The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Benjamin Cole]

Telegraph

 World News--The Telegraph

 Putin speech live: 'I'm not bluffing on nuclear weapons', says Russian leader as 300,000 called up to army

Russia announces partial military mobilisation

Putin set to declare occupied land part of Russia

Putin is cornered - the prospect of a nuclear war is closer than ever

Comment: We must prepare for the war to turn even uglier

Truss suggests Russia should pay reparations to Ukraine

---30---

Looks to get uglier. 

Probably the Russian soldiers are being told they are "fighting in Ukraine so you don't have to fight 'em in Moscow." 

Interesting that the thug Putin struck when Biden was president, and not Trump.

Among US elites, is the war seen as a geopolitical opportunity, rather than a humanitarian disaster?  

 

 

[Matt Allison]

3 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Looks to get uglier. 

 

Well. at least for Russia it does.

[W. Niederhut]

8 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

W-

You have never explained why Putin invaded Ukraine on Biden's watch and not Trump's, given your views of Trump and Biden. 

In your view, was the Russian invasion of Ukraine inevitable, and would have happened even if Trump had retained the White House? 

Ben,

     I've had some direct, personal experience with Putin's agenda and modus operandi during the past 20 years, in the old ROCOR-- Russan Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

    IMO, his long-term FSB plan since the late 90s has been to establish totalitarian control over the Russian Federation, and to then re-establish the former Soviet empire.  He has expressed open contempt for liberal Western democracy.

    His decision to invade Ukraine this year was simply the latest step in his long-term totalitarian, imperialist agenda.  He thought it would work out as it did in Chechnya.  But his Ukraine invasion was based on bad intelligence and miscalculation.

    As I said earlier, he underestimated Ukrainian resistance, and he underestimated Joe Biden.

    Trump had nothing to do with it.  He was Putin's asset, offering no resistance to Putin's agenda in Ukraine, and even facilitating it by withholding support from Kyiv.

     Meanwhile, you began this year by criticizing Biden for not doing more to support Ukraine.

     Now you're criticizing Biden for doing too much to support Ukraine?

     It's a difficult predicament, but I think Biden and Blinken have played a bad hand, dealt by Putin, reasonably well.

     Of course, Putin is capable of doing almost anything-- if only to spite the Ukrainians.  He has repeatedly bombed civilian targets, and even bombed areas around the Zhaporizhia nuclear facility.

     

[Steve Thomas]

New York attorney general files civil fraud lawsuit against Trump, some of his children and his business

By Kara Scannell September 21, 2022

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/21/politics/trump-new-york-attorney-general-letitia-james-fraud-lawsuit/index.html

“James is seeking $250 million in allegedly ill-gotten funds and to permanently bar Trump and the children named in the lawsuit from serving as the director of a business registered in New York state. She is also seeking to cancel the Trump Organization’s corporate certificate, which, if granted by a judge, could effectively force the company to cease operations in New York state.”

 

Okay, so now his university has been shut down as a fraud. His charity has been shut down as a fraud, and now his company.

 

If it looks like one and quacks like one, can you spell D-U-C-K?

Steve Thomas

[W. Niederhut]

It looks like yet another Putin ally has fallen from grace-- dying of tall building syndrome.

Putin Ally Dies After Falling Down Stairs on Day of Russia Mobilization (newsweek.com)

[Mark Knight]

Last week the manager at my local Senior Citizens Center went on a couple of tirades. On Tuesday, talking about VP Kamala Harris, he stated, "She needs to be shot right between the eyes." He became agitated just by being shown her photo. The following day, speaking of President Biden, he said, " He needs to be shot." Then he added, "I could take him out at 1.000 yards, and he'd never see it coming."

Then he got agitated because the local Democratic Party had set up their headquarters in a building directly across the park from the Senior Center. "Every damn one of 'em in that place should be shot!" he said. Since he's bragged about owning military-style weapons, and he's an ex-Marine, I hope he never snaps.

But just in case, I made a report on the FBI online tip line today. Yes, he's super-MAGA. I just hope he doesn't turn vigilante should Trump be arrested. I asked the FBI to leave my name out of any conversations they have with him.

And Ben, I don't hear ANY "Donks," as you call them, threatening bodily harm to Trump or to Republicans. Not UNLESS the MAGA crowd decides to attack them.

[Matt Allison]

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

IMO, his long-term FSB plan since the late 90s has been to establish totalitarian control over the Russian Federation, and to then re-establish the former Soviet empire.  He has expressed open contempt for liberal Western democracy.

Correct!

And really, that's all we need to know in order to decide what steps we take.

[Matt Allison]

58 minutes ago, Mark Knight said:

Then he got agitated because the local Democratic Party had set up their headquarters in a building directly across the park from the Senior Center. "Every damn one of 'em in that place should be shot!" he said. Since he's bragged about owning military-style weapons, and he's an ex-Marine, I hope he never snaps.

 

MAGA is a terrorist movement.

It isn't discussed much in the mainstream press, but it is absolutely acknowledged in law enforcement circles.

[Jeff Carter]

U.S. foreign policy advice for Ukraine and Eastern Europe region are clearly separated into a Realist position ( for example: Mearshiemer, Cohen, Burns, Kennan) and a Neoconservative position (most hawkish think tanks), with the neoconservative position mostly ascendant (and responsible for events of 2014). The Realist position - best articulated by the Burns memo from 2008 (published by Wikileaks) - holds that NATO expansion into the eastern regions of Europe was a gross foreign policy error which would eventually be contested kinetically by the Russians. The neoconservative position is that Putin, if not all Russians in general, is genetically disposed to aggression and conflict and therefore must be contained by military strength and eventually entirely defeated.

The Biden administration has aligned with the neoconservative position, signalled by the return of Nuland to the State Dept. Following this realignment, the government of Ukraine announced its final rejection of the UNSC-endorsed Minsk Accords, which sought to federalize but keep intact the country, and also announced plans to reclaim all “separatist” territory by use of arms. This was supplemented with a general mobilization of troops near the Donbas region. In the late autumn of last year, the US State Department worked with Yellen’s Treasury Dept to outline a series of financial sanctions and other penalties designed to effectively ruin the Russian Federation in the event it supported the “separatist” regions slated for attack. Those penalties have so far failed to achieve the stated goal, which leaves the neoconservative faction to advocate greater military pressure, which, with news from Russia today, stands a real chance of creating an escalation logic which could get seriously out of hand.

Objectively, the Realist position is supported by the documentary record and the unfolding of events exactly as predicted years earlier. The neoconservative position is ideological, has no record of accurate predictions, and ultimately advocates total war. That last week Russia received tacit backing for its referendum plan from both China and India - the two most populous nations on our planet - underlines that the neoconservative positions of the US and EU partners in Ukraine region have little support in the rest of the world.

[Douglas Caddy]

 

 

Ex-Trump Official Accuses Former President Of Sinister Immigration Plot (msn.com)

[John Cotter]

If you keep poking a bear, who is to blame if the bear eventually responds by tearing off your arm?

If the only feasible way of thwarting a plan to destroy your country is to invade a country complicit in that plan, what do you do?

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, John Cotter said:

If you keep poking a bear, who is to blame if the bear eventually responds by tearing off your arm?

If the only feasible way of thwarting a plan to destroy your country is to invade a country complicit in that plan, what do you do?

John,

     I'm interested in hearing from our European colleagues on this subject, because Americans of my generation were reared in a society that was steeped in Cold War paranoia about the U.S.S.R.  We had a reflexive, duck-and-cover fear of Soviet era nukes.

     That said, I've always been a cultural Russophile, and even a convert to the (White) Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) during the past quarter century.  One of my older siblings is fluent in Russian, and was one of the first college-level American exchange students permitted to study in the U.S.S.R. in the early 70s era of detente.

     What is your take on Ukrainian threats and aggression toward the Russian Federation-- prior to Putin's invasion of Ukraine this year?

     From my perspective, it seems rather that Putin has been the aggressor toward Ukraine-- e.g., seizing the Crimea in 2014, and initiating militant separatist movements in the Donbas region.  He has also aggressively pursued control of the Ukrainian government with Kremlin puppets like Yanukovych.  

     It is true that there have been Ukrainian Orthodox Churches seeking independence from the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, (including my own Metropolitan in Odessa) but that has more to do with the fact that the MP has been infiltrated and controlled by the KGB since 1920.  (The Estonian Orthodox Church also pursued autonomy from the MP following the break up of the U.S.S.R.-- going under the omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholmew.)

      Isn't the current conflict in Ukraine really a struggle between Ukraine's aspirations for self-determination and liberal democracy vs. subjugation by Putin's totalitarian Russian police state?  And isn't NATO expansion in Eastern Europe also driven chiefly by former Soviet Bloc nations wanting freedom and democracy rather than Russian totalitarianism?

      Serious, non-rhetorical question.  I don't presume to know the correct answer.

Edited September 21, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Matt Allison]

Pretending Putin is anything besides a war criminal is just too funny.

[Mark Knight]

Appeals court gives DOJ access to classified documents from Mar-a-Lago (usatoday.com)

 

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ben,

     I've had some direct, personal experience with Putin's agenda and modus operandi during the past 20 years, in the old ROCOR-- Russan Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

    IMO, his long-term FSB plan since the late 90s has been to establish totalitarian control over the Russian Federation, and to then re-establish the former Soviet empire.  He has expressed open contempt for liberal Western democracy.

    His decision to invade Ukraine this year was simply the latest step in his long-term totalitarian, imperialist agenda.  He thought it would work out as it did in Chechnya.  But his Ukraine invasion was based on bad intelligence and miscalculation.

    As I said earlier, he underestimated Ukrainian resistance, and he underestimated Joe Biden.

    Trump had nothing to do with it.  He was Putin's asset, offering no resistance to Putin's agenda in Ukraine, and even facilitating it by withholding support from Kyiv.

     Meanwhile, you began this year by criticizing Biden for not doing more to support Ukraine.

     Now you're criticizing Biden for doing too much to support Ukraine?

     It's a difficult predicament, but I think Biden and Blinken have played a bad hand, dealt by Putin, reasonably well.

     Of course, Putin is capable of doing almost anything-- if only to spite the Ukrainians.  He has repeatedly bombed civilian targets, and even bombed areas around the Zhaporizhia nuclear facility.

     

Putin has done worse that that, in reducing Mariupol to rubble. A city of 500,000. A cruel thug---and Putin contends Ukrainians are his countrymen? 

In regards to the present in Ukraine, I presented the Eliot Cohen article in The Atlantic as an example of Donk thinking.

To the Donk elites, Ukraine is not a humanitarian mission, but another battle in the old geopolitical struggle for world dominance---in other words, nothing has changed at the Donks, it is like Allen Dulles is running the show.  

If there is a way to end the war quickly, even with a ceasefire-armistice and not a peace, I would take it. Putin will die someday, and then maybe progress can be made.

But the Donk leadership wants a military victory in Ukraine and public capitulation by Putin. Ask HRC. 

As a result, a lot of people are going to die in a prolonged stalemate---one could hardly engineer a worse outcome. 

Surely, you do not contend Biden has JFK's circumspect depth on global relations. 

In my view, Biden is doing in Ukraine and in DC what he has done through his long Senate career: Service elites, and tout liberal positions on some issues. 

Biden "supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he assembled witnesses who grossly misrepresented Saddam Hussein, his government and claimed possession of WMDs."--Wiki 

Some partisans may think Biden is a great man.  But long ago the Donks became the GOP, on all foreign, military and trade matters. 

The Donks are masters at ID politics, and have blobbed into the M$M and the Deep State. 

You need a third party in the US.