MAINSTREAM COOLER - For those who believe mainstream contemporary facts.

[Kirk Gallaway]

Yeah, "one way or another, this darkness has got to give!"

 

Just curious as to your response. So I hear that Macron shouldn't have called for those elections and the right wing  have made big gains?  What are your thoughts ?

[Douglas Caddy]

Palestine Lod Airport 1934

 

[Bill Fite]

30 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Yeah, "one way or another, this darkness has got to give!"

 

Just curious as to your response. So I hear that Macron shouldn't have called for those elections and the right wing  have made big gains?  What are your thoughts ?

From what I've followed, there's some similarities here:

• unpopular president
• right wing on the rise
• resentment to EU rules & taxes - especially in the agriculture industry

But the French election process is different than the US.  There is a second round if the leading vote getter doesn't receive > 50% of the vote.  So the RN is running about 37% or so nationally.  Macron's party is in 3rd place with about 20%.  It's difficult to say what the election results will be since in constituencies where the RN candidate is the top vote getter the voters for candidates not in the top 2 may unite behind the 2nd place candidate to vote against the RN.

I read that Macron's strategy may be similar to a  Mitterand inviting the Communist Party into  shared power so that they would have to take responsibility in the parliament for their policies which failed. Macron assumes the RN will fail this time.  Sounds a bit risky.

The debates here are more real debates.  

My wife said the US debate was more like two high school kids arguing.

I do like the French system with 2 rounds of voting.  I think it would end the 2 parties in the US  nominating candidates with low approval ratings & stop the political system generating candidates who are bought and paid for & make the winning candidates more open to implementing 3rd party programs.

*******

Where'd you hit in southern Europe?

 

 

Edited June 29 by Bill Fite

[Kirk Gallaway]

Thank you for the summary. Well of course, you're an American. I'd like to change everything, the electoral system, Scotus, Citizens United, money out of politics, but most Americans people don't vote in their interests. Are the French any more likely to vote in their interests? I used to think the typical European was much more informed and voted more in their interests than Americans.

I came in from Barcelona, rented a car in Montpelier, from there I went to Avignon, Guordes, those beautiful canyons I forget the name of, Nice, Cassis, San Tropez, Cannes and left off the car at the Eastern border.

[Sandy Larsen]

33 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

But as far as the question of Biden hubris. I'd like to ask him "what were you thinking.? and see what his response would be. I think it would be telling!

 

Biden was asked why he performed poorly in the debate and his reply was that it's hard to debate a liar.

Naturally, going into the debate, I had assumed that Biden had practiced how to respond to Trump known lies. Problem is, Trump lies about EVERYTHING. He makes them up on the fly. So no matter what Biden said, Trump would come back with a lie turning things around, making Biden look bad.

I think that what may have happened in the debate was that this Trump tactic frustrated Biden to the point of mild confusion and stumbling.

If I were training Biden for the next debate, I would tell him that anytime Trump said a lie that he wasn't anticipating and prepared for, just reply in an exasperated voice, "He's just making that up! That's not the way it was at all." And variations of that response. Don't get frustrated, get even... by calling Trump a liar whenever necessary

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

11 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Biden was asked why he performed poorly in the debate and his reply was that it's hard to debate a liar.

But Biden started and his start was horrific! In 2020, i was worried before the debates but he had composure even though Trump was constantly interrupting him trying to get him to stutter.

Then he had the abortion issue, the real softball where he could make  points and he says  some good stuff and then segues into the  Venezuelan immigrant killing that American and actually acknowledges that Trump was at her funeral! WTF!

18 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Naturally, going into the debate, I had assumed that Biden had practiced how to respond to Trump known lies. Problem is, Trump lies about EVERYTHING.

Yes of course, Biden picked the format. The camera often was split. And Biden should have shaken his head or managed a number of different visual responses every time Trump lied. Instead he looked down would not let you even see his eyes and played into looking like a disengaged old man. Just the opposite of what he should have been trying to do!

 

23 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I would tell him that anytime Trump said a lie that he wasn't anticipating and prepared for, just reply in an exasperated voice, "He's just making that up! That's not the way it was at all."

He did do that a few times. But in that format, sometimes it was too late. and with his mic off,  He had to at least shake  his head and deal with Trump lies the only timely way he could.

[Matt Allison]

[Bill Fite]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Yeah, "one way or another, this darkness has got to give!"

Funny how some of those Hunter lyrics are burnt right into the brain.

Sounds like you had a pretty good itinerary on your European vacation.

46 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

I used to think the typical European was much more informed and voted more in their interests than Americans.

It's interesting in France - there's still active socialist and communist parties.

The New Popular Front is polling at 28% of the population.  It's a coalition put together for this snap election of the Socialist, Communist, Ecologist,etc. parties.

So, there is a significant portion of the population who support broader programs benefitting  the whole society.   

[Douglas Caddy]

The artist lives in Jordan. This is a sample of what the world thinks about America today.

 

[Douglas Caddy]

 

California Is Showing How a Big State Can Power Itself Without Fossil Fuels | The New Yorker

 

[Bill Fite]

4 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Just curious as to your response. So I hear that Macron shouldn't have called for those elections and the right wing  have made big gains?  What are your thoughts ?

Addendum:   Just got the paper - Liberation - the front page and pages 2-14 are all a call to all on the left to vote tomorrow and deprive the RN of 1st round victories.  Another difference w the USA.

Since a lot of RN support is regional - I'm not sure this will be successful.

[Douglas Caddy]

New evidence that the US blocked the Ukraine/Russia peace deal

By Aaron Mate June 27, 2024

The collapse of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in April-May 2022. President Vladmir Putin has directly accused the US and UK of sabotaging the negotiations in Istanbul, President Biden and his top principals have never offered a rebuttal.

An anonymous senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov said “I know for a fact the United States didn’t pull the plug on that. We were watching it carefully.” https://www.wsj.com/.../did-ukraine-miss-an-early-chance...

The New York Times has published a lengthy account of the Istanbul talks based on insider sources, including three Ukrainian negotiators, as well as leaked copies of draft treaties disclosed publicly for the first time. The Times’ reporting underscores that Ukrainian and Russian negotiators made significant progress. It also offers new evidence that the Biden administration stood in the way. Yet rather than acknowledge the West’s role in blocking a peace deal, the Times offers up a dubious new excuse from the Ukrainian side for walking away. https://www.nytimes.com/.../ukraine-russia-ceasefire-deal...

The Istanbul agreement, as summarized in a Ukrainian authored document known as the Istanbul Communiqué, would have seen Ukraine accept permanent neutrality, rule out NATO membership, not host foreign military bases, and limit the size of its armed forces. In exchange, Russia would withdraw its military and pledge to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and security. The status of Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region would have been left to future negotiations.

Yet rather than acknowledge that a peace deal was within reach, the Times adopts the NATO-Ukrainian narrative that Russia sought Kyiv’s capitulation. The Times minimized Russian grievances about the influence of neo-Nazis and a crackdown on Russian culture inside Ukraine.

According to the Times, Russia’s proposed text “targeted Ukraine’s national identity, including a ban on naming places after Ukrainian independence fighters.” Yet Russia asked Ukraine to ban “the glorification and propaganda in any form of Nazism and neo-Nazism, the Nazi movement and organizations associated therewith,” including the naming of Ukrainian streets and memorials after Nazi collaborators. Moscow’s demands can hardly be seen as an affront to “Ukraine’s national identity.” With NATO states having sided with the numerically small but politically influential ultra-nationalist movement inside Ukraine – including the Azov battalion, a more accurate characterization is that Russia’s proposed curbs on Nazism were an affront to a key Western ally.

The Times confirms that the US did not like what it was hearing from Istanbul, writing “American officials were alarmed at the terms” of the proposed deal and relayed their concerns to the Ukrainians. A former senior US official characterized the deal as an act of surrender: “We quietly said, ‘You understand this is unilateral disarmament, right?’”

In fact, much like seeking the de-glorification of Nazis, Russia’s bid for permanent Ukrainian neutrality was not an outlandish demand. It was a request to revert to Ukraine’s July 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, which affirmed Ukraine’s “intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs.” This was the position of elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych before he was ousted in the US-backed Maidan coup of February 2014, as well as the plurality if not majority opinion inside Ukraine over many years.

As F. Stephen Larrabee, a former Soviet specialist on the US National Security Council wrote in 2011, “the main obstacle” to Ukraine's ascension to NATO “is not Russian opposition… but low public support for membership in Ukraine itself.”

In seeking to override both Ukraine’s founding constitution and popular opinion, the Biden administration was therefore not “alarmed” that Ukraine’s neutrality meant “unilateral disarmament.” Instead, it wanted to preserve the US led militarization of Ukraine as a de-facto NATO proxy on Russia’s border.

The former US official also claimed that White House believed Putin was “salivating” at the prospect of peace. The Times also acknowledges that the Russian president appeared to be “micromanaging” the talks from Moscow bolstering the case that he was indeed serious. Two Ukrainian negotiators also told the Times that they saw the Russians as serious, with one noting that Putin “reduced his demands” over time. For example, after initially insisting that Ukraine recognize Crimea “as an integral part of the Russian Federation,” Moscow dropped that request.

Accordingly, as Ukrainian negotiator Oleksandr Chalyi later admitted, the two sides “managed to find a very real compromise” and “were very close in the middle of April 2022... to finalize the war with some peace settlement.” Putin, he said, “tried to do everything possible to conclude (an) agreement with Ukraine.”

The two sides indeed made so much progress that the Istanbul Communiqué’s final item foresees the possibility of convening a meeting “between the presidents of Ukraine and Russia with the aim of signing an agreement and/or making political decisions regarding the remaining unresolved issues.” Two weeks later, a 16-page draft treaty (including six annexes), dated April 15th, made its way to Putin’s desk.

Under the proposed agreement, Ukraine’s security would be assured by guarantor states, including the US and Russia. On this issue, outlined in Article 2, there was no dispute. But according to the Times, Moscow tried to add a clause in Article 5 concerning the guarantors’ response in the event of an armed attack on Ukraine.

Moscow proposed that if Ukraine were to be attacked (by any nation, NOT RUSSIA), the guarantors would need to unanimously agree on any military response.

In the Times lied writing this would mean that “Moscow could invade Ukraine again and then veto any military intervention on Ukraine’s behalf — a seemingly absurd condition that Kyiv quickly identified as a dealbreaker.” Article 2 of the draft treaty binds any guarantor state or party to the treaty – including Russia – “to refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine, its sovereignty and independence, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” Accordingly, were Russia to flagrantly violate the treaty by invading Ukraine, it would have no grounds to invoke a different section of the treaty to prevent other states from responding to its attack. If one party violates a treaty it cannot expect others to continue adhering to it. Therefore, if Russia were to attack Ukraine, it would not have right to stop someone else from responding.

The Times-Ukrainian claim that this Russian proposal was a “dealbreaker” is not only dubious on its own, but contradicted by the available record.

 

Did Ukraine Miss an Early Chance to Negotiate Peace With Russia? - WSJ

[Douglas Caddy]

 

 

[Matt Allison]

My sense is that the idea of replacing Biden has already been rendered moot. Which, FWIW, IMO, only makes him look stronger.

When people try to knock out the top dog and fail, there are spoils to that victory.

[Kirk Gallaway]

2 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

New evidence that the US blocked the Ukraine/Russia peace deal

By Aaron Mate June 27, 2024

The collapse of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in April-May 2022. President Vladmir Putin has directly accused the US and UK of sabotaging the negotiations in Istanbul, President Biden and his top principals have never offered a rebuttal.

An anonymous senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov said “I know for a fact the United States didn’t pull the plug on that. We were watching it carefully.” https://www.wsj.com/.../did-ukraine-miss-an-early-chance...

The New York Times has published a lengthy account of the Istanbul talks based on insider sources, including three Ukrainian negotiators, as well as leaked copies of draft treaties disclosed publicly for the first time. The Times’ reporting underscores that Ukrainian and Russian negotiators made significant progress. It also offers new evidence that the Biden administration stood in the way. Yet rather than acknowledge the West’s role in blocking a peace deal, the Times offers up a dubious new excuse from the Ukrainian side for walking away. https://www.nytimes.com/.../ukraine-russia-ceasefire-deal...

The Istanbul agreement, as summarized in a Ukrainian authored document known as the Istanbul Communiqué, would have seen Ukraine accept permanent neutrality, rule out NATO membership, not host foreign military bases, and limit the size of its armed forces. In exchange, Russia would withdraw its military and pledge to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and security. The status of Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region would have been left to future negotiations.

Yet rather than acknowledge that a peace deal was within reach, the Times adopts the NATO-Ukrainian narrative that Russia sought Kyiv’s capitulation. The Times minimized Russian grievances about the influence of neo-Nazis and a crackdown on Russian culture inside Ukraine.

According to the Times, Russia’s proposed text “targeted Ukraine’s national identity, including a ban on naming places after Ukrainian independence fighters.” Yet Russia asked Ukraine to ban “the glorification and propaganda in any form of Nazism and neo-Nazism, the Nazi movement and organizations associated therewith,” including the naming of Ukrainian streets and memorials after Nazi collaborators. Moscow’s demands can hardly be seen as an affront to “Ukraine’s national identity.” With NATO states having sided with the numerically small but politically influential ultra-nationalist movement inside Ukraine – including the Azov battalion, a more accurate characterization is that Russia’s proposed curbs on Nazism were an affront to a key Western ally.

The Times confirms that the US did not like what it was hearing from Istanbul, writing “American officials were alarmed at the terms” of the proposed deal and relayed their concerns to the Ukrainians. A former senior US official characterized the deal as an act of surrender: “We quietly said, ‘You understand this is unilateral disarmament, right?’”

In fact, much like seeking the de-glorification of Nazis, Russia’s bid for permanent Ukrainian neutrality was not an outlandish demand. It was a request to revert to Ukraine’s July 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, which affirmed Ukraine’s “intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs.” This was the position of elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych before he was ousted in the US-backed Maidan coup of February 2014, as well as the plurality if not majority opinion inside Ukraine over many years.

As F. Stephen Larrabee, a former Soviet specialist on the US National Security Council wrote in 2011, “the main obstacle” to Ukraine's ascension to NATO “is not Russian opposition… but low public support for membership in Ukraine itself.”

In seeking to override both Ukraine’s founding constitution and popular opinion, the Biden administration was therefore not “alarmed” that Ukraine’s neutrality meant “unilateral disarmament.” Instead, it wanted to preserve the US led militarization of Ukraine as a de-facto NATO proxy on Russia’s border.

The former US official also claimed that White House believed Putin was “salivating” at the prospect of peace. The Times also acknowledges that the Russian president appeared to be “micromanaging” the talks from Moscow bolstering the case that he was indeed serious. Two Ukrainian negotiators also told the Times that they saw the Russians as serious, with one noting that Putin “reduced his demands” over time. For example, after initially insisting that Ukraine recognize Crimea “as an integral part of the Russian Federation,” Moscow dropped that request.

Accordingly, as Ukrainian negotiator Oleksandr Chalyi later admitted, the two sides “managed to find a very real compromise” and “were very close in the middle of April 2022... to finalize the war with some peace settlement.” Putin, he said, “tried to do everything possible to conclude (an) agreement with Ukraine.”

The two sides indeed made so much progress that the Istanbul Communiqué’s final item foresees the possibility of convening a meeting “between the presidents of Ukraine and Russia with the aim of signing an agreement and/or making political decisions regarding the remaining unresolved issues.” Two weeks later, a 16-page draft treaty (including six annexes), dated April 15th, made its way to Putin’s desk.

Under the proposed agreement, Ukraine’s security would be assured by guarantor states, including the US and Russia. On this issue, outlined in Article 2, there was no dispute. But according to the Times, Moscow tried to add a clause in Article 5 concerning the guarantors’ response in the event of an armed attack on Ukraine.

Moscow proposed that if Ukraine were to be attacked (by any nation, NOT RUSSIA), the guarantors would need to unanimously agree on any military response.

In the Times lied writing this would mean that “Moscow could invade Ukraine again and then veto any military intervention on Ukraine’s behalf — a seemingly absurd condition that Kyiv quickly identified as a dealbreaker.” Article 2 of the draft treaty binds any guarantor state or party to the treaty – including Russia – “to refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine, its sovereignty and independence, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” Accordingly, were Russia to flagrantly violate the treaty by invading Ukraine, it would have no grounds to invoke a different section of the treaty to prevent other states from responding to its attack. If one party violates a treaty it cannot expect others to continue adhering to it. Therefore, if Russia were to attack Ukraine, it would not have right to stop someone else from responding.

The Times-Ukrainian claim that this Russian proposal was a “dealbreaker” is not only dubious on its own, but contradicted by the available record.

 

Did Ukraine Miss an Early Chance to Negotiate Peace With Russia? - WSJ

I've heard that Doug. I've heard it was Boris Johnson who came in and ruined the negotiation. Now was he under authority as if it was Joe Biden? Was this the unofficial NATO position?

The former US official also claimed that White House believed Putin was “salivating” at the prospect of peace.

"Salivating"? Yeah nice evenly balanced quote! Of course Biden and Nato were first prepared to offer Zelensky asylum, but he said he "doesn't need assylum, he needs guns" or something to that effect. 

I understood in 2011 , in polling ,it was pretty much split down the middle whether Ukraine wanted admission to Nato. And after the 2014 revolution, it was solidly for Nato admission.

It seems like the article ends up hedging a little whether Russia had the right to iater invade and as a guarantor, veto power over  outside intervention? That would seem like deal breaker!

Just my take. But obviously if Ukraine decided it was in it's best interests to eventually accept a joint proposal, this whole war could have been avoided, or at least put off.