Europe is hosting its EPC summit in Copenhagen where the war cries have grown louder than ever, amidst sharp militarization and endlessly bellicose rhetoric, which has been a theme here for the past several weeks.
The forces of making and unmaking exist thankfully in a balance that can only be tipped in the direction of forward movement, growth, evolution, not into chaos and nothingness. Which is another way of saying, build the world or destroy yourself. But that does not work the other way round. Trump has that lesson to learn.
Actually, the United States is NATO, hence the United States is the monster. Dr. Frankenstein is the Deep State running the show. Probably why Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize so badly. Trump wants to prove he is still human, while doing inhumane deeds (genocide, lying, cheating, two-timing, cold-heartedness, mean-spirited, home-wrecking loser type stuff). Do not all of God's creations feel, have conscious, morals, and "stuff?"
NATO, Snow White and the 31 Dwarfs. When I see TACO, his expressions, his gestures, I have the impression that he has his own membership in LGBTQ+. So he is Snow White and as we see, he gets screwed by the dwarves.
Actually, the United States is NATO, so the United States is the monster. Dr. Frankenstein is the Deep State who wants to bring the monster to life. No wonder Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize so badly. The monster somehow needs to prove to the world that he is not a lying, cheating, two-timing, cold-hearted, mean-spirited, home-wrecking, warmongering loser. The monster still needs to show it is humane, even if the only avenue available to the monster is through inhumane acts. "Even though I am a monster, do I not feel?"
War is likely to break out in Europe and I am trying to prepare my organization for it as it’s part of my job. More colleagues are starting to agree with this tragic outlook than ever before and see the increasing war craze of European leaders for what it is. Utter madness.
you mean more colleagues are starting to see if for what it is - ? or more colleagues are starting to sound the war drums too? My unerstanding is that Europe is broke and needs war to print more money. The crooks at the EU have stolen all the money and given it to Ukraine - God only knows why - maybe kickbacks ? I bet Von Der Layan is one of the richest women in the world, but not even that satisfies her. Not even sure you can blame her on the Jews, although that weird outfit she wore - that masonic cape designed like Schwab's - makes me remember that the Jewsis Kabbalists are running Europe too.
More colleagues are agreeing that Europe is driving for war. But the majority being German only reads Bild, so only repeat what’s told by that propaganda outlet. So war it is.
Try conscripting and mobilizing German youth. See how that plays? I've spent a lot of time in Germany this past year. Forty per cent of the population in Germany and France would probably welcome a Russian invasion and Regime Change in Paris and Berlin.
Correct sir. General Bone Spurs and that creepy Corporal Brylcreem, lecturing the mucketymucks at Quantico?! If there was any spine in that crew they'd be organizing a coup during "Happy Hour" that very evening. I'm thinking the top brass doesn't appreciate being lectured to by a sniveling VN era draft dodger. What a leaderless society we've devolved into. Bigly sad.
The Ukraine SMO has evolved into an electronic and drone war. I believe it will be trivially easy to convince 2 generations of gamer boys to take their World of Warcraft skills and play for real, as long as they can do so from the safety of a reinforced concrete bunker.
no - the jew has put them in a prison. name the jew or oppose the non-white subhuman invasion caused by jews and go to jail, yet pajeet rape gangs roam free. listen to jew puppet Starmer and his frenetic concern for two disgusting jews yet total lack of concern for two white girls being killed...
The people who invented colonialism and gave us racism and imperialism are peaceful?!?
What happened was that europe was relegated to a backwater after WWII and they decided that this chest thumping "The World Belongs To The Strong!" schtick isn't nearly so much fun when you're on the receiving end, whereupon europeans morphed into the biggest metrosexuals on the planet.
For that matter, european strategy since 1917 can be summarized as "Get the Americans to do their fighting for them!"
I had dinner with a good German friend, an entrepreneur and subcontractor for EADS. I told him that he had aged considerably since last year and that it was not a Russian move, but rather a Russian media and press issue. For him, the AFD is far-right and fascist, and he remains stuck when I ask him which traditional parties are banning candidates and parties. What are these parties whose members and supporters, almost all of whom had Nazi affiliations?
EU squandered people's pension plans and want war so they'd not be found out, and France embezzled Russian funds - out of $71 billion, accountable for what - just $21 billion? Once the war stops, the legal proceedings begin
God only knows why - maybe bribes? So I am God, thank, because I have been saying this all along, the Biden family did not invent money laundering, it has existed in the EU forever and he was the sole reason for its creation.
If whatever you are doing generates GDP that suits the western model. After all actually making stuff, let alone stuff anyone can buy even if they might want to, is so last century.
I beg to differ. This has nothing to do with people starving. Nobody is starving today in Europe. The reason is that the warmongers know very well that they have no chance against Russia without the backing of the USA. Therefore, they restrict themselves to barking and war-dancing around the fire.
True.. But the point I wanted to make was that if a person is homeless and is without a job, what makes it posible for him/her to go far away and fight an enemy they haven't seen before? I follow this on the internet I confess.. (from Johannesburg)
Of course I don't know you, your nation or organization, but I agree war is coming to Europe. However I think the war you're going to see and suffer from is much more likely to be bricks and bottles thrown in the streets than cruise missiles hitting airports and tanks rolling across the borders.
Precisely why the Cabal is dementedly screeching about Russia. Consciously or unconsciously, it is nothing but diversionary activity. Der Primat den Aussenpolitik, as Bismarck termed it 160 years ago.
I think you are correct, the decision was already made and Brian Berletic was right all along. The rest is just chimp posturing to create hype for a unwanted and unneeded brother wars.
A futile war against Russia without the involvment of the US may break out but also, there may be a war of West Europeans nations against each other.. There are sharp divisions in Europe and the conflict among temselves should not be ruled out.. This is a likely scenario which many don't seem to be aware of... Take for instance the rift between Hungary , Slovakia and the rest.. Europe is the heart of world wars.. (from Johannesburg)
War, between who vs who? Russia vs. Russia? Do you really think the dwarves will show up on the battlefield? Make an effort, if war were declared by the dwarves you would see lines of hundreds of kilometers of fleeing people in every member country of the
Unlike the Danaans, the west doesn't have ten thousand ships. And, unlike the Danaans, the Trojan boogeyman in the east didn't steal Helen. She's still back home, being groped by undocumented foreigners, who her inept husband insists (in his cuckolded hubris) they need for "economic growth".
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."
The hysteria of the Danes in particular surprises me. I thought that the Danes were levelheaded, no-nonsense kind of people. Cool Scandinavians, you know.
As one reader once suggested somewhere: there must be some stuff in the water of the Baltic Sea that affects the inhabitants of the bordering countries. Just think of the Poles and the Estonians, and don't forget the Finns. They all seem to have lost their marbles lately.
I have lived there. For cool you mean a monolitic hord of flag waving sheep happy to not have and opinion on anything and just repeat the accepted narrative. I dont have data but I would bet the Danish were thr most covid compliant sheep in the world. The Scandinavians are all client states of the anglosaxons, have access to their the financial capital markets and very much finance (Norsk sovereign fund) a lot of dirty DS imperial shit. They are all being used as pawns.
My colleague, a middle-aged man weighing around around 140 kilos, was sitting at the lunch table and blaming un-injected people like myself for causing the hospitals to overload. While he was eating a cheese burger and drinking a Coca Cola. The other people at the table were all quiet. You could tell that they all agreed with him, even though it is people like him who fill up our hospitals with their lifestyle.
I remember when the Danish government finally removed the mask restrictions - but only from Monday onwards. So the Danes were still wearing masks the whole weekend in public transport. And Monday morning they all took them off. As if the danger automatically dissappeared that Monday.
So many other examples, but I won't bore you with them. This is where I absolutely lost hope for Denmark.
To their credit, it has to be said, that from what I read in the comments on Social Media, very few people are taking this drone thing seriously. Many blame the Prime Minister for escalating the conflict.
But these people are probably still a minority. Because amongst my friends and colleagues, only the narrative exists.
I actually lived in Sweden at that time. It was paradise in comparison.
Remember when I took the train from Sweden to Denmark. For those who don't know, the train goes across a bridge that takes around 10-15 minutes to get from Sweden to Denmark. The absurd thing was that nobody wore masks the first 5 minutes of the journey, and then just as soon as we had crossed half of the bridge, everyone had to wear their masks, because we were now officially in Danish territory.
I was a gamer on LOTRO for about two years and one of the greatest blockheads I ever chanced to meet in a Discord voice channel was a Danish engineer, so proud of his education yet he could not question or doubt what he was told by 'authorities'.
He often complained about lag and screen freeze while I was suffering no such thing and when I asked him how much RAM he was running he didn't know then got offended, when I pressed him about his processor and internet bandwidth. "I've got a DELL, it is the best!" he said. Every other gamer I know of discusses such things quite often without anger.
The Danish fellow never said so but I could tell he hated me from then on. Especially when it started to become obvious that though he had been playing that game for over a decade, I played my one avatar better than he played his dozens. My supposedly inferior class of avatar hit a critical strike like lighting. I killed a raid boss and several lieutenants with a DPS strike in the billions.
I now know that though I didn't mean to, I attacked his ego. He had been a reasonably decent teammate but from then on whenever I was in the group he played emotionally and let his anger affect his teamwork. All because he was ignorant of his machine's specifications and just how the game stats worked. He used the computer reasonably well but emotions and computers don't mix. LOTRO was the last MMO game I played and it, along with the other two over my own decade of play, taught me a little something of human nature.
The Danes and for that matter all of Europe are suffering a massive inferiority complex despite their decent level of development and recovery from the Great Patriotic War. Europe was entirely defeated by Nazi Germany and the Russians, with some assistance from the UK and US, defeated Hitler. US troops are their occupiers and the only security they have due to cradle to the grave socialism devouring their military strength. The governments which are destroying them have made themselves the only crutch the ignorant can lean upon so they obey the edicts and do not question.
Now their governments are demanding they stand and take pride in themselves but they have nothing of which to be proud, they are sheep and proud of their weakness as they follow the dinner bell. Their leaders have nearly insufferable hauteur from a fake pride whose origin is the worship of self due to ego and atheism.
All the Western nations, including the US, have no solid foundation on which to stand save for the shifting sands of fiat currencies which are crumbling before our eyes. This is due to the deficit spending and fractional reserve banking destroying all our fiat currencies equally together so that the US and European currencies seem strong. They are all taking a dive into deep waters where they are starting to drown.
The lower income citizens became aware of this first. The Eastern/Southern alliance is busy trying to distant themselves from the looming disaster as every fiat currency in history has failed and was destroyed by hyperinflation. No not one remains for any real period of time. A lifetime is elderly in the lives of fiat currencies. More than a century is ancient.
That is why the European and indeed all central banks are busy buying gold and silver instead of US bonds as the reserve currency scheme requires to survive. In this way they can strike their protectors and cut off their noses to spite their faces. Their wounded pride and fear will help bring the very disaster upon them which they dread.
The Don can only delay for a short time, not stop, the inevitable fall of the dollar and the other fiat currencies tied to it. Because the gargantuan debt of US bonds coming due will not sell as the present establishment knows is necessary, the end is drawing ever closer in a tsunami of dollars buying up all the gold and silver on the COMEX. Real Americans never trust a government and are buying the Great Commodity also. The dollar and all the rest took their mortal wound the day Tricky Dicky Nixon took it off the gold standard to avoid raising taxes to pay for Vietnam. The rest of the story is the dying throes and attempts to stand as Western fiscal and monetary civilization falls.
Cryptocurrency is just another fiat currency and like them all a Ponzi Scheme. Crypto is obviously good in good times, a fair-weather friend, but has not yet been tested under fire which is the failure of the legal tenders upon which it depends. If it survives the fiscal and perhaps political fall of Western civilization it may be a new legal tender created outside of governments.
It amazes me that the autocratic governments have allowed anyone to print/create currency save themselves. We've not seen a determined run on the Bank of Crypto by someone with real power. Perhaps it is stronger than the governments? Power is the loyalty or obedience of those willing to kill at your command. Money is only influence just like propaganda.
The evil Washington Empire of which Europe is a part is the snake Ouroboros and is devouring itself, with some minor help from the rest of the world. Its death throes are to be feared by all within its power.
One of the best films of all time is in my opinion Dies Irae, by a Danish director, whose name I don't remember.
It is a profound analysis of the northern European way of becoming completely hysterical all together, reinforcing each another's loss of control of their thoughts and actions.
Now that I think about it, I remember most of the workers were Lithuanians, some Ukranians and Poles too. Danemark is a Baltic state, they surely have a lot of investments there, other than cheap labour extraction. The Baltic used to be a Scandinavian sea before the Russians and the Poles had access to it. They had also many oversees colonies before the English assymilated them, together with the Dutch. So they became sort of vassallzed subjects of the British, who in reciprocity let them access to their global finance system and guarantee their security, as Denmark is for the UK a protecting barrier against Russia and Germany (Skajerak battle, Jutland battle) and can, like now, close the straits if necessary.
"J'étudie en Suède et tous mes camarades de classe scandinaves nés dans les années 1980 ou plus tard étaient des enfants gâtés et faibles mentalement." En gros, comme tous ceux après les années 1980.
But really, it was postgrad studies, so we were a mix bag of students. If I focus on Scandinavians, those born before 1980s were completely different.
It was management programme and one of our lecturers told us that they had to be hypersensitive with this demographic and apply specific managerial approaches.
Maybe these "cool Scandinavians" remember what Zhukov said: "We have liberated Europe from fascism, but they never forgive us for it?
Kaja Kallas, declared in September 2025 that it was entirely new to her that Russia and China referred to a shared past as fighters against fascism and militarism in the second world war. Russia and China wanted to rewrite history, and the world believed them, according to Kallas.
One could dismiss this statement by one of the EU’s highest representatives as confused or uninformed. What is interesting, however, is that it encountered no objection from the heads of state and government of Germany, France, Poland and Italy. One must therefore understand Kallas’s historical judgment as an expression of an EU policy that seeks to rewrite history in order to flank the preparation for war with historical politics.
The western imperialists love Orwell, the tormentor/programmer at the same time. O’Brien and Winston were different sides to Orwell himself, a collection of experiences described in his “dystopia/reality” about the future. We can see his contradictory concepts every day:"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." Don't we?
I'm not convinced of the "evil fascist" narrative any longer.
The Bolsheviks (and their backers) were allegedly made up of a certain demographic and their horrendous brutality was so evil, it's needed someone to stand firm against it.
That is so true. The bolsheviks were (are) the Jew. Their holidays celebrate genocide and they murdered the czar and his family in a jew ritual (same as how they slaughter animals in the most painful way possible (kosher slaughter)
The Jew is the disease and the national socialists are the cure. Read uncle A’s book.
It beg to differ. It has nothing to do with "fascism," and what Kaja Kallas says doesn't matter.
In my view, the main reason why so many of our politicians, journalists and other intellectuals in the West, with their ultra-liberal ethics, hate Russia is that Russia has become the last main bulwark of traditional European civilization.
These liberals have an ally in Big Money, salivating to lay hands on Russia's riches again, as they were allowed to under Jeltsin.
Last but not least, there are the Zionists, who lost control over Russia during and after WWII and want to take revenge.
Those who rewrite history do not seem to realize that their descendants will be ignorant of history and doomed to repeat, or rhyme, its mistakes. National socialism was socialism, just like the other great parties controlling today's Europe. 1984 was the beginning not the end of Orwell's novel of protest which fools have taken as a textbook to be followed. It is Greenburgism.
I am currently reading Zhukovs memories and you mention about western ignorance or contempt towards Russia is a purposed slandering campaign. Take the battle of Jaljin-Gol, for instance. As Zhukov puts it, it was a decisive and catastrophic Japanese defeat of the best Imperial cream de la cream troops, so much so that the Imperial High Command decided that they werent able to go against the soviets and turned focus to Southern Asia and the Pacific for the raw materials they needed. This battle is hardly known by western audiences. Even crooked Wikipedia accounts only 8.000 casualties for 9.500 soviets. However, it was a total encirclement and anhilation of the Japanese corp, as they wouldnt surrender when offered. The soviets claimed 60.000 Japanese casualties. Only in the first phase of the battle, before the encirclement, 10.000 Japanese troops were destroyed. The soviets used enourmous amounts of materials and troops. This battle was so decisive that the soviets decided to focus on mechanized armour divisions. By 1941, they were producing 900 tanks A MONTH. This was the first victory of Zhukov as a Commander and determined his rising star as the red army most capable commander in chief. Finally, It convinced Stalin that the Japs wont attack in Siberia again which could deplace the Siberian divisions to the Moscow front, to win the decisive battle of Moscow in which the Germans retreated 150 km off Moscow. I cant think in a more decisive event. However, the West never wanted to acknowledge de capabilities of the Russian army, side-mentioning Janjil Gol as a small skirmish. The Russians defeated Napoleon and Hitler, occupying both Paris and Berlin. Slandering the Russians is still the goal.
True.. I grew up hearing an unfair assertion that we Africans can't think for ourselves. But the stupidity, corruption and warmongering that we are seeing in Europe, the UK and the US is beyond belief, and is nothing like we have ever seen on the African continent in modern history.. I wonder how such imbeciles managed to come here and steal everything from us..
All my great grandparents came to US shores from Norway in the 1880s. Glad they left.
Col MacGregor told the Norwegian Prof, Glenn Diesen, recently that the Norwegians were especially rabid and straining at the leash about the necessity of going after Russia. The dumb shites. The know-nothing quislings. All that North Sea abundance and you see the need to go up against Russia. I wonder how that might end?!
Specifically Putin's indecision. It is purely Putin's decision in this matter. The military wants to escalate and destroy Ukraine.
I have written before - the only way to win this game of "escalation" is to seem/be unhinged. If US strikes Moscow, strike NYC or Washington in response and say "it wasn't us, it was the Ukrainian rebels using our weapons" or "it was the venezuelans"
Every action should follow Newton's Third Law - Every Action has an equal and opposite reaction. If Putin followed this rule, he'd be in a much better place.
Sure. It doesn’t matter though, the Russian response should be equally brutal - even up to an including direct war with the US. That is the only way to win this thing unfortunately.
This could have been avoided if Putin led a sane foreign policy and didn’t create comprador elites.
In reality - who knows what US response would be. Everyone thought the same of Russia - but now we know its "Red lines" mean nothing
I agree. The threats are raining down on Russia. Putin needs to act. Step #1: Nothing larger than a pickup truck comes into Ukraine from any road or rail line. No planes can land that are not obviously passenger carriers. Nothing flies. AWACs and their ilk driven away from the borders.
Yes! Put Oreshnic's and Iskanders in Venezuela. I can hear Vlad explaining it to Trump.
"Yes President Trump. It was Russian theoretical scientists that discovered principals that led Russians material scientists to discover new materials that were then developed by Russian engineers into systems built and assembled by Russian workmen. These systems were then transported by Russian military and fall under the direction of central Russian leadership who will use Russian satellites and other reconnaissance assets to provide the Russian command and control systems to program the targets inside the United States. The orders to fire will be in Russian and carried out by Russian solders. BUT I want you to remember - it is Venezuela attacking you!"
"I just love these games you Americans teach us. We would never have figured this out on our own!"
I wish they would just do it already instead of running their annoying little mouths all the time. I'm so sick of hearing these European politicians talk like they actually have a credible military to fight Russia with.
Well, you can't know that, so I'll mention it here, as far as Poland is concerned.
If Poland is doing so well, why do about 35% of all Poles work as guest workers in Germany?
In Germany, you'll find almost 100% ONLY Poles on large and normal construction sites.
The construction industry in Germany will come to a standstill if all Poles stop working and go home.
But
In Poland itself, some things are like they were in 1965. For example, 85% of all houses are still heated with brown coal, which, by the way, is evident every winter in that coal for private households is only delivered on a ration basis.
.
A Polish foreman here at the Amazon construction site, or rather one of many foremen, about 32 years old, told me that he would stay in Germany for another two years on assembly, then he would have finished building his third home at home to rent out... so much for the prices and the difference to building materials, which have become almost unaffordable for private home builders in Germany.
So where is Poland better off without a foreign country from which its citizens can earn their euro? Who financed Poland's own pipeline to Norway? In exchange, they built an airport in the middle of nowhere for NATO on the border.
There's a Tusk stuck up the USA's anus, no matter who's president, Poland cheers everyone on.
I'm leaving benelux for Brazil where I have family, there will be no nuclear effect down there too far. In Paris very rich people do the same direction NYC or beyond, money, big money is leaving europe, condos price falling in capital cities sell asap...before it becomes ashes.
What she actually meant was people in Chile were unusually "cold" for that continent vs. Argentina, Brazil, etc. When you are an immigrant, you prefer "warmer" people:-)
We also had Brazil in mind. Especially the state of Santa Catarina and Florianopolis. But I keep hearing that it is a zionist place. Is it really that bad in terms of mentality?
A friend from the US, claimed Mexican citizenship (parents probably, I didn't dig) moved last November to Mexico city, working for a US corporation as a perm, does some contracting on a side, works on weekends as a tourists guide for tips with American tourists. Has no regrets, says, dollar stretches way far over there.
When like before WW2 there will be tons of the door-to-door life insurance salesmen selling life insurance for cheap in the EU, we'd sure know, the war is next day
We were also thinking about relocating to Brazil - even though it is not the easiest place to move to. Brazil of course have it's safety issues, but I take violent crime over nuclear war anytime. Any places you would recommend in Brazil for a foreigner to relocate? I know that Florianopolis is one of the safest places, but I also hear that it is very pro-Israel mentality, and cannot live amongst such people.
Seizing a tanker is an act of war but of course Putin won't do shit like all the other acts of war against Russia. Guess he's waiting for a nuclear first strike after long range radars and strategic bombers are all destroyed before doing anything? Or maybe even then won't do anything.
It is an act of war against Benin. So Benin should "do shit" against France. This tanker has got nothing to do with Russia (officially). And, latest news, the captain who has been charged is Chinese. Pas de quoi fouetter un chat. A low risk strategy that allowed Macron to play smart-ass with his friends during the EU summit in Copenhagen yesterday. Voilà et bonne chance - as the French knight would have said in Monty Python's Holy Grail.
Epilogue: the Boracay was reportedly released and continued its journey on Friday morning (03/10). End of the farce. Of course, there is nothing in MSM about this.
Not mention that the cargo was destined for either India or China. Macron has just seized cargo headed for Asia.
So the blockade he is discussing is a blockade against China. You can bet Russia has good reason not to say too much initially while the enormity of what Macron is doing sinks in on other parts of the world.
Macron has made it clear that this is not a one off situation. It is a deliberate plan to blockade part of China's import capability.
Abject nonsense. The idea of a "shadow fleet" is nonsense. The reality is an extraordinarily rich and sophisticated world infrastructure that moves oil around in very fine tuned and exquisitely responsive mechanisms driven by market considerations.
It's not Russia's fleet, it's the world's fleet, and to go to war against the entire world's non-negotiable need for Russian oil is a losing proposition.
Who was the legal owner of the cargo of this ship? Who was even the legal owner of the SHIP? Who insured the cargo and/or the ship?
All of those parties were victims and targets of this act of war.
I guarantee you there are plenty of Russian entities behind those questions, and most likely the answer to one of them is or involves the Russian federal government. So stop hiding behind select technicalities when other technicalities change this to an open act of war on Russia.
I expect no open retribution for this act of war. Perhaps covert ones that we will never hear about.
Please stop the cope though. This is not Reddit, I hope not yet.
It is an act of war against Russia. Its stated purpose is to prevent the export of Russian oil and to hurt Russia. Ownership and flagging of the ships are immaterial. At some point one must look at the substance rather than the form.
Actually the law often focuses on the form rather than the substance.
Obviously the intent is as you say and Russia can certainly consider it an act of war if it chooses to do so.
The US and European countries have obviously engaged in hostile acts through Ukraine and with sanctions meant to cause enormous harm to Russia. The theft of Russia's financial assets in Euroclear vastly exceeds any harm from Macron delaying a tanker serving Russia.
I would agree with most of this but suggest that quibbling over terminology is not what needs to be happening. Most people regard the act as an act of war against Russia - that was its intent and its effect, and it leaves a *practical* question: what will Russia do about it? If it does nothing, it can expect plenty more of the same because, again practically speaking, the western merchants of war think it signals weakness. They will push until there are some consequences felt *by westerners.* They don't regard Ukrainians as important, so consequences need to be directed against people they do regard as important. I would argue the time has come, long since, to dish out some of those consequences.
I have previously taken the position that because Russia is winning the Ukrainian aspect of this war one can't argue with success, but I've come to regard the war as a broader war and am not so sure Russia is winning that one. We know what's happening in west Asia, and it looks like Trump is now emboldened to attack Venezuela, another Russian ally. Zero Americans have died, essentially, while many others have. I think that's important to the people pushing this war.
Senator Lindsey Wagner has bragged about how cheaply the US has bought the deaths of many Russians and even more Ukrainians. All without losing any important soldiers. Just create enough US dollars out of thin air and I think the fools believe they will rule the world.
It’s popular to talk about all the wars the US has lost since WW2, but did you ever notice that American hegemony really started in early 1990, the middle of that long losing streak? The US does not need to “win” what we call wars, it merely needs to HAVE them. The wars it actually wins are the covert wars, the color revolutions, and the information wars it uses to keep every other country off-balance.
If you think, as I do, that Israel is little more than a pawn of the US, you might say there have been battlefield victories; if you think that the terrorists who overthrew Syria did so in accordance with US planning, that could be a victory, but it’s immaterial. The victory has been the unrest and terrorism itself.
You do understand that I’m not a fan of that, I trust.
For some reason the site will not allow me to "like" comments that are not in response to mine, but I think you're right: if Russia doesn't take decisive action here it's going to have big problems. Most of the commenters here seem to be ignoring that obvious fact.
What do you think of the Istanbul proposals by Russia? Misjudgment? (or stronger, I know). I think leaving that offer on the table now, at least, even with the adjustments that have been considered, is a mistake. Perhaps he thinks they’ll never accept it, though. Too much posing, imo.
Honestly speaking, the problem wasn't so much the proposals, but Russia's "just the tip" attempt at warfare.
Had Russia used adequate force from the outset, the negotiators would have looked at Johnson like he was nutso. Now, he's babbling about enlisting for the war, even though everyone knows he'll never do it.
You are right that if Russia does not react very seriously against France, similar acts will follow and export of Russian oil per ship will be made nearly impossible.
An other aspect is that this means depriving China of a large part of their input of oil.
If similar measures are taken against Iran, I suppose that war would be inevitable.
One must only remember Roosevelt's oil embargo against Japan.
"The result is that Russia's shadow exports of oil will be cut off."
Really? I think you're underestimating the size and operating area of the tanker fleet transporting Russian oil. Do you really believe what you say or is it just hyperbole?
It is easy to get swept up in the western narrative of all their 'provocations' that Russia is bafflingly refusing to react to.... means it weak, right?
But if they react, they are the aggressor of course. Apparently most people in the west fall for this: you push and push and push the other until he breaks, get angry, does something in return and we call them the aggressor. Works everytimr it seems and says something about the population. No critical thinking whatsoever.
Not that I disagree with you about schools, but this isn't school, and there's no one to dish out punishment. International law does not really exist, and at this stage of geopolitics it's only a question of what you can do, and what consequences you can survive. I think Russia should be reacting - let them say it's the aggressor. They'll be saying that, and are saying that, no matter what Russia does. It can take whatever the west can dish.
Opinion differs Elena, but I see Russia advancing in Ukraine and Europe talking about a re-armament that it can't afford and I think"steady as she goes".
Russia is winning the military, economic, financial and diplomatic wars, in my opinion. I am not even convinced NATO is winning the propaganda war in 2025. For me, all this theatre in Europe is just noise.
Yeah, I know. And yet Syria was just destroyed, Israel is being Israel, the EU just stole elections in Romania and Moldova, the US cheerfully and without consequence bombs Moscow, we’re seriously considering conquering Venezuela, and support terrorists around the world. It sounds more like a list of crimes than accomplishments, but to an extent these days those seem to be the same things.
The quote "You can't overestimate the stupidity of the general public" is attributed to the American author and poet Charles Bukowski, and it appears in his novel Ham on Rye. I once read that a Democratic pundit paraphrased Mr. Bukowski, "You cannot overestimate the stupidity of the American voter," but Google seems to have 'forgotten' who that is.
At the end of the day, the aggressor is only determined after a war has been fought. No country having won a war ever committed war crimes or acts of aggression.
If you consider it purely a Ukrainian war, Russia is winning where it counts. What if you consider it a broader war, though? a war where Syria mattered, for example, and Lebanese guerillas? Iran? Venezuela? Romania? Azerbeijan? Moldova? The US is not fighting on one front, and while the Ukraine war drags on, Russia is useless - or of reduced usefulness, shall we say - to its allies in the wider conflict. Ukraine is certainly losing, but Russia could be, too.
The US is fighting on multiple fronts because it has multiple resource needs- or perhaps appetites would be a better word. Russia is a rich rich nation best served by protecting that wealth first, which is where its value is and is why the west is attacking it. Nations that have denuded their own patch or never had much at home to begin with, are highwaymen and thieves. That will not end well for them, is not ending well for them. When it was about nation building rather than resource theft, more powerful forces were prepared to give it a chance. Now it has descended into theft again, the horses of Nemesis have been unleashed. They have had a long road to travel but as they say in some texts, the end of what started with some high aspirations and ended in debauchery, dissolution and gluttony, is nigh.
The tone of this note goes perfectly with the audiobook I happen to be listening to at the moment, Gone with the Wind, which you may know is about the demise of the American Confederacy, as read in an English accent, a very lovely voice. But I’m not sure we’re in Gone with the Wind territory here.
The US may be a declining empire, but it is attempting to protect and retain global hegemony. I suspect the end is nowhere near as nigh as you think, and that Russia is in fact in grave danger. The US seems to find great interest in resource-rich countries, yes, but I think the overthrow of Syria, for example, was as much about facilitating an attack on Iran as any resource. Russia needs to support its allies, and its hands are tied while it’s bogged down in Ukraine. The US has no interest in bringing peace to Ukraine for that reason.
I suggest you do a deep dive into Chinese capabilities. Wang Yi said it best in a meeting with the EU recently. China won't stand by and let Russia lose in a war with NATO. The more the US and Europe fight wars across the globe, and China sits and prepares, the faster the Western Empire collapses. Real wars cost a LOT of money and so far the West has only one conflict of any geostrategic significance. Ukraine, and they are losing badly. That said, an attack on Iran looks imminent and this could tilt the balance one way or another. Given the previous conflict in June and the US defeat in their Yemeni skirmish it could just sink the Empire. I don't think Russia is losing the big war. China won't stop backing them. The US situation is critical and worsening. How do they continue funding the Empire?
All good points, there’s no denying. I will say that China saying what it will or will not let happen is just talk at this point. We’ll see what they do when the chips are down. I find it very difficult to get information I trust about China.
Back in the late 1990s as a little girl with a thoughtful dad, I thought the US was on the verge of collapsing. The dollar wasn’t worth shit any more then than it is now - or perhaps a little more, but it’s a distinction without a difference. Gold was hovering between two and three hundred dollars/ounce and drastically underpriced in my opinion. I thought the house of cards was doomed to fall within months or short years, but we’re still here.
Empires take a long time to fall. They may get swept away all at once, but the lead up can take lifetimes. The whole thing looks like it’s being held together with duct tape and bad intentions, but it could fall anytime within the next fifty years I think. Of course with someone as reckless as Trump at the helm it could speed things along, but who knows when the blow will fall?
The 1990 was peak US hegemony. The Wolfowitz Doctrine was birthed into Pax Americana. No competition was allowed to rise. Funny thing is the Neoliberal model sucks the wealth from countries and offshores them to tax havens. Those that prevented this have risen to challenge Empire. Empire is freaking out and making some really detrimental moves. The Resistance seems ascendant. Will the Empire nuke is all?
Russia has clearly chosen Ukraine as the hill on which to make its stand and it appears to be a good one, at that. Leaving aside the astonishing Russian Recovery from 1991 to today (rags to riches, virtually, with an apparent capabliity to confront the worlds most powerful allieance), Putin has adroitly called NATOs bluff and ill-considered 'promises' to accept Ukraines membership, which we now see are hollow and meant more as a way to enrage and provoke Russia than to enhance the alliance. It's almost a 'reverse Article 5': the vague NATO promises to Ukraine guarantee Russia will keep hammering it. I think Russia picked the right time to push back hard - their honorable attempts to solve this by diplomacy are well documented and give ample leg room to act and enjoy the support of the global majority. Did Russia really 'lose' in Syria? Is Iran 'lost'? Has Russia's 'unlimited' partnership with China even been truly utilized? Russia isn't losing - it is hasn't even really started.
I can see why you would think those things. In my view, Ukraine joining NATO had nothing at all to do with Ukraine’s well-being and was almost entirely a provocation to Russia. To the extent it wasn’t provocation, it was an attempt to extend the military capabilities to facilitate an overthrow. Not an ounce of good faith, in other words. I do think Russia lost in Syria and Romania and Moldova, and in Azerbaijan too, for that matter. It’s obviously more than holding its own in Ukraine itself, but it has been allowing western attacks on oil and strategic forces. To what extent the alliance with China will pan out time will tell - it looks good no doubt.
I just don’t think anything is a given. The US is doing what it can to hold the rest of the world back. Assuming that will ultimately fail, I still think the timeline could be much longer than seems likely.
Not to be contrary, because what you are saying all makes sense, but for conversation: I resist agreeing that Russia lost in Syria because it still has Khmeimim Airbase, although I think it gave up Tartus Naval Base. Syria's new gov seems to be keeping its options open vis a vis Russian relations, although I'm surprised Putin would deign to parlay with the likes of Jolani. As for Azerbaijan and Armenia's Trump-fueled cash-cow transport corridor shotgun marriage if convinience we shall see how durable that really is as time passes. It looks flimsy af to me, but I am literally in an armchair here, moving imaginary prices around my fantasy Devils Chessboard lol.
Well, it's a little more ambiguous than that because, technically, it's not Russia's tanker. Maritime practices are highly convoluted. It's a tanker carrying Russian oil that is technically under a different country's flags, often/usually crewed by non-Russians, and the tanker itself owned by a different country/corporation, etc.
So it's not quite the same thing as France or whomever seizing an actual Russian warship or something like that.
Putin's Valdai performance today was the last straw.
Coup. Now.
There is no time to waste.
The Americans are killing your people every day, are about to launch a strategic bombing campaign against you, including using nuclear-capable weapons, i.e. the red line that has always been understood to mandate a nuclear response, because there is nowhere to retreat after that, and they already attacked your strategic nuclear forces too. Yet you come out publicly about how you want to be friends with them? And how the Tomahawks are no big deal.
Let's hope the military is working on what in retrospect had to be done years ago, will remove this malignant tumor from the body of the Russian state, and then Russia will start actually fighting. Otherwise the country is doomed.
Because the war was not fought properly from the start, it escalated to the point where nuclear war is inevitable (either that, or Russia will be destroyed, which in the long term will have similar effects for humanity).
And if we had had my way even earliter, there would not even have been a war, this problem would have been solved decisivley back in 2014 the latest, or even earlier.
I'm disappointed at how much of this I agree with. Instead of calling for a coup, however, which I think Putin is both too shrewd to allow to happen and which I doubt the Russian people would appreciate, I'm just hoping Putin will change his approach and finish dropping the pretext that (1) Trump is anything other than a warmonger and (2) that the west will ever accept Russia and doesn't want to destroy it, and (3) that any form of alliance with the US is worth any kind of damn.
How is he going to drop the line that Trump is not the enemy when he has dug himself so deep in that hole?
We will be hearing about how Putin was mislead once again for years, the same way we've been hearing it about Merkel? Of course, one had to be an absolute idiot to fall for Minsk-1/2, and Putin is not an idiot, but to claim you fell for it when they are doing all the things they are currently doing to you is just a whole new level of absurdity.
P.S. Right now what is needed is a total severance of all relationships with the West and a public commitment to the physical removal of the US from all of Eurasia, to be done together with China, Iran, North Korea and everyone else who wants to join. Have them isolated to their island when they can do little harm without lobbing ICBMs.
How far is the rhetoric from Moscow compared to that objective?
He could say it was strategy. I agree it has difficulties, I just say it needs to be done. I think it really was strategy, too, an attempt to divide the US from Europe, perhaps, or slow down certain of the things that have taken place. But I think it needs to stop. It isn’t working.
Having great power at your command tends to make you cautious at using what could have unintended consequences like the destruction of your own nation. Marledonna is quite right. For the present we are alive because the nuclear powers play very cautiously with one another.
Naturally I don't blame you for preferring Russians over Americans but if Putin used his full power on America many millions of both nations would be dead, many more would die of cancers and such collateral damage. I don't believe the world would end, merely a few hundred million dead and hundreds if not thousands of major cities destroyed.
Furthermore I believe Russia would have the better death count as it is less densely populated though much larger in size. At present your Civil Defense posture is undoubtedly superior also as here in the evil empire nuclear war is regarded as unsurvivable. This is as foolish as believing it can be won.
You know it's all well and good to stand tall, beat your chest and proclaim how mighty and strong you would be if you had power. It is very manly and proud of you, it is also vainglorious and foolish in the face of the deaths of nations. Don't you care about the Russian Federation at least?
By the way, I believe the Iskander-K along with several others such as the Kalibr and Zircon are the same classification of weapon as the Tomahawk, a cruise missile though the superior Iskander-K is hypersonic and usually ground-launched. Thanks for getting me to study these and improve my own knowledge of weaponry. However you might be right about the Iskander not being submarine-launch capable. The Poseidon you cited is an ICBM. Most are tipped with nuclear warheads. I don't consider that Russia is incapable of striking with Iskanders or other cruise missiles with conventional warheads and would hope that a spread of several hundred nuclear warheads would be considered, over-eager for strikes with conventional warheads. Total pride and anger will lead to total madness. Mutually Assured Destruction. It's MAD and I guess you are also. I know for sure you are pedantic and seem incapable of listening to reasonable objections to your bluster.
I acknowledge that the evil Washington Empire started the war in Ukraine during Maidan in 2014 and has encouraged it all along the way until Trump's current though not previous administration when it was on the back burner and almost unnoticeable.
There are other forces at work to give the Washington Empire its just deserts. Fiscal and monetary problems alone should be quite a comeuppance but it wouldn't worsen their hubris any if the idiots sent a few hundred thousand of our troops to be placed in the Ukrainian cauldron of The Federation to be ground up into sausages.
Have a little patience and take pride in Vladimir Putin, we on the outside of Russia looking in, and in the know of true events, admire him greatly. The SMO is not exactly sitting on his hands and doing nothing. When Biden got elected I started buying silver and when the SMO began I started buying gold. I'm glad I did. The GDP of the BRICS trade alliance whose birth Russia assisted under Putin's ministration already exceeds that of the G-7.
Remember now it is better to be alive and have a little pride than to be dead on the floor of Hell with great pride, perhaps even the hubris of Lucifer before the fall.
zion don is a jew tool. he will soon attack Iran again for his jew masters. that is where russia could really hurt the jew run "west" - hit the jew HQ and shoot down some B2s
If you really are a Russian then you know that anybody who talks about coups against the Putin administration either knows nothing about Russia, has completely lost contact with reality, or is simply hoping that repeating the West's propaganda for morons by morons can accomplish anything.
I'm an American living in Russia for many years. I've spoken perfect, fluent Russian for many, many years as well. I don't live in Moscow immersed in an expat world isolated from Russia and Russians but far, far out in the regions where we rarely see foreigners. In my life here I live immersed in Russia and Russianness.
Our man Vladimir Vladimirovich is wildly popular out here in the regions. There are, of course, pockets of insane liberals who don't like him but mercifully out here those are few and far between, not like the larger percentage of crazed liberals there are in Moscow. There is no chance whatsoever of a coup against a man who has such phenomenal, grass roots popularity with the people and elites of Russia. Speaking of elites, the support for Putin among them is also extraordinarily high. He's a very effective leader and gets things done as elites like: a better economy and so on.
I respectfully disagree with your three points. Trump is not so much a warmonger as he is a highly erratic, totally amoral character who lives in a comic book world where he doesn't care if people die so long as he gets his way and the facade of his reality show continues to make him the star. The task for a seasoned politician and diplomat like Putin is not to call Trump names, but to continue doing what is right for Russia without wasting time on publicly characterizing the loud-mouthed dope who is committing more than enough errors on his own.
Whether the west will ever accept Russia and not want to destroy it is the wrong question. The right question is where the balance of animosity lies within the great trends that define "the west." More and more people within Europe are realizing that their elites are leading them into an unwanted war. It makes sense for Putin not to go on any verbal attacks against those people who don't want war with Russia. Not going to verbal war against them does not require any changes in the war Russia is waging successfully. Being diplomatic does not in any way mean Russia takes the use of military technical means off the table.
I've never heard Putin say he wants an alliance with the US. He simply pointed out that in the past the US had the opportunity for such alliances that it blew off, and he made those comments as an example of the US's total negativity that resulted in a poor relationship with Russia. Putin is simply saying that re-establishing normal diplomatic relationships, as existed with the USSR, is a sensible thing to do.
Well, that states things with great clarity and precision. I mostly agree with you about Trump except that I’m not sure he’s as stupid as you think. I find it offensive that Putin plays the game of flattering him and pretending the US isn’t the warmonger it is, but those could be valid diplomatic decisions, and mostly I think they have been.
I have come to think that Putin is not running this war the best way, for reasons it would probably be boring for me to repeat but could be summarized by saying I think we’re already in a world war but Putin seems to act as if it’s only the one war involving Ukraine. I don’t like his stated willingness to leave Odessa in the hands of the Nazis, his tolerance of the US using Ukraine as a base for bombing Russia, or his occasionally accepting indecisive outcomes. I don’t think any of these things are disloyal or irrational, just that they’re mistakes.
By the way, if you care to take a look at the exchange between me and HBi or whatever his handle, you will easily observe that HE was the one who first went ad hominem, claiming that I was “obviously not pragmatic” in a patronizing way. In fact I never went ad hominem at all, although stating my preference for people who saw and spoke the truth came as close to that as could be done and probably should count (it was after his comment, though, and I maintain it was a legitimate response to his evasions).
He threw a temper tantrum after that. There’s no dressing it up.
Hard to coup Putin who turned 350000 member national guard into his personal security and enjoys 80% popularity. Russians will go down with the cult of personality ship like hitler/Germans in WW2.
Britain didn't do anything when France seized their fishing trawlers in the Channel. The EU government in Brussels was silent then as well as during this recent piracy. I wonder why? You don't supposes Paris might actually control Brussels?
Putin said something about this in his speech at Valdai. He said that seizing other countries' ships is piracy, so by seizing that tanker, the French became pirates. And what do you do with pirates? You destroy them. Putin's words must have really scared Macron, because France released the tanker shortly after that. This very well shows how much all these European clowns are actually afraid of Russia and that they are not actually going to start any direct war with Russia, because they know what will happen to them.
Good but what you propose might be more complicated. For Russia probably the action with best cost/profit ratio would be to vaporize the EU and NATO HQs in Brussels. Taking down the ECB building in Frankfurt would be also a nice touch….
What a beautifully articulated critique! I love how you've managed to distill such complex thoughts into such a concise, well-reasoned response. Your debate skills are truly something to behold.
Well at least that would spare the European citizenry, unless they would want to go to war, to avenge their beloved leaders. No worries, either way, as I do think not many in the global majority would be sympathetic, no matter what Russia does to European cities. As it would only be a fullfillment of the Europeans heart's desire or so it seems. Looking back at history Europeans only find peace after being destroyed.
I'm genuinely impressed by the eloquence and depth of your counterargument. The way you've deconstructed my points with such scholarly precision really demonstrates the kind of intellectual discourse I was hoping for. Your rhetoric professor must be so proud.
"Blow people up" is not an argument. It's provocation. It can serve to flag this Substack, when the screws start being tightened, as allowing posters to advocate violence. My comment (and yours if it were in the right place) was intended to show that certain readers of this discussion are aware of the existence of provocateurs (including posters who may be in good faith but whose posts have the effect of provocation) and are calling them out.
In a way, your asking me to put up an argument is encouragement to engage with provocateurs, and as such itself could be considered provocation.
Since I posted my response early this morning, I see that Simp has Liked No1's original comment. That's his right. But my argument - and it is indeed an argument - stands: With a war that began because of a rejection of diplomacy by the US/NATO side while the Russian side made every effort to pursue diplomacy,, advocating behaviour on Russia's part that favours violence over diplomacy amounts to trolling and provocateuring and discredits the blog/Stack.
I totally agree. Just hit the buildings hosting the Governments and the Parliaments. People would go out in the square celebrating the end of their oppression.
I think you'd be disappointed. I'd think a whole lot more Europeans would be convinced that their leaders had been correct if that happened than would celebrate the sudden absence of specific loathsome people. I disagree with Gene Poole, though: I think it's a pleasant thought.
Thank you for that masterclass in constructive criticism. I particularly appreciate how you took the time to engage with the specific merits of my argument. This is exactly the kind of thoughtful dialogue that elevates online discussions.
I have always voted for Porton Down, home to the Skriptal-Novichok hoax. It would be amusing to see the locals scatter like rats at the thought of the poisons emanating from the blast.
As is always the way. But those rats, of course, will be warm and safe in their deep, secret bunkers, complete with generators, air filtration systems and supplies for a decade. If they get the war they lust for, Starmer, VDL, Stoltenberg, Merz, Kallas, Rutte and Macron will more likely be the last seven creatures to remain alive in western Europe. Them and the cockroaches.
"But he’s right on one thing, which I have enlarged on before: that by far the single-most overlooked aspect of modern warfare, and the keys to winning it, has to do with the cultural integrity of a people. Europe and the US are disintegrating into total cultural and ethnic ambiguity and dissolution, its narod or volk simply will not have the weight of national pride and unity to ever overcome Russians who are fearlessly willing to die for their homeland."
Simp is making the common error on the Right of assuming that non-white native populations will not fight for their country, adopted or not.
What NO population wants to do, is be sent thousands of miles away to fight in an Imperialist/colonial war instigated by the oligarchic dictatorships masquerading as "democracies".
That is a very different kettle of fish.
Russia is fighting an existential war. Europe is fighting a war of choice.
This right here is why the difference.
It is driving EU/Zionist empire leaders mad, but wars in Ukraine and Iran are not seen as being genuinely existential.
Unlike say, the growing urge to kick them all out (And sadly all too often simply replace with the next lot of identikit CIA cutouts).
The main question I have is more like: what will they enact when everyone is marching of to war.
Because no-one wants to go to die in a far-off place for some sycophants. I don’t think much people in Europe believe that Russia want to invade them. A lot of them would welcome it I guess: 15% taxrate vs mostly around 50% right now!!
But more like: war is the ultimate distractor. What will they introduce? The digital gulag I guess?
The digital gulag is the only one of their suicidal policies that is going tolerably well (more is the pity).
On the other half, war goes directly against the rest of their agenda: climate change, third world migration, deconstruction of traditional values. War is a large scale industrial endeavour, high carbon foot print, nothing will promote more remigration than falling missiles and conscription and war fighting is asserting traditional values or some perversion of them, automatically.
The only part of this 💩💩💩💩 that doesn't conform to Brian Berletic scenario of NATO division of labor is the total lack of serious preparation. But then, the lenocracy hasn't selected serious people for personnel for a long time 😉🤬🤬
All this doubling down on a pair of twos never made sense and makes less sense as we keep going.
The more they talk, act, do, "convene", ... Everything they do seems to be aimed at waking people up. Don't they know the first rule of dogs? (ie: don't wake sleeping dogs)??
They ran out of good choices in 2008, in my view. The financial coup d'état did for that.
Since then they're bouncing between the narrow walls of their ideologicals taboos and the floor of their diminuishing power. In other words, the lenocracy is irrational and stupid and too far up its own arse to understand why it is irrational and stupid.
The problem is they already should have done so and never will, at least if it is up to Putin.
The europeans will fight, even if most likely as a slave army that will be gunned down by their own side if they try to retreat.
The ukrainisation of Europe will see to that, Bandera Ukraine can be considered a highly successful experiment in that regard.
Concent, much less enthusiasm vor war is irrelevant.
Just as it is in the case of drones, which are the one thing that Europe almost certainly eventually WILL be able to successfully mas produce.
Meanwhile Putin treats the western leaders out to destroy the russian people and civilisation as an 18th century monarch would, as untouchable and sacrosanct, holy royal blood to holy royal blood, someone to whom you would even send waggons full of good of they found themselves if they found themselves inconviniently trapped by a siege, so THEY can continue to live like kings while the soldiers on both sides starve.
Of course this is completely onesided and the western political savages would love nothing more than to ram a bayonet up his anus and drag bis corpse through the streets but Putin seems in blissful denial about this.
Well, if it happens hopefully it will be the russian people doing this to his incompetent, treasonous ass.
Am I the only one that thinks that Russia brought this upon itself by
a. seeking to be a part of the West rather than a member of the East
b. believing Western guarantees despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Does anyone else (especially Russian people) think that instead of this SMO bullshit, Russia should have gone all-in and cut the head of the snake in Feb ‘22? Trump wouldn’t have been calling Russia a ‘paper tiger’, had Russia done so.
DM says it the last three years. We Westerners are broken. If you have debts of 80-130 % of your GDP and you add the neglected infrastructure you will have a debt of probably 200-300 % of your GDP. Then you have an dramatically ageing population, a sick and lazy youth and an economy which produces less and less goods for the world market. To compare it with a human being: If you are that sick you chose assisted suicide. That‘s what our Western Leaders are calling for…
The Great Reset, debt jubilee, or whatever you want to call it, is overdue by at least a decade. That which cannot be repaid will not be repaid. Maxing out the limits of the credit system faster through war is one way to provide political cover ("the evil Russians, Iranians, Venezuelans, etc., made us do it") for the inevitable restructuring of the global debt Ponzi.
Spot on. The inevitability of the coming war is being driven by unstoppable economic imperatives. War will happen because war must happen at this point in the economic cycle.
"The British government is no longer paying interest on the original consol bonds issued to finance the Napoleonic Wars. These perpetual bonds, known as 4% consols, were finally redeemed in 2015. The final four undated gilts, including those first issued in 1752 and used to finance the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars, were redeemed in July 2015, marking the end of over 260 years of interest payments on these historic debts.
The decision to redeem them was made possible by the low interest rate environment and the government's long-term economic plan, which allowed for refinancing at lower rates.
While the original bonds from the Napoleonic era were only fully retired in 2015, their legacy is part of a broader history of perpetual debt, with some of the oldest gilts, such as those from the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720, also being retired around the same time."
-----------------
"The Confederate States of America defaulted on their debt after the Civil War, and the U.S. government formally repudiated the Confederate debt through the ratification of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment."
And my original post referenced restructuring, not default.
The post WW2 troika, Bretton Woods, IMF and World Bank has created a $330-$350 Trillion global debt Ponzi that can only be serviced by further economic growth. Where I live, each additional $ of government debt is not increasing GDP by the same amount.
Combine this with a shrinking population (ex-Africa) and something has to give. War provides the "creative destruction" impetus to invest in major reconstruction, which is a labor and materials intensive activity.
So it is either war, or a peaceful negotiation between "the west" and "the rest" (not just the BRICS) as to a fair and balanced money creation system that benefits all, not just the apex predators. Based on this article and others similar to it, it looks like the west is opting for another war.
Trump called Russia a paper tiger and the world laughed. Trump's always good for a laugh or "obliterating" the facts. Russia is a bear with 6inch razor claws. Engage at your own peril.
And am I the only one thinking that Russia being the adult in the room is avoiding a nuclear confrontation in Europe at all costs? Or that a huge part of the rhetoric is to buttress failing economies by going full war economy? And to deflect populations from their failures as unpopular unwanted mistrusted "leaders". Like the article says no one besides them wants war or is willing to go to war for their wet dreams and or political salvation.
zion don is a jew puppet - white men will never again fight for a ZOG government that hates him. once the all white air power is attrited, the US military is a subhuman non-white joke of rent seekers..
I think Putin quietly realizes that Russia will never get a permanent settlement, rather the West will always be trying to divide and conquer Russia for its natural resources as well as part of the Thucydides trap the West steps into searching for a way to preserve its hegemony. The West can never be trusted. And then there's the issue of what are the Zionists up to? Deception and creating chaos to trick both sides into destroying each other. The old divide and conquer. Russia will never have peace. It's best strategy is to remain in a state of indefinite war, low intensity conflict if possible to keep it hardened militarily without over stressing the Russian economy and public support.
Russia needs to maintain a level of military preparedness, which ironically is best achieved through a low-level state of war, rotating troops, instead of a decapitation strike attempt against the West. Don't kid yourself, Putin is walking a fine line in trying to balance the economic needs of his country vs the costs of an existential war.
Yes, the conflict will not end, even if Russia defeats Ukraine on the battlefields. The romp state of Ukraine will be the cancer, fed with the blood of the west, that cannot be removed and that will try again in future to grow further again. It’s actually a quite depressing thought
Well.... pls take note that France has lost pretty much it's colonial empire in Africa which was providing a lot of essential natural resources it needed (uranium, oil etc).. and got into a tiff with Italy when Algeria decided to supply oil/gas to the Italians instead. Aka there is a limited pool of real actual fossil energy sources, and Europe has bankrupted itself by overpaying for ever more self-limited supply. That means their industry will NOT be able to ramp up for war even if they wanted to... honestly within 3-5 yrs, people will be shocked that Europe will be at 3rd world living standards, you can take it to the bank. That's why the super rich are fleeing Europe, they do see the writing on the wall. Hence it is to Russia and China's advantage to keep things from getting out of hand, and let the natural trends already in place keep picking up speed and defanging Europe/US for good.
It's stuck with low-intensity conflict, but it could do that without Ukraine continuing to exist as a state. Could do it better without strategic weapons parked 200 km from Moscow. And it could support its allies in the greater war if it would just finish off Ukraine. Russia IS in an existential war, and in my opinion it would be better off if it acted like it.
This is complete cope. Russia will continue in this state of war because they refuse to attack back at their true attackers. This allows their enemies to continuously send proxies to attack Russia.
There are plenty of people hypnotized by propaganda and money that will continually attack Russia until Russia responds decisively.
And no I don't mean a nuclear war. There's plenty of options short of that, as evidenced by the DAILY attacks on Russia soil, killing Russians daily and taking out infrastructure.
Of course, but once you get into this conversation, people will starting lecturing you about how you don’t understand Putin’s judo / 15D chess movements.
Putin is a proud Russian quoting Pushkin and the great Russian poets! He talks of the proudness of the Russian people and their ability to fight against the enemies onslaught and that the enemy has forgotten the n terribleness of Russias vast desert like and snowy terrain! Fight his psople at your peril!
In other words the West - well Europe anyway - lacks strong and decisive male leadership and is far too distracted by islamic rhetoric or transgender problems of which pronouns or toilets to use - To fight any war here in a meaningful way.! Europe is ripe for the taking... And Putin knows it!
Putin has zero intention of 'taking Europe'. He just wanted to sell them energy at a good price and bind everyone into a peaceful, co-dependant economic security framework. Too bad the US NATO Frankenstein gollum wrecked it all.
Heather can speak for herself, but I understood her remark to mean 'especially Europe', which, given the number of women in charge as PMs and so on, is in fact true.
If so, he should also reflect more about the times of Prince Bagration, Marshall Zhukov etc and realize that in those times victory came not by taking half assed measures and trying to appease the “Western partners”.
Not even a half hearted attempt at sophistry? You gotta earn your keep, you're making your whole team look bad with pre-kindergarten level of argumentation. The State department may pull your funding soon....
Wtf are you talking about? Ukraine is up to 1.8mil casualties, no matter how you cut it its a whole lot of fighting! Just becouse he is not falling for the western provokations it does not make him weak, its the West that is in full panic! If anyone is weak as hell its those western loudmouths hiding behind their proxies, barking chihuahuas! Quit yapping and declare war on Russia, put up or shut up!
1) How has that solved Russia's strategic problems?
2) How is it a win for Russia given that most of those people are ethnic Russians?
3) Has it moved the frontline substantially?
4) What relevance does it have to Russia being under attack? Russia is under attack by the US and Europe, and it has not fired a single shot back in response. The Serbs did more in 1999...
Russia is solving the strategic problem by annihilating the best proxy western nations could muster with billions of dollars invested in weapons and training! Nato is being demilitarised as we speak! Yes unfortunately many of those killed are ethnic russian but they have been poisoned by russophobic propaganda and used as a tool just like the green goblin maskerading as the president of Ukraine. Those not hostile to Russia surrender at the very first opportunity to do so and joint the fight on the russian side! Movement of frontline? What part of attritional warfare dont you understand? If the russian military has taken favourable positions they gladly let the Ukrainian army send loads of troops to uncuccessfully counterattack losing huge amount of personnel hitting a wall of fire, sometimes its better to work around their fortified areas, cut of supply and put them in to a boiler where they can be targeted suffering huge losses without even seeing a single russian soldier! All that western yapping is pure panic, they dont have the manpower nor the means to meet the russian army, the would get slaughtered like you've never seen before! Why do you think after almost 4 years none of the European chihuahuas never actually joined in to fight officially? Poles lost about 10.000 so called mercenaries already, we all know most of them were actual polish soldiers sent by the polish government, loads of German, US and UK "mercs" getting sent back in pieces. The West lost this war long ago their ego just cant let them acknowledge they lost to a "gas station maskerading as a country "
lol. As a Russian, i can say, that we absolutely don't care what westerners think about us, the only thing that matters is what we think about ourselves and about our country. If you think that Putin is humiliating our country, then you are very stupid. We are now proud of our country and confident in it more than ever and everyone now see how pathetic the west is.
And what you think it is irrelevant to the question whether he is humiliating the country or not.
He is, and that is an objective fact.
If you want to be proud of Russia, you want to see a Russia that fights back. It has the capabilities, unlike all the other countries the US has been beating up on. But it is demeaning itself to the same level because of the spinelessness of Putin and the elites around him
That's really funny. You walked into a classic Putin put down without having the wit to realize he had ridiculed mindless trolls.
As Putin correctly pointed out, Russia is defeating all of NATO in Ukraine and making steady advances on all fronts. As he said, if that makes Russia a "paper tiger", what does it make NATO?
Doh. I can see that Putin being so much smarter than the foul and debased West makes you really angry.
Smart enough to not elicit a full court press response by a deranged NATO and probable nuclear escalation?
The cost/benefit analysis of various reaponse options is finely calculated - I can see the utility in Russia calmly absorbing the sucker punches while it grinds forward and prepares the knockout blow.
Much smarter than you, looks like. Russian cities are not being bombed 24/7. I live in one. For that matter, not even cities very close to the front lines (as in a mere 20 miles away) are not being bombed 24/7.
There are, indeed, a handful of terrorist incidents when the occasional nazi drone gets through air defenses. But the fatalities and even injuries are completely negligible. They don't come remotely close to the fatalities and injuries that Russia experienced from Islamic terrorists. In fact, they don't even come close to the fatalities and injuries that *Parisians* experienced from Islamic terrorism.
They don't go over my head at all, they're just irrelevant. The rulers of rhe West could not care less.
In WWII, we heard the Japanese insist that their spiritual superiority would make them victorious, not withstanding allied wealth and power. That did not end well.
I dont speak Russian - and apart from having been to Moscow once know little about Russias cold war history .But, I do like Mr Putins reference to Russian literature and creativity and his linking of that with his
nations power. Which is not something i can see the British Prime Minister Kier Starmer doing. Despite the wealth of cultural heritage on these islands which once ruled 90% of the World.
Wow, Europe is going full retards. I think at this moment most sane people had turned into supporting total annihilation of rogue European regimes, strikes on military sites or from wherever the command is given would do the job. Then let the European do the rest clean up.
What is retarded about it? Is Putin going to do anything to them?
No, you heard him (or perhaps didn't) today in Sochi. He wants to be friends with the West, no matter how many Russians they kill and how much of Russian industry they destroy.
Oh come on. This is blatant trolling and has been all along. They are trying to stampede Russia into a ceasefire because of fear. They have nothing and can do nothing. They wouldn't risk actual war with Russia because they have insufficient military force to actually defend themselves with, never mind attack Russia.
Ignoring this on the international stage, and reassuring the Russian public seems like the right thing to do. Continue the SMO without this as a consideration.
Maybe never. To reindustrialize you have to have some basic productivity, and for the EU that means export markets. But they're no longer competitive in export markets because their energy costs are too high without access to low cost Russian energy.
The European economic miracle was powered by low cost Soviet, and then Russian, energy. Without that they can't run that play again.
Europeans also no longer have the work ethic and basic education they need to compete against countries like China in export markets overall or high tech markets. Chugging out women's fashions and Italian handbags isn't a path to reindustrialization.
Finally, Europe doesn't have the resources to power reindustrialization given they've cut themselves off from the closest, most efficient source of resources: Russia.
Europe rose to power despite a paucity of resources by stealing them from the rest of the world through colonialization. But that era is over. Not even Niger is going to let the French steal uranium from them at prices far below market, and the days when the UK could suck trillions of pounds in wealth from India are long gone.
These days Europe has to buy the resources it needs at fair market prices, and they don't have the money or the cooperative attitude required to beat the Chinese at that. The Europeans still think they can threaten countries into selling them resources below market. The Chinese offer to build ports and airports and hospitals and develop mines in a fair partnership. If you were a developing country, which would you choose? Your former colonial master or a true friend looking to do business in a mutually beneficial partnership?
While you diagnose their current state very well, I'm trying to keep an open mind here about their chances. Objectively, in 1917, would you have considered the bulk of Russian/Soviet industry to be a likely outcome? It happened, but not without trauma for the society in general. You could have said the same thing about China in the 1950s and 1960s. The totalitarian government they are attempting to create in Europe may figure out a path for them to accomplish this goal, but much would have to change and the timeframe is going to be extended. "Can it hold together?" remains an unanswered question.
If they changed their mindset about green energy, imagine what you could do with all that lignite? You don't even need to imagine - remember what things were like back in the Warsaw Pact days. True, the air was yucky, but there are things we could do about that today, scrubbers etc. I'm reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's circa 1991 line about the modern day Czech lands, "Inhaling on a cigarette cleanses the lungs". They also have oil resources they could plumb. I'm not convinced they are bereft of energy, they had a NIMBY attitude that caused them to outsource the energy extraction to Russia. For that matter, outsourcing all resource extraction elsewhere. Reversing that would take decades, but maybe that's what will need to happen.
I won't rule out an economic miracle. But I also won't rule out stagnation and defeat. I suppose we get to watch to see if either is true. Bottom line, of course, is that they are no real military threat until they get the sinews of an industrial economy back operating again.
Getting some soldiers that aren't fat and/or transgender would help, too. The NATO forces are worse than the US in this regard.
I can't respond to (or even read) messages in threads where I blocked the author. So, while I saw the blurb of the reply you wrote, I only saw the first paragraph perhaps. The last thing I read in the blurb was "The Europeans are already at..." and since I have insufficient context i'm not going to reply halfassed. :-) There was sufficient context to reply re: ad hominem.
Until my final comment about her being a narc, which I do believe, I wasn't engaging in any intentional ad hominem. There are a lot of dark triad personalities on the internet. It seems to be an irresistible lure for same. I have a nose for them - long experience, life experience (my father and stepfather were also narcs, as was one of my wives). Largely the reason I got involved in recovery about 3 1/2 years ago. Codependence, of which one aspect is people pleasing. Anyway, hanging around crazy people makes you crazy.
One of my recovery principles is something called JADE - do not justify, argue, defend or explain. I block people the moment they appear toxic, without explanation. I don't owe anyone a relationship of any sort. I also break up with women instantaneously as soon as they show toxicity. I'm breaking my JADE principle to explain to you here the why because I want to, specifically you.
My own weakness in this regard - i'd been tolerating crazy people for 50 years, including in my youth - makes my reactions very preemptive and i'm constantly working to somehow achieve a more normal balance in this regard. I still do weekly sessions with my sponsor (3h on Monday nights) to try to improve.
Objectively I am going to say that she was being emotional instead of thinking about the situation with a realpolitik viewpoint. It was really easy to get upset at the other power in the incidents I noted - Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc, but the reality is the reality of these situations. The proxy war aspects of Ukraine are not worth superpower conflict and not worth taking a L on the SMO to respond to. Putin wants to win here, the SMO is the chosen ground for the victory and he's not letting go to respond to distractions. This is a win ultimately. He's correct. That is what I meant by saying I am a pragmatist. The sore feelings will be addressed post-SMO victory in adequate fashion. People will regret what they did here ultimately. Just not today - "Revenge is a dish best served cold".
Western europe will have to move their planes towards the countries bordering Ukraine in order to have enough range... but once they do that, they become sitting ducks for Russian missiles which will come faster than they can react/take-off. So if there's going to be that level of escalation, Russia has to be patient and wait for the west to bring their war materials closer to them for easier and effective annihilation. The west really doesn't have any real cards to play in that sense, except for terror tactics ...
No they aren't. They are relying on Russia to not expand the theater. It is in the Russian interest to do so. The pants shitting in European quarters if they had to deal with the Russian attack they are imagining would be shocking in its fury. No sewage system could contain it.
Relying on Russia not to expand the theater or respond to their antics IS risking actual war. They are, in fact, engaging in small - "salami slices" they call it - acts of actual war on the assumption that Russia will not respond. We all know that every bomb that lands in Russia was guided by western technology and intelligence. If someone did anything like that to the US you'd see how much of an act of war we'd consider it in no time.
Do you think Russian (or for that matter Soviet) leadership is ever truly irrational? Even Stalin was quite rational in his dealings with others. That Russia will enforce its interests is the safest bet in the world. Russia has no interest in a larger war. The price it exacts for this behavior now, on the other hand, will be apropos. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
This seems to be a response to me, but it doesn't address anything I said. I was speaking about risking war, not Russia's actual response. I said nothing of "irrational," Russian or otherwise.
I will say this, though, Russia is, imo, a "larger" war, one involving Syria (until it was destroyed), Iran, China, Venezuela... a world war in other words, happening now.
And revenge is a dish best served by those still alive to serve it, though I think revenge is not currently a significant topic.
I've clearly made the point that there is no risk as long as Russia is acting rationally. Which it is, and always does. It would be an irrational act to strike at the West for supplying weapons to Ukraine, in the same way it would have been irrational for the Soviet Union to strike the US for supplying the Afghans in the 1980s, or for that matter hitting the Soviet Union for supplying the Vietnamese back in that era.
If Russia were truly in any of those wars you cite, they would have been fought rather than conceded. Ergo, Russia has no interest in anything but the SMO at the moment. The SMO is a Russian critical interest, the rest are peripheral at best.
Russia has no fear for its existence while it maintains a nuclear arsenal.
I consider this forum interesting because of many intelligent comments. ⁷ Unfortunately there is a gradual increase of aggression and insults. It would be good to oppose an argument without trying to humiliate others.
You are bang on with your 'salami slice' observation: the excruciatingly thin slices of NATO aggression have developed into thick hunks of direct attacks on Russias nuclear triad equoment - every NATO action in Ukraine and Russia risks war, but Putin is determined to keep it contained. Smart.
Hard to say. We'll have to see how it all plays out. After the US experience in SE Asia would you have expected Vietnam to be a significant trading partner with the US? (which it is) Times change, people adjust to the new realities as what happens in the here and now takes precedence over what has been. While true it won't go back to before 2014 or 2022 those really weren't great -- and history never repeats anyway. When the dust settles things may well be better than they were then. If the nukes don't fly....
That is true, although it's noteworthy to point out in that region they're Buddhists, those wars became part of their liberation founding myth (on the tail of French Indochina etc) and the communism which followed didn't respond to their needs (indeed, fighting continued with China later), while we in the West have gone all-in with such spectacles as TQIA+, which is the antithesis to the Orthodox Church in Russia. My point is just that it's going to be difficult to rebuild bridges, which is something we're all taking for granted and perhaps we ought to start thinking about it. And I agree, if nukes were to fly then we might be talking a couple of generations (for instance, the animosity still today between China and Japan re: WW2).
I meant if the nukes fly there will only be a rebuilding from the ashes of a planet after a world-wide conflagration. A bit more than a few generations....
Europe certainly can't take on Russia and win - to have any chance, they need the US onboard. The current panic has to be because Ukraine is on its last legs. Shipping more arms - which are going to be embezzled and sold abroad - won't cut it. What is needed are men to fight. Or should I say cannon fodder, to deplete the Russian arms' stocks. Europe will only pitch-up when Russia runs out of ammo. In the meantime, the plan appears to be to fast-track Ukraine into the EU by breaking all the membership rules, then presumably offering up NATO membership by the back door. This nonsense will only stop when Western politicians are made to look at the pile of shit they've created, and their noses are rubbed in it.
Ukraine in the EU will be a disaster. The Ukranian Mafia will be the biggest organised crime outfit in the world. Meanwhile, French farmers will be suicidal. The whole idea is preposterous. 🤡 🌎
so awful that Europe and the US and Canada and on and on - are disgracing themselves - makes me ashamed. I wonder if the jewish Israeli firsters were not in control of the US whether any of this would be happening. I just finished a book about Dimona, written in the 1980s - and the USSR was Israel's greatest enemy besides the Palestinians. who weren't really any threat if the Jews had just been reasonable. But the USSR was arming Israel's neighbours ( Egypt and Syria ) and watching the development of the illegal nuclear program.
Maybe someone has shown Ursula Peter Sellers movie "The Mouse that Roared", is she is trying for a reprise but with a country with more heft these days than the United States.
More likely she watches Dr strangelove and fantasies about being the US president played by Sellers : Merkin Muffley. Both first and last names seem appropriate in her case.
A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Russia now responds to what the west does, not what it huffs and puffs away at what it will do. And no, Russia is not going to give the west what it wants right now- a dirty cease fire. Or failing that some lurid escalation that knocks its own allies off the fence to press it to do just that.
The immediate western european fear is of a vast tide of refugees heading from Ukraine their way over the winter. Russia does not have to fight western Europe directly to bring it down.... as is already obviously to those with eyes to see.
And yet Europe seems to be quaking in its boots that Russia is gearing up to take the whole place. Do you pay attention to the news?
They can't even take Pokrovsk - 15 months - but any day now.
New troll enters the chat.
Who has noticed that the worse the beatdown NATO receives the more troll activity there is? They are breeding like flies.
The troll speaks....
NATO: The US’s Frankenstein.
Quick... Kill it with fire 🚀🚀🚀
Poetically enough, the monster marched to his own doom into the frozen Arctic sea at the end of the book...
And as always Evil will never win in this world, no matter how strong and powerful it may look.
Because it consumes itself.
“Evil cannot create anything new. They can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.”
Tolkein
The forces of making and unmaking exist thankfully in a balance that can only be tipped in the direction of forward movement, growth, evolution, not into chaos and nothingness. Which is another way of saying, build the world or destroy yourself. But that does not work the other way round. Trump has that lesson to learn.
good - the jew will eventually be defeated...
Yep
NATO - Negro and Tranny Org
Actually, the United States is NATO, hence the United States is the monster. Dr. Frankenstein is the Deep State running the show. Probably why Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize so badly. Trump wants to prove he is still human, while doing inhumane deeds (genocide, lying, cheating, two-timing, cold-heartedness, mean-spirited, home-wrecking loser type stuff). Do not all of God's creations feel, have conscious, morals, and "stuff?"
NATO, Snow White and the 31 Dwarfs. When I see TACO, his expressions, his gestures, I have the impression that he has his own membership in LGBTQ+. So he is Snow White and as we see, he gets screwed by the dwarves.
Actually, the United States is NATO, so the United States is the monster. Dr. Frankenstein is the Deep State who wants to bring the monster to life. No wonder Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize so badly. The monster somehow needs to prove to the world that he is not a lying, cheating, two-timing, cold-hearted, mean-spirited, home-wrecking, warmongering loser. The monster still needs to show it is humane, even if the only avenue available to the monster is through inhumane acts. "Even though I am a monster, do I not feel?"
https://youtu.be/1qNeGSJaQ9Q
War is likely to break out in Europe and I am trying to prepare my organization for it as it’s part of my job. More colleagues are starting to agree with this tragic outlook than ever before and see the increasing war craze of European leaders for what it is. Utter madness.
you mean more colleagues are starting to see if for what it is - ? or more colleagues are starting to sound the war drums too? My unerstanding is that Europe is broke and needs war to print more money. The crooks at the EU have stolen all the money and given it to Ukraine - God only knows why - maybe kickbacks ? I bet Von Der Layan is one of the richest women in the world, but not even that satisfies her. Not even sure you can blame her on the Jews, although that weird outfit she wore - that masonic cape designed like Schwab's - makes me remember that the Jewsis Kabbalists are running Europe too.
More colleagues are agreeing that Europe is driving for war. But the majority being German only reads Bild, so only repeat what’s told by that propaganda outlet. So war it is.
un bon boche est un boche mort
Are you a Kabyle Westerner?
Try conscripting and mobilizing German youth. See how that plays? I've spent a lot of time in Germany this past year. Forty per cent of the population in Germany and France would probably welcome a Russian invasion and Regime Change in Paris and Berlin.
I know I would. If the Russian army landed on the English coast, I’d go straight there and join it.
in the USA too
Correct sir. General Bone Spurs and that creepy Corporal Brylcreem, lecturing the mucketymucks at Quantico?! If there was any spine in that crew they'd be organizing a coup during "Happy Hour" that very evening. I'm thinking the top brass doesn't appreciate being lectured to by a sniveling VN era draft dodger. What a leaderless society we've devolved into. Bigly sad.
The Ukraine SMO has evolved into an electronic and drone war. I believe it will be trivially easy to convince 2 generations of gamer boys to take their World of Warcraft skills and play for real, as long as they can do so from the safety of a reinforced concrete bunker.
Cut off their access to their bank accounts. They'll fold.
its pathetic. still watching television
Europeans like being slaves. Most authority-trusting, rules-following sheep on the planet.
no - the jew has put them in a prison. name the jew or oppose the non-white subhuman invasion caused by jews and go to jail, yet pajeet rape gangs roam free. listen to jew puppet Starmer and his frenetic concern for two disgusting jews yet total lack of concern for two white girls being killed...
yeah that's sickening
peaceful people. Cultural. But I'm thinking historically. There are massive protests for Palestine though - that gives me hope
The people who invented colonialism and gave us racism and imperialism are peaceful?!?
What happened was that europe was relegated to a backwater after WWII and they decided that this chest thumping "The World Belongs To The Strong!" schtick isn't nearly so much fun when you're on the receiving end, whereupon europeans morphed into the biggest metrosexuals on the planet.
For that matter, european strategy since 1917 can be summarized as "Get the Americans to do their fighting for them!"
that's the Brits. Pax Britannica Pax Americana Pax Judaica
Well, French do mutiny from time to time. The US needs to outsource protests to France and prosecution/execution of the corrupt to China
And those mutinies accomplished what, exactly?
Used to get the elite to guillotines...
I had dinner with a good German friend, an entrepreneur and subcontractor for EADS. I told him that he had aged considerably since last year and that it was not a Russian move, but rather a Russian media and press issue. For him, the AFD is far-right and fascist, and he remains stuck when I ask him which traditional parties are banning candidates and parties. What are these parties whose members and supporters, almost all of whom had Nazi affiliations?
stop conflating the good guys ("nazi") with the jew who runs the "west".
Stop confusing yourself with intelligence
If europe wants to print more dough, they will do so, war or no.
EU squandered people's pension plans and want war so they'd not be found out, and France embezzled Russian funds - out of $71 billion, accountable for what - just $21 billion? Once the war stops, the legal proceedings begin
If that were the case, the eu can print money. That said, $50b is basically a rounding errorm
Know an old saying, "when borrowing, it's someone else's money, when returning it's your own?"
Government borrowing doesn't work like that, since governments (and central banks)can print money at will if need be.
God only knows why - maybe bribes? So I am God, thank, because I have been saying this all along, the Biden family did not invent money laundering, it has existed in the EU forever and he was the sole reason for its creation.
If whatever you are doing generates GDP that suits the western model. After all actually making stuff, let alone stuff anyone can buy even if they might want to, is so last century.
"War is likely to break out in Europe..."
I hope that you are wrong and that this warmongering is all bark and no bite.
True.. If a person is starving and you tell them to go to war, they'll tell you to back off..
I beg to differ. This has nothing to do with people starving. Nobody is starving today in Europe. The reason is that the warmongers know very well that they have no chance against Russia without the backing of the USA. Therefore, they restrict themselves to barking and war-dancing around the fire.
True.. But the point I wanted to make was that if a person is homeless and is without a job, what makes it posible for him/her to go far away and fight an enemy they haven't seen before? I follow this on the internet I confess.. (from Johannesburg)
Without USA support. If Russia is a paper tiger, the USA is a single-celled bacterium made of tracing paper.
Jawohl! Myself are whipping up some good Bernaise to accompany my Sirloin Steak.
My lust for meatjuice went up a few clicks with this article.
Do not credit the Swiss with that sauce. It is of French origin. Bearnese. :-)
eh…did not. The ”jawohl” is German. Bernaise french. Suisse is german, french and italian speaking. Myself speaking three languages - its Europe.
Of course I don't know you, your nation or organization, but I agree war is coming to Europe. However I think the war you're going to see and suffer from is much more likely to be bricks and bottles thrown in the streets than cruise missiles hitting airports and tanks rolling across the borders.
Precisely why the Cabal is dementedly screeching about Russia. Consciously or unconsciously, it is nothing but diversionary activity. Der Primat den Aussenpolitik, as Bismarck termed it 160 years ago.
I think you are correct, the decision was already made and Brian Berletic was right all along. The rest is just chimp posturing to create hype for a unwanted and unneeded brother wars.
A futile war against Russia without the involvment of the US may break out but also, there may be a war of West Europeans nations against each other.. There are sharp divisions in Europe and the conflict among temselves should not be ruled out.. This is a likely scenario which many don't seem to be aware of... Take for instance the rift between Hungary , Slovakia and the rest.. Europe is the heart of world wars.. (from Johannesburg)
I suggest everyone in Europe find Strange Defeat by Marc Bloch. Consider France and UK were far more stable and prepared for war in Spring 1940!
Then and now, the plan was ever always only to get the Americans to ride to their rescue.
This plan is progressing apace.
War, between who vs who? Russia vs. Russia? Do you really think the dwarves will show up on the battlefield? Make an effort, if war were declared by the dwarves you would see lines of hundreds of kilometers of fleeing people in every member country of the
Chill out dude. There will be no war in Europe because Europe does not have the capability.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad
So that they destroy themselves, and the hand of God in it all, is occluded.
Unlike the Danaans, the west doesn't have ten thousand ships. And, unlike the Danaans, the Trojan boogeyman in the east didn't steal Helen. She's still back home, being groped by undocumented foreigners, who her inept husband insists (in his cuckolded hubris) they need for "economic growth".
Well put
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."
The hysteria of the Danes in particular surprises me. I thought that the Danes were levelheaded, no-nonsense kind of people. Cool Scandinavians, you know.
As one reader once suggested somewhere: there must be some stuff in the water of the Baltic Sea that affects the inhabitants of the bordering countries. Just think of the Poles and the Estonians, and don't forget the Finns. They all seem to have lost their marbles lately.
Me too. To be honest, just because it's in the papers doesn't mean it's true.
I have lived there. For cool you mean a monolitic hord of flag waving sheep happy to not have and opinion on anything and just repeat the accepted narrative. I dont have data but I would bet the Danish were thr most covid compliant sheep in the world. The Scandinavians are all client states of the anglosaxons, have access to their the financial capital markets and very much finance (Norsk sovereign fund) a lot of dirty DS imperial shit. They are all being used as pawns.
The Danes went absolutely insane during Covid.
My colleague, a middle-aged man weighing around around 140 kilos, was sitting at the lunch table and blaming un-injected people like myself for causing the hospitals to overload. While he was eating a cheese burger and drinking a Coca Cola. The other people at the table were all quiet. You could tell that they all agreed with him, even though it is people like him who fill up our hospitals with their lifestyle.
I remember when the Danish government finally removed the mask restrictions - but only from Monday onwards. So the Danes were still wearing masks the whole weekend in public transport. And Monday morning they all took them off. As if the danger automatically dissappeared that Monday.
So many other examples, but I won't bore you with them. This is where I absolutely lost hope for Denmark.
To their credit, it has to be said, that from what I read in the comments on Social Media, very few people are taking this drone thing seriously. Many blame the Prime Minister for escalating the conflict.
But these people are probably still a minority. Because amongst my friends and colleagues, only the narrative exists.
The Swedes not so much. They defied the quarantine, masks and distancing folderol.
I actually lived in Sweden at that time. It was paradise in comparison.
Remember when I took the train from Sweden to Denmark. For those who don't know, the train goes across a bridge that takes around 10-15 minutes to get from Sweden to Denmark. The absurd thing was that nobody wore masks the first 5 minutes of the journey, and then just as soon as we had crossed half of the bridge, everyone had to wear their masks, because we were now officially in Danish territory.
Clown world.
Same deal with England and Wales IIRC.
None of it made any sense, yet the blind and dumb sheep, conformed like true Bolsheviks.
I was a gamer on LOTRO for about two years and one of the greatest blockheads I ever chanced to meet in a Discord voice channel was a Danish engineer, so proud of his education yet he could not question or doubt what he was told by 'authorities'.
He often complained about lag and screen freeze while I was suffering no such thing and when I asked him how much RAM he was running he didn't know then got offended, when I pressed him about his processor and internet bandwidth. "I've got a DELL, it is the best!" he said. Every other gamer I know of discusses such things quite often without anger.
The Danish fellow never said so but I could tell he hated me from then on. Especially when it started to become obvious that though he had been playing that game for over a decade, I played my one avatar better than he played his dozens. My supposedly inferior class of avatar hit a critical strike like lighting. I killed a raid boss and several lieutenants with a DPS strike in the billions.
I now know that though I didn't mean to, I attacked his ego. He had been a reasonably decent teammate but from then on whenever I was in the group he played emotionally and let his anger affect his teamwork. All because he was ignorant of his machine's specifications and just how the game stats worked. He used the computer reasonably well but emotions and computers don't mix. LOTRO was the last MMO game I played and it, along with the other two over my own decade of play, taught me a little something of human nature.
The Danes and for that matter all of Europe are suffering a massive inferiority complex despite their decent level of development and recovery from the Great Patriotic War. Europe was entirely defeated by Nazi Germany and the Russians, with some assistance from the UK and US, defeated Hitler. US troops are their occupiers and the only security they have due to cradle to the grave socialism devouring their military strength. The governments which are destroying them have made themselves the only crutch the ignorant can lean upon so they obey the edicts and do not question.
Now their governments are demanding they stand and take pride in themselves but they have nothing of which to be proud, they are sheep and proud of their weakness as they follow the dinner bell. Their leaders have nearly insufferable hauteur from a fake pride whose origin is the worship of self due to ego and atheism.
All the Western nations, including the US, have no solid foundation on which to stand save for the shifting sands of fiat currencies which are crumbling before our eyes. This is due to the deficit spending and fractional reserve banking destroying all our fiat currencies equally together so that the US and European currencies seem strong. They are all taking a dive into deep waters where they are starting to drown.
The lower income citizens became aware of this first. The Eastern/Southern alliance is busy trying to distant themselves from the looming disaster as every fiat currency in history has failed and was destroyed by hyperinflation. No not one remains for any real period of time. A lifetime is elderly in the lives of fiat currencies. More than a century is ancient.
That is why the European and indeed all central banks are busy buying gold and silver instead of US bonds as the reserve currency scheme requires to survive. In this way they can strike their protectors and cut off their noses to spite their faces. Their wounded pride and fear will help bring the very disaster upon them which they dread.
The Don can only delay for a short time, not stop, the inevitable fall of the dollar and the other fiat currencies tied to it. Because the gargantuan debt of US bonds coming due will not sell as the present establishment knows is necessary, the end is drawing ever closer in a tsunami of dollars buying up all the gold and silver on the COMEX. Real Americans never trust a government and are buying the Great Commodity also. The dollar and all the rest took their mortal wound the day Tricky Dicky Nixon took it off the gold standard to avoid raising taxes to pay for Vietnam. The rest of the story is the dying throes and attempts to stand as Western fiscal and monetary civilization falls.
Cryptocurrency is just another fiat currency and like them all a Ponzi Scheme. Crypto is obviously good in good times, a fair-weather friend, but has not yet been tested under fire which is the failure of the legal tenders upon which it depends. If it survives the fiscal and perhaps political fall of Western civilization it may be a new legal tender created outside of governments.
It amazes me that the autocratic governments have allowed anyone to print/create currency save themselves. We've not seen a determined run on the Bank of Crypto by someone with real power. Perhaps it is stronger than the governments? Power is the loyalty or obedience of those willing to kill at your command. Money is only influence just like propaganda.
The evil Washington Empire of which Europe is a part is the snake Ouroboros and is devouring itself, with some minor help from the rest of the world. Its death throes are to be feared by all within its power.
God Bless Us All
One of the best films of all time is in my opinion Dies Irae, by a Danish director, whose name I don't remember.
It is a profound analysis of the northern European way of becoming completely hysterical all together, reinforcing each another's loss of control of their thoughts and actions.
Now that I think about it, I remember most of the workers were Lithuanians, some Ukranians and Poles too. Danemark is a Baltic state, they surely have a lot of investments there, other than cheap labour extraction. The Baltic used to be a Scandinavian sea before the Russians and the Poles had access to it. They had also many oversees colonies before the English assymilated them, together with the Dutch. So they became sort of vassallzed subjects of the British, who in reciprocity let them access to their global finance system and guarantee their security, as Denmark is for the UK a protecting barrier against Russia and Germany (Skajerak battle, Jutland battle) and can, like now, close the straits if necessary.
"Good times create weak people"
I studies in Sweden and all of my Scandinavian schoolmates born in 1980s or later were spoilt brat mental weaklings.
"J'étudie en Suède et tous mes camarades de classe scandinaves nés dans les années 1980 ou plus tard étaient des enfants gâtés et faibles mentalement." En gros, comme tous ceux après les années 1980.
Haha, fair enough. :D
But really, it was postgrad studies, so we were a mix bag of students. If I focus on Scandinavians, those born before 1980s were completely different.
It was management programme and one of our lecturers told us that they had to be hypersensitive with this demographic and apply specific managerial approaches.
Maybe these "cool Scandinavians" remember what Zhukov said: "We have liberated Europe from fascism, but they never forgive us for it?
Kaja Kallas, declared in September 2025 that it was entirely new to her that Russia and China referred to a shared past as fighters against fascism and militarism in the second world war. Russia and China wanted to rewrite history, and the world believed them, according to Kallas.
One could dismiss this statement by one of the EU’s highest representatives as confused or uninformed. What is interesting, however, is that it encountered no objection from the heads of state and government of Germany, France, Poland and Italy. One must therefore understand Kallas’s historical judgment as an expression of an EU policy that seeks to rewrite history in order to flank the preparation for war with historical politics.
The western imperialists love Orwell, the tormentor/programmer at the same time. O’Brien and Winston were different sides to Orwell himself, a collection of experiences described in his “dystopia/reality” about the future. We can see his contradictory concepts every day:"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." Don't we?
Quite. 'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’
A contrary view would be that Europe was then destroyed by socialism / communism, which the "fascists" were trying to prevent..
Europe was destroyed by the JEW - socialism, capitalism matters not
I'm not convinced of the "evil fascist" narrative any longer.
The Bolsheviks (and their backers) were allegedly made up of a certain demographic and their horrendous brutality was so evil, it's needed someone to stand firm against it.
That is so true. The bolsheviks were (are) the Jew. Their holidays celebrate genocide and they murdered the czar and his family in a jew ritual (same as how they slaughter animals in the most painful way possible (kosher slaughter)
The Jew is the disease and the national socialists are the cure. Read uncle A’s book.
It beg to differ. It has nothing to do with "fascism," and what Kaja Kallas says doesn't matter.
In my view, the main reason why so many of our politicians, journalists and other intellectuals in the West, with their ultra-liberal ethics, hate Russia is that Russia has become the last main bulwark of traditional European civilization.
These liberals have an ally in Big Money, salivating to lay hands on Russia's riches again, as they were allowed to under Jeltsin.
Last but not least, there are the Zionists, who lost control over Russia during and after WWII and want to take revenge.
It cannot be put more rightly.
Thank you.
"We have liberated Europe from fascism,,," and what did it get them - total subservience to the jew
We should add Hollywood as a factor (or the degeneracy caused by
the entertainment industry in general), and also that Germany still remains
a US occupied territory.
Speaking as a dutch person: my government resembles a death cult.
They mainly represent asylum seekers, and busy themselves with
endless threats and security measures. (Mencken's hobgoblins)
Their vantage point has shifted from network corruption to systemic corruption.
(the erection of enormous slush funds that started with the Covid Recovery Fund - to be picked clean with minimal oversight)
Those who rewrite history do not seem to realize that their descendants will be ignorant of history and doomed to repeat, or rhyme, its mistakes. National socialism was socialism, just like the other great parties controlling today's Europe. 1984 was the beginning not the end of Orwell's novel of protest which fools have taken as a textbook to be followed. It is Greenburgism.
God Bless Us All
I am currently reading Zhukovs memories and you mention about western ignorance or contempt towards Russia is a purposed slandering campaign. Take the battle of Jaljin-Gol, for instance. As Zhukov puts it, it was a decisive and catastrophic Japanese defeat of the best Imperial cream de la cream troops, so much so that the Imperial High Command decided that they werent able to go against the soviets and turned focus to Southern Asia and the Pacific for the raw materials they needed. This battle is hardly known by western audiences. Even crooked Wikipedia accounts only 8.000 casualties for 9.500 soviets. However, it was a total encirclement and anhilation of the Japanese corp, as they wouldnt surrender when offered. The soviets claimed 60.000 Japanese casualties. Only in the first phase of the battle, before the encirclement, 10.000 Japanese troops were destroyed. The soviets used enourmous amounts of materials and troops. This battle was so decisive that the soviets decided to focus on mechanized armour divisions. By 1941, they were producing 900 tanks A MONTH. This was the first victory of Zhukov as a Commander and determined his rising star as the red army most capable commander in chief. Finally, It convinced Stalin that the Japs wont attack in Siberia again which could deplace the Siberian divisions to the Moscow front, to win the decisive battle of Moscow in which the Germans retreated 150 km off Moscow. I cant think in a more decisive event. However, the West never wanted to acknowledge de capabilities of the Russian army, side-mentioning Janjil Gol as a small skirmish. The Russians defeated Napoleon and Hitler, occupying both Paris and Berlin. Slandering the Russians is still the goal.
Yoni, thank for your comment.
I expect that stuff in the Danish press is just a big balloon of hot air. I doubt even northern west Europeans are that gullible any more.
Remember the Danes did launch a thousand boats, Viking boats.
True.. I grew up hearing an unfair assertion that we Africans can't think for ourselves. But the stupidity, corruption and warmongering that we are seeing in Europe, the UK and the US is beyond belief, and is nothing like we have ever seen on the African continent in modern history.. I wonder how such imbeciles managed to come here and steal everything from us..
" Cool Scandinavians, you know."
All my great grandparents came to US shores from Norway in the 1880s. Glad they left.
Col MacGregor told the Norwegian Prof, Glenn Diesen, recently that the Norwegians were especially rabid and straining at the leash about the necessity of going after Russia. The dumb shites. The know-nothing quislings. All that North Sea abundance and you see the need to go up against Russia. I wonder how that might end?!
Simple. Russian indecision and impotence have caused NATO to smell blood.
Specifically Putin's indecision. It is purely Putin's decision in this matter. The military wants to escalate and destroy Ukraine.
I have written before - the only way to win this game of "escalation" is to seem/be unhinged. If US strikes Moscow, strike NYC or Washington in response and say "it wasn't us, it was the Ukrainian rebels using our weapons" or "it was the venezuelans"
Every action should follow Newton's Third Law - Every Action has an equal and opposite reaction. If Putin followed this rule, he'd be in a much better place.
Well, none other than Ramzan Kadryov said in 2022 that if the Kremlin would "let the army be the army", they could win the war in five days.
To be fair, the US would respond brutally and decisively and wouldn't give a rat's ass about any justification proffered.
Sure. It doesn’t matter though, the Russian response should be equally brutal - even up to an including direct war with the US. That is the only way to win this thing unfortunately.
This could have been avoided if Putin led a sane foreign policy and didn’t create comprador elites.
In reality - who knows what US response would be. Everyone thought the same of Russia - but now we know its "Red lines" mean nothing
I agree. The threats are raining down on Russia. Putin needs to act. Step #1: Nothing larger than a pickup truck comes into Ukraine from any road or rail line. No planes can land that are not obviously passenger carriers. Nothing flies. AWACs and their ilk driven away from the borders.
Yes! Put Oreshnic's and Iskanders in Venezuela. I can hear Vlad explaining it to Trump.
"Yes President Trump. It was Russian theoretical scientists that discovered principals that led Russians material scientists to discover new materials that were then developed by Russian engineers into systems built and assembled by Russian workmen. These systems were then transported by Russian military and fall under the direction of central Russian leadership who will use Russian satellites and other reconnaissance assets to provide the Russian command and control systems to program the targets inside the United States. The orders to fire will be in Russian and carried out by Russian solders. BUT I want you to remember - it is Venezuela attacking you!"
"I just love these games you Americans teach us. We would never have figured this out on our own!"
Use Anglo games against the Anglo. That is the only language that they understand
A fine example of this: the Berlin "Love Parades" (1989 - 2006),
and Merkel announcing "Wir schaffen das." in 2015.
A quote I always wrestle with.
First I ask, Do you believe you are one Divine Creation? If not, the rest don't matter.
If so, why do we give so much divine power to one that will destroy us.
It is the ignorance of ego that binds humanity to see who they truly are.
Spiritually "god" has no more greater power than you do.
I wish they would just do it already instead of running their annoying little mouths all the time. I'm so sick of hearing these European politicians talk like they actually have a credible military to fight Russia with.
the more talk, the less credibility.
Quite. 'Scream demented threats for years on end and carry a pink plastic drinking straw’, as Teddy Roosevelt didn't say.
In USD terms, the Polish economy has grown by close to 20% this year - all due to exchange rates. Tusk must be proud. Lol
Imitation of freedom, imitation of values, imitation of economy, imitation of army...
Well, you can't know that, so I'll mention it here, as far as Poland is concerned.
If Poland is doing so well, why do about 35% of all Poles work as guest workers in Germany?
In Germany, you'll find almost 100% ONLY Poles on large and normal construction sites.
The construction industry in Germany will come to a standstill if all Poles stop working and go home.
But
In Poland itself, some things are like they were in 1965. For example, 85% of all houses are still heated with brown coal, which, by the way, is evident every winter in that coal for private households is only delivered on a ration basis.
.
A Polish foreman here at the Amazon construction site, or rather one of many foremen, about 32 years old, told me that he would stay in Germany for another two years on assembly, then he would have finished building his third home at home to rent out... so much for the prices and the difference to building materials, which have become almost unaffordable for private home builders in Germany.
So where is Poland better off without a foreign country from which its citizens can earn their euro? Who financed Poland's own pipeline to Norway? In exchange, they built an airport in the middle of nowhere for NATO on the border.
There's a Tusk stuck up the USA's anus, no matter who's president, Poland cheers everyone on.
I'm leaving benelux for Brazil where I have family, there will be no nuclear effect down there too far. In Paris very rich people do the same direction NYC or beyond, money, big money is leaving europe, condos price falling in capital cities sell asap...before it becomes ashes.
Southern Brazil (Bolsonaro country) is more European than Europe now. So is Uruguay.
My friend went to Chile, was shocked to find "Belgium" there :-)
Which Belgium? The Belgium of today’s Molenbeek, or of 1985?
1985
Oh good. Looks like Brazil, Chile or Uruguay will be the countries to head to for asylum, at least for those who don’t like the cold.
What she actually meant was people in Chile were unusually "cold" for that continent vs. Argentina, Brazil, etc. When you are an immigrant, you prefer "warmer" people:-)
We also had Brazil in mind. Especially the state of Santa Catarina and Florianopolis. But I keep hearing that it is a zionist place. Is it really that bad in terms of mentality?
if it is nice and white, the jew parasite will come to subvert it...
Nuclear or no nuclear, it’s not a bad move. You are just 5-10 years ahead of the curve.
A friend from the US, claimed Mexican citizenship (parents probably, I didn't dig) moved last November to Mexico city, working for a US corporation as a perm, does some contracting on a side, works on weekends as a tourists guide for tips with American tourists. Has no regrets, says, dollar stretches way far over there.
The hyperbolic rally in U.S. equities is fueled by European and Israeli money. Soon psychopathy will have destroyed those places.
When like before WW2 there will be tons of the door-to-door life insurance salesmen selling life insurance for cheap in the EU, we'd sure know, the war is next day
There was this newspaper article. I believe the Argentinian women hockey team? "More European than Europe" it was titled.
Just as you are saying. More pointedly.
We were also thinking about relocating to Brazil - even though it is not the easiest place to move to. Brazil of course have it's safety issues, but I take violent crime over nuclear war anytime. Any places you would recommend in Brazil for a foreigner to relocate? I know that Florianopolis is one of the safest places, but I also hear that it is very pro-Israel mentality, and cannot live amongst such people.
Seizing a tanker is an act of war but of course Putin won't do shit like all the other acts of war against Russia. Guess he's waiting for a nuclear first strike after long range radars and strategic bombers are all destroyed before doing anything? Or maybe even then won't do anything.
West must be thinking by now "it's worth a try"
It is an act of war against Benin. So Benin should "do shit" against France. This tanker has got nothing to do with Russia (officially). And, latest news, the captain who has been charged is Chinese. Pas de quoi fouetter un chat. A low risk strategy that allowed Macron to play smart-ass with his friends during the EU summit in Copenhagen yesterday. Voilà et bonne chance - as the French knight would have said in Monty Python's Holy Grail.
Epilogue: the Boracay was reportedly released and continued its journey on Friday morning (03/10). End of the farce. Of course, there is nothing in MSM about this.
Well informed, and well said :-)
Not mention that the cargo was destined for either India or China. Macron has just seized cargo headed for Asia.
So the blockade he is discussing is a blockade against China. You can bet Russia has good reason not to say too much initially while the enormity of what Macron is doing sinks in on other parts of the world.
Macron has made it clear that this is not a one off situation. It is a deliberate plan to blockade part of China's import capability.
Well, given that 53% of the French vineyards belong to China, now, the pissed off Chinese will buy another 47% :-)
In my book, this is cope. Piracy IS an act of war, and plenty of wars in Europe have started bc of that casus belli.
Yeah, but that was back when we could have widespread war at the drop of hat because the weapons were so much more localised.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, "a theft by any other name..."
I see Moscow Mule explained it better than I.
Well put
Whatever you have to tell yourself. Russia can kiss its shadow fleet good bye.
Abject nonsense. The idea of a "shadow fleet" is nonsense. The reality is an extraordinarily rich and sophisticated world infrastructure that moves oil around in very fine tuned and exquisitely responsive mechanisms driven by market considerations.
It's not Russia's fleet, it's the world's fleet, and to go to war against the entire world's non-negotiable need for Russian oil is a losing proposition.
Not really. Just seize any ship suspected of carrying Russian oil. Not that hard.
Who was the legal owner of the cargo of this ship? Who was even the legal owner of the SHIP? Who insured the cargo and/or the ship?
All of those parties were victims and targets of this act of war.
I guarantee you there are plenty of Russian entities behind those questions, and most likely the answer to one of them is or involves the Russian federal government. So stop hiding behind select technicalities when other technicalities change this to an open act of war on Russia.
I expect no open retribution for this act of war. Perhaps covert ones that we will never hear about.
Please stop the cope though. This is not Reddit, I hope not yet.
"an act of war" but against whom? Unless the tanker is Russian owned or flagged, it is hard to claim it is an act of war against Russia.
It is an act of war against Russia. Its stated purpose is to prevent the export of Russian oil and to hurt Russia. Ownership and flagging of the ships are immaterial. At some point one must look at the substance rather than the form.
Actually the law often focuses on the form rather than the substance.
Obviously the intent is as you say and Russia can certainly consider it an act of war if it chooses to do so.
The US and European countries have obviously engaged in hostile acts through Ukraine and with sanctions meant to cause enormous harm to Russia. The theft of Russia's financial assets in Euroclear vastly exceeds any harm from Macron delaying a tanker serving Russia.
I would agree with most of this but suggest that quibbling over terminology is not what needs to be happening. Most people regard the act as an act of war against Russia - that was its intent and its effect, and it leaves a *practical* question: what will Russia do about it? If it does nothing, it can expect plenty more of the same because, again practically speaking, the western merchants of war think it signals weakness. They will push until there are some consequences felt *by westerners.* They don't regard Ukrainians as important, so consequences need to be directed against people they do regard as important. I would argue the time has come, long since, to dish out some of those consequences.
I have previously taken the position that because Russia is winning the Ukrainian aspect of this war one can't argue with success, but I've come to regard the war as a broader war and am not so sure Russia is winning that one. We know what's happening in west Asia, and it looks like Trump is now emboldened to attack Venezuela, another Russian ally. Zero Americans have died, essentially, while many others have. I think that's important to the people pushing this war.
Senator Lindsey Wagner has bragged about how cheaply the US has bought the deaths of many Russians and even more Ukrainians. All without losing any important soldiers. Just create enough US dollars out of thin air and I think the fools believe they will rule the world.
God Bless Us All
It’s amazing how much they say out loud. Such arrogance.
It works.
Attacking somebody is not winning a war. When did the US last win a war?
It’s popular to talk about all the wars the US has lost since WW2, but did you ever notice that American hegemony really started in early 1990, the middle of that long losing streak? The US does not need to “win” what we call wars, it merely needs to HAVE them. The wars it actually wins are the covert wars, the color revolutions, and the information wars it uses to keep every other country off-balance.
If you think, as I do, that Israel is little more than a pawn of the US, you might say there have been battlefield victories; if you think that the terrorists who overthrew Syria did so in accordance with US planning, that could be a victory, but it’s immaterial. The victory has been the unrest and terrorism itself.
You do understand that I’m not a fan of that, I trust.
The legal niceties don't matter and are just an attempt to excuse Russian indecision.
The result is that Russia's shadow exports of oil will be cut off.
For some reason the site will not allow me to "like" comments that are not in response to mine, but I think you're right: if Russia doesn't take decisive action here it's going to have big problems. Most of the commenters here seem to be ignoring that obvious fact.
This was obvious, going back to 2022.
What do you think of the Istanbul proposals by Russia? Misjudgment? (or stronger, I know). I think leaving that offer on the table now, at least, even with the adjustments that have been considered, is a mistake. Perhaps he thinks they’ll never accept it, though. Too much posing, imo.
Honestly speaking, the problem wasn't so much the proposals, but Russia's "just the tip" attempt at warfare.
Had Russia used adequate force from the outset, the negotiators would have looked at Johnson like he was nutso. Now, he's babbling about enlisting for the war, even though everyone knows he'll never do it.
You are right that if Russia does not react very seriously against France, similar acts will follow and export of Russian oil per ship will be made nearly impossible.
An other aspect is that this means depriving China of a large part of their input of oil.
If similar measures are taken against Iran, I suppose that war would be inevitable.
One must only remember Roosevelt's oil embargo against Japan.
This is entirely intentional and is designed to give france an opportunity to run screaming to its American Master.
"The result is that Russia's shadow exports of oil will be cut off."
Really? I think you're underestimating the size and operating area of the tanker fleet transporting Russian oil. Do you really believe what you say or is it just hyperbole?
You think tankers are hard to track?
It is easy to get swept up in the western narrative of all their 'provocations' that Russia is bafflingly refusing to react to.... means it weak, right?
True
But if they react, they are the aggressor of course. Apparently most people in the west fall for this: you push and push and push the other until he breaks, get angry, does something in return and we call them the aggressor. Works everytimr it seems and says something about the population. No critical thinking whatsoever.
Russia understands this all too well and the importance of keeping its own alliance intact.
It's how teachers react to bullying in school, punishing the victim when they react.
Not that I disagree with you about schools, but this isn't school, and there's no one to dish out punishment. International law does not really exist, and at this stage of geopolitics it's only a question of what you can do, and what consequences you can survive. I think Russia should be reacting - let them say it's the aggressor. They'll be saying that, and are saying that, no matter what Russia does. It can take whatever the west can dish.
Opinion differs Elena, but I see Russia advancing in Ukraine and Europe talking about a re-armament that it can't afford and I think"steady as she goes".
Russia is winning the military, economic, financial and diplomatic wars, in my opinion. I am not even convinced NATO is winning the propaganda war in 2025. For me, all this theatre in Europe is just noise.
Yeah, I know. And yet Syria was just destroyed, Israel is being Israel, the EU just stole elections in Romania and Moldova, the US cheerfully and without consequence bombs Moscow, we’re seriously considering conquering Venezuela, and support terrorists around the world. It sounds more like a list of crimes than accomplishments, but to an extent these days those seem to be the same things.
The quote "You can't overestimate the stupidity of the general public" is attributed to the American author and poet Charles Bukowski, and it appears in his novel Ham on Rye. I once read that a Democratic pundit paraphrased Mr. Bukowski, "You cannot overestimate the stupidity of the American voter," but Google seems to have 'forgotten' who that is.
God Bless Us All
At the end of the day, the aggressor is only determined after a war has been fought. No country having won a war ever committed war crimes or acts of aggression.
It is weak. Sorry.
Non-reaction and calm, effective resolve are seen as strength and superior strategy, by some.
especially if you are winning where it counts, which it is.
If you consider it purely a Ukrainian war, Russia is winning where it counts. What if you consider it a broader war, though? a war where Syria mattered, for example, and Lebanese guerillas? Iran? Venezuela? Romania? Azerbeijan? Moldova? The US is not fighting on one front, and while the Ukraine war drags on, Russia is useless - or of reduced usefulness, shall we say - to its allies in the wider conflict. Ukraine is certainly losing, but Russia could be, too.
The US is fighting on multiple fronts because it has multiple resource needs- or perhaps appetites would be a better word. Russia is a rich rich nation best served by protecting that wealth first, which is where its value is and is why the west is attacking it. Nations that have denuded their own patch or never had much at home to begin with, are highwaymen and thieves. That will not end well for them, is not ending well for them. When it was about nation building rather than resource theft, more powerful forces were prepared to give it a chance. Now it has descended into theft again, the horses of Nemesis have been unleashed. They have had a long road to travel but as they say in some texts, the end of what started with some high aspirations and ended in debauchery, dissolution and gluttony, is nigh.
The tone of this note goes perfectly with the audiobook I happen to be listening to at the moment, Gone with the Wind, which you may know is about the demise of the American Confederacy, as read in an English accent, a very lovely voice. But I’m not sure we’re in Gone with the Wind territory here.
The US may be a declining empire, but it is attempting to protect and retain global hegemony. I suspect the end is nowhere near as nigh as you think, and that Russia is in fact in grave danger. The US seems to find great interest in resource-rich countries, yes, but I think the overthrow of Syria, for example, was as much about facilitating an attack on Iran as any resource. Russia needs to support its allies, and its hands are tied while it’s bogged down in Ukraine. The US has no interest in bringing peace to Ukraine for that reason.
Or so I read the tea leaves.
I suggest you do a deep dive into Chinese capabilities. Wang Yi said it best in a meeting with the EU recently. China won't stand by and let Russia lose in a war with NATO. The more the US and Europe fight wars across the globe, and China sits and prepares, the faster the Western Empire collapses. Real wars cost a LOT of money and so far the West has only one conflict of any geostrategic significance. Ukraine, and they are losing badly. That said, an attack on Iran looks imminent and this could tilt the balance one way or another. Given the previous conflict in June and the US defeat in their Yemeni skirmish it could just sink the Empire. I don't think Russia is losing the big war. China won't stop backing them. The US situation is critical and worsening. How do they continue funding the Empire?
All good points, there’s no denying. I will say that China saying what it will or will not let happen is just talk at this point. We’ll see what they do when the chips are down. I find it very difficult to get information I trust about China.
Back in the late 1990s as a little girl with a thoughtful dad, I thought the US was on the verge of collapsing. The dollar wasn’t worth shit any more then than it is now - or perhaps a little more, but it’s a distinction without a difference. Gold was hovering between two and three hundred dollars/ounce and drastically underpriced in my opinion. I thought the house of cards was doomed to fall within months or short years, but we’re still here.
Empires take a long time to fall. They may get swept away all at once, but the lead up can take lifetimes. The whole thing looks like it’s being held together with duct tape and bad intentions, but it could fall anytime within the next fifty years I think. Of course with someone as reckless as Trump at the helm it could speed things along, but who knows when the blow will fall?
The Shadow knows, but maybe no one else.
The 1990 was peak US hegemony. The Wolfowitz Doctrine was birthed into Pax Americana. No competition was allowed to rise. Funny thing is the Neoliberal model sucks the wealth from countries and offshores them to tax havens. Those that prevented this have risen to challenge Empire. Empire is freaking out and making some really detrimental moves. The Resistance seems ascendant. Will the Empire nuke is all?
Check this report.
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/critical-technology-tracker/
Russia has clearly chosen Ukraine as the hill on which to make its stand and it appears to be a good one, at that. Leaving aside the astonishing Russian Recovery from 1991 to today (rags to riches, virtually, with an apparent capabliity to confront the worlds most powerful allieance), Putin has adroitly called NATOs bluff and ill-considered 'promises' to accept Ukraines membership, which we now see are hollow and meant more as a way to enrage and provoke Russia than to enhance the alliance. It's almost a 'reverse Article 5': the vague NATO promises to Ukraine guarantee Russia will keep hammering it. I think Russia picked the right time to push back hard - their honorable attempts to solve this by diplomacy are well documented and give ample leg room to act and enjoy the support of the global majority. Did Russia really 'lose' in Syria? Is Iran 'lost'? Has Russia's 'unlimited' partnership with China even been truly utilized? Russia isn't losing - it is hasn't even really started.
I can see why you would think those things. In my view, Ukraine joining NATO had nothing at all to do with Ukraine’s well-being and was almost entirely a provocation to Russia. To the extent it wasn’t provocation, it was an attempt to extend the military capabilities to facilitate an overthrow. Not an ounce of good faith, in other words. I do think Russia lost in Syria and Romania and Moldova, and in Azerbaijan too, for that matter. It’s obviously more than holding its own in Ukraine itself, but it has been allowing western attacks on oil and strategic forces. To what extent the alliance with China will pan out time will tell - it looks good no doubt.
I just don’t think anything is a given. The US is doing what it can to hold the rest of the world back. Assuming that will ultimately fail, I still think the timeline could be much longer than seems likely.
Not to be contrary, because what you are saying all makes sense, but for conversation: I resist agreeing that Russia lost in Syria because it still has Khmeimim Airbase, although I think it gave up Tartus Naval Base. Syria's new gov seems to be keeping its options open vis a vis Russian relations, although I'm surprised Putin would deign to parlay with the likes of Jolani. As for Azerbaijan and Armenia's Trump-fueled cash-cow transport corridor shotgun marriage if convinience we shall see how durable that really is as time passes. It looks flimsy af to me, but I am literally in an armchair here, moving imaginary prices around my fantasy Devils Chessboard lol.
Mice to meet you.
Well, it's a little more ambiguous than that because, technically, it's not Russia's tanker. Maritime practices are highly convoluted. It's a tanker carrying Russian oil that is technically under a different country's flags, often/usually crewed by non-Russians, and the tanker itself owned by a different country/corporation, etc.
So it's not quite the same thing as France or whomever seizing an actual Russian warship or something like that.
Isn't it true that since India is selling oil to France, the oil in the tanker is technically theirs?
So what? The result is that Russia's shadow sales of oil are basically done.
Remarkable, isn't it? the resistance to this patently obvious fact.
The commentariat here put on a masterclass in denial, wishful thinking rationalization and cognitive dissonance.
Every time.
They have been thinking that all the time thanks to Putins more amenable approach. The longer the time this conflict lingers the worse the outcome.
Putin's Valdai performance today was the last straw.
Coup. Now.
There is no time to waste.
The Americans are killing your people every day, are about to launch a strategic bombing campaign against you, including using nuclear-capable weapons, i.e. the red line that has always been understood to mandate a nuclear response, because there is nowhere to retreat after that, and they already attacked your strategic nuclear forces too. Yet you come out publicly about how you want to be friends with them? And how the Tomahawks are no big deal.
Let's hope the military is working on what in retrospect had to be done years ago, will remove this malignant tumor from the body of the Russian state, and then Russia will start actually fighting. Otherwise the country is doomed.
The only positive thing I can think of: if we had it your way, we would all have been obliviated and I wouldn't be writing this response her.😀
It's the exact opposite.
Because the war was not fought properly from the start, it escalated to the point where nuclear war is inevitable (either that, or Russia will be destroyed, which in the long term will have similar effects for humanity).
And if we had had my way even earliter, there would not even have been a war, this problem would have been solved decisivley back in 2014 the latest, or even earlier.
nuclear is less serious than purported -
Nuclear Wargaming: It shouldn’t just be Game Over!
https://youtu.be/ufgvvfvqiMw
I'm disappointed at how much of this I agree with. Instead of calling for a coup, however, which I think Putin is both too shrewd to allow to happen and which I doubt the Russian people would appreciate, I'm just hoping Putin will change his approach and finish dropping the pretext that (1) Trump is anything other than a warmonger and (2) that the west will ever accept Russia and doesn't want to destroy it, and (3) that any form of alliance with the US is worth any kind of damn.
How is he going to drop the line that Trump is not the enemy when he has dug himself so deep in that hole?
We will be hearing about how Putin was mislead once again for years, the same way we've been hearing it about Merkel? Of course, one had to be an absolute idiot to fall for Minsk-1/2, and Putin is not an idiot, but to claim you fell for it when they are doing all the things they are currently doing to you is just a whole new level of absurdity.
P.S. Right now what is needed is a total severance of all relationships with the West and a public commitment to the physical removal of the US from all of Eurasia, to be done together with China, Iran, North Korea and everyone else who wants to join. Have them isolated to their island when they can do little harm without lobbing ICBMs.
How far is the rhetoric from Moscow compared to that objective?
He could say it was strategy. I agree it has difficulties, I just say it needs to be done. I think it really was strategy, too, an attempt to divide the US from Europe, perhaps, or slow down certain of the things that have taken place. But I think it needs to stop. It isn’t working.
That is your objective, not Putin's.
If it's not Putin's objective, the country will be destroyed.
Which means Putin has to go and someone else who will pursue it has to replace him.
Your Putin hatred makes every comment you post, irrelevant.
Having great power at your command tends to make you cautious at using what could have unintended consequences like the destruction of your own nation. Marledonna is quite right. For the present we are alive because the nuclear powers play very cautiously with one another.
God Bless Us All
You are alive.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians are not.
Had Putin used his power, maybe you wouldn't be alive, but those people would be.
Guess who I care more about?
Naturally I don't blame you for preferring Russians over Americans but if Putin used his full power on America many millions of both nations would be dead, many more would die of cancers and such collateral damage. I don't believe the world would end, merely a few hundred million dead and hundreds if not thousands of major cities destroyed.
Furthermore I believe Russia would have the better death count as it is less densely populated though much larger in size. At present your Civil Defense posture is undoubtedly superior also as here in the evil empire nuclear war is regarded as unsurvivable. This is as foolish as believing it can be won.
You know it's all well and good to stand tall, beat your chest and proclaim how mighty and strong you would be if you had power. It is very manly and proud of you, it is also vainglorious and foolish in the face of the deaths of nations. Don't you care about the Russian Federation at least?
By the way, I believe the Iskander-K along with several others such as the Kalibr and Zircon are the same classification of weapon as the Tomahawk, a cruise missile though the superior Iskander-K is hypersonic and usually ground-launched. Thanks for getting me to study these and improve my own knowledge of weaponry. However you might be right about the Iskander not being submarine-launch capable. The Poseidon you cited is an ICBM. Most are tipped with nuclear warheads. I don't consider that Russia is incapable of striking with Iskanders or other cruise missiles with conventional warheads and would hope that a spread of several hundred nuclear warheads would be considered, over-eager for strikes with conventional warheads. Total pride and anger will lead to total madness. Mutually Assured Destruction. It's MAD and I guess you are also. I know for sure you are pedantic and seem incapable of listening to reasonable objections to your bluster.
I acknowledge that the evil Washington Empire started the war in Ukraine during Maidan in 2014 and has encouraged it all along the way until Trump's current though not previous administration when it was on the back burner and almost unnoticeable.
There are other forces at work to give the Washington Empire its just deserts. Fiscal and monetary problems alone should be quite a comeuppance but it wouldn't worsen their hubris any if the idiots sent a few hundred thousand of our troops to be placed in the Ukrainian cauldron of The Federation to be ground up into sausages.
Have a little patience and take pride in Vladimir Putin, we on the outside of Russia looking in, and in the know of true events, admire him greatly. The SMO is not exactly sitting on his hands and doing nothing. When Biden got elected I started buying silver and when the SMO began I started buying gold. I'm glad I did. The GDP of the BRICS trade alliance whose birth Russia assisted under Putin's ministration already exceeds that of the G-7.
Remember now it is better to be alive and have a little pride than to be dead on the floor of Hell with great pride, perhaps even the hubris of Lucifer before the fall.
God Bless Us All
zion don is a jew tool. he will soon attack Iran again for his jew masters. that is where russia could really hurt the jew run "west" - hit the jew HQ and shoot down some B2s
Agreed. I also want to say I love your kissey-lips photo! A little 'light' inside the tunnel 😎
I’m just a sex writer dragged into politics by geopolitical events that cannot be ignored.
If you really are a Russian then you know that anybody who talks about coups against the Putin administration either knows nothing about Russia, has completely lost contact with reality, or is simply hoping that repeating the West's propaganda for morons by morons can accomplish anything.
I'm an American living in Russia for many years. I've spoken perfect, fluent Russian for many, many years as well. I don't live in Moscow immersed in an expat world isolated from Russia and Russians but far, far out in the regions where we rarely see foreigners. In my life here I live immersed in Russia and Russianness.
Our man Vladimir Vladimirovich is wildly popular out here in the regions. There are, of course, pockets of insane liberals who don't like him but mercifully out here those are few and far between, not like the larger percentage of crazed liberals there are in Moscow. There is no chance whatsoever of a coup against a man who has such phenomenal, grass roots popularity with the people and elites of Russia. Speaking of elites, the support for Putin among them is also extraordinarily high. He's a very effective leader and gets things done as elites like: a better economy and so on.
I respectfully disagree with your three points. Trump is not so much a warmonger as he is a highly erratic, totally amoral character who lives in a comic book world where he doesn't care if people die so long as he gets his way and the facade of his reality show continues to make him the star. The task for a seasoned politician and diplomat like Putin is not to call Trump names, but to continue doing what is right for Russia without wasting time on publicly characterizing the loud-mouthed dope who is committing more than enough errors on his own.
Whether the west will ever accept Russia and not want to destroy it is the wrong question. The right question is where the balance of animosity lies within the great trends that define "the west." More and more people within Europe are realizing that their elites are leading them into an unwanted war. It makes sense for Putin not to go on any verbal attacks against those people who don't want war with Russia. Not going to verbal war against them does not require any changes in the war Russia is waging successfully. Being diplomatic does not in any way mean Russia takes the use of military technical means off the table.
I've never heard Putin say he wants an alliance with the US. He simply pointed out that in the past the US had the opportunity for such alliances that it blew off, and he made those comments as an example of the US's total negativity that resulted in a poor relationship with Russia. Putin is simply saying that re-establishing normal diplomatic relationships, as existed with the USSR, is a sensible thing to do.
Well, that states things with great clarity and precision. I mostly agree with you about Trump except that I’m not sure he’s as stupid as you think. I find it offensive that Putin plays the game of flattering him and pretending the US isn’t the warmonger it is, but those could be valid diplomatic decisions, and mostly I think they have been.
I have come to think that Putin is not running this war the best way, for reasons it would probably be boring for me to repeat but could be summarized by saying I think we’re already in a world war but Putin seems to act as if it’s only the one war involving Ukraine. I don’t like his stated willingness to leave Odessa in the hands of the Nazis, his tolerance of the US using Ukraine as a base for bombing Russia, or his occasionally accepting indecisive outcomes. I don’t think any of these things are disloyal or irrational, just that they’re mistakes.
By the way, if you care to take a look at the exchange between me and HBi or whatever his handle, you will easily observe that HE was the one who first went ad hominem, claiming that I was “obviously not pragmatic” in a patronizing way. In fact I never went ad hominem at all, although stating my preference for people who saw and spoke the truth came as close to that as could be done and probably should count (it was after his comment, though, and I maintain it was a legitimate response to his evasions).
He threw a temper tantrum after that. There’s no dressing it up.
Hard to coup Putin who turned 350000 member national guard into his personal security and enjoys 80% popularity. Russians will go down with the cult of personality ship like hitler/Germans in WW2.
Britain didn't do anything when France seized their fishing trawlers in the Channel. The EU government in Brussels was silent then as well as during this recent piracy. I wonder why? You don't supposes Paris might actually control Brussels?
God Bless Us All
Putin said something about this in his speech at Valdai. He said that seizing other countries' ships is piracy, so by seizing that tanker, the French became pirates. And what do you do with pirates? You destroy them. Putin's words must have really scared Macron, because France released the tanker shortly after that. This very well shows how much all these European clowns are actually afraid of Russia and that they are not actually going to start any direct war with Russia, because they know what will happen to them.
If I'd be Russia and Europe starts a war, I would take out their leaders first thing. No-one else wants to fight but these people.
Problem solved.
War over.
Eliminate the people behind the sock puppet leaders and we might get lasting results.
the BIS ?
Good but what you propose might be more complicated. For Russia probably the action with best cost/profit ratio would be to vaporize the EU and NATO HQs in Brussels. Taking down the ECB building in Frankfurt would be also a nice touch….
Sell your shit somewhere else.
Awesome dialects! Great argumentation!
Your tactic is sadly familiar: Troll, then accuse anyone who calls you out of "not engaging in rational dialogue." But thanks for the compliments.
Didn't you mean "dialectics"? But I do write good dialect: "Aw, go sell y’ shit somewheres else, whydontcha?"
How rude
Rule #1 to deal with trolls: "ignore them, do not feed the troll".
It is a problem of a defective gene pole.
What a beautifully articulated critique! I love how you've managed to distill such complex thoughts into such a concise, well-reasoned response. Your debate skills are truly something to behold.
Well at least that would spare the European citizenry, unless they would want to go to war, to avenge their beloved leaders. No worries, either way, as I do think not many in the global majority would be sympathetic, no matter what Russia does to European cities. As it would only be a fullfillment of the Europeans heart's desire or so it seems. Looking back at history Europeans only find peace after being destroyed.
Sell your shit somewhere else.
I'm genuinely impressed by the eloquence and depth of your counterargument. The way you've deconstructed my points with such scholarly precision really demonstrates the kind of intellectual discourse I was hoping for. Your rhetoric professor must be so proud.
Your tactic is sadly familiar. See above.
Make a reasoned argument to support your thinking. (Unnecessary ad hominem edited out.)
A variant of the same tactic.
"Blow people up" is not an argument. It's provocation. It can serve to flag this Substack, when the screws start being tightened, as allowing posters to advocate violence. My comment (and yours if it were in the right place) was intended to show that certain readers of this discussion are aware of the existence of provocateurs (including posters who may be in good faith but whose posts have the effect of provocation) and are calling them out.
In a way, your asking me to put up an argument is encouragement to engage with provocateurs, and as such itself could be considered provocation.
Since I posted my response early this morning, I see that Simp has Liked No1's original comment. That's his right. But my argument - and it is indeed an argument - stands: With a war that began because of a rejection of diplomacy by the US/NATO side while the Russian side made every effort to pursue diplomacy,, advocating behaviour on Russia's part that favours violence over diplomacy amounts to trolling and provocateuring and discredits the blog/Stack.
Now I'll fuck off.
I totally agree. Just hit the buildings hosting the Governments and the Parliaments. People would go out in the square celebrating the end of their oppression.
It would be shockingly funny to see the reaction of the normal people to the vision of the EU HQ in ruins.
and might get rid of the euro, the banksters' invention after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I think you'd be disappointed. I'd think a whole lot more Europeans would be convinced that their leaders had been correct if that happened than would celebrate the sudden absence of specific loathsome people. I disagree with Gene Poole, though: I think it's a pleasant thought.
Yeah, I suppose the lobotomized/brainwashed people wouldn't be that happy. Unfortunately they are still a large number!
+ journos
Sell your shit somewhere else. You're discrediting Simp. Or is that the point?
Thank you for that masterclass in constructive criticism. I particularly appreciate how you took the time to engage with the specific merits of my argument. This is exactly the kind of thoughtful dialogue that elevates online discussions.
Your tactic is sadly familiar. Please see my comments to the other two trolls who are using it.
I nominate Stoltenberg
In the UK
1: MI6 HQ
2: City of London
3: GCHQ
The wish list only gets longer and longer….
Don’t forget Whitehall and Westminster - and if it’s in session and there’s a small tactical nuke going spare, Holyrood.
Where can we submit targets?
I have always voted for Porton Down, home to the Skriptal-Novichok hoax. It would be amusing to see the locals scatter like rats at the thought of the poisons emanating from the blast.
As is always the way. But those rats, of course, will be warm and safe in their deep, secret bunkers, complete with generators, air filtration systems and supplies for a decade. If they get the war they lust for, Starmer, VDL, Stoltenberg, Merz, Kallas, Rutte and Macron will more likely be the last seven creatures to remain alive in western Europe. Them and the cockroaches.
There's a difference?
Only in size, and outward appearance.
"But he’s right on one thing, which I have enlarged on before: that by far the single-most overlooked aspect of modern warfare, and the keys to winning it, has to do with the cultural integrity of a people. Europe and the US are disintegrating into total cultural and ethnic ambiguity and dissolution, its narod or volk simply will not have the weight of national pride and unity to ever overcome Russians who are fearlessly willing to die for their homeland."
Simp is making the common error on the Right of assuming that non-white native populations will not fight for their country, adopted or not.
What NO population wants to do, is be sent thousands of miles away to fight in an Imperialist/colonial war instigated by the oligarchic dictatorships masquerading as "democracies".
That is a very different kettle of fish.
Russia is fighting an existential war. Europe is fighting a war of choice.
This right here is why the difference.
It is driving EU/Zionist empire leaders mad, but wars in Ukraine and Iran are not seen as being genuinely existential.
Unlike say, the growing urge to kick them all out (And sadly all too often simply replace with the next lot of identikit CIA cutouts).
The "West" itself established the pattern of modern war, with attacks on leaders off the battlefield. Including in this war.
It might save many lives if some oligarchs that hold no office but meddle in geopolitics go first. Might sober up some heads.
But lets be clear, the decision was already made, all this is a chimp dance of nerving each other to commit the crime at international scale. 🤬🤬😈
The main question I have is more like: what will they enact when everyone is marching of to war.
Because no-one wants to go to die in a far-off place for some sycophants. I don’t think much people in Europe believe that Russia want to invade them. A lot of them would welcome it I guess: 15% taxrate vs mostly around 50% right now!!
But more like: war is the ultimate distractor. What will they introduce? The digital gulag I guess?
The digital gulag is the only one of their suicidal policies that is going tolerably well (more is the pity).
On the other half, war goes directly against the rest of their agenda: climate change, third world migration, deconstruction of traditional values. War is a large scale industrial endeavour, high carbon foot print, nothing will promote more remigration than falling missiles and conscription and war fighting is asserting traditional values or some perversion of them, automatically.
The only part of this 💩💩💩💩 that doesn't conform to Brian Berletic scenario of NATO division of labor is the total lack of serious preparation. But then, the lenocracy hasn't selected serious people for personnel for a long time 😉🤬🤬
All this doubling down on a pair of twos never made sense and makes less sense as we keep going.
[doubling down ... never made sense]
Hey! That's my feeling. Give it back 🤣!
The more they talk, act, do, "convene", ... Everything they do seems to be aimed at waking people up. Don't they know the first rule of dogs? (ie: don't wake sleeping dogs)??
They ran out of good choices in 2008, in my view. The financial coup d'état did for that.
Since then they're bouncing between the narrow walls of their ideologicals taboos and the floor of their diminuishing power. In other words, the lenocracy is irrational and stupid and too far up its own arse to understand why it is irrational and stupid.
yes. the Jew bosses the world over (nulland kagan, soros, Kushner, Nentnyahu, geenblatt) need to start having accidents wherever they may be.
Those too, are just the 'front men' of the people pulling their strings.
The bigger Jew bankers. As Mr ford said - kill off the top 50 Jews and all wars will stop.
The problem is they already should have done so and never will, at least if it is up to Putin.
The europeans will fight, even if most likely as a slave army that will be gunned down by their own side if they try to retreat.
The ukrainisation of Europe will see to that, Bandera Ukraine can be considered a highly successful experiment in that regard.
Concent, much less enthusiasm vor war is irrelevant.
Just as it is in the case of drones, which are the one thing that Europe almost certainly eventually WILL be able to successfully mas produce.
Meanwhile Putin treats the western leaders out to destroy the russian people and civilisation as an 18th century monarch would, as untouchable and sacrosanct, holy royal blood to holy royal blood, someone to whom you would even send waggons full of good of they found themselves if they found themselves inconviniently trapped by a siege, so THEY can continue to live like kings while the soldiers on both sides starve.
Of course this is completely onesided and the western political savages would love nothing more than to ram a bayonet up his anus and drag bis corpse through the streets but Putin seems in blissful denial about this.
Well, if it happens hopefully it will be the russian people doing this to his incompetent, treasonous ass.
harsh, but a lot of truth in there.
Sounds crazy until you realize this cadre of globalist clowns are the main source of the problem.
Am I the only one that thinks that Russia brought this upon itself by
a. seeking to be a part of the West rather than a member of the East
b. believing Western guarantees despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Does anyone else (especially Russian people) think that instead of this SMO bullshit, Russia should have gone all-in and cut the head of the snake in Feb ‘22? Trump wouldn’t have been calling Russia a ‘paper tiger’, had Russia done so.
DM says it the last three years. We Westerners are broken. If you have debts of 80-130 % of your GDP and you add the neglected infrastructure you will have a debt of probably 200-300 % of your GDP. Then you have an dramatically ageing population, a sick and lazy youth and an economy which produces less and less goods for the world market. To compare it with a human being: If you are that sick you chose assisted suicide. That‘s what our Western Leaders are calling for…
The Great Reset, debt jubilee, or whatever you want to call it, is overdue by at least a decade. That which cannot be repaid will not be repaid. Maxing out the limits of the credit system faster through war is one way to provide political cover ("the evil Russians, Iranians, Venezuelans, etc., made us do it") for the inevitable restructuring of the global debt Ponzi.
this is moot, since when 'money' is needed the Fed can just print new $, thanks to the 1913 Jekyll Island ploy.
Spot on. The inevitability of the coming war is being driven by unstoppable economic imperatives. War will happen because war must happen at this point in the economic cycle.
A war does not cancel debts. The British government is still paying interest on gilts (that have no maturity date) issued to find the Napoleonic Wars.
"The British government is no longer paying interest on the original consol bonds issued to finance the Napoleonic Wars. These perpetual bonds, known as 4% consols, were finally redeemed in 2015. The final four undated gilts, including those first issued in 1752 and used to finance the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars, were redeemed in July 2015, marking the end of over 260 years of interest payments on these historic debts.
The decision to redeem them was made possible by the low interest rate environment and the government's long-term economic plan, which allowed for refinancing at lower rates.
While the original bonds from the Napoleonic era were only fully retired in 2015, their legacy is part of a broader history of perpetual debt, with some of the oldest gilts, such as those from the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720, also being retired around the same time."
-----------------
"The Confederate States of America defaulted on their debt after the Civil War, and the U.S. government formally repudiated the Confederate debt through the ratification of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment."
Point being that war does not result in the cancellation of debts, unless the British Empire has been at peace at all times since 1815.
Lots of government debts are repudiated or otherwise defaulted upon.
And my original post referenced restructuring, not default.
The post WW2 troika, Bretton Woods, IMF and World Bank has created a $330-$350 Trillion global debt Ponzi that can only be serviced by further economic growth. Where I live, each additional $ of government debt is not increasing GDP by the same amount.
Combine this with a shrinking population (ex-Africa) and something has to give. War provides the "creative destruction" impetus to invest in major reconstruction, which is a labor and materials intensive activity.
So it is either war, or a peaceful negotiation between "the west" and "the rest" (not just the BRICS) as to a fair and balanced money creation system that benefits all, not just the apex predators. Based on this article and others similar to it, it looks like the west is opting for another war.
The Brit gov't finally paid off the former Brit slave owners in 2015,
as compensation for ending slavery. From Perplexity AI:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/in-what-year-did-the-brit-gov-dgfd0MsJSIqtxKrNbGZLoA#0
Do not be so pessimistic. Europe is getting millions of scientists and engineers from places like Congo every year
Trump called Russia a paper tiger and the world laughed. Trump's always good for a laugh or "obliterating" the facts. Russia is a bear with 6inch razor claws. Engage at your own peril.
And am I the only one thinking that Russia being the adult in the room is avoiding a nuclear confrontation in Europe at all costs? Or that a huge part of the rhetoric is to buttress failing economies by going full war economy? And to deflect populations from their failures as unpopular unwanted mistrusted "leaders". Like the article says no one besides them wants war or is willing to go to war for their wet dreams and or political salvation.
No, your definitely not the only one.
zion don is a jew puppet - white men will never again fight for a ZOG government that hates him. once the all white air power is attrited, the US military is a subhuman non-white joke of rent seekers..
The world is not laughing, which is why europe will go to war.
I think Putin quietly realizes that Russia will never get a permanent settlement, rather the West will always be trying to divide and conquer Russia for its natural resources as well as part of the Thucydides trap the West steps into searching for a way to preserve its hegemony. The West can never be trusted. And then there's the issue of what are the Zionists up to? Deception and creating chaos to trick both sides into destroying each other. The old divide and conquer. Russia will never have peace. It's best strategy is to remain in a state of indefinite war, low intensity conflict if possible to keep it hardened militarily without over stressing the Russian economy and public support.
Russia needs to maintain a level of military preparedness, which ironically is best achieved through a low-level state of war, rotating troops, instead of a decapitation strike attempt against the West. Don't kid yourself, Putin is walking a fine line in trying to balance the economic needs of his country vs the costs of an existential war.
Yes, the conflict will not end, even if Russia defeats Ukraine on the battlefields. The romp state of Ukraine will be the cancer, fed with the blood of the west, that cannot be removed and that will try again in future to grow further again. It’s actually a quite depressing thought
Well.... pls take note that France has lost pretty much it's colonial empire in Africa which was providing a lot of essential natural resources it needed (uranium, oil etc).. and got into a tiff with Italy when Algeria decided to supply oil/gas to the Italians instead. Aka there is a limited pool of real actual fossil energy sources, and Europe has bankrupted itself by overpaying for ever more self-limited supply. That means their industry will NOT be able to ramp up for war even if they wanted to... honestly within 3-5 yrs, people will be shocked that Europe will be at 3rd world living standards, you can take it to the bank. That's why the super rich are fleeing Europe, they do see the writing on the wall. Hence it is to Russia and China's advantage to keep things from getting out of hand, and let the natural trends already in place keep picking up speed and defanging Europe/US for good.
It's stuck with low-intensity conflict, but it could do that without Ukraine continuing to exist as a state. Could do it better without strategic weapons parked 200 km from Moscow. And it could support its allies in the greater war if it would just finish off Ukraine. Russia IS in an existential war, and in my opinion it would be better off if it acted like it.
Nonsense. The Soviet Union was not constantly fighting internal wars.
This is complete cope. Russia will continue in this state of war because they refuse to attack back at their true attackers. This allows their enemies to continuously send proxies to attack Russia.
There are plenty of people hypnotized by propaganda and money that will continually attack Russia until Russia responds decisively.
And no I don't mean a nuclear war. There's plenty of options short of that, as evidenced by the DAILY attacks on Russia soil, killing Russians daily and taking out infrastructure.
Of course, but once you get into this conversation, people will starting lecturing you about how you don’t understand Putin’s judo / 15D chess movements.
My wife is Russian, she is never preoccupied with W perception management. Paper tiger and similar juvenile crap.
I've been saying that for years now.
No, you are not alone, in fact many in Russia and foreign observers are surprised by Putin's conduit of the war.
Someone said that Putin will start III WW, for being too nice.
In situations like this, it is difficult to know what is a strategically a good and a bad decision.
It is clear that Putin is trying to minimise the risk of a general war against NATO, while attaining some objectives on Ukraine.
It is clear also that by non responding to Western provocations, he has emboldened them to go forward along that line.
Maybe they will go one step to far and all those appeals for dialogue will have been for nothing.
The last declarations of Macron are a summit of impudence.
Time will be the judge.
Putin is a proud Russian quoting Pushkin and the great Russian poets! He talks of the proudness of the Russian people and their ability to fight against the enemies onslaught and that the enemy has forgotten the n terribleness of Russias vast desert like and snowy terrain! Fight his psople at your peril!
In other words the West - well Europe anyway - lacks strong and decisive male leadership and is far too distracted by islamic rhetoric or transgender problems of which pronouns or toilets to use - To fight any war here in a meaningful way.! Europe is ripe for the taking... And Putin knows it!
Putin has zero intention of 'taking Europe'. He just wanted to sell them energy at a good price and bind everyone into a peaceful, co-dependant economic security framework. Too bad the US NATO Frankenstein gollum wrecked it all.
Heather, perhaps I am misunderstanding your comment.
But by differentiating Europe from the West, are you suggesting that the USA has "strong and decisive male leadership"?
Heather can speak for herself, but I understood her remark to mean 'especially Europe', which, given the number of women in charge as PMs and so on, is in fact true.
Could be mate.
One can be strong, decisive and masculine and also completely stupid. FAFO State Secretary for Warmongering might perhaps serve as an example.
Loud and aggressive aren't the same things as strong and masculine. Empty vessels make the most noise.
If so, he should also reflect more about the times of Prince Bagration, Marshall Zhukov etc and realize that in those times victory came not by taking half assed measures and trying to appease the “Western partners”.
Today was the last straw.
Just absolutely shameful despicable disgusting vomit-inducing display of weakness and disloyalty.
And this while Sochi was under drone attack. To make sure the message is sent,
He is doing a lot of talking and very little fighting.
Not even a half hearted attempt at sophistry? You gotta earn your keep, you're making your whole team look bad with pre-kindergarten level of argumentation. The State department may pull your funding soon....
IF that is true, can someone put a link in the comments where I can sign up to be a paid troll? I need a side-gig.
Wtf are you talking about? Ukraine is up to 1.8mil casualties, no matter how you cut it its a whole lot of fighting! Just becouse he is not falling for the western provokations it does not make him weak, its the West that is in full panic! If anyone is weak as hell its those western loudmouths hiding behind their proxies, barking chihuahuas! Quit yapping and declare war on Russia, put up or shut up!
>Ukraine is up to 1.8mil casualties
1) How has that solved Russia's strategic problems?
2) How is it a win for Russia given that most of those people are ethnic Russians?
3) Has it moved the frontline substantially?
4) What relevance does it have to Russia being under attack? Russia is under attack by the US and Europe, and it has not fired a single shot back in response. The Serbs did more in 1999...
Russia is solving the strategic problem by annihilating the best proxy western nations could muster with billions of dollars invested in weapons and training! Nato is being demilitarised as we speak! Yes unfortunately many of those killed are ethnic russian but they have been poisoned by russophobic propaganda and used as a tool just like the green goblin maskerading as the president of Ukraine. Those not hostile to Russia surrender at the very first opportunity to do so and joint the fight on the russian side! Movement of frontline? What part of attritional warfare dont you understand? If the russian military has taken favourable positions they gladly let the Ukrainian army send loads of troops to uncuccessfully counterattack losing huge amount of personnel hitting a wall of fire, sometimes its better to work around their fortified areas, cut of supply and put them in to a boiler where they can be targeted suffering huge losses without even seeing a single russian soldier! All that western yapping is pure panic, they dont have the manpower nor the means to meet the russian army, the would get slaughtered like you've never seen before! Why do you think after almost 4 years none of the European chihuahuas never actually joined in to fight officially? Poles lost about 10.000 so called mercenaries already, we all know most of them were actual polish soldiers sent by the polish government, loads of German, US and UK "mercs" getting sent back in pieces. The West lost this war long ago their ego just cant let them acknowledge they lost to a "gas station maskerading as a country "
>Putin is a proud Russian
If he was a proud Russian, he would not be humiliating the country the way he has since late March 2022
lol. As a Russian, i can say, that we absolutely don't care what westerners think about us, the only thing that matters is what we think about ourselves and about our country. If you think that Putin is humiliating our country, then you are very stupid. We are now proud of our country and confident in it more than ever and everyone now see how pathetic the west is.
And what you think it is irrelevant to the question whether he is humiliating the country or not.
He is, and that is an objective fact.
If you want to be proud of Russia, you want to see a Russia that fights back. It has the capabilities, unlike all the other countries the US has been beating up on. But it is demeaning itself to the same level because of the spinelessness of Putin and the elites around him
That's really funny. You walked into a classic Putin put down without having the wit to realize he had ridiculed mindless trolls.
As Putin correctly pointed out, Russia is defeating all of NATO in Ukraine and making steady advances on all fronts. As he said, if that makes Russia a "paper tiger", what does it make NATO?
Doh. I can see that Putin being so much smarter than the foul and debased West makes you really angry.
Russian cities are being bombed 24/7
NATO cities are untouched.
How smart is that?
Smart enough to not elicit a full court press response by a deranged NATO and probable nuclear escalation?
The cost/benefit analysis of various reaponse options is finely calculated - I can see the utility in Russia calmly absorbing the sucker punches while it grinds forward and prepares the knockout blow.
"How smart is that?"
Much smarter than you, looks like. Russian cities are not being bombed 24/7. I live in one. For that matter, not even cities very close to the front lines (as in a mere 20 miles away) are not being bombed 24/7.
There are, indeed, a handful of terrorist incidents when the occasional nazi drone gets through air defenses. But the fatalities and even injuries are completely negligible. They don't come remotely close to the fatalities and injuries that Russia experienced from Islamic terrorists. In fact, they don't even come close to the fatalities and injuries that *Parisians* experienced from Islamic terrorism.
"Putin is a proud Russian quoting Pushkin and the great Russian poets!"
So what? The rulers of the West care only for power.
Still worth quoting - if Putin's more poetic and metaphorical words go over facile heads, no worries: they were never meant for them.
They don't go over my head at all, they're just irrelevant. The rulers of rhe West could not care less.
In WWII, we heard the Japanese insist that their spiritual superiority would make them victorious, not withstanding allied wealth and power. That did not end well.
I dont speak Russian - and apart from having been to Moscow once know little about Russias cold war history .But, I do like Mr Putins reference to Russian literature and creativity and his linking of that with his
nations power. Which is not something i can see the British Prime Minister Kier Starmer doing. Despite the wealth of cultural heritage on these islands which once ruled 90% of the World.
Wow, Europe is going full retards. I think at this moment most sane people had turned into supporting total annihilation of rogue European regimes, strikes on military sites or from wherever the command is given would do the job. Then let the European do the rest clean up.
What is retarded about it? Is Putin going to do anything to them?
No, you heard him (or perhaps didn't) today in Sochi. He wants to be friends with the West, no matter how many Russians they kill and how much of Russian industry they destroy.
He obviously thinks upping the tempo would be unnecessary at this point. But that may well change at some point.
Keep the excuses coming.
Oh come on. This is blatant trolling and has been all along. They are trying to stampede Russia into a ceasefire because of fear. They have nothing and can do nothing. They wouldn't risk actual war with Russia because they have insufficient military force to actually defend themselves with, never mind attack Russia.
Ignoring this on the international stage, and reassuring the Russian public seems like the right thing to do. Continue the SMO without this as a consideration.
Interesting take. But a war with West will not be fought in trench with trench weapons West is out of, but with missiles and airpower.
Which they have both inadequate supplies of and inadequate industrial capacity and raw materials to build serially.
Well you certainly set my mind at ease for tonight.
You'll be able to watch them attempt to reindustrialize to change that reality. It'll take them longer than it took Russia - years.
Maybe never. To reindustrialize you have to have some basic productivity, and for the EU that means export markets. But they're no longer competitive in export markets because their energy costs are too high without access to low cost Russian energy.
The European economic miracle was powered by low cost Soviet, and then Russian, energy. Without that they can't run that play again.
Europeans also no longer have the work ethic and basic education they need to compete against countries like China in export markets overall or high tech markets. Chugging out women's fashions and Italian handbags isn't a path to reindustrialization.
Finally, Europe doesn't have the resources to power reindustrialization given they've cut themselves off from the closest, most efficient source of resources: Russia.
Europe rose to power despite a paucity of resources by stealing them from the rest of the world through colonialization. But that era is over. Not even Niger is going to let the French steal uranium from them at prices far below market, and the days when the UK could suck trillions of pounds in wealth from India are long gone.
These days Europe has to buy the resources it needs at fair market prices, and they don't have the money or the cooperative attitude required to beat the Chinese at that. The Europeans still think they can threaten countries into selling them resources below market. The Chinese offer to build ports and airports and hospitals and develop mines in a fair partnership. If you were a developing country, which would you choose? Your former colonial master or a true friend looking to do business in a mutually beneficial partnership?
While you diagnose their current state very well, I'm trying to keep an open mind here about their chances. Objectively, in 1917, would you have considered the bulk of Russian/Soviet industry to be a likely outcome? It happened, but not without trauma for the society in general. You could have said the same thing about China in the 1950s and 1960s. The totalitarian government they are attempting to create in Europe may figure out a path for them to accomplish this goal, but much would have to change and the timeframe is going to be extended. "Can it hold together?" remains an unanswered question.
If they changed their mindset about green energy, imagine what you could do with all that lignite? You don't even need to imagine - remember what things were like back in the Warsaw Pact days. True, the air was yucky, but there are things we could do about that today, scrubbers etc. I'm reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's circa 1991 line about the modern day Czech lands, "Inhaling on a cigarette cleanses the lungs". They also have oil resources they could plumb. I'm not convinced they are bereft of energy, they had a NIMBY attitude that caused them to outsource the energy extraction to Russia. For that matter, outsourcing all resource extraction elsewhere. Reversing that would take decades, but maybe that's what will need to happen.
I won't rule out an economic miracle. But I also won't rule out stagnation and defeat. I suppose we get to watch to see if either is true. Bottom line, of course, is that they are no real military threat until they get the sinews of an industrial economy back operating again.
Getting some soldiers that aren't fat and/or transgender would help, too. The NATO forces are worse than the US in this regard.
I can't respond to (or even read) messages in threads where I blocked the author. So, while I saw the blurb of the reply you wrote, I only saw the first paragraph perhaps. The last thing I read in the blurb was "The Europeans are already at..." and since I have insufficient context i'm not going to reply halfassed. :-) There was sufficient context to reply re: ad hominem.
Until my final comment about her being a narc, which I do believe, I wasn't engaging in any intentional ad hominem. There are a lot of dark triad personalities on the internet. It seems to be an irresistible lure for same. I have a nose for them - long experience, life experience (my father and stepfather were also narcs, as was one of my wives). Largely the reason I got involved in recovery about 3 1/2 years ago. Codependence, of which one aspect is people pleasing. Anyway, hanging around crazy people makes you crazy.
One of my recovery principles is something called JADE - do not justify, argue, defend or explain. I block people the moment they appear toxic, without explanation. I don't owe anyone a relationship of any sort. I also break up with women instantaneously as soon as they show toxicity. I'm breaking my JADE principle to explain to you here the why because I want to, specifically you.
My own weakness in this regard - i'd been tolerating crazy people for 50 years, including in my youth - makes my reactions very preemptive and i'm constantly working to somehow achieve a more normal balance in this regard. I still do weekly sessions with my sponsor (3h on Monday nights) to try to improve.
Objectively I am going to say that she was being emotional instead of thinking about the situation with a realpolitik viewpoint. It was really easy to get upset at the other power in the incidents I noted - Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc, but the reality is the reality of these situations. The proxy war aspects of Ukraine are not worth superpower conflict and not worth taking a L on the SMO to respond to. Putin wants to win here, the SMO is the chosen ground for the victory and he's not letting go to respond to distractions. This is a win ultimately. He's correct. That is what I meant by saying I am a pragmatist. The sore feelings will be addressed post-SMO victory in adequate fashion. People will regret what they did here ultimately. Just not today - "Revenge is a dish best served cold".
Air power would last a week. They can take off, but they'll have nowhere to land.
Western europe will have to move their planes towards the countries bordering Ukraine in order to have enough range... but once they do that, they become sitting ducks for Russian missiles which will come faster than they can react/take-off. So if there's going to be that level of escalation, Russia has to be patient and wait for the west to bring their war materials closer to them for easier and effective annihilation. The west really doesn't have any real cards to play in that sense, except for terror tactics ...
You say they wouldn't risk actual war - I say they're risking it every single day.
No they aren't. They are relying on Russia to not expand the theater. It is in the Russian interest to do so. The pants shitting in European quarters if they had to deal with the Russian attack they are imagining would be shocking in its fury. No sewage system could contain it.
Relying on Russia not to expand the theater or respond to their antics IS risking actual war. They are, in fact, engaging in small - "salami slices" they call it - acts of actual war on the assumption that Russia will not respond. We all know that every bomb that lands in Russia was guided by western technology and intelligence. If someone did anything like that to the US you'd see how much of an act of war we'd consider it in no time.
What the US would do (and I'm an American) is not necessarily a guide for how sane people should behave.
Certainly not, but I was speaking of “risking war.” The west is continually daring Russia to take direct retaliatory action. Reckless.
Do you think Russian (or for that matter Soviet) leadership is ever truly irrational? Even Stalin was quite rational in his dealings with others. That Russia will enforce its interests is the safest bet in the world. Russia has no interest in a larger war. The price it exacts for this behavior now, on the other hand, will be apropos. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
This seems to be a response to me, but it doesn't address anything I said. I was speaking about risking war, not Russia's actual response. I said nothing of "irrational," Russian or otherwise.
I will say this, though, Russia is, imo, a "larger" war, one involving Syria (until it was destroyed), Iran, China, Venezuela... a world war in other words, happening now.
And revenge is a dish best served by those still alive to serve it, though I think revenge is not currently a significant topic.
I've clearly made the point that there is no risk as long as Russia is acting rationally. Which it is, and always does. It would be an irrational act to strike at the West for supplying weapons to Ukraine, in the same way it would have been irrational for the Soviet Union to strike the US for supplying the Afghans in the 1980s, or for that matter hitting the Soviet Union for supplying the Vietnamese back in that era.
If Russia were truly in any of those wars you cite, they would have been fought rather than conceded. Ergo, Russia has no interest in anything but the SMO at the moment. The SMO is a Russian critical interest, the rest are peripheral at best.
Russia has no fear for its existence while it maintains a nuclear arsenal.
These are five of the best sentences written on the topic.
4 sentences, Einstein.
Check again moron. Losing your cock and balls has made you just like the woman you want to be. Zero analytical ability and zero mathematical acuity.
Apologies I thought you were replying to Elena, not HBI. My mistake.
I consider this forum interesting because of many intelligent comments. ⁷ Unfortunately there is a gradual increase of aggression and insults. It would be good to oppose an argument without trying to humiliate others.
You are bang on with your 'salami slice' observation: the excruciatingly thin slices of NATO aggression have developed into thick hunks of direct attacks on Russias nuclear triad equoment - every NATO action in Ukraine and Russia risks war, but Putin is determined to keep it contained. Smart.
Fair enough, it is possible.
But then, what happens the day after this ceasefire?
This is another topic seldom discussed. Given everything that's happened and been said, what happens the day after?
There's no going back to how things were before 2014 or 2022. And this in itself will be a big problem.
Hard to say. We'll have to see how it all plays out. After the US experience in SE Asia would you have expected Vietnam to be a significant trading partner with the US? (which it is) Times change, people adjust to the new realities as what happens in the here and now takes precedence over what has been. While true it won't go back to before 2014 or 2022 those really weren't great -- and history never repeats anyway. When the dust settles things may well be better than they were then. If the nukes don't fly....
That is true, although it's noteworthy to point out in that region they're Buddhists, those wars became part of their liberation founding myth (on the tail of French Indochina etc) and the communism which followed didn't respond to their needs (indeed, fighting continued with China later), while we in the West have gone all-in with such spectacles as TQIA+, which is the antithesis to the Orthodox Church in Russia. My point is just that it's going to be difficult to rebuild bridges, which is something we're all taking for granted and perhaps we ought to start thinking about it. And I agree, if nukes were to fly then we might be talking a couple of generations (for instance, the animosity still today between China and Japan re: WW2).
I meant if the nukes fly there will only be a rebuilding from the ashes of a planet after a world-wide conflagration. A bit more than a few generations....
Two generations from now? The European countries do not have two more generations before they exit history, unless a revolutionary change takes place.
Europe certainly can't take on Russia and win - to have any chance, they need the US onboard. The current panic has to be because Ukraine is on its last legs. Shipping more arms - which are going to be embezzled and sold abroad - won't cut it. What is needed are men to fight. Or should I say cannon fodder, to deplete the Russian arms' stocks. Europe will only pitch-up when Russia runs out of ammo. In the meantime, the plan appears to be to fast-track Ukraine into the EU by breaking all the membership rules, then presumably offering up NATO membership by the back door. This nonsense will only stop when Western politicians are made to look at the pile of shit they've created, and their noses are rubbed in it.
Ukraine in the EU will be a disaster. The Ukranian Mafia will be the biggest organised crime outfit in the world. Meanwhile, French farmers will be suicidal. The whole idea is preposterous. 🤡 🌎
I agree. I suspect a lot of personal wealth is invested in Ukraine, and they don't want to lose it, so it's a case of the public purse to the rescue.
so awful that Europe and the US and Canada and on and on - are disgracing themselves - makes me ashamed. I wonder if the jewish Israeli firsters were not in control of the US whether any of this would be happening. I just finished a book about Dimona, written in the 1980s - and the USSR was Israel's greatest enemy besides the Palestinians. who weren't really any threat if the Jews had just been reasonable. But the USSR was arming Israel's neighbours ( Egypt and Syria ) and watching the development of the illegal nuclear program.
>But the USSR was arming Israel's neighbours ( Egypt and Syria ) and watching the development of the illegal nuclear program.
In retrospect, they should not have been watching it, they should have taken kinetic measures to stop it.
YEAH -
Maybe someone has shown Ursula Peter Sellers movie "The Mouse that Roared", is she is trying for a reprise but with a country with more heft these days than the United States.
More likely she watches Dr strangelove and fantasies about being the US president played by Sellers : Merkin Muffley. Both first and last names seem appropriate in her case.
A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Russia now responds to what the west does, not what it huffs and puffs away at what it will do. And no, Russia is not going to give the west what it wants right now- a dirty cease fire. Or failing that some lurid escalation that knocks its own allies off the fence to press it to do just that.
The immediate western european fear is of a vast tide of refugees heading from Ukraine their way over the winter. Russia does not have to fight western Europe directly to bring it down.... as is already obviously to those with eyes to see.