reason to believe he is being persecuted as a means to eliminate him as a 2024 candidate.
That the charges revolve around documents that are “secret” and which cannot therefore be exposed to public judgment as to their content is itself a measure of how much the “national security” establishment has come to dominate and displace the authority of elected politicians. The case against Trump sets a precedent: even a President’s hands are tied. This was already fully established as it applies to Congress by CIA bullying and subterfuge in the Senate’s investigation of CIA torture. Seymour Hersh’s reporting has made a case that a way has been found to circumvent the remaining requirement that a handful of Members of Congress has to be told about covert acts of war.
Naturally, the final destruction of democracy will be dressed up as the cos play and kafabe of the on-going red v blue civil war right alongside trans bathroom rights.
The political discourse in the U.S. was rendered useless and ridiculous at least thirty years ago in the Impeachment of Bill Clinton. That was an absurd scandal, driven forward by billionaire ire. Synthetic outrage replaced genuine concern more completely than saccharine ever replaced sugar in the fattening of America. It was followed by the blanket use of theatre-criticism political reporting and commentary in the 2000 election: Bush was the dry drunk everyone wanted to have a beer with while Gore invented the Internet and wore earth tones. That election was settled appropriately enough by an early projection of Florida results by Fox News, affirmed by the Supreme Court in a decision without precedent that the Court also ordered could not become a precedent.
9/11 led to the invasion and destruction of a dictator and a country that had nothing to do with it. And a very expensive and tragically ineffective reconstruction of that unfortunate country. And by the way, Afghanistan was mired in a twenty-year civil war and occupation that ended with the Taliban we overthrew in power again, but without the Central Bank reserves we stole on our way out the better to impose famine.
My point is that there was always plenty of material for a genuine scandal, plenty of provocation in corrupt and incompetent policy choices during the course of the 21st century. The culmination of financial deregulation by Clinton and Bush in the crisis that emerged after 2005 could have brought out the righteous with torches and pitchforks to stake the many vampires. Didn’t happen. The wave elections of 2006 and 2008 brought in a Dem with overwhelming Dem majorities and nothing fundamentally changed but the red v blue civil war became the go-to script used to explain our politics to ourselves. The Other was to blame. The Other was racist or degenerate, depending on which color you wore . . . and stupid and ignorant.
Political partisans have lost the thread in this nightmare of propaganda scripts curated by a legacy media that has completely lost interest in verifiable fact let alone whistleblowers or revelations from real leaks. It is every paranoid conspiracy theorist with their own Rumble, bravely crying out from a frequently banned TikTok or de-monetized YouTube.
This rant — I honestly wonder if anyone can hear me even here. TLDR probably.
There’s little doubt which country was ultimately behind the Nordstream pipeline sabotage and the recent Nova Kakhovka Dam’s collapse that happened on the eve of Ukraine’s newest counteroffensive: the country which has bankrolled Ukraine’s ability to continue to carry the war on, the country which has signed the checks, and that’s the U.S.. In fact, the Lead Stiff of Weekend at Biden’s announced another $2B in future assistance to Ukraine almost immediately after the dam was blown.
Sure, maybe it was Polish divers, whose country’s government is as beholden, if not more beholden, to the U.S. as any in NATO, who actually placed the explosives on the pipelines and detonated them. Maybe it was the UK, which reportedly helped out with the Kerch Bridge bombing, which provided the explosives to blow the dam and/or even placed them on it, and there are credible theories (as far as I can determine) that those explosives were actually tactical nuclear weapons which supposedly don’t create any nuclear fallout.
That’s all possible, but the fact of the matter is is that even if the U.S. government’s fingerprints aren’t on those operations, their signature undeniably is because War Pimp Zelensky and his Kievcaine Cowboys wouldn’t be in the position to carry out those operations without the U.S.’s assistance. Their lives, and their millions of U.S. dollars in riches, are at this point dependent upon pleasing the U.S..
Trump signed the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017. I suggest you pay particular attention to section 202 (Increased penalty for unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material). That section is why he’s facing five years in prison for each count of the indictment.
In other words, Trump would have been perfectly happy to send other people to prison for what he himself did after leaving office. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t have any sympathy for seeing him hoist on his own petard.
Trump is obvious scum, but this is the sort of thing that important people usually get allowed to slide on. And that means that it looks to many Republicans like Democrats are taking Trump out to stop him from running. (I suspect that Republicans who think that are right.)
That said, there isn’t a President in my lifetime I wouldn’t be OK with seeing in prison.
I still don’t understand how a leftist abandoning the Team Blue vs Team Red fight will strengthens leftism. Seems to me that Team Red will only double down on the anti-leftism smears, gaining votes from the mob if only via repetition of propaganda, which they’ve been successfully doing for decades.
Shouldn’t there be a clear direction which mob members from both Teams might want to be led towards, as well as those who’ve abandoned that “fight”?
Almost all U.S. Hegemonists, even the so-called “America Firsters” like Bibi’s pool boy Trump (((Hey Donny T, you missed some algae with the vac in the corner there by the diving board . Thanks, Mr. B! Get right on it after I murder an Iranian General for you and send in U.S. troops to steal Syrian food and oil! If you don’t mind. If that’s OK with you, Mr. B? That’s fine, Donny T.))), also just happen to be Zionists.
You show me a think tank that consists strictly of pro-U.S. Hegemonists who won’t go down to pucker up to the Wailing Wall and I’ll show you a think tank which influence on U.S. foreign policy is on Empty.
Trump is obvious scum, but this is the sort of thing that important people usually get allowed to slide on.
I am afraid that what he’s really not being allowed to slide on is his opposition to war with Russia and China.
And, while his prosecution(s) are practically designed to fuel the red v blue animosities, as you say, I note the security state is making itself the arbiter of what is knowable and who is allowed to know it or admit knowing it.
So, Zients, who succeeded Klain, is the new Chief of Staff. I didn’t even know that, though it’s no surprise.
So, the production team of Weekend of Biden’s have a assembled a cast (https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/cabinet/) of which 25% of it are Jewish, though only 2% of the U.S. population are Jewish, including the very influential positions of Secretary of State, Secretary of Treasury, Attorney General, Chief of Staff (known around snickering stage hands as the Lead Stiff’s head puppeteer), Secretary of Homeland Security, and Director of National Intelligence. These arguably are the six most influential positions in the production team of Weekend at Biden’s (unless you want to fool yourself and think the Lead Stiff and Kamalala are more than mere stage props) and they play lead roles in our foreign policy, economy, law, and intelligence, not to mention making sure the Lead Stiff is reading his lines right and standing straight up on his strings which is Zients’ job. But yet we keep getting guilt tripped about the rise of antisemitism, of which I see very little tangible signs of.
In regards to the two lead stage props at Weekend at Biden’s, all of Biden’s kids have Jewish hubbies and Kamalala is married to a Jewish man. Also, the top three think tank graduates leading the State Department are Jewish Zionists: Antony “I Ain’t” Blinken, the charming and cuddly cookie monster Mrs. Victoria Nuland-Kagan, and Wendy Sherman. Additionally, Sweet Auntie Anita Dunn is running around behind the scenes purring out directives.
This is certainly not to say that all Jewish people are bad and power hungry. Certainly not. Nor is it to say that most Jewish people haven’t earned their positions in life. First of all, many of the occupations that Jewish people are known to have an out-sized presence in such as medicine and law are extremely competitive and one doesn’t get through med or law school by mere connections. Also, many of the people who are fighting the loudest and hardest against our rulers are in fact Jewish. Many of the leading alt-media writers are who are the most critical of the U.S. government and Israel are in fact Jewish.
It is, however, an strong indication that at there is a significant amount of collaboration at the upper levels of the Jewish Zionist caste and they’ve been very successful at gaining collective power for themselves at the highest levels. Or I guess you could believe that these people chosen for these lead roles in Weekend at Biden’s were selected primarily due to their competence of which I see no signs of in Blinken’s disastrous foreign policy which potentially has the world on an accelerated path towards human extinction, Yellen’s terms as the Fed Head and now Secretary of Treasury, and Zients’ arrogant brow-beating of vaccine hesitants during his tenure of COVID Czar. Nor in any of the non-Jewish Weekend at Biden’s other leading cast members such as Young Republican Pete who has made a particularly poor showing as Secretary of Transportation.
The heavy representation of leading Jewish cast members in Weekend at Biden’s are no surprise though when you consider that the “Democratic” Party is basically bank-rolled and run by Jewish Zionists (look at its biggest donors) and the last two Democratic Party presidential administrations could be justifiably referred to as the Robber Rubin I and II administrations and not the Clinton and Obama administrations as they are commonly called.
So, it’s no surprise that the “Democratic” Party wants to run Fourteen Hundred Dollar and Zero Sense Joe again because it means that when things fall apart … and it is on course to since the Zionist Trio in the State Department have tossed the supremacy of the U.S. dollar into the poker pot to try to bully their way through the bad hand they’ve dealt themselves … that they’ll be in prime position to take advantage of it and maintain and even build more power just like they did when Robber Rubin jotted down on the back of an envelope who he wanted appointed to the Obama Administration in the midst of GFC, then had his consigliere Froman deliver it to Obama in a classic “offer-you-can’t-resist” fashion, and just like Johnny Fontaine, who just wanted to be celebrated on center stage, The Head PR Man for the Point Zero One Percent Obama french-kissed Rubin’s ring and gave him everything he wanted. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2009/12/13/obamas-big-sellout-president-has-packed-his-economic-team-wall-street-insiders https://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/10/wikileaks-citigroup-exec-gave-obama-recommendation-of-hillary-for-state-eric-holder-for-doj/
Pundits talk about China, Russia and sometimes India getting stronger in compairison with the west. But unless the thawing of the trunda and the warming of the oceans, and the collapse of the ocean currents is fake news what are the chances that the China, Russia, or India of 2030 will be as powerful as the China, Russia and India of 2023??
This power struggle between the leadership of the United States and its collaborators in Europe, Japan, Korea, and Australia on one side and Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela along with a growing list of other countries on the other side is a struggle that will have no winners. Global Warming, Environmental Degridation, and Resource Deplition will bring the conflict to an end in a manner that makes everyone unhappy, except for those who look forward to death.
But until that fatefull day, when the interdependent global economy falls apart comes, I will encourage those that I know to support the Palestinians, and Russians, and Cubans, and even the Iranians attemptd to defend themselves against against US and NATO aggression. I am not a fan of the domstic social policies of the Iranian government. But the Iranian Government leaders have not been waging a war of aggression against other countries for centuries let alone since 1979.
The level of support that those that I know can actually give is infitismaly small. It is not going to change the world much. Therefore, we are all going to die soon, much sooner than most of us realize. So I am encourage people to die for what they believe in not for what they think will allow them to keep their position in society.
Yes that is a foolish romantic notion as 99% of people believe in keeping thier position in society as it prevents them from being crushed sooner than otherwise would be the case. And getting crushed sooner will not change anything even in the short run 99% of the time.
But there are people in sensitive positions whose self sacrifices would be magnified a 1000 or perhaps even a 100,000 times over what the self sacrifice of the average Joe would achieve.
In the past I tried to convince such people what their real responsibilities were. I was unsuccessful. Perhaps more was expected of me. But perhaps these people were not all here.
Jimmy “peanut “ Carter.
A big maybe.
He caved big time.
Bought and sold, he who confessed to lust and sinning in his Playboy interview. (Anyone else here old enough to reference that?)
No. That guy was the first big presidential dupe for the neocon dupe.
His foreign policy advisor was the unpronounceable dude’s name that began with a B and ended with a Y with a few consonants tossed in, and we’ve been living with those consequences through multiple administrations over decades.
Not to type a long winded riff or anything, but it is an open thread, and there’s no obligation to read it, so no harm done, and if there’s any merit to these words then we can dedicate that merit to the welfare of all amidst accelerating chaos. Thanks.
The realistic best case scenario that one can hope for at this point is that the Ukrainian military collapses shockingly suddenly, War Pimp Zelensky and his Kiev-caine Cowboys flee, and Russia sets up a Russian-friendly government in Ukraine that informs Larry’s and Stanley’s Asset Inflation Factory Blackrock, Larry’s pal Steve-o’s Blackstone, and other Western ghoulish financial institutions such as Vanguard that all deeds of Western companies for Ukrainian assets are null and void and if they want their money back then they ought to go track down War Pimp Zelensky in one of his Tel Aviv villas and get it back from him. And also, by the way, they won’t accept U.S. dollars as payment any more anyway and it’s retroactive and all that.
Then Russia ought to make a big show of giving those assets back to the Ukrainian people in some way in order to try to build good will. Russia could therefore strengthen their case to the Ukrainian people that the pain that they suffered was primarily instigated by the West by doing something tangible for them: revoking West’s ownership of Ukrainian land and other assets and giving it back to the Ukrainians and thereby improving their situation.
But that’s all dependent upon the West, particularly the U.S., staying out of it and Larry, Stan, and Steve-o would make a case that that ain’t right, this isn’t the way things are supposed to work out, and it also is, by the way, a rather rude and crude threat to rules based order.
“And what kind of rules based order would it be if governments can just steal assets from other countries?” they’d ironically ask with their arms folded and their chins petulantly thrust out. “Tell me that.”
Trump is obvious scum, but this is the sort of thing that important people usually get allowed to slide on.
We here rail against our elites on an almost daily basis. Yet we also must let them slide because that’s what we’ve always done? Even if the scum lies so clearly and obviously on worldwide media? Even if the national security for every American is at risk? Even if they’ve stated repeatedly that their number one enemy is “the left”?
You seriously think that’ll bring people to the leftist cause? That we the left cannot let the elites down because, um, I dunno, because they’re too big to fail? Or maybe because we’ll hurt somebody’s feelings?
Actually Ian, I was talking to bruce. I still await his plan, though it’s been a long while. Maybe it’s just me, but he seems adamant about a ‘better way’.
I think the failure to hold GWB, Cheney and friends to account for the fraud of the Iraq War was both a symptom of profound corruption and a cause of further corruption. Never mind the absence of specifically judicial processes, the failure of the Media to mediate genuine outrage or retain public memory of what had been done was profoundly damaging to politics.
Ditto, of course, for Obama’s decisions to continue the Bush foreign policy, protect torture, immunize banksters against prosecution, et cetera — rotation in office failed to permit reform because Obama.
The problem I have with the Trump prosecutions is that they are conspicuously “trumped up” to eliminate him as a candidate against the senile, deeply corrupt Biden. I do not want the Espionage Act’s “official secrets” provisions prohibiting anyone from possessing “national defense information” from retaining or disclosing it to become good law. I do not want to see the red v blue faux civil war exacerbated to further disable any possibility of representative democracy re-emerging.
When Nixon was being investigated by a House committee considering articles of impeachment, and previously by the Senate Ervin committee, the Democrats strove to make a case on objective terms that Republicans opposing would accept on common principle. That concern for acceptance from an opposing POV and even respect for such a POV is largely absent now, done in by sniping from CNN consultants and one-liner talking points on Twitter. But, I do not think the often transparently disingenuous argument from Tribe Blue is doing anything except provoking Team Red.
Eugene V. Debs ran for President from prison, after the evil Wilson engineered his placement therein for so-called “violations” of the so-called “Espionage Act”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
So Trump can run even during his trial, if it is going on all through the election. And he can run from prison, if that is where he ends up before the election. Being tried will increase his support and being imprisoned will increase his support even more. Whether being convicted and imprisoned will ensure that he gets re-elected is not a predictable certainty, but it would make an interesting social science experiment. ” Political science fiction” come to life.
( What would increase Trump’s victory chances even more more more? Making Sarah Palin his VP running-mate.)
I learned long ago that to just turn the other cheek, isn’t much of a plan. The reason is that more than half of any human population cannot think for themselves, being temperamentally constructed to want to want to have their elites, and/or prevailing culture, do their thinking for them. Between Socrates and Bernays, a lot of thinkers have noticed this. Unfortunately, most wouldn’t change this condition since it’s more lucrative to take advantage of it.
Personally, I think this is a fine time to make that leftist chess move. But what the hell do I know?
I just saw this interview of RFK Jr. on Breaking Points. While I think that RFK Jr. is the best presisential Candidate since Eugene Debs McCarthy, the way that RFK Jr. answers the questions that are posed to him reminds me why I do not pay much attention to what is going on in the USA anymore. The way that RFK has to answer questions in order not to be politically discredited shows that the American people are alergic to truth. Overt US politcs is nothing but a soap opera.
A RFK, Jr. plus Jesse Ventura ticket against a Trump-Palin ticket would be a good episode.
I have maintained in the past that the danger of Covid-19 was highly exagurrated. I maintain that it was possible to pull of this aggaguration because there was flat out lying going on as to the cause of death, and possibly even the number of deaths.
But now what I have maintained can be in sense tested. I saw a report yesterday that said we should expect a tidal wave of covid-19 deaths to sweep the planet in the near future. If the Covid danger was real I would say that this prediction should come true.
If Covid was mostly hype then it will not come true. It is also concievable that there will be a title wave of Covid cases and deaths which will not be reported by the main stream media. But massive amounts of video documentation will have to be produced for me to believe that there is a major story going on that the MSM is not reporting.
It is far easier to produce a fake story, to turn a mole hill in to a mountain, than it is to hide a mountain.
RFK, Jr. graduated from Harvard, which gets a demerit from me. I see places like that as being more universities for elites, less “elite universities”. I base this on personal experience. I’ve said “WTF? He got into (Elite U) when she was far more qualified?” just a bit too often to not be jaded.
Plus I’d need evidence that Kennedy isn’t a poseur. I’ve seen too many “environmentally friendly” products turn out to be upon closer examination, geared for some lucrative corporate end under the pretense of “environment”.
He may be a great guy, but I always remember: the road to hell is paved with good intentions not by the good-intentioned, but by the bad-intentioned who are good at paving roads. Plus DC is a hive of scum and villainy so we must be cautious.
I guess that I will write this here on this stale page because it is not very flattering for me.
I was totally wrong about the course that the war in the Ukraine would take once the Russians actually attempted to liberate and de nazify the country.
I figured that the Russians would attempt to capture, hold and occupy Ukraine with the army that they used to launch the operation, which was much to small to do that.
I now have the impression that when the Russians launched their opperation the Russians thought that they might reach a peace agreement with the Ukraine, which they almost did successfully do in Istanbul, or Anarka. Whether or not that was a reasonable expectation to have in Feb. of 2022 I can not say.
In any case I thought that the Russians would have been defeated by now because I was under the assumption that the Ukrainian military had been well supplied and trained by the US and NATO countries up until Feb. of 2022. I am delighted that leaders of NATO countries have not got the victory that they have hoped for.
But I am not hopeful for Russia’s future. On one hand it will be difficult for NATO to defeat Russia on the battlefield. The relationship of Russia to all of the NATO countries is similar to the relationship between the Ukraine and Russia in terms of population, economic power, and military capacity. But this compairison also does not bode well for the ability of Russia to bring the war to an end by denazifying Europe once and for all.
If the war does not end with the losing side attempting to destroy the other with nuclear weapons then it looks very possible that a rapidly changing natural environment will bring an end to it and us along with it, before the nazi and confederate leadership is hung up to dry.
Soredemos
I knew the Ukrainian offensive was ultimately doomed because of the ludicrously unfavorable balance of forces (a country with no meaningful military infrastructure left against a vastly bigger country that has been effectively untouched), but I didn’t at all anticipate it would go as staggeringly badly, or as quickly, as it has over the last few days.
First they conducted what were ostensibly ‘probing attacks’ (I have real doubts that these weren’t actually serious assault attempts) which themselves were severely mauled. Then, presumably having scouted out the Russian lines they…proceeded to attack the strongest Russian positions. They made little, if any attempt to suppress the Russian artillery (not that they would have had much success, but they don’t seem to have even really tried). They have no air force to speak of. They don’t seem to have much air defense left, not even man-portable weapons (or if they do they’re incredibly ineffective). Their columns are advancing as literal columns: lines of vehicles. The lead gets taken out by artillery, or an air strike, or it hits a mine, and the rest of the line gets trapped and slaughtered. And this keeps happening; it isn’t just a one-off situation. Some genius on the Ukrainian/NATO side seems to have been convinced Russia doesn’t have night vision technology and so attacking in the dark would be safe. But Russia does, and it wasn’t.
I’ve seen commentary calling this Kursk 2.0. But that really only works in the first as tragedy, then as farce’ sense (not that the Nazis losing the first one was tragedy, that’s not what I’m saying). That original assault in WW2 had meaningful artillery and air support, and a robust armor component. It managed, against all odds, to penetrate two of the three defense lines before finally being stopped. Whereas this current offensive is getting slaughtered (just absolutely butchered; there’s numerous extensive video and photo documentation of the Russians having a turkey shoot, especially Russian aviation) miles from the actual fortifications of even just the first defense line.
For a couple days the argument could be made that these were fodder forces and Ukraine was holding the best troops and equipment back to strike the crucial blow. But, putting aside that this is sort of counter to the narrative that its the ‘Russian Orcs’ who use brutal human wave tactics, that isn’t actually happening. Ukraine is committing their ‘best’ units, the ones with months (literal months!) of training on their fancy NATO gear, to the assault. And they keep getting slaughtered. Leopard tanks and Bradley armored vehicles are dying and getting captured by the dozens. The crack units are being sent in as the tip of the spear, and that spear is being completely blunted.
Now maybe everything I’ve typed above will be proven wrong. Maybe it’s just a temporary setback, and I’ll go to sleep, and when I look again in ten hours or so maybe Ukraine will have finally achieved a crucial breakthrough somewhere. But I’m not exactly betting on it. Offensives tend not to amount to much if they spend too long in a grinding phase, especially if that happens in the opening stages. As of right now Ukraine is throwing in reserves to try and punch a hole, but those reserves were intended to be used to exploit holes already punched.
Willy
There’s a popular YouTube channel showing Seattle streetwalkers plying their trade in broad daylight on one of Seattle’s main business thoroughfares. They look less crack-whorish and more anybodies-daughterish. There’s another channel showing Seattle’s downtown homeless, who do look messed up but not anything like the cartoonish street bums from days of old. The videos make it look like there’s a lot of these people all over the place, with much commentary waxing nostalgic about better days gone by.
Disturbing to me are the number of comments blaming the Democrats, the progressives, anything “the left”, as if the American impoverishment which is highest in red states and readily visible in small towns all across red county America isn’t really real, as if this desperation thing only happens in blue cities.
There is some commentary pushback, but it seems mild and far too forgiving of the PTB who are the primary cause of all this. I’ve lived the change and I’ve done the homework. Their naively tribalistic loud and proud “The left ruins everything!” repeated mantra has gotta go. Bet replaced with reality. I’ll focus group here a few pithy YouTube comment ideas:
So you actually think trickle down works? From what, all the millions of good jobs and technology our so-called corporate betters sent overseas?
Where are all our wealthy when all this is going on? Oh that’s right. Employing undocumented blue and white collar workers flowing en masse through our borders and airports.
Back then we saw the USA as leading the world in practically everything, while we now know it as leading the world in national rate of incarceration. We used to do most of the inventing and got most of the patents, and now we do most of the random shooting.
I’m old enough to remember when big ticket items like college, health care, and housing were affordable for most. I also knew a college drop-out who paid for his house and new boat with a grocery store job. But that was 1980. I think I saw him in (the homeless) video.
I’m old enough to remember economic patriotism. Now it’s all “I’ve got mine f-you if your job got automated away and f-your Democrats too”. As if Republicans even have a plan.
I remember when greed was a deadly sin. Now it’s considered a virtue. People used to call out price gouging for what it was. Today it’s called “late-stage capitalism” or “greedflation”.
Tallifer
A glimmer of hope for Russian democracy (as reported in the Guardian), from this article: ‘Three months ago, this wasn’t possible’: exiled Russians dare to dream of Putin’s fall”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/10/russia-exiles-life-after-vladimir-putin
bruce wilder
For more than a year the Ukraine War has been a “war of narratives” taking place against a background of disinformation and secrecy so thick and deep that no one knows anything for sure from the news media.
I have been waiting to see if any undeniable facts emerge to break anyone’s preferred narrative.
The absence or obscurity of reliable facts combines with “puzzles” like who blew the dam or who blew the pipelines to set people up for cognitive exhaustion and deep uncertainty. To form an opinion or estimation is made to seem easy if you go with the flow of propaganda or choose a team to cheer, but hard, very hard if you want to start by accounting for facts or employ a sound moral sensibility.
The power plays underway in domestic politics in the U.S. are alarming. Prosecuting Trump? That is banana republic fascism — from the very people warning us of the risk of banana republic fascism. And it appears to be part of a general effort to impose authoritarian censorship and political suppression.
responseTwo
If the counter offensive fails, looks like NATO could get involved. As a WSWS reader, their critique was the plan in the beginning would eventually include NATO, grab Ukraine, and go for Russia. We, the working class will pay for the whole thing. We will be getting austerity from our ‘New American Century’ government.
mago
We’ve still got Covid
Still got war
Death and destruction accelerating
Commentary too
“Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong “
Resignation is nihilism’s baby
Nobody cares anymore or cares too much about too little and not much about the big stuff
Look, what’s that over there?
Where?
Over there bloodshed in your face thank god it isn’t your own
But
Leonard Cohen from his novel
Beautiful Losers
God is Alive, Magic is Afoot
Just look at the wonder in a young girl’s eyes, and you’ll believe in magic
Spielen is a good thing.
Jugando
while nadando con tiburones
swimming with sharks . . .
A sense of humor and wonder and confidence helps.
Basta ya.
Willy
I saw clips of Chris Christie campaigning. Almost zero chance he’ll get elected, but he implied that Jared Kushner got that $2B gift from the Saudis in exchange for Middle Eastern military secrets in Trump’s possession. If true, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Trump himself has made some serious offshored coin selling US military secrets regarding nuclear and conventional strategies and capabilities. All he’s gotta do is copy and fax, since the Justice Department just keeps making the docs out to be more and more legitimate and deadly serious.
And speaking of never locking Her up, there’s all those Trump clips from his 2016 campaign making the rounds, where he declares Hillary a traitor for her own classified carelessness. Maybe he’ll lock up Biden instead?
So, sure. Let’s give Trump another chance. He seems trustworthy. And if not, well, we’ve never had an Oval Office operating from a prison cell before.
NR
Bruce Wilder:
Trump is being prosecuted under a law he himself signed. So any “banana republic fascism” here can ultimately be traced back to him.
Curt Kastens
It is being reported the leader of Saudi Arabia and the leader of Russia have agreed to cut oil production. It is implied that this was done by the Saudis to help the Russians and hurt the US. Some of us may have been waiting for the US empire to strike back against the Saudi leadership.
But there is another possible explination for the cut in Saudi oil production. The other possibilty is that Saudi production is now in permanent decline. If that were the case the Saudi leadership would have much more confindence in thumbing its nose at the big brothers in Tel Aviv and Washington DC. If Saudi Production is is permanent deciline replacing the entire Saudi Arabian Royal Family will not lead to an increase in Saudi oil production.
None the less this change in policy by the Saudi leadership did destroy my belief that the Saudi Royal Family were complete puppets of the US MIC. Perhaps they had been complete puppets. But then the question is how did they free themselves from the situation that they were in. Of course an additional question is how long this new found apparent independence will last.
Another important question is that if the Saudis are capable of freeing themselves from the empire why can the German leadership not do so? I would think that it would be much easier for the German leadership to do so, if they wanted to.
Trinity
https://apnews.com/article/army-air-force-recruiting-shortfall-immigrants-citizenship-2cd690352210606945010d1800c5bdbe
bruce wilder
NR: Trump is being prosecuted under a law he himself signed. So any “banana republic fascism” here can ultimately be traced back to him.
You are like sticky-tape for foolish talking points. And, no, he did not sign the Espionage Act.
After years of Russiagate, which you no doubt believed in as fervently as you believed that the vaccines would end transmission of COVID-19, the national-security state has form and Trump’s partisans will have reason to believe he is being persecuted as a means to eliminate him as a 2024 candidate.
That the charges revolve around documents that are “secret” and which cannot therefore be exposed to public judgment as to their content is itself a measure of how much the “national security” establishment has come to dominate and displace the authority of elected politicians. The case against Trump sets a precedent: even a President’s hands are tied. This was already fully established as it applies to Congress by CIA bullying and subterfuge in the Senate’s investigation of CIA torture. Seymour Hersh’s reporting has made a case that a way has been found to circumvent the remaining requirement that a handful of Members of Congress has to be told about covert acts of war.
Naturally, the final destruction of democracy will be dressed up as the cos play and kafabe of the on-going red v blue civil war right alongside trans bathroom rights.
The political discourse in the U.S. was rendered useless and ridiculous at least thirty years ago in the Impeachment of Bill Clinton. That was an absurd scandal, driven forward by billionaire ire. Synthetic outrage replaced genuine concern more completely than saccharine ever replaced sugar in the fattening of America. It was followed by the blanket use of theatre-criticism political reporting and commentary in the 2000 election: Bush was the dry drunk everyone wanted to have a beer with while Gore invented the Internet and wore earth tones. That election was settled appropriately enough by an early projection of Florida results by Fox News, affirmed by the Supreme Court in a decision without precedent that the Court also ordered could not become a precedent.
9/11 led to the invasion and destruction of a dictator and a country that had nothing to do with it. And a very expensive and tragically ineffective reconstruction of that unfortunate country. And by the way, Afghanistan was mired in a twenty-year civil war and occupation that ended with the Taliban we overthrew in power again, but without the Central Bank reserves we stole on our way out the better to impose famine.
My point is that there was always plenty of material for a genuine scandal, plenty of provocation in corrupt and incompetent policy choices during the course of the 21st century. The culmination of financial deregulation by Clinton and Bush in the crisis that emerged after 2005 could have brought out the righteous with torches and pitchforks to stake the many vampires. Didn’t happen. The wave elections of 2006 and 2008 brought in a Dem with overwhelming Dem majorities and nothing fundamentally changed but the red v blue civil war became the go-to script used to explain our politics to ourselves. The Other was to blame. The Other was racist or degenerate, depending on which color you wore . . . and stupid and ignorant.
Political partisans have lost the thread in this nightmare of propaganda scripts curated by a legacy media that has completely lost interest in verifiable fact let alone whistleblowers or revelations from real leaks. It is every paranoid conspiracy theorist with their own Rumble, bravely crying out from a frequently banned TikTok or de-monetized YouTube.
This rant — I honestly wonder if anyone can hear me even here. TLDR probably.
Z
There’s little doubt which country was ultimately behind the Nordstream pipeline sabotage and the recent Nova Kakhovka Dam’s collapse that happened on the eve of Ukraine’s newest counteroffensive: the country which has bankrolled Ukraine’s ability to continue to carry the war on, the country which has signed the checks, and that’s the U.S.. In fact, the Lead Stiff of Weekend at Biden’s announced another $2B in future assistance to Ukraine almost immediately after the dam was blown.
Sure, maybe it was Polish divers, whose country’s government is as beholden, if not more beholden, to the U.S. as any in NATO, who actually placed the explosives on the pipelines and detonated them. Maybe it was the UK, which reportedly helped out with the Kerch Bridge bombing, which provided the explosives to blow the dam and/or even placed them on it, and there are credible theories (as far as I can determine) that those explosives were actually tactical nuclear weapons which supposedly don’t create any nuclear fallout.
That’s all possible, but the fact of the matter is is that even if the U.S. government’s fingerprints aren’t on those operations, their signature undeniably is because War Pimp Zelensky and his Kievcaine Cowboys wouldn’t be in the position to carry out those operations without the U.S.’s assistance. Their lives, and their millions of U.S. dollars in riches, are at this point dependent upon pleasing the U.S..
Z
NR
Bruce Wilder:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/139/text
Trump signed the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017. I suggest you pay particular attention to section 202 (Increased penalty for unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material). That section is why he’s facing five years in prison for each count of the indictment.
In other words, Trump would have been perfectly happy to send other people to prison for what he himself did after leaving office. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t have any sympathy for seeing him hoist on his own petard.
Ian Welsh
Trump is obvious scum, but this is the sort of thing that important people usually get allowed to slide on. And that means that it looks to many Republicans like Democrats are taking Trump out to stop him from running. (I suspect that Republicans who think that are right.)
That said, there isn’t a President in my lifetime I wouldn’t be OK with seeing in prison.
Well, maybe, just maybe Carter.
Willy
I still don’t understand how a leftist abandoning the Team Blue vs Team Red fight will strengthens leftism. Seems to me that Team Red will only double down on the anti-leftism smears, gaining votes from the mob if only via repetition of propaganda, which they’ve been successfully doing for decades.
Shouldn’t there be a clear direction which mob members from both Teams might want to be led towards, as well as those who’ve abandoned that “fight”?
Z
Almost all U.S. Hegemonists, even the so-called “America Firsters” like Bibi’s pool boy Trump (((Hey Donny T, you missed some algae with the vac in the corner there by the diving board . Thanks, Mr. B! Get right on it after I murder an Iranian General for you and send in U.S. troops to steal Syrian food and oil! If you don’t mind. If that’s OK with you, Mr. B? That’s fine, Donny T.))), also just happen to be Zionists.
You show me a think tank that consists strictly of pro-U.S. Hegemonists who won’t go down to pucker up to the Wailing Wall and I’ll show you a think tank which influence on U.S. foreign policy is on Empty.
Z
bruce wilder
Trump is obvious scum, but this is the sort of thing that important people usually get allowed to slide on.
I am afraid that what he’s really not being allowed to slide on is his opposition to war with Russia and China.
And, while his prosecution(s) are practically designed to fuel the red v blue animosities, as you say, I note the security state is making itself the arbiter of what is knowable and who is allowed to know it or admit knowing it.
Z
So, Zients, who succeeded Klain, is the new Chief of Staff. I didn’t even know that, though it’s no surprise.
So, the production team of Weekend of Biden’s have a assembled a cast (https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/cabinet/) of which 25% of it are Jewish, though only 2% of the U.S. population are Jewish, including the very influential positions of Secretary of State, Secretary of Treasury, Attorney General, Chief of Staff (known around snickering stage hands as the Lead Stiff’s head puppeteer), Secretary of Homeland Security, and Director of National Intelligence. These arguably are the six most influential positions in the production team of Weekend at Biden’s (unless you want to fool yourself and think the Lead Stiff and Kamalala are more than mere stage props) and they play lead roles in our foreign policy, economy, law, and intelligence, not to mention making sure the Lead Stiff is reading his lines right and standing straight up on his strings which is Zients’ job. But yet we keep getting guilt tripped about the rise of antisemitism, of which I see very little tangible signs of.
In regards to the two lead stage props at Weekend at Biden’s, all of Biden’s kids have Jewish hubbies and Kamalala is married to a Jewish man. Also, the top three think tank graduates leading the State Department are Jewish Zionists: Antony “I Ain’t” Blinken, the charming and cuddly cookie monster Mrs. Victoria Nuland-Kagan, and Wendy Sherman. Additionally, Sweet Auntie Anita Dunn is running around behind the scenes purring out directives.
This is certainly not to say that all Jewish people are bad and power hungry. Certainly not. Nor is it to say that most Jewish people haven’t earned their positions in life. First of all, many of the occupations that Jewish people are known to have an out-sized presence in such as medicine and law are extremely competitive and one doesn’t get through med or law school by mere connections. Also, many of the people who are fighting the loudest and hardest against our rulers are in fact Jewish. Many of the leading alt-media writers are who are the most critical of the U.S. government and Israel are in fact Jewish.
It is, however, an strong indication that at there is a significant amount of collaboration at the upper levels of the Jewish Zionist caste and they’ve been very successful at gaining collective power for themselves at the highest levels. Or I guess you could believe that these people chosen for these lead roles in Weekend at Biden’s were selected primarily due to their competence of which I see no signs of in Blinken’s disastrous foreign policy which potentially has the world on an accelerated path towards human extinction, Yellen’s terms as the Fed Head and now Secretary of Treasury, and Zients’ arrogant brow-beating of vaccine hesitants during his tenure of COVID Czar. Nor in any of the non-Jewish Weekend at Biden’s other leading cast members such as Young Republican Pete who has made a particularly poor showing as Secretary of Transportation.
The heavy representation of leading Jewish cast members in Weekend at Biden’s are no surprise though when you consider that the “Democratic” Party is basically bank-rolled and run by Jewish Zionists (look at its biggest donors) and the last two Democratic Party presidential administrations could be justifiably referred to as the Robber Rubin I and II administrations and not the Clinton and Obama administrations as they are commonly called.
So, it’s no surprise that the “Democratic” Party wants to run Fourteen Hundred Dollar and Zero Sense Joe again because it means that when things fall apart … and it is on course to since the Zionist Trio in the State Department have tossed the supremacy of the U.S. dollar into the poker pot to try to bully their way through the bad hand they’ve dealt themselves … that they’ll be in prime position to take advantage of it and maintain and even build more power just like they did when Robber Rubin jotted down on the back of an envelope who he wanted appointed to the Obama Administration in the midst of GFC, then had his consigliere Froman deliver it to Obama in a classic “offer-you-can’t-resist” fashion, and just like Johnny Fontaine, who just wanted to be celebrated on center stage, The Head PR Man for the Point Zero One Percent Obama french-kissed Rubin’s ring and gave him everything he wanted.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2009/12/13/obamas-big-sellout-president-has-packed-his-economic-team-wall-street-insiders
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/10/wikileaks-citigroup-exec-gave-obama-recommendation-of-hillary-for-state-eric-holder-for-doj/
Z
Curt Kastens
Pundits talk about China, Russia and sometimes India getting stronger in compairison with the west. But unless the thawing of the trunda and the warming of the oceans, and the collapse of the ocean currents is fake news what are the chances that the China, Russia, or India of 2030 will be as powerful as the China, Russia and India of 2023??
This power struggle between the leadership of the United States and its collaborators in Europe, Japan, Korea, and Australia on one side and Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela along with a growing list of other countries on the other side is a struggle that will have no winners. Global Warming, Environmental Degridation, and Resource Deplition will bring the conflict to an end in a manner that makes everyone unhappy, except for those who look forward to death.
But until that fatefull day, when the interdependent global economy falls apart comes, I will encourage those that I know to support the Palestinians, and Russians, and Cubans, and even the Iranians attemptd to defend themselves against against US and NATO aggression. I am not a fan of the domstic social policies of the Iranian government. But the Iranian Government leaders have not been waging a war of aggression against other countries for centuries let alone since 1979.
The level of support that those that I know can actually give is infitismaly small. It is not going to change the world much. Therefore, we are all going to die soon, much sooner than most of us realize. So I am encourage people to die for what they believe in not for what they think will allow them to keep their position in society.
Yes that is a foolish romantic notion as 99% of people believe in keeping thier position in society as it prevents them from being crushed sooner than otherwise would be the case. And getting crushed sooner will not change anything even in the short run 99% of the time.
But there are people in sensitive positions whose self sacrifices would be magnified a 1000 or perhaps even a 100,000 times over what the self sacrifice of the average Joe would achieve.
In the past I tried to convince such people what their real responsibilities were. I was unsuccessful. Perhaps more was expected of me. But perhaps these people were not all here.
mago
Jimmy “peanut “ Carter.
A big maybe.
He caved big time.
Bought and sold, he who confessed to lust and sinning in his Playboy interview. (Anyone else here old enough to reference that?)
No. That guy was the first big presidential dupe for the neocon dupe.
His foreign policy advisor was the unpronounceable dude’s name that began with a B and ended with a Y with a few consonants tossed in, and we’ve been living with those consequences through multiple administrations over decades.
Not to type a long winded riff or anything, but it is an open thread, and there’s no obligation to read it, so no harm done, and if there’s any merit to these words then we can dedicate that merit to the welfare of all amidst accelerating chaos. Thanks.
Z
The realistic best case scenario that one can hope for at this point is that the Ukrainian military collapses shockingly suddenly, War Pimp Zelensky and his Kiev-caine Cowboys flee, and Russia sets up a Russian-friendly government in Ukraine that informs Larry’s and Stanley’s Asset Inflation Factory Blackrock, Larry’s pal Steve-o’s Blackstone, and other Western ghoulish financial institutions such as Vanguard that all deeds of Western companies for Ukrainian assets are null and void and if they want their money back then they ought to go track down War Pimp Zelensky in one of his Tel Aviv villas and get it back from him. And also, by the way, they won’t accept U.S. dollars as payment any more anyway and it’s retroactive and all that.
Then Russia ought to make a big show of giving those assets back to the Ukrainian people in some way in order to try to build good will. Russia could therefore strengthen their case to the Ukrainian people that the pain that they suffered was primarily instigated by the West by doing something tangible for them: revoking West’s ownership of Ukrainian land and other assets and giving it back to the Ukrainians and thereby improving their situation.
But that’s all dependent upon the West, particularly the U.S., staying out of it and Larry, Stan, and Steve-o would make a case that that ain’t right, this isn’t the way things are supposed to work out, and it also is, by the way, a rather rude and crude threat to rules based order.
“And what kind of rules based order would it be if governments can just steal assets from other countries?” they’d ironically ask with their arms folded and their chins petulantly thrust out. “Tell me that.”
Z
Willy
Trump is obvious scum, but this is the sort of thing that important people usually get allowed to slide on.
We here rail against our elites on an almost daily basis. Yet we also must let them slide because that’s what we’ve always done? Even if the scum lies so clearly and obviously on worldwide media? Even if the national security for every American is at risk? Even if they’ve stated repeatedly that their number one enemy is “the left”?
You seriously think that’ll bring people to the leftist cause? That we the left cannot let the elites down because, um, I dunno, because they’re too big to fail? Or maybe because we’ll hurt somebody’s feelings?
Ian Welsh
Oh, I’m OK with doing it to Trump, just noting the consequences.
Willy
Actually Ian, I was talking to bruce. I still await his plan, though it’s been a long while. Maybe it’s just me, but he seems adamant about a ‘better way’.
bruce wilder
I think the failure to hold GWB, Cheney and friends to account for the fraud of the Iraq War was both a symptom of profound corruption and a cause of further corruption. Never mind the absence of specifically judicial processes, the failure of the Media to mediate genuine outrage or retain public memory of what had been done was profoundly damaging to politics.
Ditto, of course, for Obama’s decisions to continue the Bush foreign policy, protect torture, immunize banksters against prosecution, et cetera — rotation in office failed to permit reform because Obama.
The problem I have with the Trump prosecutions is that they are conspicuously “trumped up” to eliminate him as a candidate against the senile, deeply corrupt Biden. I do not want the Espionage Act’s “official secrets” provisions prohibiting anyone from possessing “national defense information” from retaining or disclosing it to become good law. I do not want to see the red v blue faux civil war exacerbated to further disable any possibility of representative democracy re-emerging.
When Nixon was being investigated by a House committee considering articles of impeachment, and previously by the Senate Ervin committee, the Democrats strove to make a case on objective terms that Republicans opposing would accept on common principle. That concern for acceptance from an opposing POV and even respect for such a POV is largely absent now, done in by sniping from CNN consultants and one-liner talking points on Twitter. But, I do not think the often transparently disingenuous argument from Tribe Blue is doing anything except provoking Team Red.
different clue
Eugene V. Debs ran for President from prison, after the evil Wilson engineered his placement therein for so-called “violations” of the so-called “Espionage Act”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
( And in finding that piece about Debs, I stumble apond an article also mentioning Lyndon LaRouche also running from prison.)
https://news.yahoo.com/run-president-prison-heres-happened-182126435.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
So Trump can run even during his trial, if it is going on all through the election. And he can run from prison, if that is where he ends up before the election. Being tried will increase his support and being imprisoned will increase his support even more. Whether being convicted and imprisoned will ensure that he gets re-elected is not a predictable certainty, but it would make an interesting social science experiment. ” Political science fiction” come to life.
( What would increase Trump’s victory chances even more more more? Making Sarah Palin his VP running-mate.)
Z
Would you trust this man’s nose in your hair?
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/29/biden-advantage-older-voters-00094515
Z
Willy
Once again, no plan.
I learned long ago that to just turn the other cheek, isn’t much of a plan. The reason is that more than half of any human population cannot think for themselves, being temperamentally constructed to want to want to have their elites, and/or prevailing culture, do their thinking for them. Between Socrates and Bernays, a lot of thinkers have noticed this. Unfortunately, most wouldn’t change this condition since it’s more lucrative to take advantage of it.
Personally, I think this is a fine time to make that leftist chess move. But what the hell do I know?
Curt Kastens
This discussion leaves me speechless. No wait, I mean the discussion i have linked below leaves me speechless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEU7DUorS_g
Curt Kastens
I just saw this interview of RFK Jr. on Breaking Points. While I think that RFK Jr. is the best presisential Candidate since Eugene Debs McCarthy, the way that RFK Jr. answers the questions that are posed to him reminds me why I do not pay much attention to what is going on in the USA anymore. The way that RFK has to answer questions in order not to be politically discredited shows that the American people are alergic to truth. Overt US politcs is nothing but a soap opera.
A RFK, Jr. plus Jesse Ventura ticket against a Trump-Palin ticket would be a good episode.
Curt Kastens
I have maintained in the past that the danger of Covid-19 was highly exagurrated. I maintain that it was possible to pull of this aggaguration because there was flat out lying going on as to the cause of death, and possibly even the number of deaths.
But now what I have maintained can be in sense tested. I saw a report yesterday that said we should expect a tidal wave of covid-19 deaths to sweep the planet in the near future. If the Covid danger was real I would say that this prediction should come true.
If Covid was mostly hype then it will not come true. It is also concievable that there will be a title wave of Covid cases and deaths which will not be reported by the main stream media. But massive amounts of video documentation will have to be produced for me to believe that there is a major story going on that the MSM is not reporting.
It is far easier to produce a fake story, to turn a mole hill in to a mountain, than it is to hide a mountain.
Willy
RFK, Jr. graduated from Harvard, which gets a demerit from me. I see places like that as being more universities for elites, less “elite universities”. I base this on personal experience. I’ve said “WTF? He got into (Elite U) when she was far more qualified?” just a bit too often to not be jaded.
Plus I’d need evidence that Kennedy isn’t a poseur. I’ve seen too many “environmentally friendly” products turn out to be upon closer examination, geared for some lucrative corporate end under the pretense of “environment”.
He may be a great guy, but I always remember: the road to hell is paved with good intentions not by the good-intentioned, but by the bad-intentioned who are good at paving roads. Plus DC is a hive of scum and villainy so we must be cautious.
Curt Kastens
I could only handle 7 minutes of the link below.
It leafs me speeechless as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RRjT-zwxtw
Curt Kastens
I guess that I will write this here on this stale page because it is not very flattering for me.
I was totally wrong about the course that the war in the Ukraine would take once the Russians actually attempted to liberate and de nazify the country.
I figured that the Russians would attempt to capture, hold and occupy Ukraine with the army that they used to launch the operation, which was much to small to do that.
I now have the impression that when the Russians launched their opperation the Russians thought that they might reach a peace agreement with the Ukraine, which they almost did successfully do in Istanbul, or Anarka. Whether or not that was a reasonable expectation to have in Feb. of 2022 I can not say.
In any case I thought that the Russians would have been defeated by now because I was under the assumption that the Ukrainian military had been well supplied and trained by the US and NATO countries up until Feb. of 2022. I am delighted that leaders of NATO countries have not got the victory that they have hoped for.
But I am not hopeful for Russia’s future. On one hand it will be difficult for NATO to defeat Russia on the battlefield. The relationship of Russia to all of the NATO countries is similar to the relationship between the Ukraine and Russia in terms of population, economic power, and military capacity. But this compairison also does not bode well for the ability of Russia to bring the war to an end by denazifying Europe once and for all.
If the war does not end with the losing side attempting to destroy the other with nuclear weapons then it looks very possible that a rapidly changing natural environment will bring an end to it and us along with it, before the nazi and confederate leadership is hung up to dry.