The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Douglas Caddy]

Michael Moore says Democrats are going to win BIG.

 

O Ye of Little Faith - Michael Moore

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Addendum:  Let me add that the moronic, redundant commentaries around here about the U.S. "booby-trapping" Putin into invading Ukraine are predicated on willful ignorance about Putin's true history, and his longstanding geopolitical agenda.

Our sophomoric Putin apologists-- Chris Barnard, Benjamin Cole, et.al.--need to do some remedial reading.

https://www.amazon.com/Putins-People-Took-Back-Russia/dp/0374238715/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1666572097&sr=1-2

Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it?

In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche―a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad.

Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach―and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match―Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.

Please reduce your ad hominem argument style. 

If you have a point of view, offer it. That's good enough. 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

Speaking of earlier version of the US intel-state in operation:

IMHO, Japan was running an incredibly vicious expansive imperialist empire going into WWII. 

Many serious scholars say FDR left Pearl Harbor wide open for Japanese attack. In a sense, the Japan military high-command was booby-trapped--with the US in the Pacific, Japan's empire was lost, the nation was occupied and demilitarized. 

I hope reasonable people do not conclude I am an apologist for Tojo and the Emperor, when I surmise the Japanese may have been lured into the Pearl Harbor attack. 

Yes, Putin may have fallen into a trap in Ukraine---one somewhat laid by US intel services. And mostly Putin's own hubris---echoes of Pearl Harbor? 

Can reasonable people discuss this idea? 

 

[W. Niederhut]

47 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Please reduce your ad hominem argument style. 

If you have a point of view, offer it. That's good enough. 

 

Frankly, I'm fed up with people who continue to make excuses for sociopaths like Putin and his compromised American asset Donald Trump-- blaming others for their sociopathic conduct.

Putin is a war criminal.  No one forced him to invade and bomb Ukraine, while committing mass murder of civilians.  He has intended to annex Ukraine for years.

Trump is also a criminal, who conspired to overturn the results of our 2020 U.S. election, and even incited a violent armed attack on the U.S. Congress.

Rather than repeating the same old Putin apologetics, try to educate yourself about the history of Putin and his totalitarian police state.

 

[Matthew Koch]

1 minute ago, Benjamin Cole said:

 

Can reasonable people discuss this idea? 

 

Watch Gonzlo smoke cigarettes and tell you information that won't be in Western MSM. Ukraine Russian war starts 4 minutes in.. 

 

[Ron Bulman]

What got us here from 1963, 56 now almost 50 years later is greed.  From the oilagarch' s (now including natural gas = electricity) to the rest of the rest of the plutocrats.  I have to wonder if inflation isn't the result of price gouging.

[Benjamin Cole]

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Frankly, I'm fed up with people who continue to make excuses for sociopaths like Putin and his compromised American asset Donald Trump-- blaming others for their sociopathic conduct.

Putin is a war criminal.  No one forced him to invade and bomb Ukraine, while committing mass murder of civilians.  He has intended to annex Ukraine for years.

Trump is also a criminal, who conspired to overturn the results of our 2020 U.S. election, and even incited a violent armed attack on the U.S. Congress.

Rather than repeating the same old Putin apologetics, try to educate yourself about the history of Putin and his totalitarian police state.

 

That's great, that's your point of view. 

I consider myself reasonably well-educated, although the global scene is a rather big picture, and it difficult to know everything. 

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/russia-may-have-fallen-into-a-ukraine-trap-set-by-the-u-s/

This is actually a leftish newspaper, and the author is Robert H. Wade, Professor of Global Political Economy at the London School of Economics. In an extensive analytical article just published by LSE, Wade argues that although Russia’s actions in Ukraine are inexcusable, the designs for the current war were drawn up more in Washington than in Moscow.

---30---

Is Wade well-informed and educated? 

Wade makes clear his very low regard for Putin. He calls Putin "inexcusable." IMHO, right. 

But, in the US, we have seen the operations of the Deep State now for at least 60 years. The Cuban Missile Crisis, JFKA, Vietnam, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and who knows what. We may see only the tip of the iceberg. 

It is possible to hold brutal Islamic fundamentalists in low regard yet also to realize that mission was triggered by the Deep State. 

A reasonable---in fact, a fascinating---discussion is whether Putin was baited into Russia, and with or without involvement of the Presidency. 

 

[John Cotter]

8 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

John,

      My apologies.  What questions have I not answered?

      I must have missed them-- which is easy to do with all of the constant non sequiturs and Fox News and YouTube posts on the board recently.

     Also, what threats have the U.S. and NATO posed to Putin's fascist police state during the past 20 years?

     Surely you don't imagine that the U.S. and NATO have had any intention of attacking Russia militarily, do you?

     The notion is simply absurd.  If anything, the U.S. and NATO have assiduously attempted to avoid WWIII.

     Now Putin has pushed the West to the brink with his nuclear threats and brutal rape of Ukraine.

     Putin mainly feels threatened by Western economic prosperity and freedom-- and derides the West as decadent for tolerating things like free elections, term limits for democratically-elected officials, and civil rights for gay and lesbian citizens.   He is openly contemptuous of liberal democracy.

     Meanwhile, he and his GRU goons have aggressively fomented ethnic and cultural strife in Europe and the U.S. in order to divide and weaken their perceived enemies.  To what end?

     The man is evil-- a psychopath.  I've been studying him for the past 15 years, after he and his FSB goons seized the ROCOR.  I lived through that whole sordid process in the ROCOR from 2000-07.  Putin wanted the ROCOR parishes in Western Europe and the U.S. for espionage purposes.

   KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent: Konstantin Preobrazhensky, Various, Andy Glad Graphic Design: 9780615249087: Amazon.com: Books  

    

William,

 Regarding the two questions that you haven’t answered, they are at the end of this extract from my post of last night:

 I ended our previous discussion of this topic with the following couple of paragraphs:

 “A manifestation of Russian exceptionalism comparable to the Ukraine situation would be, for example, as follows: the progressive Russian domination of South and Central America culminating in the intensive planting of intelligence and military assets in Mexico and the engineering of a coup there so as to instal an anti-American government.

 “It’s hard to believe that the US would not view that kind of Russian aggression as an existential threat and take whatever action was deemed necessary to defeat it.”

 Do you agree with that assessment, which is my attempt at a distillation of Mearsheimer’s thesis? If you don’t agree, why not?

Edited October 24, 2022 by John Cotter

[Joe Bauer]

More and more national stage figures are publicly stating the raw truth of Donald Trump as a "clear and present, unparalleled danger to our democracy." 

This final darkest assessment regards the man is becoming a national warning call.

The latest:

• Bob Woodward said he changed his mind about Trump after re-listening to his own interviews.

• Woodward previously described the former president as the "wrong man" for the presidency.

• But "Trump is an unparalleled danger," Woodward wrote on Sunday in the Washington Post.

Ahead of the release of his never-before-heard audio interviews with former President Donald Trump, Watergate journalist Bob Woodward wrote that after listening to the unreleased tapes again, he concluded that Trump was an "unparalleled danger" rather than just the "wrong man" to be president.

"The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews with President Trump," set to be released Oct. 25, is an audiobook of previously unreleased conversations between the veteran journalist and the businessman-turned-politician.

In an op-ed for the Washington Post released Sunday, which includes previously unreleased snippets of "The Trump Tapes," Woodward wrote that he had concluded his 2020 book on Trump by calling him "the wrong man for the job."

Woodward now says his assessment of Trump did not accurately describe the former president.

"Two years later, I realize I didn't go far enough. Trump is an unparalleled danger," Woodward wrote.

 

 

 

[Matt Allison]

8 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I have to wonder if inflation isn't the result of price gouging.

It is 100% the result of price gouging.

Teddy Roosevelt is rolling over in his grave watching corporations still exploit regular Americans over 100 years after he tried to end such practices. 

[Mark Knight]

Russian state-funded media director calls for Ukrainian children to be burned or drowned - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism

 

[W. Niederhut]

7 hours ago, John Cotter said:

William,

 Regarding the two questions that you haven’t answered, they are at the end of this extract from my post of last night:

 I ended our previous discussion of this topic with the following couple of paragraphs:

 “A manifestation of Russian exceptionalism comparable to the Ukraine situation would be, for example, as follows: the progressive Russian domination of South and Central America culminating in the intensive planting of intelligence and military assets in Mexico and the engineering of a coup there so as to instal an anti-American government.

 “It’s hard to believe that the US would not view that kind of Russian aggression as an existential threat and take whatever action was deemed necessary to defeat it.”

 Do you agree with that assessment, which is my attempt at a distillation of Mearsheimer’s thesis? If you don’t agree, why not?

John,

      I agree that the U.S. would view this as an existential threat, but Mearsheimer's analogy is absurd on several counts.

     For one thing, if we think of an analogous "Russian domination of South and Central America" on the borders of the Russian Federation, what have the U.S. and NATO actually done?

    Talk to people in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, etc.  They have eagerly welcomed the opportunity to be free and protected from domination by Putin's neo-Soviet police state-- after their terrible experiences under the Soviet yoke in the post-WWII era.  Among other things, Stalin systematically sent his ethnic neighbors to the Gulag, as Solzhenitsyn described in detail.  And, in true Stalinist fashion, Putin is even now exfiltrating Ukrainian civilians to Russian prison camps!

    As I asked you earlier in our discussion, would you have opted to live in Dresden or Munich in the post WWII era?

    U.S./NATO "domination" of Western Europe after WWII has consisted in supporting freedom and economic prosperity.

    The same thing has been true, more recently, in Eastern Europe.  Those people don't want to be oppressed by Putin's police state.

     Here's a story from this past week that speaks volumes about Putin's Russian Federation today.

Ukrainian conductor shot and killed by Russian troops for refusing to participate in concert

Ukrainian conductor shot and killed by Russian troops for refusing to participate... - Classic FM

October 17, 2022

 

[Douglas Caddy]

I agree with the author's assessment of Russia's condition today and in the future:

 

Why Russia’s strategic defeat is in the cards | The Hill

[Douglas Caddy]

Another must-read. I read the full article in the print edition of the New York Times today. It is an eye-opener.

 

Their America Is Vanishing. Like Trump, They Insist They Were Cheated. (yahoo.com)

[Matt Allison]

24 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Why Russia’s strategic defeat is in the cards | The Hill

Yep.

Putin is a terrorist. Ultimately, he will use a dirty bomb or tactical nuke in an attempt to get his way because he is out of options.

I would imagine the efforts to remove or assassinate him are moving as quickly as possible.