249 thoughts on “Two Wars, Two Visions”

1. “Lost in the tsunami of disinformation from Western media about the war in Ukraine is the fact that the Ukrainian army has performed quite poorly.”

   The actual performance of the Ukrainian military is something Putin is trying to bury in a flood of propaganda.

   “The ongoing attacks on these areas by Ukraine was the legal pretext for the Special Military Operation that started eight months ago.”

   The “legal pretext” was created by Putin. Those attacks were not done by the Ukrainians. Putin has shown he could not care less for his own supporters in the Donbas. It’s not the people he is after, he’s after the territory as well as the rest of Ukraine because his goals lie further west and needs Ukraine to get there.

   “…the other side is cutting through the red tape and the rule of law to implement the latest polices.”

   This statement is beyond the pale. Russia has repeatedly violated international law as was done earlier in Chechnya. Frankly, Zman, you’ve sunk to a new low. You’re simply spewing Putin’s propaganda. I’ve deleted your bookmark.

   • Well done. BoomerCon satire is always good for a laugh.

   • “Those attacks were not done by the Ukrainians.”

     Correct It was the aliens. Again.

2. Excellent essay. However, there is one reality we can hang on to in this hall of mirrors: Russia occupies the contested land and it isn’t going to give it back. Whatever the cost.

3. After a certain amount of reflection, it should not be difficult to conclude that war is only justified in defense of one’s home, family and culture. Certainly, how such a war is waged is a subject for discussion and controversy (limited or total and everything in between) but the casus belli should always and only be in response to aggressive attacks on one’s home, family or culture. Almost everything else can be handled in some other way. As a corollary, one should always have the means available to wage such a defensive war successfully, i.e., peace through strength. The problem arises when the necessary force of arms is acquired, then those who can wield it begin to think it should be wielded without the necessary provocation. This pretty much eliminates the kind of proxy wars the USA has been “fighting” and most certainly eliminates wars of any sort, direct or proxy in support of theoretical/political abstracts like “democracy.” What the Biden cabal has done in Ukraine is a pure abomination, inasmuch as it does not involve any threat to domestic life or even an identifiable American interest, particularly when viewed in light of the cabal’s total elimination of any southern (or northern, for that matter) border and active importation of an invading army of illegal immigrants.

4. The Russians are certainly pulling their punches. And they won’t nuke Ukraine because there are ethnic/cultural Russians in every town. (When the US nuked Japan, they could be pretty sure they weren’t killing any of their own.)

   The vacuum at the centre of the whole fracas is the ethnic Russians in the Donbass. We need to hear from these people, but they’ve been so poorly represented by Russia (and of course completely ignored by the west), it’s as if they don’t exist. Their voice is the only thing that can make a difference in this war.

5. When Putin speaks who is his intended audience? The assumption is that it’s the U.S. and her allies. Perhaps Putin is making his case to other countries which seems far more likely and would help explain some of his remarks. At this point I think he knows it’s pointless to talk to the U.S. and most of the European nations.

6. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Today in War

7. Per “Ambassador Kosh” in Babylon 5, “And so it begins.”

   The weekend FT had a very backdoor column by Gillian Tett that went by praise for Gen McRaven (or craven) [the guy who signed off on every ROE that got SEALs and other spec ops killed and signed off on BS prosecutions of SEALs for war crimes that failed, just to get more medals while his men died for nothing] and his “make your bed speech” on TED Talks or something, to praise for physical rituals, to a column ending demand for “national service.”

   And that is the weakness of our Regime. Its not hooked on Monkey Phonics, but sheer humiliation, terror, and sadism against the straight White male population — what looks like constant improvisation and rule-breaking is just feeding their emotional needs. The smart move would have been to never fight Russia in the first place, or do it in very small ways that do not cross red lines and don’t involve risk to the global financial system after 2 years of lockdowns. But the lives and emotions of these people are so empty that they NEED on a physical level like a junkie the infliction of pain, misery, and especially humiliation upon ordinary White men in particular.

   I.E. “Draft the White guys.” Its coming. The Duran guys noted there is a demand in the media for drafting the White male population and sending them off to fight in Ukraine. I think there are serious plans in the Regime for a 18-65 White male only draft to be sent to Ukraine to die. And I do think some version of this will be put into practice. I think at least part of this is to provoke some response that will allow for simple rule by terror, i.e. direct administrative rule bypassing everything ala Covid and other “emergencies.”

   • Rule-by-terror has been in effect for going on three years now. Part of me would like to see this attempted, to be honest.

   • Give all the white guys guns. I like it.

   • Go ahead. Please create, train and arm the White Supremacist Militia, Dems.

8. “Terrorist attack”? It’s a war. Russia started a war. They invaded a neighbor, and set about destroying their neighbor’s infrastructure.

   Now, if the neighbor responds in kind, this is somehow illegitimate? On what planet? If a Russian soldier shoots a Ukrainian soldier, is the Ukrainian obligated under your psychotic legal theories to simply stand there? Is it “terrorism” if he shoots back? Is at least he permitted to take cover, under the Z Man Convention on International Conflict, or is that “terrorism” as well? Is he allowed to dress his wounds?

   You’ve gone insane. You’re as crazy as the left. I had some glib asshole explain to me yesterday that “populism is always about genocide”. You’re as simpleminded as he is.

   In a war, just like a home invasion, your intended victims may very well shoot back. Don’t like it? Don’t start it. Simple.

   The fact that Victoria Nuland is also insane is interesting, but at this point, the morons running Russia have *chosen* to let her and her people goad them into perpetrating a disaster. They made that choice. Their choice will fuck them good and hard, and they will richly deserve it. It will also fuck their people, who do not deserve it, and that’s a tragedy. But the die is cast.

   • You missed the 14,000 civilians killed by the Ukranians since 2014 using artillery against the ethnic Russians in the 2 republics?

     Do you think they built all those artillery emplacements and fortifications surrounding Donetsk since February?

     Maybe you want to extend your reading beyond the MSM cartoon world.

   • Dear Lord,
     I didn’t think anyone was actually that obtuse regarding the facts on the ground.

     Spoiler alert;

     Santa Claus isn’t real either.

   • And then one day, for absolutely no reason at all, Putin invaded the peaceful nation of Ukraine.

   • Don’t forget about the issue of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and the incorporation of countries that were formerly in the Warsaw Pact. George Kennan was right about that being a mistake. The Ukraine would have been far better off as a neutral country with a small military, much like Austria.

9. In one way or another, the war needs to get a lot less abstract to the US jerkoffs in charge, as it seems like the only thing they’ll understand. The unfortunate downside is a lot more White casualties.

10. “¹We know. Everyone knows.”

    Come for the trenchant and spot-on analysis; stay for the footnotes.

    Love ya, Z! Please keep it up. We need you.

11. Please clap.
    Please, please clap.

    • Sorry, this was in response to The Greek’s comment below.

12. I advise everyone to watch Germany in the next months.
    29 VIII 2022, chancellor Olaf Scholz gave a lecture in Prague about his vision for the EU. This crisis gave another boost to euro-federalists in Germany (first came after Brexit, expressed by such personae as Sigmar Gabriel and Martin Schulz) that push strongly for another revisionist treaty (after Lisbon) that removes national veto powers, punishes political transgressors (Poland, Hungary) and gives way for European Army to emerge.

    21 IX 2022 in New York, Scholz announced that Germany is ready to take seat in UN Security Council as a permanent member.

    Those interested in further reading of the Prague lecture:
    Rede von Bundeskanzler Scholz an er Karls-Universität am 29. August 2022 in Prag; bundesregierung.de

    • Weird timing, given the economic doom facing Germany. A deindustrialized Germany is just another powerless European country.

      • Sanctions and the economic collapse we are facing may actually internally strengthen the EU.

        • A crisis can strengthen a regime if it is exogenous and temporary, like a war or natural disaster. If the regime rises to the occasion and manages the crisis, then it strengthens the regime. On the other hand, crises that arise from internal contradictions or missteps by the regime never strengthen the regime.

          • Maybe strengthen isn’t the proper word for it but with Russia as an external enemy and going from crisis to crisis it is possible that the EU will linger on for a long time with no one from the inside being able to changeling it. Just like the USSR.

            The only problem may actually be that the communist were far more sane than the modern EU intelligentsia.

        • The EU for all intents and purposes is a dead institution. Without German money to the periphery: Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc. it cannot exist. Ursula Van Der Leyen only has authority if she’s handing out money with strings. Otherwise she’s a useless old bag no one cares about. Like Madonna coming out “gay” no one cares.

          German money depends on the Mittelstand, the industrial exporting machine that comprises a few dozen industrial giants and thousands of mid-tier firms using cheap gas and expensive, skilled labor. OPEC+ now has decided that Asia will pay less for oil and gas than Europe. So the China/Vietnam etc. advantage is even higher. Cheaper energy and cheaper labor. The EU was built upon and depends upon German money and that is no longer possible.

          • Believe me those countries can exist. Some will probably need to bury half of the population until the end of this decade but no one will fight after such a thing for a generation or so.

      • One should become aware how overgrown and export-dependent German economy is. Parts of it are off-shored to places like Poland and supposed impending doom didn’t stop investments here in the least. Besides, EU funds tend to be cycled back into German economy as their companies often benefit from public contracts. A behemoth like that isn’t going to crash and burn overnight.

        Besides, why would American Empire fight to destroy German industry? The same they helped to kick-start with Marshall Plan? What kind of asset deindustrialized Germany becomes to Americans? Gaia cultism aside, without strong Germany, there is no main plenipotentiary on the Continent, Europe unravels as a system while not being ready for such pipe dreams as Intermarium. I mentioned ambassador rule in my past comments, but you still need a lynchpin that holds other parts together.

        England had no sympathy for Russia, but they generously financed the court in Petersburg just to support the war faction against Napoleon.

        • Germany, England and the USA leadership are no longer the from the populations you are drawing your historical precedents from.

          A few decades ago there would have been some validity, but the changes mean one cannot use older National interest as a premise for the arguments.

          • While I agree that the circulation of elite underwent negative changes in the last centuries I’m going to oppose blanket-like statements that throw most of the elite into the carny/crazy bag (I reserve it mostly for the aspiring members and few cranky old-timers).

            Germany for example, still retained quite a number of important old aristocratic elites. I won’t even talk about one of the oldest oligarchies: England. Even if raison d’etre for the elites have changed, they still pursue their goals in a manner they see as most efficient for them. Germans have always been the masters of practical idealism in this case.

          • @Puszczyk

            I am not throwing them all into the cray bag.

            I said the ethnic makeup of the politicians in those countries has changed and where it has not they are mostly women.

            It is invalid to try and model these new things using historical precedent.

            If new people move into the house next door, I do not try and write a rationale of their behavior based on the character of the people who used to live there.

        • The point of NATO has always been to keep Russia our, American in and Germany down. I did a post on this last week. https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=28390

          I have argued for a long time that to understand American foreign policy, first throw your logic aside.

          • To my untrained eye, it looks a lot like the UK’s foreign policy, both pre-WWI Europe and post-WWI Middle East. Which is the biggest reason I believe GAE is the ‘British’ Empire with new headquarters.

          • I trust the claim that revanchism is an important piece in American outlook on foreign relations, that having a vegetable as President doesn’t help the matter (as without an Emperor courtiers are running rampant), although I remain unconviced that your leaders completely lost their marbles and are intent on utterly demolishing Germany…to own Russia? Slow erosion of your ally’s position through immigration crisis is one thing. Throwing a wrecking ball at their economy with INTENT to make them useless in geopolitical power plays is something else.

            To sum up, I agree that American irresponsibility is increasing chaos everywhere, but I disagree that imperial elites simply decided to go full Morgenthau on Deutschland. I’m sure they will happily observe German economy flounder while cold strikes humility into them, but they see no reason to destroy a progressive country and potentially empower their enemies.

            Of course I can be wrong and indeed USA is cruising on fully weaponized stupidity kept afloat by the sea of dollars.

        • Certain interest groups weren’t as powerful then as it is now. These interest groups have scores to settle that date back hundreds of years, which is why they are gleefully conjuring up ways Russia can be carved out. If it comes at the expense of Germans, so much the better. We are beyond economics, this is utilizing and exercising power that has accumulated over decades.

      • Germany is on track to a future where they will struggle to manufacture small arms and ammunition in any large quantity, much less something as large and complex as a Leopard main battle tank.

      • Scholz is channeling his inner Morganthau

13. Putin as it seems, refused to understand that his enemies are not interested in return to classic imperial diplomacy that relied on “Great Powers concert”. Time and time again Russia proposed adopting XIX-century approach to international politics only to hit a brick wall before details could be laid out. Germans (with the French and the Dutch to a lesser extent) were the most receptive to those ideas, although American leash, failed EU policy mechanisms and domestic democratic radicalism undermined efforts to bring any lasting consensus.

    Obama’s pivot to Pacific was probably the last ray of hope for Putin that offered him an illusory sense of safety as a potential balance to China (inverted Nixon) until Syria and Ukraine smashed everything.

    Today Russia is forcibly enforcing its vision of international order along with all the rules that go with it. That also means largely ignoring small vassal states on diplomatic stage and negotiationg directly with their hegemonic protectors if necessary.

    Last provocations may imply that GAE wants to bait Russia into attacking the “Outer Empire” of Baltics, Poland and Romania in the first line. When Ukrainian offensive finally reaches its limit, attempts to provoke a direct strike at NATO will likely escalate. Last months could be be summed up as unspoken: “TAKE THAT, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO US ANYWAY?!!” thrown with every spit in the eye.
    https://nypost.com/2022/10/02/marco-rubio-fears-desperate-putin-may-strike-nato-territory/

14. Musk reboots Starlink, provides Commander Ye with planetary reach.

    ZOG liquidated via rhetoric and dragon energy.

15. Z is finally acknowledging, oh so grudgingly, that he was wrong back in March when he was saying things like “Reality in the ground says the Russians are slowly grinding up the Ukrainian army. In a month, there will be little of it left in the east”. Nevertheless you can be sure that he is absolutely right about everything he is saying now, because he says it with such certitude. How can you not trust a guy who thinks so highly of himself?

    I suggest though that you might want to consider the alternative, which is that the war was in fact a pointless and idiotic land grab and Z is totally full of shit.

    • Hard to say correct or incorrect Z was with the first part of that statement. I suspect that the Russians were, in fact, “slowly grinding up the Ukrainian army.” It’s clear that the Ukrainians were taking horrendous casualties at the time.

      As to the second part, yes, that was incorrect. The Ukrainians were able to mobilize more men that the world expected.

      Regarding whether it’s a land grab, hard to call invading lands that are occupied by ethnic Russians, who have been attacked for years by the Ukrainians, a land grab. If you don’t understand that, you’re a buffoon. Russian and Ukrainian history didn’t start in 2014 or even 1954.

      Could Z be wrong about how this is unfolding? Sure. But he’s a nice alternative view to what we get in the MSM.

      • There is no doubting that the Russians have been grinding the Ukrainian army down. I went through the numbers last week in my Taki post. The Ukrainians have lost about 100,000 men, through deaths and severely wounded. These are enormous losses.

        • I will say that I was surprised by the Ukrainian counter-offensive. Perhaps it was my naivete, but I didn’t expect the Ukrainians to be willing to continue fighting after the meat-grinder of this summer.

          Putin’s gentleness is partly to blame. He wanted to stay friends with the Ukrainians. Not seeing their cities smashed gave them hope.

          This winter will be interesting. A much larger Russian force combined with Surovikin means that the war will be taken to Ukraine in a very different way.

          Regardless, Putin has been incredibly successful in the larger war against GAE. The world has a much clearer picture of our leaders – and what are leaders will do to those they dislike – than they did a year ago. The world has changed.

          • The Russians have made a number of errors. This is the nature of war. The biggest mistake was in not allocating the proper amount of manpower The Ukrainian offensive in the north was successful because the Russians simply lacked the manpower to defend the area. The southern offensive has been a disaster because the Russians have the manpower and resources to fight the Ukrainian offensive.

            The other mistake the Russians have made is in not appreciating the power of the public relations war. Giving up Kharkiv meant little to the Russians, but it was a huge PR win for Ukraine and that is what keeps the weapons flowing. This missile barrage has silenced the normal cheerleaders, which works in Russia’s favor.

            The winter will be interesting. Right now they are in the mud season. It rains hard in the autumn which makes it tough to move heavy equipment. Come December, the ground freezes.

          • The world has changed, but still stays the same. Any perusal of histories of the Spanish civil war tell you what is going on in The Battle of the Press: Ukrainia Edition. Orwell’s quote applies here: reading about successful offensives that never happened, and successful defensive actions that he actually saw overrun. It’s even the same papers and institutions doing it. Attacks will happen and be successful because the press is there to film it; they may be attacking a staged defense with blank rounds and far from any actual battlefield, but by golly the London Times will have its heroic front-page live-action portrayal of the successful and decisive Republican, er Ukrainian, offensive campaign.
            The entire thing is lies because they are of their master, the Father of Lies.

          • The main point we gloss over and JEB can’t understand is that “it ain’t over until the fat lady sings”. Russia, despite the recent (minor) military reversals, is a completely intact war machine.

            The GAE propaganda machine has been wrong 100% in their analysis of the situation in Ukraine from day 1. First it was that Russian sanctions would cause their economy to collapse. Then it was that Russian losses were so high as to be unsustainable. Then it was that a coup was in the offing and regime change in Russia was imminent. So on and so forth.

            Idiots like JEB always follow the official lie, they can’t/won’t think for themselves. When an intelligent person sees through the propaganda, they are baffled. And like with Covid, when proven wrong JEB will once again go away and pretend he never said anything of the sort.

            The only person “full of shit” is JEB—a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

        • Here are a few musings of mine on a nice warm sunny fall day here:

          The thing that became obvious to me within days of the war starting was that the plan was for any reporting about Ukraine to be cartoonish propaganda. I mentioned here before how they started talking about Russia was somehow “late” for their conquest of a nation bigger than Iraq after like 5 days when it took the US over a month to overrun Iraq. It was at that point that I started ignoring almost all reporting from the theater that wasn’t in Russian and my Russian isn’t good enough to slog through that stuff most of the time. Besides I knew the Russian stuff wouldn’t exactly be the truth either.

          What does get through the electronic fog is a general picture that Russia is methodically winning the real war and thanks to the stupidity of actions like NordStream and the Kerch bridge stunt (suicide bombs really? What are you guys Jihaddis now?) they are starting to win the propaganda war too. That last bit in fact means that they are on track to win outright because…

          The only thing keeping the Uke meat grinder going is the blind support of the Anglo-American NPC core and the billions in aid that keep flowing because of the politicians they support. Once the GAE forces started doing stupid, desperate and crazy stuff like blowing up pipelines and bridges they opened the door to allow chickenshit politicians from London to San Francisco to run back to the comfort of their child molester vans.

          I get the impression that, fortunately for all of us, there’s still a core of intelligent, if not exactly decent, people in the GAE establishment who are getting nervous about things like Nordstream and Kerch. The alphabet soup agencies have always attracted unhinged James Bond or Rambo wannabes. Hopefully someone with power will see that it’s time to send those guys back to their desks. Besides, it’s election time in the US. The smart move here for the core elite would be to declare victory, count the billions (more) they’ve managed to steal from all of us, and move on to the next excuse to seize more power and money.

      • People also underestimated or were unaware of how many foreign mercs popped up in Ukraine.

        MBS just brokered a deal to return a group of mercs containing individuals from 10 different countries.

        There were rumors on Telegram that the Russian MoD has noted up to 30 different nationalities of merc at some of the Uke training bases.

        • Maybe the Russians should start shooting the mercenaries, which as I understand it, is allowed by Geneva Convention. I realize captured pawns are bargaining chips, but nothing like a corpse with a bullet in the head says “We aren’t fucking around.” If naught else, it would likely dampen enthusiasm among would-be soldiers of fortune, no matter what pay is offered.

          • A couple of large thermobaric munitions delivered in the midst of a few large concentrations of these mercenaries might do the trick. Oops, this here ain’t one of those scrappy little Third World conflicts, now is it lads?

            Larry Johnson made the point recently that, with the change in the charge to the new commander of Russian forces, General Surovikin, that the narure of their effort is changing from a Special Military Operation to a full-bore Combined Arms Operation. That will be a horse of a different color right off, and the latent Russian escalatory dominance can assert itself forcefully with minimal time lag.

    • You idiots never learn. You followed the media and were wrong about Covid. Instead of being embarrassed, you just move on and make an ass of yourself over the next scam. My goodness.

      • Kinda off-topic, but there is a bizarre structural similarity between Z’s essay today, and an old essay of Leo Tolstoy [concerning Guy de Maupassant] which VD posted today.

      • That transition has been seamless, hasn’t it? So many who were cowering in their dark closets, faces draped with rags to keep out the Devil Bug, are now puffing out their chests and daring Putin to rain down nukes. It is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying that the propaganda has that much control and effect.

        • It really is remarkable. The great divide is not over biological reality after all. The divide is between those who blindly trust the system and those who can see.

          • Well, it’s both.

            But, yes, it’s been very eye-opening to see many on the DR accept the narrative on various topics. It took Covid and now Ukraine to show how tied these people remain to the past and to the system.

            They can’t let it go. They still believe it can be fixed. Even more importantly, they still crave its approval, which I find truly bizarre.

          • There is biological reality also at play, presumably neurological, with some of us being largely immune to propaganda. It seems not to correlate directly with intelligence and so forth. I know brilliant people who swallow the most ham-handed nonsense hook, line and sinker. The proclivity to believe propaganda also seems be getting worse.

            It emerged, and was quickly buried, that social media explicitly was designed to be addictive. So it is possible recent discoveries about how we are hardwired to respond to stimulus and information are being exploited. That still leaves on the table the issue of immunity, though.

          • I have always thought that an aspect of belief and trust is a gullibility – cynicism scale. Some people are are natural skeptics while at the other end there are people who are naturally trusting. It seems to be independent of IQ, but the trust does seem to correlate, positively and negatively, to authority.

          • Jack Dobson,

            Sorry, fat fingered a down vote when I wanted to enthusiastically agree.

          • It’s got to be one of those spectrum traits that are adaptive to some environments and maladaptive in others. Being fed bullshit that’s actually for your own good will actually advantage mildly gullible people, like believing God doesn’t want you to play with yourself. Now you can redirect all that energy over to woodcraft or learning to play the flute.

            Our present society is run by sociopaths, so the paranoid personality becomes more adaptive. Clearly they put all this porno out here to manipulate me to some nefarious end, I’m not going to fall for their trap and spend my time learning woodcraft or maybe teach myself to play the flute…

          • Exactly. That is the new dividing line of humanity. The terms “conservative” and “progressive” or “leftist” are meaningless today.

        • Well, I’m hoping Uncle Ivan nukes our enemies on the coast because I want to see if a Tsar bomb can actually destroy all the two and six-legged cockroaches in New York City, not because of any false bravado. Let’s you and him fight, ya know?

    • Is this the real Jeb Bush?

16. As always, I root for the side that doesn’t call me a racist, misogynist, islamophobic, anti-semtic, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, baseless conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer, anti-science, climate denier, election denier, and a deplorable/vile dummy who believes in the flying spaghetti monster.

    • I don’t root for a side. I’m just a skeptical captive of the one-sided meme war being waged on the internet. If I am on a side, it’s the side of ending this damnable think before it grows into a global conflagration.

      • I understand and agree. But it seems clear who the instigator is here. Could be wrong though; could be the whole thing is phoney on both sides.

    • It’s Muhammad Ali’s quote about the Viet Cong, just changed around a little. No Russian (actual Russians, not (((Russians)))) ever called me a sexist, racist, etc.

    • Been tempted since February to change my social media profile pic to a Russian Flag with the words
      NO RUSSIAN
      EVER CALLED ME
      DEPLORABLE
      on the different colors, but so far, common sense has won out. 😀

17. Ukraine and Russia remind me irresistibly of this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XeDvKqI4E&ab_channel=morpheusatloppers

18. Actually, I think few people know about a million Germans starved during WWI due to the Anglo-American blockade. Or that a million Iraqis starved due to sanctions after the Gulf War (Madeleine Albright admitted this openly), before 9/11 forced a policy change.

    Hunger is the greatest motivator.

    • Well, the Germans should have thought a bit more about the consequences of going to war on behalf of Austria over Serbia in 1914, since they did everything they could to ensure that the Royal Navy would initiate a blockade.
      Much like the Germans of today, who simply ignored the consequences of supporting AINO’s proxy war with Russia over the Donbass.
      Play stupid games, win stupid prizes is the history of German foreign and military policy since 1890.

    • Again, no one in London thought initiating a blockade of Germany in 1914 would result in Germany starting a genocidal war against Slavs three decades later so they would never starve again.

      Who knows what’s gonna happen after this fuck up. Well, except we won’t learn a damn thing.

19. Well the Taki piece was thoughtful, well reasoned and insightful so it must be wrong. I agree with the reasoning behind Putin’s Pansy approach but think that he had the bigger geo-strategic picture in mind above all else. Russia has shown itself to be, to a ludicrous degree, the upholder in International Law and the sanctity of contract. The degree to which this approach has been successful is quite remarkable. The palpable panic in Washington about the Saudi decision is telling, as is the reaction: Sanctions and punishment. As I’ve said many times, the sense of entitlement among the West’s Elite is astonishing: All countries are expected to bend the knee to every wish and whim and sacrifice their own most vital interest to do so. In what world can it possibly be in the interest of the Saudi state to cede the setting of the oil price to the West from OPEC? The Global South looks at this through the prism of 75 years of looting, regime change, terrorism, sanctions, piracy and theft and finally seem to have had enough. The March UN resolution condemning Russia won the support of 150 plus nations, just six months later the September one got 53 votes.
    Short of the physical destruction of the country, Russia has won. What’s left is a messy clean-up operation.

    • The West is increasingly dependent on creating a moral consensus in the vacuum where Rule of Law used to hold sway. That’s why the propaganda and censorship has reached such dizzying heights.

      Of course, there’s no rule of law without some sort of moral consensus, but the two are supposed to counterbalance eachother to ensure purity spirals don’t destroy your society by creating an existential threat to classes within a country.

      That’s why civil wars tend to start with massive upticks in murder, as the ruling regime is either unwilling or incapable to administer law and order equally to citizens, creating a “nothing to lose” situation where fanatics kill with impunity and the victims can’t count on the state to help them..

      • You are just seeing the female/male dichotomy.

        In my observation it seems women don’t really have a concept of right as an abstract that must be used as a measure, rather the herd feeling of not being ostracized is the only measure (confused with morals), which can change all the time as to its viewpoint.

        • Women are biologically designed to follow the tribe’s consensus because for thousands of years, women’s survival – the the survival of their children was completely dependent on being a good-standing member of the tribe.

          Therefore, in a women’s mind, the tribe’s consensus is her morality. Agreeing with the tribe means protecting herself and her children, which, of course, is morally correct. Obviously, we’re no longer in that situation, but our biology hasn’t changed.

          If the DR wants to win over some white women, we need to offer them a competing tribe where they feel safe. This is why TPTB fight so hard to stop whites from forming communities.

          • Its interesting how the child protection drive has been subverted to child murder and mutilation and protect and welcome the outsider.

          • Thinking on that a little more it strikes me then that the media NPC programming has then created a neural structure for a lot of women where children are their enemy and the immigrant/other race/deviant has been switched in to be her children.

            I assume if we understood how they were doing the programming, it would be possible to see the non-verbal and semantic layers used to build up this unconscious control structure.

          • Yes. The media uses women’s maternal instincts to destroy our people. It’s why women with children aren’t quite as susceptible, at least when it comes to where they live and where they’re children go to school.

            Of course, for upper-middle class women, if they know that they and their kids are safe by buying their way out of the danger, they will immediately switch back to NPC mode. Blacks are no longer the biggest danger to their life, not holding the right views is, so they make sure to hold the right view. Not to say the right thing, but to believe it.

            Also, if you’ve been around women, you’ll quickly notice that their best weapon against each other (and their biggest fear) is ostracizing. Cancel culture has been around for tens of thousands of years.

          • @Citizen of a Silly Country

            Another attribute to consider is that women (and men, but especially women) seek status, Rank within population. This promotes rapid evolution: for example, when being good with a bow-and-arrow is valued then those men have high status, when something else becomes valued, women will leap on that.

            The media has become the grantor of status, what People Mag portrays as high status garners a significant harvest of adopters. The media is the de-facto evolutionary fitness decider.

          • trumpton: “women don’t really have a concept of right as an abstract that must be used as a measure, rather the herd feeling of not being ostracized is the only measure (confused with morals), which can change all the time as to its viewpoint”

            Citizen of a Silly Country: “in a women’s mind, the tribe’s consensus is her morality. Agreeing with the tribe means protecting herself and her children, which, of course, is morally correct”

            trumpton: “Its interesting how the child protection drive has been subverted to child murder and mutilation”

            ===============

            I don’t know that I would use the word “subvert” here; it strikes me as more of an “inversion”.

            The phenomenon you’re dealing with is known as, “Von Munchhausen’s by Proxy”.

            Without giving away too many spoilers, the immigrant streetsh!tter, M Night Shyamalan, made an epic movie about it, called “The Sixth Sense”.

            Von Munchhausen’s by Proxy lives at the intersection of Cluster-B Histrionics [“pay attention to me me me me me!!!”] and Non-Specified Passive Aggression [“I will stab you in the back and then chortle & snicker at your corpse”].

            By passive-aggressively harming their own children, females bring all sorts of attention to themselves, and the more the children suffer, the greater the outpouring of sympathy for the [ostensibly] innocent mother who has to deal with such terrible pain in her life.

            Those of us who were raised by reasonably sane [and very nearly moral] mothers have no idea how satanically horrifying life must be for a child who was born to a mother on the Left side of the bell curve for compassion.

          • @bourbon

            The munchausen by proxy is a manifestation of what is now a much wider society wide issue that has been intentionally induced.

            But I agree its pretty close to what we see around the vex and mutilation activities that gain media reward for these women as they murder and butcher their own offspring just for the attention.

            The level of evil in with malice aforethought inducing a psychosis on this scale cannot be overstated.

          • Trumpton: “The level of evil in with malice aforethought inducing a psychosis on this scale cannot be overstated.”

            I don’t know if even the average commentator here chez Z can grok the Evil which you are positing; I think too many of them are still too hesitant to make the necessary stroll through the Abyss in order to come to that conclusion.

            Evil which would consciously & intentionally invert the fair sex’s histrionic vanity into a compulsion for mutilating and murdering its own children, and deploy Edward Bernays’s mass mesmerization & hypnotization techniques in immanentizing that particular eschaton, is an Evil which I suspect Normie Con Inc simply cannot grok.

        • We’re in an ultra-conservative household, our inner circle being very conservative friends. Unfortunately, when my wife has to go outside the bubble to interact with children-hating liberal piano teachers (ironic) or the medical profession, they oftentimes show a subtle to overt amount of hostility to the number of children we have (4). Shakes her up real good being outside the established moral consensus. I just shrug and try to explain, diplomatically, that those people are the enemy, and their opinion is worse than useless.

          • Yes, your wife has a different tribe. That’s huge. She can fall back to your views.

            Women gravitate to the strongest tribe. Since a particular tribe controls literally everything in their country, particularly, the media, women follow the consensus that they see in the media, schools and corporations. The strongest tribe controls them, so they obey. It’s just biology.

            However, if women feel threatened by the current tribe’s beliefs or that another tribe might be a better option and can hold its ground against the current tribe, they will switch sides. It has nothing to do with ideas and morals. It’s which tribe is strongest and protects me.

          • Heh, I grew up among liberals and I remember that sentiment quite well. The funny thing was that leftists wouldn’t bat an eye at some Mexican woman walking through the mall with eight children like a little line of brown ducklings, it was always a white family with three or more kids that set them off. Especially blonde Mormons, that would always elicit some kind of snotty commentary.

          • Chet Rollins: “children-hating liberal piano teachers (ironic) or the medical profession, they oftentimes show a subtle to overt amount of hostility to the number of children we have (4)”

            That’s the Passive Aggressive Industrial Complex reacting to the presence of an Active Aggressor in their midst.

            Passive Aggressives can sniff an Active Aggressor from 1000 miles away.

            These are meta-darwinian phenomena which you are witnessing.

            The genes for Passive Aggression – e.g. infiltrating children’s musical edumakashun structures or pediatric medicine services – the genes for Passive Aggression immediately sense the presence [in their midst] of the genes for Active Aggression – e.g. pushing out FOUR live births of beautiful White babies – and when they sniff the presence of Active Aggression, the genes for Passive Aggression immediately move to DefCon Three and force the Passive-Aggressive’s psychological state to begin lashing out at the Active Aggressor.

            Once you realize the presence of this Meta-Darwinian warfare, you can sense it everywhere.

            John Carpenter made an epic movie about it, called “They Live”.

            After you put on John Carpenter’s psychological sunglasses, you can never un-see the Passive Aggressive Industrial Complex and the incessant Meta-Darwinian warfare which it wages upon Active Aggressives, [who, oddly enough, are the most peaceful of all hominids].

            Finally, let me emphasize one little linguistic point about your use of “ironic” [similar to my use just now of “oddly enough”] in noticing that liberal piano teachers & doctors hate their students & patients: There would be nothing ironic about it whatsoever if these piano teachers & pediatricians were indeed SADISTS, i.e. if they were Sadistic Passive Aggressives.

            In that case – Sadistic Passive Aggression – you’re looking at precisely the same motivations which drive sodomites to become boys’ choir masters & scout troop leaders & football team coaches; because choirs & scout troops & football teams are where the innocent & defenseless & naive little virgin boys are to be found.

            I’ve got a lifetime of experience now in dealing with Passive Aggressives who hate children [and who take great glee in harming children], and I wish I had something upbeat or even mildly optimistic to say on the topic, other than

            A) Home School, and

            B) If you ever find a true Christian pediatrician or Christian music teacher [Christian not in name but Christian by nature], then treasure them & thank your lucky stars that you crossed paths with them, because they are becoming rarer than hens’ teeth.

        • I remember hearing a conservative ex-muslim’s observation on the cruelty and
          fanaticism of many women in islamic countries: The mothers of suicide bombers gain a special status. FGM is upheld and practiced by the women. Honour killings are fully endorsed – and often committed – by female relatives. And on and on. Women become absolute bloodcurdling sociopaths in their pursuit of social coin, no matter where they find themselves.

      • There will be no civil war. The War has was already forfeited in 2020.

        2020 will go down in history as the year that America died. The covid-cooties hysteria whipped up by the scaremongers in the globalist media was to be the first nail in the coffin, in the process of turning America into the first, world-state. Deaths WITH the cooties became deaths FROM the cooties- if you’ll recall what the Great Liars said.

        Still, the only people really afraid were the woolen pussyhat npcs addicted to the msnpc kool-aid, and that mass of utterly clueless, peasant consumptards which continue to perpetuate the idiotic American stereotype. Most traditional Americans were not sufficiently cowed by the cooties fear-campaign in the globalist media- they were not buying the fake death counts, and most witnessed a total disconnect from their actual day-to-day experience, compared to what anderson pooper, and even Fox news was attempting to sell them.

        Therefore globalist media had to conjure up another “crisis” (isn’t the new thing always SUCH A CRISIS?) in the death of a complete nobody- Fentanyl Floyd. Floyd’s death served as the final battering ram so badly needed by the wolves of internationalism to usher in their new global order. His “sacrifice” produced a spark which ignited a tinderbox of nation-wide racialist discontent and centuries-old nonsensical grievance among the great copper-horde of urban minorities, and- all of a sudden- the ghosts of jim crow, slavery, and white supremacy were lurking under everyone’s bed, and you’d have thought the kkk was in every police department and government office, the way they were targeted.

        But, most importantly, 2020 and the maelstrom following the death of fentanyl floyd were, in reality, a stealth coup, wide-ranging in it’s totality. What began as a socio-economic uprising and paradigm-shift soon morphed into a political reality when the wolves of globalism utilized the covid farce as cover to complete the political coup, when the election of 2020 was stolen via several forms of chicanery, but chiefly by the widespread use of fraudulent mail-in ballots. Remember that?

        It is vital to understand that we are now living under a new globalist order. A completely unhinged, psychopathic, despotic, and evil minority has seized all major levers of power, and is using this influence to purge any and all opposition. The jan. 6th “rioters” were among the first to be purged openly, en masse. Trump, and his network of associates came after. Dicktater Brandon has essentially labelled all trump-supporters domestic terrs in everything but name recently.

        Now, they are coming for original Americans in general, and this attack is proceeding at a rapid pace, on every front imaginable. This is open cold-war, and ethnic/political cleansing by any other name. Merely observe the changes occurring in every sphere of life, as well as what is rapidly being normalized- from tv, to the radio, to social media, to your local library. Even “churches” are no longer exempt from the new right-think sweeping society. I don’t think I even need to mention the more than 5 million new third-world garbage-people flooding the country- completely uninhibited- to further illustrate that replacement is real, and happening at a fundamentally unsustainable pace.

        We have entered into a new, dark age, and WE WILL NOT BE VOTING OUR WAY OUT OF THIS MESS. Any talk of political solutions within the current paradigm- at such a late hour- are mere mental masturbation, and so much shoe-drooling. We are now the permanent crown-jewel of the globalist scum, after a century of patient struggle, and subterfuge. You’d do well to acknowledge that we have suffered major, irreparable losses. This was a slow-motion, stealth coup, and America is dead. We’ve got to accept this, to form a platform for sane, logical solutions.

        Fortunately, I have a very unique solution to this impossible Gordian knot facing us. We need a paradigm-shift of our own, and the one I have in mind will dwarf the current one that has recently overwhelmed us. Stay tuned.

        But for starters, I am announcing a new political party, and would love to have some of you as our first and most senior leaders, should you accept the invitation. Everyone here is welcome to join in the discussion- which is sure to be radical, and epoch-making. I’m just a philosopher/inventor, but we need more practical, experienced voices, to keep things firmly grounded. This movement will shake the very foundations of the world (with or without you) and we will never stop working toward our goals. It’s going to be kind of a big deal. We simply cannot be defeated, because we are among the best out here, and our weltanshauung is supreme, being firmly rooted in reality, despite our lofty goals. We strongly advocate against violence, for now, and you will see why shortly. We have exceedingly innovative concepts that will blow your mind, guaranteed. What’s more, this international movement will touch upon all spheres of life- not merely the political.

        We do plan on reciprocating support to any who support us overtly or otherwise. But overall, I don’t intend to take up much more space on Mr. Z’s excellent blog here.

        Buckle your seatbelts, and get excited, because you are going to make a real difference, someday soon. The future is ours, and it is very bright indeed. You’re all welcome aboard, unofficially, (and the young and female are MOST encouraged to apply and make their voices heard- however, it should be noted that the more useful perspectives will naturally rise to the top.) We are open to collaboration with any similarly like-minded groups, and believe unity is important at this point, rather than more jewish nit-picking that has only served to unnecessarily divide all of us. The official announcement will be forthcoming in days.

        To be continued.

        • The young and female most encouraged and make their voices heard?

          I am surrounded by the mindless braying of the young and female. Like I need more of that mindless herd stupidity.

          Is this going to be a cult thing?

          • no, trumptard. Unlike your idiotic trump-cult, it will obviously be a bit beyond you. muh TRUMP bro….

            Laff now, cry l8er homes!

            yer fired

          • It would be more effective as an insult if you actually had the derivation of the username correct, rather than jumping to the conclusion its about Trump.

            Not everything is about the US.

          • mmmm… alright. well. fuck you guys then. enjoy your doom. I’ll be here when you come crying for help when your hair is on fire. I might still tell you to get fuct tho. yeah. I will. forget it homeboyyyy i have no desire to help a motley bunch of keyboard warriors anyway, i LIVE IN THE REAL WORLD, DOING BIG BOY SHIT. HAVE FUN WITH YOURSELVES HERE. the door is now shut. yes, im fickle, and it’s your ass, not mine, ho. this shit is going up, with or without you. enjoy more of the fail.

          • I was your only hope, simpleton. Whateverthefuck you think this is- is not that. I make no apologies for being the shit, and the best out here. I’m the best, faggit, and someday, you’re gonna realize that. I do not need you, peasant. to the contrary… you desperately need a literal creative genius like me to breathe life back into your geriatric, fozzilized, doomed dogdump of an existence. I give two fucks if you want to burn. I’ll let you. Like it’s nothing. Damn. a few bad apples and all… it dont take much with me. in the street, i’d stab a bitch for less than running his cute mouth like that.

            It’s not like I’m sitting on the biggest thing since the industrial revolution, or anything. Fag.

          • I can’t even anymore. I’m going to take the biggest idea since the industrial revolution, and deliver it directly to the zionists, since no conservatives can ever tolerate me. I don’t give a fuck anymore. You just sealed your doom. No matter what you do, you lose now.

            That’s called a checkmate, dickface. congratulations, are you guys winning yet? get stuffed. I’m sick of you crabby fucking conservatives acting like you know everything. I’m gonna show you a thing or two. you cannot fix the epoch failure you just set in motion for yourselves. I will enjoy the fuck out of sticking it to you idiots. you want a supervillain, fuckboy???? you just made one

          • Literally offered to lay the world at your feet. And. Every. Fucking. Time. You stupid cowboys have to laugh and spit in my face in return. I won’t forget that. Your future is mine. Your whole world is mine. There is fuckall you can do about it, now. I will be the biggest curse to your people since josef stalin- mark these words, you wormy piece of shit. You just failed harder than any man has, i think, ever. I’m done bitching. If it’s war you want, it’s a war you’ll get! Fuck you in your neck

          • I don’t give a fuck anymore. Wherever I go, leftists idolize and literally flock to me in the street. They follow me around like curious children, and they don’t know why. They just know i’m one of the realest motherfuckers they’ve ever seen. Same thing with gang members, except I scare the piss out of hardened killers like it’s nothing, and they don’t really know why, either. Bosses and og’s love the shit out of me, to be honest. I suppose they can just sense, on an animal level, that a major predator is in their midst, and they all cuck. Even 6 foot 8 polynesians fear me and can’t figure out why. My mana be strong brahdah. Foos just get it. Fools like you just don’t. This will prove to be your undoing. I don’t take disrespect well.

            Someday, I will lead armies against you, and fucking crush you. After that, I may decide to resurrect the right- and on my terms this time- not yours.

            I don’t need you.

            I was doomed to be somebody’s supervillain anyway, so I guess being the bad guy is the role I was meant to play. Good luck. You’ll need it.

          • O-kaaaay then…

        • How to say you are a Gamma, but not say you are outright:

          Post a wall of text, and then call people names when they mock you.

          • He can’t even stay in character for his phrasing.

            NPCs just can’t grok the cadence of how real people think and write, so they always sound like its auto-generated cut and paste fragments strung together with random padding.

    • From what I’ve read, Washington started huffing and puffing at the Saudis, threatening to terminate military cooperation and arms sales, although not officially.

      I call it a bluff, cutting Saudis from US support means they have no other way, but to settle with Iran and Turkey on spheres of influence which would cause erratic screeching from Tel Aviv to Washington.That also means Yemen War would have to end and Middle East might enter a new period of (fragile) stability..

      • I think the ME deal is done. Putin has been acting as a broker between the Saudi’s and Iran. Both are going to enter the BRICS bloc. Turkey is moving in that direction too. If nothing else the Biden Regime has caused a large number of the Satraps- pretty much all except The West and Japan (Dunno about S Korea) to ask the simple question: What’s in it for me?

        Increasingly the answer is Not Much and getting less while the price is going up. Biden was always a bully boy proponent of the GAE , ever clamoring for more power for D.C. at home and abroad – remember his claim that he had in 1997 or 1998 originated the PATRIOT Act?
        He now notionally at least, gets to dismantle it.

    • In “The Demons”, speaking of one of the characters who for many years had been treated by society with reverence, the narrator says, referring to his habit to be revered (and agreed with): “Ah, what being used to things can do!”.

      Can we imagine what the outcomes for the Middle East and the world would be, if Russia successfully brokered a peace and co-operation between the Sunni and Shiite powers? (Read: KSA and IRAN, their allies would follow).

    • The ugly truth is there will be no successful “clean-up” operation.

      Russia can’t lose, but they can’t win either.

      The US is going to be training guerillas who’ll murder their own “collaborating” people in Ukraine forever.

      The “resistance”, if you will.

      To a US state department chock full of men and women who learned most of their “history” from Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Hunger Games what could possibly be more romantic?

      • “The US is going to be training guerillas who’ll murder their own ‘collaborating’ people in Ukraine forever.”

        What if Putin’s statement that he will attack the decision making centres is not a bluff?

20. “This legalistic mindset is turning up in the response to the terrorist attack on the Kerch bridge in the Crimea.”

    Why is Putin saying this is terrorism? It sounds retarded to me. That bridge is a major resupply route to a major front in the war. Besides that, does Putin think he gets to play war in Ukraine and level Ukraine, but Ukraine is not allowed to target anything inside the RF? Are they really larping war?

    More importantly, does he really believe legalistic word games makes one bit of difference? Or that the “rules of war” matter in the slightest? He shouldn’t forget that “who” decides is more important than any alleged rule.

    • This is just Putin throwing the language of the West back at the West. It forces them to at least realize their hypocrisy even if they do not admit it. If calling it terrorism makes it to a few news sites and a few people realize the hypocrisy and wake up, then he did his job.

      • You know the ineffective rhetoric about dems are the real racists?

        Well the west are the real hypocrites is not going to work either.

        • Totally agree, hence they won’t admit it. However, pointing out examples is important.

        • First and foremost, Putin will have his domestic audience in mind when he chooses his words. I’m not sure what web of associations a term like terrorism conjures up in the mind of Russians, but I pretty certain that the Moscow theater attack as well as the Caucasus school massacre are, subconsciously at least, part of it. What followed from the Russian state at the time was a fist of steel. So, Putin speaking of terrorism may be meant to prepare the ground domestically for gloves coming off. The current strikes at selected but widespread Ukrainian infrastructure targets would seem to confirm this reading.

          If the terrorism rhetoric also serves as an irritant to part of the Western public, that would of course be a welcome but entirely secondary benefit, I imagine.

        • Who are they pointing out the hypocracy to? It isnt powerless White Americans. Its leaders of BRICS and Opec. International politics is very different in dynamics from domestic us dynamics. Midwestern international leaders care very much about whether the us leadership is “agreement capable.” Their heads and (vast) fortunes are literally on the chopping block, depending on the answer.

          • Idk where autocowreck found “Midwestern” in there, apologies and ignore that word.

    • “More importantly, does he really believe legalistic word games makes one bit of difference? Or that the “rules of war” matter in the slightest? He shouldn’t forget that “who” decides is more important than any alleged rule.”

      If you were to ask the average American why the war between the states was fought, what would their answer be?

      • By any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution, the war or Northern aggression should never have happened. They entered into the union voluntarily and under a list of conditions. It was assumed that states could leave, at least by some people. But the “rules” don’t matter, it’s who enforces the rules that matter. Our so-called side is ignoring all of the alleged “rules”

        The very same types of people who made war on the South are in total control of education and mass communications. Can you reasonably expect any American to have anything other than the approved narrative in their heads?

        “Hate” and “bigotry” are against the supposed “rules” of social media. Yet you can routinely find calls for extermination of White people on all the platforms. Yet criticize one minor aspect of globohomo and you get removed for “hate” The “rules” are absolutely meaningless.

        In a rigged game, rules are for suckers.

        • I agree and i think a lot of people have been picking up on what you say over the past few years. Which makes Putins example of going by the rules all the more important.

      • Climate change?

    • “Putin think he gets to play war in Ukraine and level Ukraine”

      If you think Putin has done that You need to fuck-off back to your Kagan family digs.

      • I’m not saying he leveled Ukraine, that’s just a bit of hyperbole to illustrate a point. But for sure all of the fighting has been on Ukrainian soil. War is war and the enemy gets a vote. Surely he cannot think the Russian Federation is “off limits” for some legal reason or something. IMHO, what has kept Russia largely off limits is because the US doesn’t want a wider war, it wants to destroy the Russian state in Ukraine. Yes, I still think we are the bad guy.

        I don’t side with globohomo here. I am neutral to lean-Russia I just think it makes sense that if Kiev can be hit by missiles by the Russian armed forces under command and direction of the military and political leadership of Russia, they should not be surprised if war comes their way. That bridge was, IMHO, a fair target. Troops on Ukranian soil are fighting with weapons brought to them via that bridge.

        What the hell is “Kagan family digs” If you meant “dogs” that still doesn’t make any sense to me.

        • The same surely then applies to the US and EU that are active participants in this war?

          Why is Berlin or Brussels off the table?

          • For the same reason Russia has largely been off limits. In this case, the Russians absolutely do not want a wider war. If Russia sent missiles into Germany, NATO Article 5 would have to be invoked.

            It would lead to a much wider war with actual NATO soldiers fighting against the Russians and could get very ugly, very fast. Russia does not desire a fight with NATO (proper) and knows it could not win a fight with NATO. Putin fairly recently said so.

21. Z, you left us hanging! What do we know??!! Good cliff-hanger!

    • I did not want the usual suspects getting sidetracked with the comment about Poland. Yeah, we all know it much more complicated than the story books tell us, but that was not the point.

      • “…and then, for no reason at all.”

      • Heh. Deft. That was smooth, smooth as glass. The mark of a true operator, a Kyle Rittenhouse of the comment section. A master of internet aikido. Such economy of movement. Heil!

      • Please, more footnotes. Especially ones with subtle jokes.

22. More and more it feels like a religious war. After fall of communism (state religion) Russia turned to the church for moral guidance. Every Russian movie I’ve been watching is strongly against the abortion and views pedophilia as the worst crime possible.
    While at the same time the West turned to neo-Marxism. Even grabbing Russian personal property and boasting about it feels like bolshevics are in charge once again.

    • There is an ad on Russian television where a Russian couple is on an airplane to America, the land of freedom. Then they get scolded by the staff and other passengers about their pronouns and gender identity. The point is clear. American is a land of immoral depravity masquerading as liberty.

      • I think that television commercial indicates quite a bit of deftness in the meme war. Since I don’t do social media, I have to assume it is blocked and banned but it has been circulated elsewhere throughout the West, and whether admitted or not most realize it is spot on.

        • Jack Dobson: The commercials have been derided as propaganda by the USmedia (pot meet kettle) but are, of course, accurate and based.

          https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/propaganda-video-warns-fleeing-russians-about-lgbtq-26-black-people-in-the-us/ar-AA12NIab

          • The Western propaganda organs simply made their publics aware of the commercial, and some likely dug around to find it as a direct result. Not the result intended, for certain.

          • Just went and watched the original commercials. I don’t believe I’m reaching when I note that the proboscis on the man is meant to signify a particular demographic and that this intent will also be obvious to genuine Russians.

            https://twitter.com/KermlinRussia/status/1577768742066524168

        • Jack: Your point about the meme war is an important one. Putin most needs to convince his own people that Russia is on the side of good, as well as combat our MSM blizzard of lies. Since most Russians are naturally patriotic (except perhaps for some of the more online youth), they don’t reflexively attack their own country and people.

          The old USSR was better at the propaganda war because its aims aligned with our heavily Juice media and self-styled intelligentsia – the nuclear freeze movement, international feminism, etc. Seems to me that trying to win the international propaganda war – when billions of dollars and the international banksters/controllers are determined to paint Russia as notsee Germany redux – would be a waste of resources.

          • I’ve long thought if Putin announce he was returning to communism the Western tongue bath would drown him.

    • “it feels like bolshevics are in charge once again.”

      They are. Or aren’t they?!

23. An interesting theory, which seems to have some merit, has been floated that the economic terrorism against Nordstream was in fact not greenlighted by the United States but was the freelance handiwork of MI6* and Poland. The ruling Greens in Germany were perfectly fine with it because it furthered their religion and a foreign attack resolved the issue of Russian fossil fuels while keeping their hands clean. As I gather from this claim, MI6 primarily was responsible because it aligned with Britain’s Mackinder doctrine to control the Eurasian heartland, and Poland has long-standing animosity toward Moscow along with the economic incentive of its own energy interests. D.C. and Moscow have since used back channels to make clear this was not an attack on the latter by the former. Hence Putin laid the responsibility at the feet of the “Anglo-Saxons,” which we assumed meant Americans but did not if the theory is true. The UK and Poland entered into a mutual security pact (sound familiar?) several months ago outside of NATO. I have confirmed that part, at least.

    The United States did surveillance via the Navy and gathered intelligence for the Brits and Poles, per this theory, but was unaware of the ultimate plan to blow up the pipeline. I have a hard time with this part in particular since it seems to be an effort to whitewash and downplay the United States’ role. My guess is the US at least suspected what would happen.

    If most of this is true, and again there seems to be at least some merit, the Western countries are not on the same page despite the unified front presented. Given the rank idiocy of all involved this makes it even more dangerous.

    Pulling back to the war overall, two things appear clear:

    1. The Western economic war failed miserably**; and
    2. For whatever reason, be it incompetence or deliberate, Russia has not been gaining ground for several months and has lost some.***

    *People forget, but the primary party initially pushing for war with Iraq was the UK Prime Minister Blair. He had a golden opportunity with the idiot Bush as president, a man who surrounded himself with psychopathic and murderous Neocon warmongers who also wanted that war.

    **This may be good for us since it apparently has caused Davos to suffer for a change. The spectacle of all the sociopathic Tribal financiers demanding Jerome Powell to stop raising interest rates has been delicious. The rates apparently will continue to rise.

    ***The same people floating the theory mentioned above claim Putin wanted the Russian public to see Ukraine was not a war of choice like the American debacle in Iraq and in fact is an existential threat to their country before he goes full bore.

    • Blair did not push the Bush cabal into the Iraq war. Bush et al. were after Iraq long before 2003, or even 1997 which was the year Blair became PM.

      Blair was appointed head of the Labour Party in 1994 which was still after Bush cronies had publically talked about gunning for Saddam.

      Stop making stuff up

      • I’m not making anything up at all. Blair pushed Bush to go to the UN for the resolutions to give the patina of legitimacy to the war. In Operation Desert Fox in 1998, Blair encouraged the Clinton Administration to do the same and was rebuffed.

        One theory is Blair wanted to end Labour’s dovish reputation. That may have been part but he really wanted that war and what he couldn’t get under Clinton he did under Bush

    • Nah – I don’t see it.

      The UK has been an ass kisser gloming onto the US coat tails since the late 80s.

      There is no way they would have done this without direction and frankly I don’t think they have the capacity anymore.

      • The Royal Navy has been using aquatic drones since March 2021. Agreed the UK is an ass kisser of the US but I find this theory plausible.

        • Maybe, but the UK is such a junior partner at this stage it might as well be another state.

          I can’t see the UK doing this off their own bat in European waters.

          Vanishingly small I would say.

    • Poland yes, Britain probably not. A US Navy ship cased the pipeline the week before (this is on record with one of those track-every-ship outfits), and reportedly a US warplane carrying air-to-ground flew over the pipeline about an hour before the first explosion. Both in the immediate vicinity of the damage. Hmmm.

      If it had been Britain, I expect the damage would have happened out in the middle of the Baltic, not damnear to Germany (which is functionally an occupied US territory).

    • *People forget, but the primary party initially pushing for war with Iraq was the UK Prime Minister Blair. He had a golden opportunity with the idiot Bush as president, a man who surrounded himself with psychopathic and murderous Neocon warmongers who also wanted that war.

      Poppa Bush’s original reaction to Iraq invading Kuwait was quite tepid.

      It was only a week or so later, after meeting with Thatcher that he was all this will not stand! It was widely reported at the time that Thatcher had told him “now’s not the time to get all wobbly, George”

    • The theory is plausible, but Biden said he’d do it and then it happened. I don’t feel a need to search for alternative explanations. Especially when London and DC are the same people for all practical purposes.

    • My guess is the US at least suspected what would happen.

      Given Nuland’s and Biden’s prescient statements that Nordstream would be stopped one way or another, I find it hard to believe the ZUSA was not significantly involved.

24. I just passed through the break room at work, where FOX Business was on, and Stuart Varney was indignantly sputtering about how these attacks were “clearly revenge”.

    No shit! It’s a war, as the media breathlessly reminds us every hour, so why wouldn’t the Russians counter attack? I have no idea what message he was trying to convey; there is no nuance to it beyond Bear Man Bad.

    • Revenge for what?

      According to the “western diplomatic sources” the Russian blew up their own pipeline and the bridge.

    • For a second I thought I read Jim Varney. ‘Hey Vern, they’re bombing Kiev!’

25. From the Taki column: “As John Bolton recently confessed, this can only end for them with regime change in Moscow.”

    Another Boomer that can’t die soon enough. Why must that generation cling to power, taking the rest of us down with them as they do so?

    • Doltin’ is the Neocon of Neocons. No surprise there.

      • If I were Putin I’d have my agents grab Bolton, shave his mustache off, and then have the severed mustache prominently displayed in the Kremlin.

    • Bolton has nothing to do with being a “Boomer” and everything to do with being a Qatar-funded traitor. Who was filmed walking around in Qatar a week after Trump fired him. What a coincidence.

      • The US Air Force and the Chamber of Commerce have both opened offices in Qatar.
        Something spooky going on there. Related to the LNG terminal buildout?

        Lordy, I miss nations already.

    • Why the demographic hate where none is relevant. This effed up proxy war and also the destruction of all that is good in the west has many adherents and a lot are not Boomers. You are better than this bud.
      That said, it would be nice if Bolton took a fall down a long flight of stairs.

      • David Wright: And you are better than the NAXALT argument. I’m a boomer too, but I do not reflexively take umbrage at the demographic attack just as I do not reflexively take the side of wahmen. The gist of Vizzini’s complaint was, I think, very clear.

        • I didn’t say I was a boomer.

      • It is completely relevant. There’s a saying in science, “science advances one funeral at a time.” What it means is that older generations and entrenched establishment figures hold science hostage to their biases and often new theories don’t get a decent hearing until a generation passes. This isn’t unique to science.

        We have the oldest political class in US history, Silents and Boomers. Doddering old septuagenarians and octogenarians who can’t remember what they had for breakfast this morning but are holding onto power with their palsied yet still iron grips.

        It will take those generations passing before things change. Sure, plenty in younger generations are just as bad, but right now the bad part of the younger generation is given cover and finance by old people like Biden, Schwab, Soros and Pelosi.

        I think the younger generation of — Trudeau, Macron, Ahern pretty much any younger European or American leader — is ridiculously stupid and incompetent and will bring disaster, but the only way we have is through it, and nasty old Bolton and other Boomers clinging to power are just another thing holding us back.

        Increasing lifespans increase political entrenchment.That generation had its chance. It failed. Time to step aside and let the next batch of idiots have at it.

    • Boomers die.
      something, somthing.
      Victory!
      Course you’re next

26. “In the West, the war is an abstract thing. It is a defense of democracy, which is a thing no one bothers to explain. In fact, if you ask what it means you get shouted down as a threat to our democracy.”

    It’s much the same when you ask questions about Afghanistan. “We went there to establish democracy?”

    What’s a better expression of the will of the people than the fact that after 20 years of occupation, there was no passion among the people of Afghanistan to defend the US puppet government there? The people democratically demonstrated through their actions that they did not want Western democracy.

    Ok, fine. Leave them alone, then.

    • Afghans, who while devoutly religious did not really care for the Taliban’s draconian policies, had witnessed the degeneracy and sickness of the West, complete with Pride parades in Kabul and the American embassy all rainbowed up, and decided the United States was more dangerous to them and their children. The same elements are at play in the Ukraine. Woke really has caused the Empire to be viewed as a pariah across most of the globe. It may prove its undoing.

      • “did not really care for the Taliban’s draconian policies”

        Assertion requires evidence. They handed the country back over to the Taliban eagerly enough.

        • If you can’t discern the difference between “handing over” to the Taliban and being willing to die in the attempt to stop them, then you might be happier on a site with the intellectual rigor of National Review.

          • They had an army far larger and better equipped than the Taliban. They had no will to use it. They did literally “hand over” the country to the Taliban because they didn’t make even a cursory attempt to fight for it. If you won’t fight for what you supposedly want, I question how much you really want it.

            I believe actions speak louder than words. The part of the Afghani population that opposed the Taliban, when the rubber hit the road, was insignificant.

        • @Vizzini:

          ” The part of the Afghani population that opposed the Taliban, when the rubber hit the road, was”

          It wasn’t a matter of support for the Taliban but revulsion against what the West was peddling to them. Again, there were Pride parades, the American embassy bathed in rainbow colors, as another commenter posted George Floyd statues, and feminism indoctrination. The Afghanis were not about to fight to keep that. Misgivings about the Taliban, some tribal, some religious, some cultural/personal, were ignored when the alternative was worse.

          We have subsequently learned that for months, possibly years, the State Department had been warned that its bizarre religious rituals were making the Afghan population even more hostile to the West.

      • I noticed, in the wake of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, a giant George Floyd memorial (kind of a LeBron/Chairman Mao giant painting) in downtown Kabul. Whenever I asked why the average Afghani should give a pigs ass about St. George, they just stood there blinking, almost frightened to think about the question.

        • It was like Rome putting a statue of Ceasar in some dusty town in the middle of present day Syria.

27. Perhaps the Russians are so meticulous about following rules because the Putin Regime, like all regimes, has to be concerned about sustaining internal legitimacy. He is asking his people to sacrifice. He has constraints and constituents like all politicians/leaders. And also I think Yo (comment below) is absolutely correct for pointing out the need to maintain some semblance of rule-following for China and India.

    • The Russian leadership cares a great deal about public opinion. Putin knows there are two things that happen in Russia when the people are unhappy. One is a palace coup and the other is a peasant revolt. It is why opposition media is permitted in Russia. It is useful for understanding where public opinion is at any one time. There is a lot of criticism in Russia of this war, but most of it is running against what is viewed as the soft approach and in favor of much tougher measures.

      I think today’s missile strike was in response to that criticism. Putin is securing up his hawkish flank and setting the stage for the winter war, which will be much harsher than the war so far. The Russian people have to be prepared for it.

      • If you’ve been reading Putin’s speeches, this is very much the case. He’s shifted from trying to make nice with the West and talk sense into Russia’s misbehaving little brother, to being very tired of everyone’s bad behavior, and will now correct any bad behavior that impacts Russia directly. He’s said flat out that he no longer believes accord with the West (which he strove to achieve for decades) is possible.

    • Putin trained as an attorney. (Yes, really.) He thinks laws mean something, and that agreements should be kept.

      • I must admit that is one thing I find confusing as to the obvious expectation as to negotiated settlement from Russia.

        They invaded precisely because the Minsk agreement was a sham that no one in the Ukraine or the west was going to stick to and just used it in order to build up and arm Ukraine.

        The original NATO agreements on non-expansion the US already said they had no intention in sticking to when they signed it and the EU and US and Japan have just torn up every international treaty without a second thought, and seized billions in assets without any legal basis what-so-ever.

        Every previous one was voided almost as they were signed, so aiming for another seems an exercise in futility..

      • Putin’s generation knows what it means not to have rule of law. His project is rebuilding his people’s civilization. Cultivating self-sustaining rules-based systems is crucial for establishing the predictability necessary for economic development. Putin’s restraint in international affairs is simply an extension of this.

        His adversaries like Blinken and meat-puppet Biden are civilization destroyers and hence see rule of law and its governance as weapons to be used when convenient and irrelevancies to be ignored when inconvenient.

        • Interesting point I had not considered.

          Yet at some point Putin is going to have to realize he is dealing with mental cases who will never cease escalating once they are on the path.

          Force is going to be the only solution, and any part of Ukraine left standing will be a proxy launching ground for the forseeable.

        • Bingo. And Putin has said exactly that.

          • Several Putin speeches have alluded to Western treaty violations and the sham of the “rules-based order.” I really think Putin didn’t fully grasp how different the West has become from the time he was a station chief in Moscow. Sure, he knew it lied and dissembled and he could see (and probably apprehend) the madness gripping it, but the full extent of the change was unappreciated. He’s got the full measure now.

            As to trumpton’s point, there is no way Putin will believe a damned thing in any settlement agreement will be honored. He’s probably going to turn the part of the Ukraine not absorbed into his personal Gaza Strip now.

      • If you are trained as an attorney, you should know laws only mean what some bankrolled/blackmailed judge says they mean, and agreements are made to be broken.

28. “In a way, it is like this war is being waged between the bureaucracy of the post office and the leadership of the Mafia.”

    Same thing could be said about election campaigns between the Republicans and the Democrats. Democrats show up for a street fight with razors, chains, tire irons and Molotovs, while Republicans show up in Boy Scout uniforms with merit badges and secret decoder rings, waving the flag and giving the Scout Salute.

    • Also, their Scout troop leader was a pederast Democrat who still hold sway over them.

    • “… waving the flag and giving the Scout Salute.”

      Unfortunately, that flag is now the rainbow flag…

29. “Probably the biggest difference between the two sides is how they explain their respective involvement in the war. The Russians see it as a defense of the Russian people and the Russian homeland. The people in the Donbas are Russians and therefore must be defended by Russia.”

    I’m reminded of US support for Texans in the Texas Revolution. The Mexicans believed, probably correctly, that the US helped foment that revolution to acquire territory, but in popular sentiment, the White Texans were “our people” and needed to be defended.

    Of course, Crockett, Travis, Sam Houston and the rest are folk heroes, because the winners write the history. You’d think this would make the plight of Russians in the Donbas region more understandable. They’ve been waging a much longer, bloodier fight for independence than Texas had to.

    • And every interview with Ukrainians on the ground in Donbass boils down to “Thank God the Russians finally came.”

30. Muh democracy. The US dumpster government has been blabbing about democracy since at least WW1 – “ make the world safe for democracy.” And it doesn’t matter how many people we have to kill or countries we have to wreck to make the world ever so safe.

    • Probably started with that sanctimonious scumbag Woodrow Wilson. Goes by the name “liberal interventionism.” But by now the rest of the world is weary of the bluster and brag, the strut and the swagger and just wants to be left alone. Something a Pat Buchanan can understand. Something a Donald Trump can understand.

      • Rather earlier.
        “that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth…”

        Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

      • Arshad Ali: Spare some contempt for Teddy Roosevelt. I used to consider him the ‘good’ Roosevelt, but the more I learn about him the more I dislike him. The big stick bit, and his ego and third-party run. He’s a conservatard hero because of his boilerplate on hyphenated Americans, but he was fully on board with flooding America with millions of European peasants, among them many ancestors of today’s neocons.

        And I hold him fully responsible for the albatross of Puerto Rico.

31. Putin is carefully following the script from Kosovo because that’s the precedent for the last three decades of neocon gangsterism, that’s his tu quoque-defense.

    Before Kosovo, you needed a unilateral Security Council resolution to play the good guy, after Kosovo you can just yell “surprise humanitarian aid!” as you send in the bombers.

    Before Kosovo, NATO was a defense organisation, now it’s a vehicle for neocon imperialism.

    Kosovo was where the old world order broke.

    • Few people in the West know how large the Balkan war looms in the minds of the Russians and the Chinese. People forget that NATO bombed the Chinese embassy accidentally on purpose.

      As a great American philosopher once said, “the chickens are coming home to roost.”

      • When I was in China, the embassy bombing was brought up a few times. They really did think the US did it on purpose, and it was a real affront. I was like, “Naaah!” and attributed it to Chinese media misinformation, and also who cares?

        Well they did, and now many years later I believe the Chinese.

        • I’ll never discount laughable incompetence as a possibility. The amazing part is how short American memory is. It’s like a friend accidentally burning down your house while smothered, and then a year later being like, “you’re still mad about that bruh? That was AGES ago.”

        • I wonder if the (reported) recent hit by Russian missiles on the German consulate in Kiev are an echo of history?

      • The alleged real reason for the Chinese embassy bombing, which I’ve never seen great proof for, was that a lot of the material from the downed F-117 Nighthawk stealth plane was being stored there in preparation for shipment to China.

    • I suppose everyone saw piece by Vucic detailing the US trying to pressure Hungary (in Orban’s first term) to invade Serbia as the ground part of the initial attacks?

      Which even then he refused to do.

    • This cannot be emphasized enough. The referendum in Kosovo was the template for what was done initially in Crimea and now in the other annexed areas. The campaign against Serbia was the moment the Empire became openly expansionist and undeniably evil.

      • Yes, it was at least the unmistakeable moment (for those with eyes to see, at least). I took it that way.

    • Kosovo was when I turned whole heartedly against the US foreign policy. It started somewhat in the First Gulf War when it was clear that the conflict was based on a propaganda campaign and that we gave Saddam the green light to invade. But Kosovo had that NWO /neocon/liberal endorsed conflict smell that I couldn’t get past. I fell off the wagon for a bit after 9/11 regarding Afghanistan but almost immediately after the fall of Kabul the neoclowns started their year long campaign for the war. You just can’t unsee things after your eyes are opened and there is almost no US military intervention I would support other than a response to a direct invasion.

      Despite Trump’s many failings, he didnt involve us in any new wars in his first term.

      • Well, he did continue with the illegal suoport for the “moderate” rebels, and squatting down on the oil fields in Eastern Syria. That was eye-opening; but it couldn’t hold a candle to his greenlighting the assassination of Iranian General Soleimani. That there was getting hip deep into a war, as the general was ostensibly there to see if things could be resolved.

        No points for Trump, sorry.

        • Trump’s control over the military was so minimal, we can’t deduce what he ordered by looking at what they did. Did he want us in Estonia in 2017 participating in NATO/UK Russian-invasion exercises? Can’t imagine he did.

          Offing Soleimani is the one act I think we can be sure Trump at least approved of. He’s not a (modern) ruling class guy. He’s sentimental toward the “sucker” soldier, not the enemy general.

          Remember when high-ranking military men *died in wars*? I don’t. But those seem like better days.

32. The obvious analogy is in the way the regime is waging war against us.

    The importation of our replacements, the weaponization of the Justice, Education, Intell & Revenue Departments, violation of election laws, the discrimination against white people, – all done with total disregard of the US Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights.

    Soon our replacements will be of sufficient number wherein they won’t need to steal elections anymore.

33. “At the start, Western governments seized the property of Russian companies and individuals. There was no court case or legal arguments about it. They just did it.”

    And the silence from those who like to style themselves as civil libertarians, defenders of human rights, and advocates of limited government, was deafening.

    • Self-determination for me, but not for thee.

34. “No one at the end of the Great War imagined the events of the 1930’s.”

    I believe Keynes foresaw the inferno Europe was to become when he chided the Allies for seeking vengeance at the Versailles conference. Didn’t he warn that within a generation Europe would again erupt in flames?

    I can’t imagine that this war is being conducted without China’s active or tacit consent which, on the surface, wouldn’t seem to make sense. If our ruling class sees its future as the resident American managers in the coming pan-Asian century and if Russia is going to be part of this pan-Asian hegemon, why wouldn’t China/India/other pan-Asian partners threaten to crash the American economy unless the U.S./Europe called off this apparent Ukrainian nonsense?

    • Yes. JM Keynes’ “Economic Consequences of the Peace” covers this.

    • https://www.marshall.econ.cam.ac.uk/archives/economic-consequences-of-the-peace
      Keynes short book sold very well and created quite the awareness. But in the end facts and reason will easily be overcome by inertia.

35. Russia losing the meme war is odd, as the USSR was brilliant at winning it, and Putin then was part of it at the end. Lenin and Stalin set up brilliant campaigns through the Comintern and Cominform. Their successors did the same with similar outfits. These efforts highly influenced the intelligentsia in the West, especially in Europe but also in the US. See the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace in New York City in March 1949.
    https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mp/9460447.0006.201/–shostakovich-and-the-peace-conference?rgn=main;view=fulltext

    • They don’t care, because Twitter isn’t real. Twitter commands no battalions. Twitter holds no ground. Twitter supplies no munitions.

      • This. Back then, the Soviets cared what the west thought and was trying to sell international communism. Today, the Russians have given up on the west and turned inward.

        • Also, the Soviets had a lot of collaborators in Western media and academia, to help goose along their positive public image. And pretty much all of them are still mad because the USSR failed and those upstart Russians showed up.

          • Reziac: Spot on.

          • The soviet regime ensured the collaborators in their own and the western society.

            These people existed as a joint focus outside both national boundaries.

            It only looked at the time that it was soviet vs west. In reality it was globo vs Russia and the west.

    • Russia/USSR is collecting the harvest of what they sowed, in creating and funding the Greenies in the West. They must be laughing in their beer about how much return they got on that investment.

      • Maybe not. As Reziac noted above, seven decades of USSR propaganda and (indirectly) as refugees from there who often championed their dogma in one form or another, were highly influential in the West. Would be not be fair to say that, come the collapse of the old USSR, some of those in the West with Marxist leanings may have seen themselves as the ideological heirs of Communism (or at least Socialism)?

        Fred, I agree that the lunatic Green and other movements that have largely crippled the West did have their roots at least in part in old propaganda. But it’s still to early to tell if Russia will win. Reaping what one sows is wonderful, when it was what you wanted. But another Biblical admonition hints at unintended consequences: If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.

36. “In a way, it is like this war is being waged between the bureaucracy of the post office and the leadership of the Mafia.”

    Yep, we live in a mafia state. Though I think even the Sinaloa Cartel would blanch at some of the things the US regime has done.

    • Irish mob, not Italian mafia. The Italian mafia at least had so.e standards.

      • You might want to read Ron Unz’s analysis on the mob and its ethnic makeup from an actual historical and non-hollywood perspective.

        http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-power-of-organized-crime/

        Makes interesting reading, and points to the organized crime capture of California which then spread out to the Federal realm.

      • You’re right. I’m using the word “mafia” in a loose general sense of any outfit that makes its way in the world through extortion, threats, lies, and violence. I don’t specifically mean the Sicilian Cosa Nostra or the Neapolitan Camorra.

    • Comparing the U.S. Government to the mafia is outrageously unfair — to the mafia. The Global American Empire is countless orders of magnitude more criminal and evil than the cosa nostra could dream of being.

      • The US is certainly light years away from being Our Thing.

        May its epitaph be, “…and then those upstart Americans showed up.”

37. Errrrrrrrmmmmm… can someone help the slow kid at the back of the class? What’s the footnote about? What do we all know but don’t have to talk about?

    Not trying to be a dink… honest question…

    • The part Hitler was interested in, Danzig, was majority ethnically German.

      He added the footnote so we didn’t get a “well, ackstually” sperg out in the comments.

    • Not sure, maybe the retaking of Danzig which Germans rightfully believed to be theirs?

      • Thanks fellas👍

        But that is literally the narrative I got in school. You-Know-Who woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day and just decided to take over the world on a whim. He was SO crazy, he even blamed the poor innocent jews for all the country’s problems. Stupid Germans!!!!

        Gawd…if only my shitlib social studies teachers could see me now…😂

        • Don’t forget – the most evilest man ever never used chemical weapons, even as his regime faced extinction.

          But US allies like Clemenceau, Joffre, George V, Lloyd George, etc. were more than happy to throw both their enemy troops and their own troops under a cloud of chlorine and mustard gas.

        • I had a commie history teacher who had one great trick to make you look at something in a different way.

          He pretty much could draw freehand on a blackboard a map of the world with any country as its center. He did it most often with the USSR – Greenland and Canada were a long way due north on that one, to show the encirclement of treaties that the US had cobbled together. I assume the same thing is doable on google earth.
          Absent that the one thing I learned from him was that you should doubt every thing an “authority” tells you.

      • I don’t remember the title or author (maybe someone else will) but there was a relatively recent German book about the extensive historical efforts by Germany between the world wars to find a diplomatic solution to the Baltic corridor question. So perhaps 1939 was a response to a failure to find a diplomatic solution, not a failure to try to find one.

        Given incomprehensibly stupid recent Polish behavior, I would not be in the least surprised. Any Poles who object please note that my people are even more incomprehensibly stupid. At least at the end of this process you will still have a country (perhaps one in ruins if you don’t pull your heads out of your asses), but my people have already lost our country.

    • Another part of the accusation was that Britain would go to war if Germany attacked Poland, so Poland did it’s level best to get Germany to attack Poland.

      That lends to the meta-eye rolling in regards to the current age (“Really? 80 years on and those two are still pulling the same crap??”). Brings to mind what George Washington warned against: the only way to win a war in Europe is to not get involved in the first place.

38. One part that seems clear is the Russians take their bureaucratic rules extremely seriously, while the west is using them more and more as rules to bludgeon your opponents with when it favors you, while spinning definitions and outright ignoring when it does not. The use of terms in Russia are amusing, as I believe the U.S. has not officially declared war since WWII, and I seem to recall some massive military conflicts in the past 80 years. I’m sure the same shenanigans happen in Russia, but you only have so much wiggle room with this until the rules become an inside joke. Russia is not there yet, but the west is.

    The “Rules Based Order” seems to be the ability for Western countries to have troops anywhere they want, and bomb civilian infrastructure to oblivion. The cries of war crimes against Russia are especially delicious for them attacking civilian infrastructure. If what Russia did was a war crime, what does that make U.S. strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Bosnian war, etc. etc?

    • “The “Rules Based Order” seems to be the ability for Western countries to have troops anywhere they want, and bomb civilian infrastructure to oblivion. The cries of war crimes against Russia are especially delicious for them attacking civilian infrastructure. If what Russia did was a war crime, what does that make U.S. strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Bosnian war, etc. etc?”

      That’s about the size of it. The Anglo-American order has always been adept at hypocrisy. Anglin had a good piece some days back when he asked what exactly the rules of the “rules-based order” are. That rules-based order seems to be another floating signifier. I think the only rule is that the Anglo-American order is always right and the other party always wrong.

      • I’m of a mind that WWII permanently poisoned the minds of GAE in that regard. How often did we hear that nuking Japan was good for them, why, who knows what dark road that country would have gone down if we didn’t bomb them in to eating tree bark! If some enemy of GAE hasn’t turned in to Japan they suppose that means that they haven’t been bombed enough.

    • Rules are often used to inhibit one’s neighbors i.e. “rules for thee but not for me.” The biggest guy in the room can create and enforce rules, but he by no means must follow them. He’ll use two legs in a one legged race and hold the trophy above his head at the finish line.

      The fact that Russia/Putin is so careful to follow the rules probably indicates they aren’t totally free from the yoke of GAE.

      • No, I think rather that Russia is pointing out very, very clearly to the rest of the world how even they, nuclear power that they are understand how little that the GAE’s rhetoric constrains them to follow any cognizable “rules-based order”. This points the moral quite well to those who have grown accustomed to being worked over by the neoliberal, neocolonial “rules-based order” that this thiggish system must be resisted, that Russia is doing just that, and as primum inter pares of those so oppressed, they are striking out in a new direction.

        • After seeing the headlines of Russia’s recent attacks, I agree with your comment more than my original one.

          • Well, Reynard, your comclusory paragraph was not outright incorrect. The Russians still, along with many other nations, are still constrained to struggle against the GAE, and that means that at minimum they are reactive to the GAE’s assaults. Not with passivity and mere resentment, but now with conscious resolve seeking out alternatives and allies.

39. “ The Russians have abandoned the field when it comes to the meme war”

    I think they know it’s not worth trying. They would just get banned everywhere and would be relegated to the dissident ghettos on the internet.

40. I also take it that there is a longstanding Hatfield/McCoy component here that is common to Slav subgroups and easy for outside meddlers to incite.

41. My wife and I will be playing the role of Boris and Natasha. Do we have any volunteers for Rocky and Bullwinkle?

    Also. Happy Columbus Day to all Americans of European Ancestry.

    • I jokingly said “Happy Columbus Day” to a colleague this morning. She looked surprised then replied “Happy Genocide Day”. Yeesh. She was a young woman, though.

      • Was she good looking? Should have asked her what she was doing on Dead Nigger Day…

        GAH! I have been hanging out at Blab too much…😆

      • Isn’t Columbus Day when everyone in America pretends that they’re in India?

        • I can’t participate in that because I’m left-handed.

      • Russia demonstrating that they’re gonna follow every rule to the letter is not for us Mr. Z. it’s for India China and Brazil. It is to demonstrate to them that what they’re doing is legal and appropriate . The way Russia has conducted themselves, it is much easier for those countries to support Russia without having any doubts.

        In addition, Russia’s preparing for the eventual victory and expect the truth to come out and it will be very easy for them to defend their actions to the citizens of the various countries.

        • Truth to come out.

          My you are the joker this morning.

          • Dude do you purposely try to always be this obtuse? You completely ignored the bigger point of that comment and highlighted a side point.

            Everybody knows truth doesn’t mean anything to the US and Great Britain. I’m talking about Croatians, Serbians the Hungarians, the Poles, the Romanians and yes even the Ukrainians. People who currently have doubt to in those
            nations will vindicate Russia in the end.

          • lighten up it was just a bit of leg pulling.

          • Fair enough bro. One too many coffees to start the day! Lol

    • “Do we have any volunteers for Rocky and Bullwinkle?”

      Hey Stephen, watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat! Nothin’ up my sleeve.

      • First we get moose and squirrel

    • Interestingly, Columbus Day is still a bank holiday, even if the federal government and major equity exchanges have stopped recognizing it.

      • Back when I worked at MegaBank it was “interesting” watching Columbus Day go from a paid vacation day to a “floating” holiday to just “disappear”.

    • Eenie meanie chili beanie
      The spirits are about to speak!

      • Are they friendly spirits?

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