John Mearsheimer has it about right: this is an incredibly stupid policy by the West. It is only exceeded by the total subservience to Nato’s priorities that Ukies have shown since 2014: no sense of self-preservation or understanding that they are being used – the ultimate failure of the Darwin test.

If we make it through, the relentless attack by Nato on Russia since the end of the Cold War will be seen as one of the most stupid and unnecessary policies in the last few hundred years. What were they thinking? That Russia will roll over and collapse? What was the plan B? Did the neo-cons and their enthusiastic ethnic fanatic supporters think they would need one?

The ethnic fanatics obsessed with hating Russia 24 hours a day would be the Ukie exiles, Poles, Balts, and the assorted Russia-haters bitter about Russia winning WW2, like the SS general’s grandson Herr Olaf Scholz. When it is over, this will be like a cold shower for them. The end of a dream.

I concur.

There is a long form article from Mearsheimer here:

https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/bound-to-lose

In politics, Perception is Reality. If Russia believes they are threatened then they will react accordingly.

Cruise missile technology made “intermediate ballistic” an obsolete choice. Because both sides perceived the INF was of limited interest, ending it was a minor issue.

Russia perceives NATO encroachment on their only warm water port in Crimea to be an existential threat to their survival. Defending this strategic asset was a national priority. The Brussels HQ for NATO badly misunderstood the Russian mind set.

PEACE 😇

I started off enthusiastically supporting Ukraine, and then became somewhat lukewarm about it, but I feel myself lately returning to something like my earlier enthusiasm.

I think America and Western Europe should make sure Ukraine ultimately wins in a very decisive and clear way. One of the best and most important things one can do in life is stand up for principles and ideals – in fact that’s probably the essence of life.

The risk of nuclear war is negligible. Even if it were real, nothing is more contemptible than to surrender to a bully out of fear. Surviving is hardly the most important thing in life, and it is probably morally good that America shoulder some of the risks for supporting this war. It’s been shown that the world can easily survive a nuclear war – and in any case, the risks are negligible.

Aside from that, supporting Ukraine is in the “grand tradition” of Western cultures idealistic support for those opposing tyrannies that stretches from ancient Greece to World War Two (although admittedly and regrettably with many exceptions and failures and hypocrisies, continuing today). As someone who grew up steeped in the moral and idealistic culture of the West, loving it’s literature, philosophy, and art, throwing Ukraine to the wolves would be not just a clear moral betrayal but a betrayal of over 2,000 years of Western tradition (now on life support, admittedly).

The only people advocating throwing Ukraine to the wolves are nihilists – Nietzsche’s “last men” whose fears magnify risks – and the sinister and malicious, or the simple minded who think Putin and Xi stand for “Western values” – of this last simple minded group we must not judge too harshly, but these are generally not groups I want to keep company with.

As for Ukraine itself, it seems to me a very ambiguous and mixed bag type thing, and not wholly good – but one of the reasons I am not an HBD idiot is that I believe in the principle of “movement”, like Heraclitus, and not in the “fixed”.

Everything in life is a “work in progress”.

So I am back in my beloved West, somewhere in the wonderfully empty middle of Nevada, that magnificent but little explored state. So many small roads lead away from the main highways into empty backcountry, it’s fantastic!

I left NYC hot and muggy, and arrived in a cold and rainy desert. But the desert in the rain smells wonderful! And under a gray sky the desert feels completely different – more somber, meditative, reflective. I love it!

Autumn is on the horizon.

Anyone who wants to escape the iron prison of modernity – and this only applies to those who do – can do no better than to go into the wilderness for at least several days at a time. As Paul Kingsnorth says, quoting I forget who, “civilization is only three days deep”.

What this means is that modernity works by imposing fetters on your mind – the mind-forged manacles of Blake. Modernity stops you from thinking, and trains you systematically to “unsee” what you naturally see. But if you want to return to the reality you have been trained to not see, all you have to do is “liberate” your mind from its chains and restore it to it’s natural state – your mind wants to see, and will do so if you stop suppressing it 🙂

This is admittedly harder than it sounds – all of society is pushing you to not see, and inertia, social conformity, and dogmatic thinking are powerful suppressants.

But by simply giving society the slip, you can free yourself 🙂

But there is a method – it must be for three days, minimum. Preferably more. No electronics (other than for navigation) – books are ok, but they must be of the right kind. A good fantasy book is excellent, or tales of myth and legend or ghost stories or weird tales. All these open your mind to reality. Poetry and fiction are excellent too – but they should be Romantic. History can be good, and some types of religious reading can be wonderful as well – especially the great mystics.

As for companions, they too must be of the right kind – no cynics, although genuine Pyrhonnian Skeptics can be good, no closed minded and dogmatic or ideologically committed materialists or dreary “realists”. At the very least someone “neutral” and open minded – and such people are hard enough to find in the modern wasteland. Few can escape the training.

But if you can, solitude is best at least some of the time.

If you are worthy, one of the most sublime experiences you can have out in nature is to come, imperceptibly, to see the land and the elements, the sun and the moon and the stars, as alive – as quickened by life and intelligence. If you’re really lucky, you may even begin to see that the wilds are throngged with a host of “unseen presences” – the longaevi, what our wiser ancestors called symbolically by the name of fairies, elves, etc. They are still out there – it is only our dull wits that we can no longer see them.

But whatever happens – you will discover an unusual dimension of life and experience out there and you will come back changed, if you do it right. More in touch with a larger reality and more in touch with beauty – modernity will seem more brittle than ever before.

And above all you will have had fun 🙂 That thing so suspect to modernity, because it leads to happiness, and modernity wants you to be under the constant lash of “accomplishment” (the furious working towards pointless physical tasks).

So what are you waiting for – get out there!

Happy Sep 11 everybody. The day we all became fascists for the entire foreseeable future.

throwing Ukraine to the wolves would be not just a clear moral betrayal but a betrayal of over 2,000 years of Western tradition

That’s very debatable, to say the least. Greece, Rome, European powers during most of those 2000 years and their offshoot colonies never thought of waging wars across the oceans to defend the weak of the world. Quite the contrary, if anything.

But even if we agree, for argument’s sake, that being the self-appointed policemen of the world is an old Western tradition with roots in Antiquity and we ignore the very plausible argument that acting like that is what actually brought this war about, what do we do with Yemen, Libya, Burma, the Amazonian jungle tribal warfare and all the rest of places where bullies have the upper hand now? Heck, why not return to Afghanistan then? Wasn’t abandoning the Afghans to the Taliban troglodytes an even bigger betrayal of those cultural and philosophical principles that you advocate? We were actually there. We had already defeated the forces of darkness in that place. All Western nations were present there, building a bright new future for the suffering Afghans and then we just gave up and left them to the wolves again.

“..it takes much more than logic and clear-cut demonstrations to overcome the inertia and dogma of established thought – Irwin Stone”

Lol, don’t I know it 🙂

“The modern world will not be punished. It is the punishment. – Nicolas Gomez Davila”.

So true. But these words are deep – they apply to all sin. Evil is not punished, it is the punishment. Hurting others, being without love, is to be in a hellish state of mind. Older religious writers understood sin in this fashion.

” Happiness = a crisp cold morning in a beautiful mountain or desert setting with an endless view, a mug of steaming coffee in ones hands, awake to the fullness and mystery of Being – AaronB”.

🙂

But how few are those who can understand or appreciate this!

From the previous thread:

Remember, your excuse for doing nothing as Ukrainians are slaughtered is your claim that helping the Ukrainians will result in the world getting nuked.

I hope this won’t offend you too much but, frankly, that is a retarded way of distorting my views.

I agree with Buchanan, Coulter, Sailer, Paul and so many other American intellectuals and public figures (most of them Anglos, for those who care) that the US should stop getting militarily involved (which is totally different from “doing nothing”) in every foreign conflict. In fact, we are already “doing nothing” in most conflicts and people are being slaughtered all the time under our watch. What did we do when the Ukrainians themselves slaughtered a couple thousand of their countrymen in Donbas? Egg them on, actually. In most cases, even if we assume that we started off with noble intentions, Western involvement in foreign conflicts has repeatedly solved nothing while prolonging the suffering of civilians.

The fact that our involvement in the current war could lead to a nuclear confrontation, as everybody in a position to know has warned (Trump, Orban, Biden himself, among others), makes the continuation of that policy more insane but one doesn’t have to believe that this or any other specific war “will result in the world getting nuked” (almost nobody thinks that there is such a certainty) to oppose foreign interventionism.

You could hardly have come up with a more childish way of misrepresenting what someone is telling you. That doesn’t help if the objective is having rational debates.

This is total BS.

NATO and the West were pressuring Russia since the end of the Cold War. The chickens associated with that ill-conceived policy finally came home to roost in Ukraine. Russia is simply responding to the Western moves.

The Grand Tradition (the one we dream of but almost never happens) would have been to make a respectful, lasting peace between the West and Russia.

I bought the Bartlett Steele biography of Howard Hughes a couple weeks ago but I haven’t started it yet. The true story (I have no idea if such is close to possible) is pretty ghastly. Wonder if Musk has read it.

Few people are more obnoxious than the reluctant Western imperialists. The mistakes were made, but we are still the greatest, and the Greeks! – really, a collection of slave societies who also loved to travel around and liberate others – whatever, I suppose something about Voltaire or Shakespeare justifies it all. You play it well here, I am glad you rediscovered the adventure of bossing the rest of the world around.

The issue is not what we want, the issue is what can be realistically done. That is Mearsheimer’s point – Nato over-reached and didn’t think it through. Ukies went along with unshakeable faith in the Western supremacy and it is taking them to a disaster. But keep on trying, you may as well, the damage has mostly been done.

Let’s read Proust and worship Nato. One is great, so the other one must also be superior. Right? But I still prefer the outright unabashed imperialists, the guys who go to the Middle East because “the oil is ours!“, clobber Latino rebels because they are stronger (and Miami has great parties), tell China that the sea of its coast is not theirs, it is – again – ours – no big surprise, since everything is.

Russia is too damn big and suffers from authoritarianism – they put non-conformist journalist called Assange in jail for life (or was that Sweden?), and are busily trying to put the main opposition candidate in prison (or is that some Afro prosecutor in Georgia?) They block websites with unapproved views. The West is the best, and the rest needs to learn how to serve their superiors. Something like that? But what happens if they lose the adventure in Ukraine?

their only warm water port

Ever heard of such place as RF Black sea warm port of Novorossiysk, which isn’t in Crimea or anywhere else in UA at all?;)

…In politics, Perception is Reality. If Russia believes they are threatened then they will react accordingly.

It is hard to believe that the Nato bosses wouldn’t understand it. The security business is based on expecting the worst, the scenarios are always based on what could happen, not on what actually happens.

Unless the Nato guys thought of Russians as aliens, it had to occur to them that putting Nato in Ukraine will inevitably lead to war. They probably wanted a war. Now when they have one and the Ukies are fighting it for them, they are getting nervous – Russia is often incompetent and slow to act, but they win wars that matter.

When we lay out the narrative from the beginning to the likely ending – as Mersh. does – it reflects poorly on the Western strategists. The only saving grace for them is that the victims are only Ukies – easy to admire, but equally easy to forget.

NATO is a military alliance against Russia. Moving it closer to Russia is an actual threat, not a perception. If NATO and the West wanted to expand the European security structure to the East without threatening Russia that would have required a new structure. That could have been done, but everyone in the Western security corps had grown up in the Cold War. The politicians at the helm were too stupid or weak to make the Cold Warriors heel, not to mention that many probably thought pressuring Russia was a good idea. Most Generals or Diplomats who spoke up about the dangers of the process were put out to pasture.

Cruise missiles were part of the INF treaty process. Ending the INF treaty was only ‘minor’ because by that time the USA had already broken the trust required for serious nuclear arms control treaties.

I think Crimea is at least as as civilizationally important to Russia as it is militarily important. It is also more useful as a staging area against Russia than it is as a port for Russia.

Have I heard of the tiny surface back-up facility at Novorossiysk? Yes. It was opened in 2020 and is very limited in terms of surface vessel space. It is a sub base.

Are you ignorant about this facility? Or being intentionally disingenuous as a distraction? ; )

PEACE 😇

It is hard to believe that the Nato bosses wouldn’t understand it. … it had to occur to them that putting Nato in Ukraine will inevitably lead to war. They probably wanted a war.

It is hard to see NATO wanting this war. It us at the end of an awkward logistics train and Türkiye is not the most reliable member at the moment.

However, you may be in on something. Who else might intentionally want war in Ukraine?

The EU is big on maximizing migrant flows. The fighting has opened the door for a large number of people to enter. Many if them are MENA origin on forged Ukrainian identity documents.

If there is an agenda, it is about the EU not NATO.

PEACE 😇

Afghanistan

There was no intra-Afghanistan willingness and/or ability to fight against Taliban, differently from UA case, also Ukrainians could only dream of such amount of both Western military tech and Western official troops at the start of RF invasion which Afghanian government had in its disposal for the fight against Taliban.

Not even mentioning such tiny details as Ukraine being western oriented white christian european country differently from inner eurasian muslim place like Afghanistan;)

something about Pushkin or Dostoevsky justifies it all

FTFY;

That is the side which is neverendingly throwing these type or arguments around at the highest official levels imaginable while trying to very kindly and brotherly (in their own imagination) to kill off the neighbourhood.

I’d deffffffinitely be blasting this on the megaphones in Donbas and Azov.

Nhan Dan Editorial on President Biden's visit to Vietnam today. "Biden's visit continues demonstrating the US respect for Vietnam's political system and the role of the Communist Party of Vietnam."https://t.co/YtNqnd3yxS pic.twitter.com/1B7wTNJZON

— Khang Vu (@KhangXVu) September 10, 2023

Curtailing aid to Ukraine will only prolong the war, Mr Zelensky argues. And it would create risks for the West in its own backyard. There is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries would react to their country being abandoned. Ukrainians have generally “behaved well” and are “very grateful” to those who sheltered them. They will not forget that generosity. But it would not be a “good story” for Europe if it were to“drive these people into a corner.” Says Jew King of Kiev. Wolodymyrr Zelenskyy, threatening terrorism in Berlin, Paris and Cardiff.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/09/10/donald-trump-will-never-support-putin-says-volodymyr-zelensky

So I am back in my beloved West, somewhere in the wonderfully empty middle of Nevada

So, leaving aside for a moment the possibility of interventionist overreach turning these fantastic landscapes into a contaminated wasteland that you and I will no longer be able to enjoy, we may have been not too far away from each other yesterday.

Contrary to the malevolent accusation I’ve been receiving lately of being a pussy for not wanting war with Russia, I actually take too many risks in my daily life and last weekend I got injured quite badly in a fall. I had to postpone the trip to the West Utah Desert that I had mentioned to you and the prospects are at least a month before I start trail running again 🙁 However, yesterday I felt well enough for an afternoon/evening trip to the desert, to enjoy the landscapes from my car.

I first visited the wonderful but almost always empty Baker Hot Springs, in the middle of the desert by a dormant volcano. Then I drove towards Nevada to explore the even more remote and solitary Tule Valley, a huge dry lakebed surrounded East and West by very high mountains.

The Great Basin Desert, actually drier than the Red Rock Country East of the Wasatch (ie the Colorado Plateau), is a more serene type of desert. Its tan/grey/ocre colors don’t amaze your senses at every turn of the road like the Red Rock Country does and its vast expanses can get monotonous even for desert lovers like us. But it’s full of secret gems that, once you get to them, make you wonder how it’s possible that you are the only soul there, enjoying so much beauty on your own.

Just a rock outcrop rising from the Southern Tule Valley deadpan.

Has anybody driven one of those golf carts the stock market is ga ga over?

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/09/zelensky-threatens-to-terrorize-europe.html

Contrary to the malevolent accusation I’ve been receiving lately of being a pussy for not wanting war with Russia, I actually take too many risks in my daily life and last weekend I got injured quite badly in a fall.

The smartest guy I ever worked with, and this is not even close, died in a climbing accident in 2020.

Mearsheimer was actually correct when he said that Ukraine needed to keep its nukes back in 1993. Too bad that the West wasn’t actually on board with this idea back then.

We don’t seek to integrate Afghanistan into the EU like we seek with Ukraine.

Was it in Russia?

Interestingly enough, I had a friend’s friend who died accidentally falling off of the Grand Canyon back in 2016. He was only 23 years old. It was extremely sad when I found out about his death. So young and full of promise!

Does the idea that surnames were invented for collecting taxes hold up, if we consider cases like Vietnam?

Mearsheimer was actually correct when he said that Ukraine needed to keep its nukes back in 1993. Too bad that the West wasn’t actually on board with this idea back then.

Soviet made and with the controls for them being in Russia, they’d no ability to be reconfigured by a non-Russian source for potential future use.

I doubt Vietnam was impressed. (1)

Joe Biden’s Global G20 Embarrassment

I am not sure that President Biden is still possessed of a guard he can drop. But if his recent performance in Hanoi is any indication, he does seem to be confused about the time of day. “Good evening, everyone. It is evening, isn’t it? This around the world in five days is interesting. Well, one of my staff members said, ‘Remember the famous song, Good Morning, Vietnam?’ Well, good evening, Vietnam.”

It was a feeble effort to make a joke, emphasis on “feeble.” The president’s increasingly wary aides took the hint. They had been holding their collective breath as he rambled on. “Lying dog-faced pony solider,” “John Wayne,” “my brother,” “climate change,” “worse than nuclear war.”

“We talked about stability,” Biden slurred, “we talked about the Third World, excuse me, the Third World, the uh, uh the Southern Hemisphere has access to change…”

This wasn’t going well. You can’t talk about “the Third World” in polite company anymore. Suddenly, Biden’s mic was cut and the dulcet tones of his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre intervened: “Thank you everybody. This ends the press conference. Thanks everyone.” Unaware of what happened, Biden maundered on for a few seconds. Then, like Nietzsche’s Last Man, he gazed vacantly about him and blinked. Then he shuffled slowly off stage and disappeared behind the drapery.

Fortunately, everyone serious including foreign leaders realize that Not-The-President Biden represents himself and his puppet masters, not America.

PEACE 😇
__________

(1) https://instapundit.com/605095/

Military Sitrep for Conflict in Ukraine, Russia’s Defensive Lines, Kiev’s Offensive Reaching Its Endgame, What Comes After? US May Soon Send ATACMS Missiles to Kiev. What Happened at G20 in India?
https://marksleboda.substack.com/p/military-sitrep-for-conflict-in-ukraine?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2#details

His accident was in Utah.

I googled for list of mountain climbing deaths and found this page. You have to scroll through a few before you find the first climber who died climbing.

https://www.climbing.com/people/climbers-we-lost-2022/

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mearsheimer-Case-for-Ukrainian-Nuclear-Deterrent.pdf

He’s not the only person who makes this argument:

https://www.cato.org/commentary/ukraine-should-have-kept-its-nukes

Could the Ukrainians take out the fissile material from these warheads and build their own, new nuclear missiles to house this material?

It is curious how feted trannies are.

I doubt the regime would look as favorably on people simply pretending to have invisible friends or girlfriends.

I once explored those lands, but not so ruggedly as you do, because I was with a little kid. There are some nice wild hot springs in random places off desolate highways, extinct or dormant volcanos, and interesting ghost towns and semi-ghost towns.

Show me a Jew and I’ll show you a terrorist.

I’m sorry to hear about your injury – I hope you get better fast and return to the wilderness as soon as you can!

I left yesterday, but was for a while in the Ruby Valley south of the Ruby Mountains near Elko. The road into the valley was beautiful and turned to dirt after a while, and the valley has a remote “lost world” feel – it has a huge wetlands and wildlife refuge. I really enjoyed it!

Before that I was briefly in Idaho up in the mountains – it was cold! Almost freezing at night and in the morning, and the land seemed more muted and somber, and I decided I wasn’t quite ready yet for Autumn – although it is my favorite season and I will enjoy it heartily in a month or two 🙂

I think I might head to the Basin and Range National Monument, which is supposed to be gorgeous desert scenery, and very remote. And then to the Eastern Sierras around Bishop!

Thanks for your pictures and descriptions.

As for the Ukraine thing, I am sure you personally are not a coward, but your “formal philosophy” on this is quite simply a form of empty and quite vapid nihilism. Taken to its logical conclusion, there is no reason to fight for your own home – better to submit and become a slave, but live in the body a few more miserable years, as nothing is more important than survival.

Again I am sure you would fight for your home – but your philosophy is pulling in the opposite direction. With regard to the risk of nuclear war, I would also suggest that if you prioritize survival then small risks begin to seen huge, and can distort vision.

In the end you have ask yourself – if America simply abandoned a weak country that was pleading to join us to a larger bully country out of fear, would that really sit well with you? At the deepest levels of your heart and mind, past all the logical and rational arguments – I don’t think it would. And is a world in which we let such things happen uglier or more beautiful?

Anyways I must go – long drives ahead – and can’t write more.

I agree with Buchanan, Coulter, Sailer, Paul and so many other American intellectuals and public figures (most of them Anglos, for those who care) that the US should stop getting militarily involved (which is totally different from “doing nothing”) in every foreign conflict.

So do, with the emphasis that I bolded.

Sailer support Ukraine.

Ukraine is not every foreign conflict. It is a conflict in Europe, in which a European Christian people are being invaded and killed. Most Americans are Europeans. A normal instinct by fellow-Europeans would be to defend them from slaughter. America (or Europe) should not have been involved in Iraq. Nor should it have engaged in nation-building in Afghanistan, but should have left after Al Queda and its Taliban hosts (the actual ones who hosted bin Laden, not their successors who now rule Afghanistan) responsible for killing Americans were destroyed.

In this case sanctions won’t work, so wanting not to get militarily involved (by which I mean, refusing to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself with) is doing nothing with respect to the invasion.

Ann Coulter, like Tucker Carlson, is an evil person who supported both the Iraq invasion and the Russian invasion.

The fact that our involvement in the current war could lead to a nuclear confrontation

An effective Russian claim that provides a convenient excuse for amoral do-nothings to look the other way as people are slaughtered.

I’ve certainly never tried to avoid being obnoxious – being a critic of the modern world inevitably makes one very, very obnoxious 🙂

I wish I knew what you are talking about, though.

My record of being critical of the West speaks for itself – no need to rehash it. And my record of being very appreciative of certain things in Russian culture also speaks for itself – especially, I would take the whole Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition over that of the West any day.

But one thing the West did get mostly right is it’s political tradition of standing up for smaller, freer countries who were being beat up on by bigger neighbors. Obviously the West did great evil too and was itself often the oppressor.

It’s not hard to see what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine, and the moral choices are only complicated if we make them so.

The West is in urgent need of moral and general internal reformation, but it’s obviously still more attractive than Russia or China – countries are pleading to join the West, while Russia and China are threatening to force others to join their club with a gun. That contrast is stark.

Anyways gotta run and can’t write more.

Found a link:

https://travelnevada.com/parks-recreational-areas/lunar-crater-backcountry-byway/

~25 years ago when I lived in that state, there was not a single other person in this area when we visited it. We were all alone, all day. Almost got the rental car stuck in a heavily rutted dirt road, in days when we had no cell phone, which was a rather reckless thing to do, though at least the weather wasn’t hot.

Hopefully you read it before you leave, in case you want to visit!

What exactly is your argument against the point that the West made a long series of warlike moves since 1993 against Russia which directly led to this Ukrainian conflict? Moreover, that this conflict was the intended result of those warlike moves by the West?

Macgregor making sense in this one:

There was no intra-Afghanistan willingness and/or ability to fight against Taliban

Nonsense. If there is a country in the world where you can keep people fighting forever with enough money and weapons, that must be Afghanistan. But Aaron’s claim is that we should continue our allegedly millenary tradition of fighting for all the good causes in the world so it wouldn’t matter at all if enough Afghans are willing to fight or not. We should liberate those oppressed women and poor Afghans who just want to enjoy music and art without being flogged. What would our ancestors think of our betrayal of these people?

Btw, I think that Latw was quite unfair with you in the past thread when she defended you from my Sovok characterization. She must have missed those posts where you expressed pride in your origins by admitting that you do not care much about past Donbas or even current Ukrainian civilian victims. It doesn’t get more Sovok than that, does it? Straight out of the Stalinist line of thought.

What exactly is your argument against the point that the West made a long series of warlike moves since 1993 against Russia which directly led to this Ukrainian conflict

The problem is that you do not qualify defensive versus offensive in terms of “warlike moves.”

If I buy a pistol and make plans to buy an AR-15 for home defense (perhaps I live in an unsafe neighborhood), I have made “warlike moves.” But it does not mean that I intend to shoot random people in the neighborhood.

A criminal in the neighborhood who has coveted my car for a long time can see that I bought a pistol, and that I am planning to get an AR-15 also. Others have already done so, and he finds himself limited by whom he can rob. And I even said, once I get my AR-15, anyone who tries to rob my home will be in bog trouble. So he invades my home before I get the AR-15.

He can say – I made a series of warlike moves, I bought a pistol, and I was planning to buy an AR-15. I had even announced that once I had the AR-15 I would be able to kill intruders. So he is the real victim. He had no choice but to rob me then and there and try to take my car.

These are the primitive types of excuses one actually hears from criminals. It’s rather amazing to see such reasoning and excuses applied by war criminals and their defenders on a state to state basis.

Has anyone attacked the territory of Russia? Even when Russia was killing 10,000s of civilians as it was crushing the Chechen rebellion?

Those “warlike moves” were of a defensive nature.

I think that it would be easier to resettle Afghans who don’t want to live under Taliban rule elsewhere–and not always in the West, due to cultural compatibility problems:

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ive-worked-refugees-decades-europes-afghan-crime-wave-mind-21506

The author of this article is personally married to an elite Afghan-American, so you can’t accuse her of being racist.

Had Afghanistan’s military not melted so rapidly in the face of the Taliban offensive in 2021, then the West could have continued funding them for a while longer, though there would have still been issues with priorities: Ukraine is of a much higher priority than Afghanistan is because the West wants to integrate Ukraine into the EU in the future, plans which the West does not have and never had for Afghanistan.

Making a nuclear weapon isn’t very difficult even the Pakis managed to build them. The question is does the political elite of a country consider it essential for survival.

Ukrainians didn’t then but certainly do now.

After this war is over and Russia more or less keeps the territory it has now I expect Russians to be given a choice Ukraine in NATO or a Nuclear Ukraine.It probably won’t be overt but sort of like the Israeli arsenal.

In this case sanctions won’t work, so wanting not to get militarily involved (by which I mean, refusing to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself with) is doing nothing with respect to the invasion.

Philippe Lemoine claims that having the West sponsor an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine would be better for the West in regards to this than funding a conventional Ukrainian war effort against Russia would since it would be cheaper for the West and less detrimental to Western-Russia relations.

My main beef with his argument here is that there’s no guarantee that funding an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine would actually be successful. What if this insurgency will fail? Philippe Lemoine uses 1980s Kosovo as a template for this, but the 1980s methods of the Kosovar Albanians failed to result in significant concessions from the Serbs, which is why they subsequently escalated their independence struggle in a more violent direction in the late 1990s. But they had the advantage of having a median age in the low 20s rather than in the low 40s like Ukraine has. So, it would be harder for Ukraine to escalate.

I’m also skeptical of Philippe Lemoine’s claim (made to me privately via Twitter PM) that it would be easier for the West to broker a negotiated settlement in Ukraine if the West refused to provide any military aid for the conventional Ukrainian war effort and instead only funded an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine. After all, after conquering Ukraine, I’m unsure that Russia would ever (short of truly drastic transformations in Russia, such as pro-Western liberals coming to power in Russia) would actually be interested in a negotiated settlement. After all, it’s far from clear that it would be politically very easy for any Russian government to conquer Ukraine and subsequently integrate Ukraine into a Eurasian super-state only to subsequently backtrack and withdraw from Ukraine. France needed to bleed a lot in Algeria before it was actually willing to withdraw from there, after all, and France was actually a relatively liberal and democratic country and did not consider Algerians to be one people with European Frenchmen. I just don’t think that a low-level Ukrainian insurgency would have actually been able to inflict the kinds of losses upon Russia and Russian collaborators in Ukraine that would have actually necessitated a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine. After all, it’s one thing to lose tens of thousands of one’s troops a year in a conventional war and quite another thing to lose just a couple of dozen of one’s troops a year in a low-level insurgency conflict. In the latter scenario, you’d need 100 years to just reach several thousand troop deaths–in other words, a death toll comparable to what the US endured in Iraq.

Thanks.

I left yesterday, but was for a while in the Ruby Valley south of the Ruby Mountains near Elko.

I’ve only passed through that area a couple of times but I know that the Ruby Mountains are surprisingly high and alpine looking. There’s also plenty of Basque presence in that area. You must have seen Basque restaurant signs around Elko.

Before that I was briefly in Idaho up in the mountains – it was cold!

If you still have plans of doing the HSR or hiking in the High Sierras be prepared for snow and winter conditions. Both the Sierras and the Wasatch have just had historically high amounts of snow that all the summer heat could not melt. This is the first time in all my years in Utah when snow is clearly visible in the mountains from the valleys in late summer and we’ve already had the first dusting of snow in the high passes. I would highly recommend taking snow gear with you if you are going to the High Sierras.

This is surely more than you need or want to know but weather can be described as a chaotic system with “memory” (or resonance, as I think I’ve read in some technical discussion). Once it starts doing something (eg frontal systems or blocking and no frontal systems) it tends to keep doing that for a while (sometimes weeks, sometimes even decades) until some mysterious perturbation puts it in a different regime. FWIW my intuition is that we’re going to continue having plenty of precipitation this autumn/winter.

Completely agreed with all of this. Interestingly enough, even before the war, Ukraine threatened to build its own nukes if it was kept out of NATO:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/16/ukraine-may-seek-nuclear-weapons-if-left-out-of-nato-diplomat

Frankly, I completely agree with their sentiments. They really should point to a 1993 article by John Mearsheimer (the same guy who argued that NATO provoked Russia by expanding) as support for their position that they need nuclear weapons if they’re not going to get NATO membership.

FWIW, Afghanistan does have a relatively pro-American community: Specifically, its Shi’a Hazara population:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/406094/afghans-view-leadership-poorly-year-withdrawal.aspx

Within Afghanistan, the U.S. remains popular among Afghanistan’s Hazara ethnic community; 53% are still supportive of U.S. leadership. As an ethnic and religious minority, the primarily Shia Muslim Hazara were persecuted when the Taliban ran Afghanistan in the 1990s and early 2000s. The community’s political leadership has often viewed U.S. military and political influence as an important counterweight to the Taliban.

However, among Pashtuns, the ethnic group that the Taliban’s core support comes from, U.S. approval stands at only 8%.

Hazaras are a Shi’a Muslim Mongoloid people and currently live in central Afghanistan:

I wonder if, on average, they are smarter than other Afghans are.

They had the advantage of NATO as their air force and the Serbs not having a sugar daddy.

Yup.

Anyway, looking to buy a new sword for EDC.

Either a 2.5ft straight sword https://www.medievaldepot.com/collections/swords/products/clamor-of-hooves-carbon-steel-medieval-sword

OR

wait a month & get a Buddha Dal (Elder Warband of Nihang Singhs) Jhatka (execution) Tegha

Somewhat similar to this but shorter & more weighty design for deadly blows.

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/987869981/antique-wootz-tegha-talwar-indian-tegha

Purposes are both TND & Jhatka for food purposes.
—

My issue with the straight sword is that I’ve used the Desi Pommel which locks your wrist into a draw cut my whole life.

The mentality behind a Euro Straight sword is reach/technique.
The technique behind a Desi Talwar is shield + bix nood.
You’re getting into their comfort zone & either hacking off an arm or getting on top + dagger stab.

ਅਕਾਲ

Completely agreed with all of this. Interestingly enough, even before the war, Ukraine threatened to build its own nukes if it was kept out of NATO:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/16/ukraine-may-seek-nuclear-weapons-if-left-out-of-nato-diplomat

Recall or learn what the Israeli did to Iraq.

https://www.rt.com/news/582796-ukraine-corruption-poll-zelensky-responsible/

https://www.rt.com/news/582782-eu-membership-ukraine-corrupt/

But Iraq didn’t have the same level of Western support and protection as Ukraine has, no? Western intelligence could give Ukraine some tip-offs in regards to this, no? And Ukraine could have its own nuclear facilities be located very deep underground, no? Just like the current Iranian nuclear facilities are.

NATO only became their air force in 1999, not before. Though you are correct that it’s very far from clear that the KLA would have ever actually succeeded in dislodging the Serbs from Kosovo, especially permanently, had it not been for NATO’s intervention in 1999. And even then the Serbs did not relent until it looked like NATO might actually have to send in its own ground forces to expel Serbia from Kosovo, at which point the Serbs indeed finally relented and withdrew from Kosovo (but did not give up their claim to Kosovo, and still haven’t so far even over 20 years later).

in the moral and idealistic culture of the West, loving it’s literature, philosophy, and art, throwing Ukraine

In literature and art, Russia (which included Ukraine in those days) was a participant in the Western tradition in the 19th century, although the contribution was overall quite unoriginal and copying earlier work, there was one of the highest technical level attained in the Russian empire and Soviet Union in the aspects of art, literature and music.

I don’t need to add, creating good literature and art is not relevant to the decisions of international law.

For example, Germany is the land of the poets and thinkers, with one of the greatest traditions in Europe. This doesn’t help to support Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939.

Ukraine is in the “grand tradition” of Western cultures idealistic support for those opposing tyrannies that stretches from ancient Greece to World War Two

This is not historically making sense. Like most ancient societies, Ancient Greek states are tyrannies in the modern sense, as they are slave economies. For example, only a minority of people in Ancient Athens would be citizens.

Ancient Greeks are also not going to rescue smaller countries, usually they are famous for destroying them. For example, the Melian Dialogue.

Also an idea “the weak will inherit the earth” would not be usually natural for Greek or Roman culture before Christianization, even after this it has a specific context for centuries.

The ideal about rescue of small countries, modern international law and universal rights is mainly only developing after the Enlightenment.

–

By the way, Ukraine as a nation has any human right to defend themselves against wars of aggression by dictators.

After they join the EU, the situation of human rights in Ukraine would be expected to improve. But the current situation there is more like any postsoviet country. There is a story from Ukraine, which highlights the similarity of the legal situations in Ukraine and Russia.

Ukraine’s Independence day, two children of a Ukrainian soldier who was killed in the war, made a video for Tiktok where they were “dancing in the cemetery”.

They’ve now been arrested and can be prosecuted with possible penalty of 3-5 years in prison.

The video is a few seconds. They are teenagers only. The father of the girls is recently killed. They pose in a weird way. This is all.
https://www.tiktok.com/@_life_hack1/video/7270954182058790149

In a country that protects human rights, they would maybe give to these orphans an invitation for grief counseling. In postsoviet Ukraine, it’s still a situation where the police initiated a witchhunt against the orphans.

The EU will have a significant job to reform this kind of postsoviet culture and legal system.

Sure, Ukraine has an extremely long way to go to even reach Polish levels of corruption:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Ukraine

I suspect that Ukraine won’t become an EU member until the 2040s at the very earliest (the 2050s if it is less lucky). But the EU can help it develop, improve, and clean up in the meantime.

Some recent articles about this topic:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/10/opinion/ukraine-war-corruption.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/11/ukraine-eu-membership-corruption/

The pommel on the “Hooves” sword look really unpleasant.

If that is the vendor you want to buy from, this would be a minor upgrade that improves both pommel and cross guard.

https://www.medievaldepot.com/products/hellion-rising-1095-high-carbon-medieval-sword-with-black-leather-wrap-handle

Trying to buy a full sword for less than $200 is a tricky proposition.

PEACE 😇

After this war is over and Russia more or less keeps the territory it has now I expect Russians to be given a choice Ukraine in NATO or a Nuclear Ukraine

So Russia will be given the choice to:
    • Nuke Ukraine to stop them from joining NATO, or
    • Nuke Ukraine to eradicate their nuke program
Both of those options sound very bad for Ukraine.

As the stronger party, Russia will give a Ukraine an offer they cannot refuse — Military limits and a treaty that guarantees “No NATO Ever“.

At least Ukraine can join the EU. That is not tied to an intolerable military threat aimed at Russian civilians.

PEACE 😇

I suspect Ukrainians are working on one now; they may already have a small suitcase one (it has been a year and a half since the war started). They would be foolish not to. They have plenty of nuclear material (Russians failed to capture all the NPPs), and plenty of scientists capable and motivated. Without the security of NATO, Ukraine will be forced to make its own security.

So Russia will be given the choice to:
• Nuke Ukraine to stop them from joining NATO, or
• Nuke Ukraine to eradicate their nuke program

Ukraine would not announce its nuke program until it has them; it may even have something now. And Russia which cannot prevent dozens of drones from being launched within Russia would not be able to stop nuclear retaliation within Russia, should Russia choose to kill 100,000s of Ukrainian civilians with nuke strikes on Ukrainian cities.

Fortunately just as the Indians didn’t preemptively nuke Pakistan, nobody nuked North Korea, and nobody will nuke Iran, I doubt the Russians will see nuking Ukrainian cities* as course of action to take, they are not as sick as you are.

* Though there is the small possibility of tactical nukes being used on the battlefield at some point, perhaps to save Crimea if it comes to that.

Rest assured that Russia will find and destroy any Kiev regime nuke program inside Ukraine. “Western support and protection” can only go so far when it comes to Ukraine. The signs are that this effort will lose momentum, if not already the case.

You overlook the destroying of Serb civilian infrastructure which proved more successful than eliminating JNA targets. Charles Kupchan is right in believing that NATO lucked out in Yugo. The Serbs could’ve hunkered down with a Western ground effort being problematical.

UNSCR 1244 supports the Serb claim on Kosovo, supported by Russia, India, Ukraine, China, Georgia, several EU nations among others.

As for the Ukraine thing, I am sure you personally are not a coward, but your “formal philosophy” on this is quite simply a form of empty and quite vapid nihilism.

It’s funny, how when it comes to US-West landscapes we see eye to eye (well, leaving the fairies stuff aside) but we don’t seem to agree on anything else and we even seem to diverge from each other as time goes by. You’ve finally managed to find common ground with Silvio though.

To be perfectly honest, I’m beginning to find this discussion about nuclear war tiresome and annoying. It’s like trying to convince a group a children that Spiderman is not real and no, he’s not coming to our rescue in the last minute if disaster comes.

People who are in an optimal position to know how real the threat is keep warning us about the peril. For example, former President Trump, current President Biden, Hungarian President Orban (a good friend of both Putin and Trump) and of course, Putin himself. I really don’t understand where this “no, they’re all just kidding, let’s march on Crimea” attitude comes from. It’s quite insane.

I do appreciate the fact that it’s very unlikely that anyone will initiate the destruction of the world as we know it if they don’t feel totally cornered. But impossible to imagine? Come on. I have read the history of World War I several times. But if somebody asked me point blank why exactly Europeans started killing each other by the millions and destroying their countries I wouldn’t know what to answer. It was just one of those things that people have been doing since the dawn of time, only multiplied by technological progress and incipient globalization. I’m not sure how important the motives for that particular conflict are for anyone these days.

The reasoning (so to speak) of the protagonists in WW2 was easier to follow. But still, whatever those reasons were, the destruction was even more catastrophic. During WW2 some countries and some ethnic groups suffered bigger losses than what most simulations project for a nuclear exchange (unless maybe our leaders go bananas and engage in countervalue attacks). The losers of that war lost everything. Their countries, their families and their own lives, either through suicide or through public execution. But we think we have evolved so much that our politicians would never behave in the same way??

AK, btw, is one of the people who has studied the subject and doesn’t think any major country would even lose their state structures in a full nuclear exchange. Most people would survive and the biggest problem would be staying alive in a contaminated environment with seriously disrupted basic services, trade and economies, especially agriculture. Based on my own reading, I also think this is the most likely scenario. Worse than any previous war and a world hardly worth living in for people in the worst affected areas but not a civilization ending episode.

I guess that, much against my will, I have just posted another long comment on the topic of nuclear war. I’ll try to think that it was worth it because we should all actually talk much more about nuclear war, like people used to do during the previous Cold War. That’s probably what kept us safe. The memories of the previous holocaust were still fresh and people didn’t want to repeat anything like that. It was a rational and very healthy fear. But for some weird reason nobody has any fear of another world war anymore. We’ve grown accustomed to think that nuclear war is a topic only pussies and lunatics talk about when in reality we’re so idiotic that we haven’t even been able to take advantage of a long period of peace to bring nuclear arsenal down to non-catastrophic levels.

Put differently, when you have two monkeys (let’s call them Joe and Vladimir) locked in a room next to yours with an RPG, leaving them alone because there’s not much you can do and they’re very unlikely to figure out how it works is not the most rational attitude. I think it’s much better to protest and make a lot of noise whenever you see they start messing around with the fucking weapon that nobody should have left there and try to make them do something else.

You overlook the destroying of Serb civilian infrastructure which proved more successful than eliminating JNA targets. Charles Kupchan is right in believing that NATO lucked out in Yugo. The Serbs could’ve hunkered down with a Western ground effort being problematical.

Serbs didn’t have the fertility of Iraqis or Afghans or support from a powerful bloc like the West that could arm them for a long time. So, I would expect NATO to defeat the Serbs. Maybe it would have been harder than expected with a ground invasion, but I don’t see the Serbs pulling off a Ukrainian miracle in such a scenario. There are only seven million Serbs relative to 25 million Ukrainians, after all. And NATO has, what, 500 million relative to Russia’s 150 million? So, the NATO:Serbia ratio is over 50:1 rather than just 6:1 for Russia:Ukraine.

UNSCR 1244 supports the Serb claim on Kosovo, supported by Russia, India, Ukraine, China, Georgia, several EU nations among others.

That’s true, but in spite of this, around half of the international community has nevertheless subsequently recognized Kosovar independence. Maybe that’s unfair, but still, that’s much more international recognition than Abkhazia or South Ossetia or Transnistria or Russia’s annexation of Crimea got. (I do lament Nagorno-Karabakh not getting more international recognition, but alas, it looks like its existence is going to be temporary.)

“Western support and protection” can only go so far when it comes to Ukraine. The signs are that this effort will lose momentum, if not already the case.

The West, other than MAGA nuts, should have enough of a vested interest in supporting Ukraine so that it will eventually join the EU after it will put its own house in order. I expect this support to continue for a very long time. Even Afghanistan got two decades’ worth of Western support and it was less important, after all.

* Though there is the small possibility of tactical nukes being used on the battlefield at some point, perhaps to save Crimea if it comes to that.

Would that actually stop Ukraine from taking Crimea, though? Or simply make Ukraine even more determined to do so?

Interestingly enough, as I have previously said here, if Ukraine can actually reconquer Crimea and the Donbass without a significant risk of nuclear war, then it should indeed do so since the rest of Ukraine’s population is now so overwhelmingly hostile towards Russia that even the Ukrainian reincorporation of Crimea and the Donbass would not materially alter this fact in too huge of a way, unlike before 2022.

I don’t think nuclear war with exchange of the strategic weapons is likely, because of the configuration of the war is not the correct one for this to be likely.

There is a government Russia with nuclear weapons in the war. But the configuration of the war is not the invasion of Russia, but the invasion of Ukraine which doesn’t have nuclear weapons.

This is similar to the situation in Vietnam in 1966-1974, where the USA had nuclear weapons, North Vietnam didn’t have nuclear weapons, and USA was fighting in Vietnam, North Vietnam was not fighting in America. So, the Vietnam War was not likely to cause the USA to use nuclear weapons and if the USA used nuclear weapons against North Vietnam, it would be unilateral.

The option of defeat in the war for Russia, is to lose the invaded parts of Ukraine, not to lose parts of Russia.

The second safety is Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons. So, even if Russia uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine, there will no exchange of nuclear weapons.

So, in the scenario where there is use of nuclear weapons, use of nuclear weapons in the war, would be unilateral, against Ukraine, but not against Russia. It would also be a tactical nuclear weapon use against Ukraine, at least in the beginning.

–

There are also some other safety things like the “power vertical”, as the euphemism is written, in Russia implies the government has an unusual flexibility, can say almost any kind of defeat is a victory without having many negative consequences. For this reason, they can exit the conflict without having internal problems, because people in Russia don’t really care and their opinion can be changed in a day to what the authorities want.

There doesn’t exist “public opinion” in Russia, except what is good for the circle of friends who are rulers of the country, will be instructed as the next “public opinion” and the people will then repeat what the authorities say.

There’s no and will be no “Ukrainian miracle” in the form of the Kiev regime regaining all of the former Ukrainian SSR and/or becoming a NATO and EU member.

“MAGA nuts” aside, a growing number of Americans have understandably become more distraught at corrupt politicians saying there’s no money for much needed domestic matters, as the latter support mega bucks to the corrupt, lying, undemocratic and neo-Nazi influenced Kiev regime, which has blood on its hands before and after 2/24/22.

The Afghanistan example serves to further nourish a more reasoned foreign policy approach.

Within two years time, it’s quite possible that Biden, Sunak, Macron, Scholz and Zelensky will no longer hold high office, thereby making it easier for their respective successor to take a more prudent course.

Live as of this posting:

https://www.rt.com/on-air/582805-putin-eastern-economic-forum-session/

If Ukraine won’t even become an EU member, then Ukrainians shouldn’t even bother fighting. Instead, in such a scenario, they should just immediately give up and move en masse to the EU.

…the West did get mostly right is it’s political tradition of standing up for smaller, freer countries who were being beat up on by bigger neighbors.

The West didn’t stand up for the Russian minority in Ukraine, Ossetians in Georgia, Serbs in Kosovo, Russians in the Baltic states…Is that what you meant by “mostly”.

The West will stand up for smaller groups if they are useful Western allies. But every country does that – it is nothing special. It is not values, it is opportunism. The Western tradition that you celebrate can be better described as fighting the enemy by any means available and lying about it by invoking virtues…

The West is rich and relaxed and that makes it attractive. In this war, the Ukies want the Western riches, all sides have by now discarded values, and pining for a nuclear war – as you did in your original post – is in bad taste.

Your post lacks a sense of fairness, another Western weakness – they love to fight unfair fights….These days those are the only ones the West manages to win.

The ideal about rescue of small countries, modern international law and universal rights is mainly only developing after the Enlightenment.

Maybe HMS is talking about the post-1918 period when the peace settlement produced many smaller European nations? And they set up the League of Nations in Geneva.

This seems to have been influenced by Enlightenment liberal ideas, the liberal nationalism variant.

The same mood must also have influenced the Bolsheviks when they created all of the national republics in the USSR.

That was really strengthened after 1945. The idea of waging war for national greatness and glory became more taboo, and wars had to be presented as being for the material benefit of the populations themselves.

… Ukraine won’t even become an EU member, then Ukrainians shouldn’t even bother fighting. Instead, in such a scenario, they should just immediately give up and move en masse to the EU.

All of them? But it is not a bad solution – the West encouraged them and they want to move to EU.

There is nothing unique about it: if all Pakistanis, Indians, Philipinos, Nigerians, Tunisians…were told that they can move to EU, they also would. Some would even start a real or pretend war to get the opportunity. Why not? That seems to be the logical conclusion for a bad mix of Western policies. But then it won’t be the West anymore…

EU is challenged enough as is to take in Ukraine anytime soon if ever. Quite foolish to think otherwise.

This is a Richard Spencer style Hottake.

The US could never credibly annex Vietnam as a contiguous province or state of America. Crimea is heavily Russian demographically and historically Russian. The narrow legal question is where the clever Brits are attempting to knock Moscow on their backside.

It’s quite clear that the legal ambiguity is where the British have sought to justify their own actions like sailing HMS Defender so close to Sevastopol.

Yeltsin was very weak.

So, I would expect NATO to defeat the Serbs. Maybe it would have been harder than expected with a ground invasion, but I don’t see the Serbs pulling off a Ukrainian miracle in such a scenario.

If the Serbs set up to die in mass numbers it is very hard to envision NATO infantry marching into fire in the 1990’s. Project New American Century, new Pearl Harbor, Sep 11.

One thing the truthers never seem to do is give due credit.

One concern with nuclear weapons use is starvation. Their use could easily lead to major disruption of world trade, economic collapse as well as martial law in many countries. These sorts of events could lead to food supply disruptions for billions of people.

+++

Ukraine may no longer have the scientific and technical capability to create nuclear weapons. If they do, it probably centers around a handful of people who are vulnerable to assassination. Ukraine could make dirty conventional bombs no problem. I think they have not used these so far to avoid retribution.

To be perfectly honest, I’m beginning to find this discussion about nuclear war tiresome and annoying. It’s like trying to convince a group a children that Spiderman is not real

Or rather, it is like trying to convince a child that there is no boogeyman under the bed.

Dmitry’s comment about Russia and nukes was about perfect.

For example, former President Trump, current President Biden, Hungarian President Orban (a good friend of both Putin and Trump) and of course, Putin himself

If one of your main arguments is the public statements of politicians known for their honesty such as Trump, Orban, Putin, and Biden you are in some trouble 🙂

Very well said. Russians, who don’t protest much about getting killed by 10,000s in some fields in Zaporizhia for no legitimate reason, are not going to mass protest about the war ending and them returning to 2021 borders or even losing Crimea. And Putin seems to have already liquidated or pushed out hardliners in the security services and arrested hardliner activists such as Girkin (also without mass protests).

The West, other than MAGA nuts, should have enough of a vested interest in supporting Ukraine so that it will eventually join the EU

“The West” is a terrible term. Which countries does that mean? North America is different than Europe, and both have their internal schisms. In this context, is “The West” Germany, France, and possibly the UK?

Certainly “The West” excludes America where anti-war populism is winning. MAGA rationalists are demonstrating their sanity. They are blocking NeoConDemocrat nuts seeking war funding in the House. The U.S. will soon regain its prestige and honour by walking away from the Veggie-in-Chief’s personal folly.

Russia does not particularly care about the non military EU. It would be easy to obtain a deal including membership for Ukraine. However, it would have to be tied to minimum necessary arms restriction treaty, including No NATO Ever.

I expect this support to continue for a very long time. Even Afghanistan got two decades’ worth

This is not Afghanistan where the fight could be strung out forever on insurgency level funding. It has already reach open war, which is orders of magnitude more expensive.

Knowing that U.S. funding is headed down, hopefully to zero, who will pay for Kiev aggression? As your goal is “The EU West” membership, that implies EU participation:

• How much will Germany spend?
• How much will France spend?

These two will have to carry the bulk of the spending. It is hard to see the UK going big on funding EU expansion. At least €3 Billion per month is an absolute minimum. €5 Billion per month is more realistic. Do you really think that France and Germany will spend that much to obtain an EU member that will permanently increase their annual contribution?

PEACE 😇

…politicians known for their honesty such as…

Who are your candidates? Zelensky? Macron? Scholz? Could you tell us who you believe?

Regarding the losses in the steppes: it seems indisputable that the Ukies have suffered worse losses, it is even accepted if you read Western press. The losses achieved very little. Why would the next offensive be more successful?

At some point basic self-preservation needs to kick in.

The option of defeat in the war for Russia, is to lose the invaded parts of Ukraine, not to lose parts of Russia.

I understand why you perceive it that way. However, are you sure that Russia perceives it that way?

You are advocating a high stakes wager, and do not seem to understand that is a bet. For example, Russia *must* protect Russian Crimea’s fresh water supply from the Dnieper. They will not allow the Punishment Dam to be rebuilt. Nuclear “red lines” may be further forward than they were in 2022.

The second safety is Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons. So, even if Russia uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine, there will no exchange of nuclear weapons.

I concur.

There is no nuclear response if Russia uses nukes exclusively in Ukraine. This makes Kiev aggression futile:

— If they lose in the conventional space, they lose.
— If they succeed in the conventional space, they get nuked and lose.

What is an achievable “win” for Ukie Maximalists? I do not see one.

say almost any kind of defeat is a victory without having many negative consequences. For this reason, they can exit the conflict without having internal problems, because people in Russia don’t really care

Putin has challenges from nationalist factions. He currently keeps these in check by enthusiastically playing the nationalist card himself. And, he needs to keep them in play as they spend most of their effort thwarting the SJW Globalists.

Trying to redefine “defeat as victory” is difficult & risky. If the perception shift does not work, it could easily lead to catastrophic internal problems. The smart move for Russia is to win on the battlefield. And, their access to nukes makes this well nigh inevitable.

PEACE 😇

tradition of fighting for all the good causes in the world so it wouldn’t matter at all if enough Afghans are willing to fight or not

Trying to use here reductio ad absurdum, which has nothing to do with events and decisions in real world with objective existing constraints.

admitting that you do not care much about past Donbas or even current Ukrainian civilian victims

Once again worthless claim when no provided direct quoting on the imaginable matter or potential misinterpretations of it.

This war is the West versus Russia. Any losses or gains are not about Ukraine per se. If Russia somehow loses in Ukraine the West will step up the pressure against Russia. This is the pattern going back 25 years. A huge escalation would be expected from both sides after such a loss.

There is minimal chance Russia would intentionally use nuclear weapons in this conflict. A major concern is accidental escalation due to some submarine, satellite or aircraft misunderstanding and destruction. Part of this risk is that MAD doctrine can potentially create very rapid escalation.

I can think of two possibilities where Russia might intentionally use nukes in Ukraine, short of a WW3 scenario. The first is draconian retaliation if Ukraine launches an attack on Russian civilians which has 9/11 level casualties, tens of thousands. Then they might simply nuke a Ukrainian city to end this mess. The second might be if NATO/Poland decides to cross the border into Ukraine in a serious way. I don’t think they are ready for this now, but next year maybe they would try something. Russia might be tempted to use tactical nukes the way the West had planned to use nukes in Europe to blunt a potential Soviet attack. Leaving Western Ukraine a contaminated zone might be a feature not a bug.

Russia’s real hard liners probably do not talk much publicly. They are at the top of the strategic rocket forces, submarine forces, long range bomber commands and space forces. We know they have clout since these services were funded with little interruption since the fall of the Soviet Union. They got funding for the Poseidon submarine weapon and the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile. To some degree these are both “Doomsday weapons” created in response to Western aggressive acts, especially dropping out of the ABM treaty. These two weapons are the result of hardliners who feel that the West is a very serious and very irrational threat to Russia. They are not playing around.

Please stop being angry and help stop this mess. Maybe you can talk some sense into your fellow travelers and talk them into a surrender. This could still save a lot of Ukrainian lives.

This war is the West versus Russia. Any losses or gains are not about Ukraine per se. If Russia somehow loses in Ukraine the West will step up the pressure against Russia. This is the pattern going back 25 years. A huge escalation would be expected from both sides after such a loss.

This war is the EU versus Russia. Do not let Not-The-President Biden’s corrupt involvement fool you. America is showing good sense and walking away from the fiasco.

Will the EU want to step up & escalate possibly? Possibly. Can Germany & France afford to? Doubtful?

PEACE 😇

Don’t be ridiculous. The EU is not the world hegemon which is basically the USA plus the surviving Western core of the British Empire.

The major EU countries are vassal-pawns similar to Ukraine, but with less excuse. They have phantom pain from the loss of their former glory and hate Russia because she retained some of hers. Mostly they do not want Russian territory and Russia does not want theirs. It is just about power and who is at the top of the heap.

Eastern Europe is different since they have a complex history with Russia, the USSR, the Turks and everyone else. These countries are easily manipulated.

Hungary and Poland cut off Ukrainian farmers: (1)(2)

Hungary will maintain ban on Ukrainian grain regardless of EU decision

The Hungarian government argues it is doing everything possible to protect the interests of Hungarian farmers, If the joint action does not lead to a result, Hungary is ready to impose the ban on a national legal basis, announced the Hungarian Agriculture Ministry in response to the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hírlap.

Poland will continue to block Ukrainian grain whatever the EU commission decides

Poland signals it will issue a decree stopping the export of Ukrainian grain to Poland should the European Commission refuse to extend the embargo beyond Sept. 15

the Polish government indicates it cannot allow Ukrainian grain imports at a time when Polish farmers have just completed their harvest and need to sell their produce. The grain embargo on Ukrainian products containing wheat, corn, rapeseed, and sunflower imposed by Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia was agreed by the European Commission at the beginning of May. It was to last until June but was extended by the EU commission until Sept. 15.

[Polish Development Minister Waldemar] Buda confirmed that the transit of Ukrainian grain into other EU states or to the countries of Africa and the Middle East would continue without interruption, and this effort would receive support and encouragement from Poland.

Does anyone know how much Ukranian grain has successfully made it to (mostly) German ports as part of the “solidarity corridor” scheme?

PEACE 😇
__________

(1) https://rmx.news/economy/hungary-will-maintain-ban-on-ukrainian-grain-regardless-of-eu-decision/

(2) https://rmx.news/poland/poland-will-continue-to-block-ukrainian-grain-whatever-the-eu-commission-decides/

I don’t think nuclear war with exchange of the strategic weapons is likely

I agree. But nothing I have said in this thread or in the previous one is to argue that nuclear war at this point in time is likely.

That’s just a distortion of the people here who, some for very clear ethnic reason, some apparently for psychedelic/ascetic reasons, are arguing that nuclear war is not possible, which is what I am disputing.

So, by arguing against something that I am not defending, you’re failing to address any of the several reasons I have given to show how nuclear war is perfectly possible. Just as it was during the previous Cold War, when nobody disputed that fact, even though by virtue of everyone doing much more than now to avoid it, it was probably less likely.

As for the likelihood of the war in Ukraine escalating to WW3, you’re not making a good case against it either, using those parallelisms you have chosen. In Vietnam and Korea (where the Americans did actually consider using nukes) the war was taking place thousands of miles away from the US. Nobody was trying to occupy a territory that the US considered its own. And the US wasn’t ruled by a dictator who could fear a coup that would depose or perhaps even kill him if he lost the war. Another crucial difference is that the war was not taking place in Europe with NATO and USSR forces in very close proximity and missiles sometimes falling on the territory of one of them. The potential for accidents and miscalculations looks clearly bigger now.

This war is the West versus Russia.
…
A huge escalation would be expected from both sides after such a loss.

I mean this sincerely, I have absolutely no idea how to parse what you are attempting to say. As it relates exclusively to the current fighting in Ukraine (not 20+ years of history):

— Would you please define what precisely you mean by “The West”?
— Which nation(s) do you believe will go for “huge escalation”?

Populist America and the SJW Globalist EU have diametrically opposite policy trajectories.

• If the U.S., according to you, equals “The West” — Then “The MAGA West” is committed to de-escalation. The U.S. House is currently blocking additional funds for Kiev aggression. Also, MAGA will walk away honourably which is not a defeat. The humiliation is exclusive to the Veggie-in-Chief and the DNC, not America.

• If Europe equals the “The West” — Then “The EU West” may desire huge escalation. However, I do not see how they are going to pay for it.

PEACE 😇

Certainly “The West” excludes America where anti-war populism is winning. MAGA rationalists are demonstrating their sanity.

What is rational about running a candidate that the majority opposes?

Majority of Americans say they won’t vote for Trump
https://nypost.com/2023/08/17/majority-of-americans-say-they-definitely-wont-vote-for-trump-in-2024-poll/

They are blocking NeoConDemocrat nuts seeking war funding in the House.

Don’t get your hopes up.

They’re blocking a broad spending bill that is vague and includes aid for hurricane victims.

McConnell is on the side of Ukraine and usually gets what he wants from other Republicans. He weaseled Trump so I really doubt Greene can stand up to him.

What the libertarians should propose is a general 5% cut to the military and then send 50 billion to Ukraine.

I do know that world wheat prices are at a 20 year low and still falling.

They are predicted to rise next year but that might be hype from the growers. Hence Putin is trying to clear his mouldy 2018 stocks from his warehouses for free.

If one of your main arguments is the public statements of politicians known for their honesty such as Trump, Orban, Putin, and Biden you are in some trouble 🙂

And what exactly would make those 4 politicians (3 of them with direct knowledge of how a nuclear war would start) lie on this specific topic? Their all 4 being “pro-Russian”? 🙂

There is no nuclear response if Russia uses nukes exclusively in Ukraine. This makes Kiev aggression futile:

— If they lose in the conventional space, they lose.
— If they succeed in the conventional space, they get nuked and lose.

Use of a nuclear weapon by Russia would be a signal that they have lost conventionally. That isn’t a win and would shame Russia for a hundred years.

NATO supposedly has a response planned in such a scenario and has already delivered that message to Putin. It was obviously private but my guess is a massive attack on Russian targets in Ukraine using cruise missiles.

Use of a single tactical nuclear weapon wouldn’t necessarily end the war. The war is spread out along a huge front and using one against troops would not necessarily result in a tactical advantage.

In any case it would set Russia even further back in regard to sanctions. Russia can’t afford to have the pipelines turned off for years. They are selling oil but with far less margin. China and India could turn against Russia if Putin went to the nuke.

Using one against any population center would result in dead Russians. So killing Russians to save Russians. And here we are at 1984. War is peace.

What is an achievable “win” for Ukie Maximalists? I do not see one.

Going back to Jan 2022 borders and keeping Ukraine out of NATO as a face saving measure. Ukraine doesn’t have to be in NATO at this point. Russia will not be trying this again.

That would be a win for Ukraine. Putin planned on eliminating them as a state. This is a war for their survival.

Putin has challenges from nationalist factions. He currently keeps these in check by enthusiastically playing the nationalist card himself.

Is that how he kept Prigozhin in check? All 5d chess moves?

imho, Biden’s current attitude regarding really scary RF nuclear threats can be seen from how badly concerned he really is about global…warming atm;)

The global temperature rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next two decades is scarier than a nuclear war, said President Joe Biden on Sunday in Vietnam.

“The only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20 — 10 years,” Biden said at a press conference at the JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi on Sunday.

“That’d be real trouble. There’s no way back from that,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript of the press conference.

“And so, there’s a lot we can do in the meantime.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/11/biden-global-warming-even-more-frightening-than-nuclear-war.html

A great overview of what the neocons appear to have planned for pausing the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

Biden’s current attitude regarding …

Friendly reminder that people with Sovok origins are required to seek guidance from Anglo commenters here before posting stuff related to American politics.

In the Verbove area, khokhol has already reached these very teeth of the dragon of General Surovikin. The road to Tokmak is just a stone’s throw away. The supply of a number of RF units is under threat of fire control. The Ukrainians are advancing simply by throwing more and more waves of infantry into battle. But this tactic works. Without decisive counterattacks, the defense in this sector has every chance of collapsing. The situation is critical.

https://t.me/apwagner/12621

I’d say this specific stuff is more related to RF politics, which is in my direct neighbourhood, but below seen musical illustration suits too when dealing with pretensions of exclusivity;)

Interestingly, Netflix’s One Piece adaptation (haven’t seen) was shot near Capetown.

Kind of the opposite of how a lot of production moved to Canada, years ago.

I wonder if that means that film has some sort sort of carve-out from the South African quota system, just like how the prestige of film production has led to tax credits in many places.

Initial reviews for One Piece are very positive.

I do not have Netflix, so I look forward to finding an opportunity to watch it. Possibly wait for it to come out on DVD.

PEACE 😇

They have phantom pain from the loss of their former glory and hate Russia because she retained some of hers.

This.

They are haters. Lower than internet trolls like $username.

I think Russia will accomplish her military goals in Ukraine so my post-Ukraine scenario is hopefully moot.

If this does not happen and Russia fails in Ukraine we are back to the issue that the pressuring of Russia is part of a long-term plan. I think if Russia loses in Ukraine, the USA/West/NATO will immediately press Russia in Belarus, Kaliningrad and probably Georgia and Kazakhstan. Russia will see this as a completely obvious existential threat and react accordingly. I think Russia will skip the soft-touch approach they have used in Ukraine and go directly to a more aggressive shock-and-awe type of combat to crush whatever the next Western aggressive move happens to be. Tactical nuclear weapons might be used from the beginning of whatever conflict transpires. The planners in the USA, the West and NATO will not be surprised by this so they will have a very aggressive plan of their own, completely independent of whatever warm-fuzzy story is being spewed out by the MSM.

Why are you muddying the waters with your passive aggressive judgements (on top of your convoluted “arguments”)? He is the opposite of a Sovok. Makes me think you cannot tell the difference between a Sovok and a non-Sovok. You simply don’t like the truth that he is transmitting.

Recent History of Arms Control Treaties

Thanks, AP! This clearly and succinctly explains why, if Russians are not protesting en masse in response to tens of thousands of Russian military deaths, they would have been unlikely to protest en masse if a much smaller number of Russians and Russian collaborators were being killed by anti-Russian Ukrainian insurgents in the hypothetical event of a successful Russian conquest of most/all of Ukraine if the West would have purely hypothetically followed the advice of people such as Philippe Lemoine and refused to sponsor the conventional Ukrainian war effort against Russia.

Kosovo declared independence under Putin, not under Yeltsin.

Would 1999 Serbs really be able to bleed NATO worse than 2003 Iraqis did for the US, though?

This war has shown us that even the most anti-Soviet/Russian Eastern Europeans are indistinguishable from Sovoks when it comes to their mentality and argumentation style. (The right wing Croatian writer Tomislav Sunic pointed this out way back in the 1990s). Homo Sovieticus lives!

Clinton was adament that no US ground troops would be involved. Maybe he could’ve been talked into it by Madeleine Albright but when Milosevic threw in the towel it was actually a surprise to most observers because it looked like the Serbs had survived the worst of it. Many NATO countries were deeply divided by the conflict.

You might be mistaken, because Sovoks are typically dull, passive / timid and conformist.

Homo Sovieticus lives!

In the Kremlin. With their red banners everywhere. That they want to push on others who don’t want them.

I think Russia will accomplish her military goals in Ukraine so my post-Ukraine scenario is hopefully moot.

I concur.

If this does not happen and Russia fails in Ukraine we are back to the issue that the pressuring of Russia is part of a long-term plan. I think if Russia loses in Ukraine, the USA/West/NATO will immediately press Russia in Belarus,

This goes back to the question that you skipped. USA/MAGA has no interest in pressing Russia. The EU/West apparently does.

I strongly suggest naming countries rather that using the meaningless term “The West”. It seems to be shattering your analysis of modern day (not 20+years ago) events. America is in the process of jettisoning the NeoCon Uniparty legacy of GW Bush.

PEACE 😇

Yes, the economy of Russia is deteriorating because of the sanctions and other geopolitical events. But the question is, why are there no protests and headlines in Moscow and Saint Petersburg describing this decline, and what kind of collective unconscious fantasy are the people of Russia living in?

3:47

FWIW, NATO, including the US, did seriously consider the ground troops option by the end, right before Milosevic capitulated:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/sept99/airwar19.htm

Interestingly enough, there were those Westerners who argued that the West should cut its losses and give up on Kosovo if it was unwilling to use ground troops to expel the Serbs from Kosovo, before it became clear that Milosevic would actually capitulate without the use of NATO ground troops:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/if-no-ground-troops-nato-should-cut-its-losses/

I am not familiar with the IP, but I know that, in Japan, it is considered a sort of archetype of famous anime or manga, to the point where it is joke that the average person might reference it.

I think that is one of the darker sides of a manga-driven culture. (Which does have some positives) There is a tendency for successful properties to go on forever. I understand the anime has >1000 episodes, which is difficult to conceive of. (More than Star Trek, though much less in minutes, since they aren’t close to an hour long)

Of course, the production cost of a manga itself is not very very high, so it is a good way to test out ideas. Seems as though Hollywood isn’t good at doing adaptations though. No doubt there is a certain challenge in adaptating anything that began as a manga, but I’d suggest a big part of it is how Japan still has a somewhat cohesive cultural identity, and the US doesn’t.

I suspect if One Piece is successful, it will encourage more failures.

Anatoly Karlin has previously recently argued that Russian liberals are the only non-Eastern Europeans east of the Oder since they don’t have an Eastern European mentality like other Eastern Europeans have.

Just how many Sovoks does your own country still have, other than among the old and middle-aged?

Russian liberals are the only non-Eastern Europeans east of the Oder since they don’t have an Eastern European mentality like other Eastern Europeans have

Exactly. Because most of them – with very few exceptions – are not honest and direct like normal Eastern Europeans.

They are also cowards who, while hiding abroad (ironically, mostly in EE and Central Europe), don’t even support armed resistance such as the Legion (much less RDK). But how they love to lecture to the host countries that have accepted them on how to run their internal affairs and how they enjoy having the “upper moral” hand over poor Ukraine that is fighting their battle against Putin. Ukraine essentially doing their work for them.

Russian liberals – one of the biggest disappointments from this war. But at least it’s good to have things out in the open and finally knowing who is who.

“Abramovich, as the main shareholder of Omsk Bacon, found nothing wrong to benefit from the annual slaughter of 300,000 pigs.”

EU: Russian Jews, including Roman Abramovich, formed oligarch networks https://t.co/CMH3tjCBsB
Anti-Semitic conspiracy libel I'm an official document of the European Commission. This is what we've come to.

— David P. Goldman (@davidpgoldman) September 11, 2023

They are also cowards who, while hiding abroad (ironically, mostly in EE and Central Europe), don’t even support armed resistance such as the Legion (much less RDK). But how they love to lecture to the host countries that have accepted them on how to run their internal affairs and how they enjoy having the “upper moral” hand over poor Ukraine that is fighting their battle against Putin. Ukraine essentially doing their work for them.

Honestly, if it doesn’t go extreme (which is very, very far from actually being guaranteed), I suspect that a Russia led by someone such as White Rex would be an MRA traditionalist paradise. What do you think?

White Rex sure knows how to market his brand lol:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/inside-the-controversial-group-of-russian-dissidents-fighting-with-ukraine-against-putin

Anatoly Karlin wanted a Putin-led Russian National State but it’s not 100% out of the question for him to get such a state led by White Rex instead.

The Chad White Rex vs. the Virgin Soyboy Putin lol.

BTW, off-topic, but I’ve got a question for you: How do you think that a Russia led by the Socialist Revolutionaries instead of the Bolsheviks during the 20th century would have looked like?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1917_Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election

The SRs combined with their Ukrainian counterparts beat the Bolsheviks almost 2:1 in Russia’s only completely free and fair election until 1990:

Well, he’s a great example of assimilation, I’ll give him that! Though we really should breed duller pigs in order to make eating pork more ethical. I only eat pork on rare occasions.

USA is not only MAGA. Very far from it, in fact. MAGA represents the lower-classes of white America, after all. Heck, MAGA looks like it might be becoming a prole movement in general.

What on Earth was Putin referencing, when he said something to the effect:

However, Putin noted that these countries remember not only Soviet aid but also Western ruthlessness. As late as 1957, “people from Africa were taken to Europe in cages… You can’t watch that without tears. Children sitting in cages, displayed for everyone to see,” Putin recalled. “No one in Africa will ever forget it.”

https://www.rt.com/africa/582820-putin-africa-colonial-oppression/

I think the perspective of US citizenry is:

> 70% perceive Ukraine as good, Russia bad, let’s do something about it
> 20% perceive Ukraine as good, Russia bad, but none of our business or US cannot afford it
< 10% perceive USA is meddling again, Russia not bad, Ukraine is a pawn of Western empire

I agree that Trump is not against Russia and will work hard to avoid war. He is very strongly against war. Unfortunately this Ukraine mess will likely make the USA look militarily impotent in these eyes of the pundit class which will have major policy ramifications for the next President. Many good jobs are in the military-industrial sector and it is not clear how well those people can be laid off by belt tightening and then re-employed in some form of re-industrialization. This process takes time.

Repurposing the military to enforce a Southern border greatly increases the chance of the USA turning into an outright police state and should be avoided at all costs.

In the case of the Ukraine project my use of the term "The West" includes the USA, NATO and a few non-NATO Western countries, Australia and Canada. I don't know how Japan and South Korea view the conflict, I assume they cautiously support the USA and are against Russia.

This war is the West versus Russia. Any losses or gains are not about Ukraine per se.

As usual your myopia causes you to see the forest and to miss the trees. Like many conflicts it is on multiple levels. Someone like you writing in the early 19th century would claim that Russian Prussia, Austria were all pawns in an Anglo-French struggle for global dominance.

There is minimal chance Russia would intentionally use nuclear weapons in this conflict.

Agree.

A major concern is accidental escalation due to some submarine, satellite or aircraft misunderstanding and destruction.

None of which would be caused by anything on the Ukrainian battlefield or in Crimea.

I can think of two possibilities where Russia might intentionally use nukes in Ukraine, short of a WW3 scenario. The first is draconian retaliation if Ukraine launches an attack on Russian civilians which has 9/11 level casualties, tens of thousands. Then they might simply nuke a Ukrainian city to end this mess

Which Ukiiane would not do. But there is a strong possibility that Ukraine has the means of doing that, and would do so if Russia were to nuke a Ukrainian city.

The second might be if NATO/Poland decides to cross the border into Ukraine in a serious way. I don’t think they are ready for this now, but next year maybe they would try something. Russia might be tempted to use tactical nukes the way the West had planned to use nukes in Europe to blunt a potential Soviet attack. Leaving Western Ukraine a contaminated zone might be a feature not a bug

.

This would trigger a massive conventional NATO response, so doubtful. Also, about zero chance of massive NATO troops being sent to Ukraine. Western countries won’t allow it, and Poland won’t be ready for such an operation until 2025. Decent chance of American F-16 pilot volunteers flying in Ukrainian uniform (as Soviets did in Vietnam), there are plenty who would love the chance.

In the very unlikely chance that Russia uses tactical nukes it would not be against a city but in the field, in a desperate attempt to save Crimea. The entrances to the peninsula are narrow so there might be large concentrations of Ukrainian troops passing through small points if they take the Crimean corridor.

This is truly bizarre. Israel is able to have nukes because the surrounding Arabs are weak. North Korea is able to have nukes because China is behind it. Why would the Russians tolerate a nuclear Ukraine? Unless the peace between them is strong and stable, the Russians have to be completely mad to accept a nuclear Ukraine. But, if the peace is so that it can be taken for granted, what is the point, then, to have nukes on the Ukraine side?

It is not that you get nukes and then you are untouchable. It is the reverse. It is that you are for whatever reason untouchable, then you can have nukes if you can make them.

If there is a real chance that you will use them, it is never ending nightmare for your target. What kind of enemy you must have got if they allow you?

Don’t forget the pig would eat you.

MAGA represents the lower-classes of white America,

ROTFL — Are you smoking your Copium? Or, shooting it up straight?

MAGA is not racially based and represents the broad middle classes of America. The non working lower class is hard core DNC.

MAGA looks like it might be becoming a prole movement in general.

In a democracy being the party of 90% or 99% of workers is an incredibly strong position for MAGA.

What do the SJW’s have? Out of touch elites and welfare queens. Look at NYC and Chicago. Even the handout sheeple types do not want illegals. The house of cards is crumbling.

PEACE 😇

I agree. But nothing I have said in this thread or in the previous one is to argue that nuclear war at this point in time is likely….That’s just a distortion of the people here who, some for very clear ethnic reason, some apparently for psychedelic/ascetic reasons, are arguing that nuclear war is not possible, which is what I am disputing.

Nuclear war against the USA over anting in Ukrainian territory including Crimea is as likely as me winning the lottery multiple times. Technically anything is possible.

If I stand at the edge of a pier an someone is drowning, and there is a life raft next to me, the decent thing to do would be to throw it in the water so the drowning person can be saved. Of course, it is possible that in doing so I may trip, hit my head, and die.

Because of this possibility, would you refuse to help?

What if a malevolent person was there, whispering to you – “don’t throw the raft – you might lose your balance, hit your head on the pier, fall in and drown too!”

This was Elon Musk refusing to help the Ukrainians to take out the missile ships that launch missiles into Ukrainian cities, killing people, and the Russians telling him not to do it, there would be nuclear war.

Just as it was during the previous Cold War, when nobody disputed that fact

This is like the Korean War, Afghanistan, and Vietnam never happened.

Each side sent lots of arms (and in Korea and Vietnam, even soldiers) to kill the other side’s soldiers. The nuclear powers lost, and left. No nukes were used.

In Vietnam and Korea (where the Americans did actually consider using nukes) the war was taking place thousands of miles away from the US.

But Afghanistan bordered the USSR.

And Korea was awful close to critical ally Japan.

I agree there are many levels to complex situations such as this. I understand how people can be stuck with a limited view and miss what is actually happening on several levels.

When all this winds down and Ukraine is lost will you accept it was a mistake or will you simply be bitter?

Future Ukrainians will be able to shake this off emotionally once enough people realize they were punked by the West.

I don’t know but I too would like to see 1957 photos of African children in European cages. It seems like they must be a rarity.

I think the perspective of US citizenry is:

> 70% perceive Ukraine as good, Russia bad, lets do something about it
> 20% perceive Ukraine as good, Russia bad, but none of our business or US cannot afford it
< 10% perceive USA is meddling again, Russia not bad, Ukraine is a pawn of the Western empire

This is where understanding “inch deep” numbers becomes important. Of the 70% how many people prioritize it as a critical issue? The count when formulating policy look more like this.

< 10% perceive Ukraine as good, Russia bad, make sacrifices to do something about it
> 60% are Sheeple seeking 🇺🇦fad🇺🇦 conformity but do not actually care
> 20% perceive Ukraine as good, Russia bad, but none of our business or US cannot afford it
< 10% perceive the EU is meddling again, Russia not bad, Ukraine is a pawn of the European Empire

Of those who prioritize the issue, ending Forever Wars easily beats funding Kiev aggression.

“The West” includes the USA, NATO and a few non-NATO Western countries, Australia and Canada.

This might have worked as a concept 20+ years ago. Unfortunately, it is far too large a group to be meaningful for analysis of current day issues.

The “U.S. led Populist West” and “EU led Globalist West” are often diametrically opposed. At a minimum you need to use these groups separately. I again suggest your best option is explicitly naming the countries. Those who want to escalate (France & Germany), versus those who seek de-escalation (America & Hungary).

The “inch deep” rule applies here too. Italy sounds pro-Ukie, but how much are they actually willing to do? They have their own problems. There are a bunch of nations giving lip service to avoid openly antagonizing Berlin and Brussels.

PEACE 😇
__________

P.S. Beware of using angle brackets, the site can interpret them as HTML code.

If you are having problems, these symbols can be hard called with “& lt ;” < and “& gt ;” > — remove the spaces in the “quoted” code. More detail here:

https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/HTMLPlus/htmlplus_13.html

Again I am sure you would fight for your home – but your philosophy is pulling in the opposite direction.

I should probably just let you enjoy the peace of the great outdoors but comments like this make me wonder what kind of “unseen presences” you’ve been in contact with. They don’t seem to have a very moderating effect on your thinking.

People who wouldn’t be able to defend their wife and children from a home intruder are probably indifferent to what’s happening in Ukraine and don’t care one way or another. That’s not exactly what the founders of the US envisaged for this country. George Washington, commander of the Continental Army that defeated the British and 1st president of the US:

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Perhaps a much better analogy for my non-interventionist position than not being able to defend my home would be to fail to defend a weak person that I see is being attacked by a stronger one. I have actually been thinking about this. It’s not like I don’t ever have any doubts and my position, especially at an emotional level, doesn’t change as I see the events unfold.

But I didn’t find that defending a person who is being attacked by a bully in your presence, which I do think is what everyone should do, especially when they have the means to stop the abuse, extrapolates easily to the current war. Apart from the difficulty of extrapolating personal behavior to the behavior of huge entities like nation-states, there are quite a few differences:

— The US is not exactly like a random passerby that suddenly witnesses an act of abuse. The US of these days is much more the self-appointed vigilante that keeps roaming around uninvited all neighborhoods of the city, trying to establish who is the winner of every dispute, according to his own interests. The US is in fact the most frequent aggressor and more often than not his intervention results in more people becoming victims than if he hadn’t intervened at all.

— The victim of the aggression in this case is not a particularly innocent one. Up until recently, he was the one victimizing innocent people (close relatives of the current aggressor) and the US actually opted to ignore that aggression and even help the current victim carry it out.

— The US has a very long history of animosity towards the aggressor (remember the Russiagate conspiracy theory and the non-stop demonization of the Russians for years before the current aggression took place). It can be very reasonably be argued that this aggression would have never taken place if the US hadn’t been planning for years to use the current victim as an accomplice to bully the aggressor. How can further involvement in that fight, as opposed to promoting negotiations, lead to a lasting peace between those two?

— There is only so much the US can do to stop the aggressor. He is a very dangerous bully with the means to destroy the whole city of he feels cornered and desperate. He has already warned that he might do that. It’s not the case of you and me trying to defend a weak victim and if we don’t succeed the bully will also victimize us. We can easily provoke many more innocent victims than the one who is suffering the attack now.

It’s naive to expect the usual suspects to understand it but nothing of the above means that I consider Russia’s aggression justified by anything that happened earlier. Let’s repeat it one more time anyway.

None of this matters.

There was blatant tampering in the last Presidential election. What has been done to address that crime and prevent it from happening again?

I think you underestimate the comfort-level of American voters with forever wars. The general American public will never understand the Western actions which led to the Russian SMO and so will always be sympathetic to Ukraine as the hypothetical underdog. The best we can hope for is the many evil people who created this crisis will lose their power and protection before slithering back into their holes; heads on pikes is just not realistic.

Trump and a few others are promoting de-escalation. With luck this movement can grow, but for most this will be for economic reasons and not based on a rational evaluation of the geopolitical facts. Still, better than nothing if we can make it happen.

Maybe VVP was thinking of Obama cages on the Texas border in 2014. It can be tough to keep up with all the weirdness these days.

There was blatant tampering in the last Presidential election. What has been done to address that crime and prevent it from happening again?

A huge amount has been done at the state and local level..

— In locations where voting security could be improved this has been done. For, example more in person voting, ID requiments, etc.

— In places where there is a 2020 precedent, local GOP groups are preparing to operate by those rules. If 2024 will be determined by Harvesting & Fultoning, the MAGA machine is ready to do everything the DNC made 100% legally valid in 2020 & 2022.

😆 Dogs? Hogs? Pshaw… [MORE] 😂

PEACE 😇

I think Russia will accomplish her military goals in Ukraine so my post-Ukraine scenario is hopefully moot.

The goals stated in Putin’s original speech?

So you believe he will successfully replace the Ukrainian government and keep them out of NATO?

Trump and a few others are promoting de-escalation.

That is incorrect.

Trump stated that they need to compromise or as president he would massively escalate by giving Ukraine far more weapons and not old stock. That means a free Ukraine would remain. Trump does not support handing over Ukraine to Putin.

He fully supports increasing arms to Ukraine if Putin does not meet his demands.

MAGA looks like it might be becoming a prole movement in general.

In a democracy being the party of 90% or 99% of workers is an incredibly strong position for MAGA.

MAGA has become a movement against numbers.

Most Americans do not want Trump to run. I’ve posted a source to that poll many times and yet you blissfully ignore it.

Where is this winning majority going to come from?

So you believe he will successfully replace the Ukrainian government and keep them out of NATO?

Kiev regime will not get all of Ukraine’s Commie drawn boundary. Putin is more likely to continue on as head of state after Zelensky leaves his post than vice versa.

I kindly refer the honourable gentleman to the answer given some moments ago.

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-227/#comment-6127386

PEACE 😇

Define American though.

That’s the rub.
You pretend you don’t support Biden anyway. Just stop simulating conservative instincts.

When all this winds down and Ukraine is lost

A comment only made possible because of your ignorance, sorry.

The only question is where the borders will be – the current frontline +/- a few dozen villages, the 2021 lines, the 1991 border, or something in between? And how many will die until the peace agreement is made.

Also a CNN (!) poll has Trump ahead of/tied with Biden among registered voters.

In an early gauge of a hypothetical Biden-Trump rematch, CNN’s poll finds, registered voters are currently split between Trump (47%) and Biden (46%), with the demographic contours that defined the 2020 race still prominent.

Trump not as competitive among Independents in that poll (47-38 Biden’s way).

Trump also has a massive lead among unlikely voters.

These registered unlikely voters said they prefer Trump over Biden by nearly 20 percentage points, 32% to 13%.

Unregistered unlikely voters would choose Trump over Biden, too: Citizens who are eligible to vote but haven’t registered also favor Trump by close to 2-1, 28%-15%.

If they can be motivated to vote….

Honestly, if it doesn’t go extreme (which is very, very far from actually being guaranteed), I suspect that a Russia led by someone such as White Rex would be an MRA traditionalist paradise. What do you think?

Oh, it would be heaven. But I doubt most Russians would accept him, although some might.

As to “MRA traditionalist paradise”, he’s not really an MRA the way they are in the West, sure, he is a masculist but he’s more about ancient heroes, pure masculinity and taking things into one’s own hands or leading a small band but not really about oppressing others without necessity. He has a natural sense of hierarchy but is also very free spirited. There is a certain complexity and even a sort of a paradox there where someone who is far right is fighting for freedom, just because of how the circumstances are right now.

He’s not really a misogynist (like most Western MRAs), he just doesn’t like woke excesses. He just has a very standard old school EE attitude where he wants women to be feminine, but he’s also ok with them being somewhat independent so it’s a little ambiguous there (but it could be resolved, if needed). Most importantly, he’s pro-European (what I like about him the most) and against massive non-White immigration. Wars would stop, racial replacement would stop.

But as to “leading the post-Putin Russia”, he’s a little bit too wild (although again, I’d totally approve, lol). In fact, all these opposition forces should’ve come together in one block, regardless of their differences. But I doubt they’re capable of it.

The Chad White Rex vs. the Virgin Soyboy Putin lol.

Totally, yay. Co-sign. (Although Putin is not really a soyboy, he’s a former chad, now senile vampire).

But to be more objective, someone like Caesar from the Legion might be better because he is more moderate and more mature. Also, White Rex is ok with giving up territory, while Caesar isn’t, so from the Russian point of view, that is better. And they are very democratic, open, very idealistic and pure in their thinking.

As late as 1957, “people from Africa were taken to Europe in cages… You can’t watch that without tears. Children sitting in cages, displayed for everyone to see,” Putin recalled.

I’m not going to defend it, just as I don’t defend past empires or colonization, which this was a part of.

Presumably Putin is referring to ‘ethnological expositions’, also known (apparently) in the vernacular as ‘human zoos’, which popped up on occasion in some Western countries in the latter 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

Putin, in regurgitating this likely old (for him) Soviet propaganda from memory, missed a few details it seems, though got the essentials correct.

Having said that, that these past abuses occurred, and though they shouldn’t have, doesn’t change the fact that while there are significant similarities between people, collectively and individually, there are also (equally important) quite real differences between them as well.

One must take the whole reality, similarities and differences, into account, (naturally without doing what is described in the links and photos below).

Pretending this reality doesn’t exist and doing otherwise in the name of faux ‘virtue signaling’ and pathological altruism, or other motivations, or, to simply ‘feel good’ emotionally, helps no one, and does the greatest harm of all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo

1958 Brussels Expo ‘Congo Village’

Human zoos, also known as ethnological expositions, were public displays of people, usually in a so-called “natural” or “primitive” state. They were most prominent during the 19th and 20th centuries…Such displays featured in multiple colonial exhibitions and at temporary exhibitions in animal zoos…

..The 1900 World’s Fair presented the famous diorama living in Madagascar, while the Colonial exhibitions in Marseilles (1906 and 1922) and in Paris (1907 and 1931) also displayed humans in cages, often nude or semi-nude. The 1931 exhibition in Paris was so successful that 34 million people attended it in six months, while a smaller counter-exhibition entitled The Truth on the Colonies, organized by the Communist Party, attracted very few visitors…

A Congolese village was displayed at the Brussels 1958 World’s Fair. The Congolese on display were among 598 people—including 273 men, 128 women and 197 children, a total of 183 families. Eight-month-old baby Juste Bonaventure Langa died during Expo 58; he rests in the Tervuren cemetery.

An interesting site. See below ‘more’ for original photos on the subject..

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/human-zoo-history-pictures-1900-1958/

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Original Caption – ‘Cannibals carrying their master!’ Chicago World’s Fair (1893)

Original Caption – ‘Civilized and Savage Meet’ St Louis World’s Fair (1904)