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The inevitable end result of our last 56 years


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13 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Pete,

    Strange synchronicity.  I'm currently reading The Gulag Archipelago, and I had just read the passage you quoted (above) last night.  I came across another passage in the book today that also relates to Putin's current police state and the firebombing of Ukrainian cities.

     The gist of it was Solzhenitsyn lamenting that the Cheka/NKVD leaders who tortured and imprisoned millions in the Gulag were never brought to justice in the USSR.  Solzhenitsyn believed that the country needed to fully acknowledge and repent of its horrific crimes against humanity in order to avoid repeating its historic crimes in the next generation.

     That never happened.

     Instead, they ended up with KGB Major Vladimir Putin-- a man whose father was an NKVD "Destruction Brigade" officer, of the kind who arrested Red Army Captain Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the German front in 1945 and sent him to the Gulag for 10 years!  And Vlad Putin, himself, actively sought a position in the KGB as a young man-- something that Solzhenitsyn and his college friends refused to do in the 1930s.

   

W, My copy has a quote on the back sleeve, "To live now and not to know this work is to be a kind of historical fool missing a crucial part of the consciousness of the age."

& it makes me smile when the news reports from Moscow state that Ukraine is historically Russian.  It's no wonder that Ukraine, Finland, Poland, Latvia, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic etc., are all turning West to democracy and looking to Nato for protection from the bear.

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- Donald Trump -

“Former Attorney General Bill Barr wouldn’t know voter fraud if it was staring him in the face—and it was," Trump claimed, even though his conspiracy theory was long ago debunked.

"The fact is, he was weak, ineffective, and totally scared of being impeached, which the Democrats were constantly threatening to do. They 'broke' him," Trump argued. "He should have acted much faster on the Mueller Report, instead of allowing the fake Russia, Russia, Russia, Hoax to linger for so long, but it was the Election Fraud and Irregularities that he refused to act on because he wanted to save his own hide—and he did. He never got impeached, contempt charges never went forward, and the Democrats were very happy with him—but I wasn’t.""

 

Well, Duh...

Steve Thomas

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I read this morning that that convoy that has been stalled on the way to Kiev...

They've been there for a week now, and they don't have any barracks. They've been living out of their trucks. They're running out of fuel to heat their trucks. It's cold and snowing. They're running out of food. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they started throwing down their guns and heading for home. That's what happened at the end of WWI and led to the Russian Revolution.

Steve Thomas

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Just now, Steve Thomas said:

I read this morning that that convoy that has been stalled on the way to Kiev...

They've been there for a week now, and they don't have any barracks. They've been living out of their trucks. They're running out of fuel to heat their trucks. It's cold and snowing. They're running out of food. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they started throwing down their guns and heading for home. That's what happened at the end of WWI and led to the Russian Revolution.

Steve Thomas

Let’s hope. 

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Reading coverage of Zelensky calling out NATO for refusing to declare and enforce a No Fly Zone. Our inability to help Ukraine fight a war with Russia while cheering them on is so sad. Sure we can send them Javelin Missiles. But really no one wins when so many people die. Saddam Hussein, when faced with the overwhelming superiority of the coalition fighting machine, ordered his fighting men to stand down, and disperse. Pretty smart move. I’d rather see Flower Power now than resistance. Putin is just one man. He needs a loyal army to do his bidding, otherwise he is nothing. 

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Yes, it would have been good if we could have seen an ongoing narrative about the horrors of war in Baghdad or Aleppo. Unfortunately I think it's just human nature that people discount the suffering of people who don't look like them , or have their lifestyle. To put it crudely, there can be a rationaiization when they see poorer areas  like Syria undergoing bombing  that "these people didn't have a pot to piss in the first place", and that their lives aren't as precious.

I think this gruesome scenario being played out in a European country for the world to see could be valuable in what's a long term trend away from War as a means to settle disputes, but it won't happen soon and there are lots  of bottlenecks along the way. Unfortunately it looks like Ukraine is going to be the sacrificial lamb.

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GOP Senators tweet screenshots during zoom meeting with Ukraine's Zelinskyy after being asked not to reveal his location

by Rob Beschizza 10:53 am Sat Mar 5, 2022

https://boingboing.net/2022/03/05/gop-senators-tweet-screenshots-during-zoom-meeting-with-ukraines-zelinskyy-after-being-asked-not-to-reveal-his-location.html

“Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Steve Daines today posted screenshots during a zoom meeting with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelinskyy, despite being asked not to do so as it could reveal his location. Another, Ron Johnson (R—Wi.) even asked him where he was.”

 

There are no words...

Steve Thomas

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Is it really such a strange idea to suggest that Ukraine might have chosen not to fight? Maybe it’s in my genes. My Sicilian family comes from a town called Polizzi Generosa, so named because invaders over centuries of Sicilian history were met with food and shelter rather than guns. 

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2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Is it really such a strange idea to suggest that Ukraine might have chosen not to fight? Maybe it’s in my genes. My Sicilian family comes from a town called Polizzi Generosa, so named because invaders over centuries of Sicilian history were met with food and shelter rather than guns. 

Westerners are being generous. They are buying Russian oil, which is the only export of Putin's one-trick economy. 

And Westerners buy everything from Xi. 

 

 

 

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54 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Westerners are being generous. They are buying Russian oil, which is the only export of Putin's one-trick economy. 

And Westerners buy everything from Xi. 

 

 

 

I read something recently about 1/3 of the worlds grain coming from Russia and Ukraine, and that Russia will now sell their excess to China. China originally declined to take the excess but, changed their minds. Seems like Xi’s China is ready for a crisis. 
 

I also saw this:

https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/putin-s-energy-shock-is-becoming-a-world-food-crisis-brace-for-rationing-20220304-p5a1m8.html

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4 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Is it really such a strange idea to suggest that Ukraine might have chosen not to fight? Maybe it’s in my genes. My Sicilian family comes from a town called Polizzi Generosa, so named because invaders over centuries of Sicilian history were met with food and shelter rather than guns. 

Paul, I think for Ukraine to welcome the Russian invasion would've meant giving up democracy for fascism.  They're not ready to do that.  I admire them for their resilience.  However displaced democracy is.

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10 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

I admire the Ukrainians, but they seem flatfooted. Zelensky said up until the moment the invasion was launched the Russians were not going to invade. 

Now there is a long, long Russian convoy sitting still on road, the very picture of sitting ducks. And they are sitting. Sitting some more. 

It appears the Ukrainians never even considered the possibility that Russian armor would enter Ukraine.

There are all sorts of cheap weapons to destroy armor these days, which is one reason the US Marines have entirely forsaken battle tanks. From what I read, some of this weaponry is being shipped to Ukraine now. 

I have a feeling the Ukrainians will prevail but preparedness is evidently not a virtue in Kyiv. 

 

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