The next big Ukraine push back is still to unfold and could still be weeks away but I don’t think so. I think this is now days. But events are unfolding that have caused me to pause and rethink what might be delaying this ‘long awaited’ counter offensive.
How devastated Russian troop morale is, and how ‘evident’ it is, could be the big issue that further delays the big push. Shaping operations for the Russian morale structure is also important and delay may save a lot of lives.
We are about to see that it is the masses that make war, and the mass of Russian soldiers just don’t want to be killed or injured! They will again donate large quantities of heavy ‘stuff’ when they turn and run from the swift moving hard hitting Armed Forces of Ukraine. (AFU)
Anyway, my money is still on almost ‘now’ and I expect to see quite a bit of ‘Market Gardening’ activity about to get underway (with naturally the appropriate lessons drawn from that historical over stretch). BTW I always thought Montgomery has been over rated but as usual I digress.
What is going on in Bakhmut is now doing huge damage to the Russian war fighting spirit. It amounts to a serious point of infection and could become the issue that provokes a more wide spread surrendering from these pitiful trenches. Russian troops surrendering in very large numbers is quite obviously the best hope of solid progress when this push finally does get fully underway.
It’s a realistic hope that a mass bolt from the front lines (in any car that’s to hand and that is how a rout will begin till the last ones grab the nearest bike) will smash what is left of Russian morale. The Russian high command would be terrified of the example set last time, particularly in the north and this time the AFU come calling they are going to be far more deadly than last year. The coming hard fought and costly victories will smash the Russians.
There will undoubtedly be some small areas where a rout quickly sets in and when it does the exploitation of those weak points will cause this long front line and the vast in depth defensive networks to then turn into a Russian Maginot Line.
These defensive structures are in essence all a delusion. All that effort will have produced a replay of the attack through the ‘impenetrable’ Arden.
Those that remain on the long front line will either retreat in good order or they will do so in bad order. But retreat they will, and it is only a question of how far and how fast before they get caught up with! Then they won’t be defending troops holding any sort of advantage but rather a series of badly organized columns running out of everything that had made them an invading army. Most that make it back to Crimea and the northern retreat will do so without any heavy weapons systems or any supplies at all. The Italians being routed in Nth Africa is the ‘look’ that I am fully expecting but there are plenty of other examples. Everything calls for momentum! The big MO is everything for the next 3 months.
IMV the rate of artillery loss by the Russians is going to become the most important of the various KPI’s and this is because the AFU out-range and are far more accurate (and that is a devastating combination) and the Russians are an army built on the power of their artillery. Break the artillery and you break the back of this beast. Once a couple of thousand fighting vehicles and their supporting infantry etc are across the mighty Dnipro river the attacks will be swift and significant territory liberated.
I would take a bet that Crimea will be in range of artillery and HIMAR’s etc by the end of June! Even if it’s not there are now Storm Shadow and other long range missiles that will be able to destroy what has to be destroyed in that most crucial of all target territories!
I think the lack of F16’s to deal with the Glide bomb menace is very unfortunate but other Ground based air defense -GBAD- will have to do for now, but at least some western political leaders NOW get it! Well done by the British!
The momentum that the breakthroughs (my guess is there will be ‘1’ across the river and ‘2’ from the Zaporozhye front) will generate, make this phase of this bloody war predictable and so Putin could 3 or 4 months down the track face a revolt and/or he could do something unexpected. But whatever he does now he is a dead man walking! How many further deaths he brings is the only issue. He is slowly turning into a paper tiger and this process will pick up speed.
The Russian defense trenches do not stand a chance. We can hope and even expect thousands of prisoners to be swept up and a vast liberation in the next 100 days and it will soon be time to try to sink every ship in the Sevastopol Harbor!
I think the process of this war in however many phases it takes, will change the way the world works for the rest of this century but that is another story for those that follow us, it is certain to change the next twenty years!
Glory to the Ukrainians. Onward to phase 4 and the liberation of Crimea! But first…
Russian KIA now topped 200,000 (an interesting ranking of who they are and how the Russian elite thinks about then in a 13 step priority ranking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veFkvRSqRiY
200K GOOD RUSSIANS. putin is ready to sacrifice more. Vlog 373: War in Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URV5ckKY8cc
‘Thanks to Putin’s full-scale invasion, the myth that Russia has some kind of right to Crimea has effectively collapsed across the West. And the reality has begun seeping in from Washington to London to Brussels that, in terms of military success, Russian suzerainty over Crimea must end before any lasting, stable peace can be found.’
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/22/ukraine-crimea-russia-putin-red-line-00083857
Never a truer view put forward and it is now growing and solidifying by the day.
The pseudoleft will now disgrace themselves in the most base way as they warn against escalating this war etc.
Who will call for the F16’s to be supplied who is enthusiastically welcoming the provision of the long rang missiles? Who will remain silent?
This very big war has only reached the beginning of stage 3 and we can only guess at how well the next 100 days of summer fighting will go for the Ukrainians, but we do know that the Russians have lost stage 2.
Strategically Putin has already lost this war but what does that mean for the next 3.5yrs of what I thought was a war that the Ukrainians would do well if they won it in 5years. True they currently look like doing it in much better than that time frame but there could be all manner of surprises yet.
What we must understand is no matter how long it takes; it must go on till victory. The war aims must be clear that all of Ukraine must be free and these borders come under NATO protection!
Speaking of NATO, it’s now time for Ireland to join and Malta and Austria and time to solve the Cypress issues as well (but don’t hold your breath on that last one) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEvhQVj2BNU
Indeed I would argue that Australia ought to offer to join and see what people make of that! This is now a tiny planet and Australia is a world trading power with an interest in developing Africa in the same manner and for the same reasons that Britain and all the others do. I don’t think that any ww1 or ww2 comparisons re forming alliances are relevant even if they are easy to make because I think that the big three issues (nations want liberation, countries want independence and the people want revolution) are now so dominant that even solving issues like Syria are now looming for the worlds democracies. Democratic revolution is the only way forward, and the enemies of that progress are not that hard to spot. Turkey is NOT one of them. China is the looming menace that threatens the peace and has to get the MEMO! Europe must be dragged kicking (as it will against this) past it’s EU trade war bullshit and into the 21st C. Brexit has produced some unexpected opportunities and the woke poison and especially the carbon dioxide religion is a world issue. None of the old ‘stuff’ makes much sense anymore including the security council big 5. It’s the currently woke west against the fascist countries that ought to focus the progressives mind starting with a fightback against the woke.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpiaURRWOTY this is how the sellout is sold!
I wonder how other people that used to have something to say NOW think about this? Being deliberately silent has been the way for many months because the logic of supporting a protracted war for the total victory and thus for the recovery of the territory of Ukraine is confronting! Former positions become exposed and even legless!
This rat is rather typical and will be shown to be wrong when Crimea falls to the victorious AFU.
How Belarus falls to it’s people is what ought to be occupying Freddy’s mind.
This is from 3 months ago and is good stuff! 2 Good Generals and 1 Admiral all retired! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co0r_ovD8dE
Feb 24, 2023
On February 21, 2023, Gen. (ret.) Philip Breedlove, Gen. (ret.) Ben Hodges, and Adm. (ret.) Jamie Foggo joined American Purpose, the first time these three Air Force, Army, and Navy veterans have combined their experience in a single discussion. Co-hosted by “The Eastern Front,” a podcast of the American Enterprise Institute, along with podcast hosts Iulia Joja (as event moderator), Giselle Donnelly, and Dalibor Rohac.
Gen. (Ret.) Philip Breedlove is a retired four-star general in the United States Air Force who served as the commander of U.S. European Command, as well as the 17th Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) of NATO Allied Command Operations. He is currently a senior consultant at Emerald Coast Strategic Solutions.
Gen. (Ret.) Ben Hodges is a retired United States Army officer who served as commanding general, United States Army Europe. He is currently the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Adm. (Ret.) Jamie Foggo is a retired United States Navy admiral who last served as commander of United States Naval Forces Europe-Africa and commander of Allied Joint Force Command Naples. He is currently dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy.
Iulia-Sabina Joja is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and former adviser to the Romanian presidency.
This is how the ‘shaping’ is unfolding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VxMqN9XFeE all good news!
I like Jake and this is his latest good stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDjJ6Dppbdo
They are done alright!
The current AFU front line troops holding the Russians in place has been remarkable. They have had a chance to build a new mobile army and now we all want to see what they can do. But the old front line troops are doing very good work every day! This next move will be breathtaking in it’s scope and consequences.
Making the Russians move troops around (break cover and become vulnerable on the move} and as well thin out the numbers in the occupied territories is exactly what was required. The first F16 pilots would already have completed their training. I guess they will, in a surprise move, be on the pointy end of this coming offensive. The AFU are well led and this war ought to be and has been rethought with the view of minimizing AFU casualties. I doffs me cap to this ‘Maoist’ leadership. They will not take a big move till they are good and ready. D Day is coming! All summer long the Russians will be driven back!
It appears that air-power is the hold up. But summer is almost here, and the ‘shaping operations’ have been and are still day by day brilliant! So they will find the week spots soon and the big mo will bring the AFU closer to the Russian air-force so lets hope they have that well countered. They are even now talking about the Saab JAS 39 Gripen from Sweden suddenly turning up! I hope so.
Here is the current US take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxmRNYU2ZVQ
Just remember they must win and they MUST change if they are going to be fit for a democracy fit for NATO and Europe!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decommunization_in_Ukraine#References
She gets it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QH5hnJpZQA Anne Applebaum: The Case for a Complete Ukrainian Victory | The Bulwark Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8TB-ZSih9k and so does Fmr. Amb. to Ukraine: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Won’t End the War Yet | Amanpour and Company Marie Yovanovitch served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine after Moscow invaded Crimea. Removed from the post by President Trump, Yovanovitch later testified in his first impeachment trial about the withholding of U.S. aid from Ukraine. She joins Walter Isaacson to discuss how this war can end and why the West must not repeat the mistakes of Crimea.
Ukraine pulls a Dolittle raid! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDsaH2jwp5s A good move!
And the BBC being comprehensively stupid as usual! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5NS_rkFL8c
and this is utterly clueless US commentators https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AmveDRIxgg The Agenda TVO Today. A really dumb conversation of the ‘smarter lefty’s’. They are not listening to the US generals such as Hodges and Petraeus etc
You have been told Freddy now keep calm and carry on! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYq_AQG7e44 Freddy from unheard has been shit on this!
Thank goodness Putin didn’t do what Freddy would have accepted! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVsBuXb5o5k&list=PL01nDImtijMBnhj2dbvUKlELeDmZZJIoc
now the Russians are outranged. How many more weeks before they get full control? Never! So reflect on that! It did not go the way Freddy fully expected!
and another pile of steaming sh.. Yanis Varoufakis: It’s mad to think Ukraine can win. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNbad82plR0&t=975s this is the rubbish that as little as 1 year later is self evidently bankrupt!
“Come to the point where we sue for peace’ NO NO NO! Utter Rubbish.
The pseudo sellout writ large https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j95-D7JYcpo&t=1367s
Anatol Lieven: The truth about Crimea. Utter BBC style bullshit! Large slices of humble pie are going to be served to this lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3iNLFM6Ujk these numbers have been going on for several days/weeks. We can expect this to continue and also see more storm shadow attacks on airfields both in the occupied territory and also in Russia. This is possibly going to go on for some time yet before they roll their own combined arms assault units forward and take the territory and capture and kill a shit load of Russian troops. If this is an artillery war (and it is) then the Ukraine army is winning it hands down! Soon the GLSDB’s will be deployed and that will add a whole new dimension to this summer’s offensive efforts.
It’s also worth noting that systems that have been less than impressive to date will soon come into their own as the jamming systems are progressively destroyed. Think switchblade drones for example!
Of course, this is a combined arms operation that we are seeing unfold so air defense systems will be crucial and they are doing a very solid job right now, so we ought to be very confident!
But as of June6th I will owe $50! That will teach me a lesson!
Oh dear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBiV1h7Dm5E John Mearsheimer: The West is playing Russian roulette. Poor old Freddy no wonder he does not get it. When you lie down with dogs don’t be surprised that you get flees! What scum!
Real https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lsT6wb7SWQ people!
The pro-Russian mil-vlogers are currently going ballistic so either there are big moves underway or very big feints. Either way Russian equipment losses are solid every day now and are particularly high for artillery, air-defense and special equipment! This is great news and bodes well for when the breakthroughs happen, and the BIG MO gets rolling. Russians will be either killed or (hopefully) surrendering in their thousands soon enough and this will go on all summer long. All the signs are great news all round!
Having spent the day viewing almost nothing else other than mil-vloggers I have come to the following conclusion. What is going on right now is still reconnaissance in force. And it’s by the -at least mostly- current front-line troops and has not involved the western trained combined arms mechanized brigades. It is these troops of course that will exploit the weaknesses that are found by these front-line forces that are currently doing the probing. When the opportunities present these mobile troops will be thrown into the race to surround trapped Russians and spread the breakthrough to get the supply lines cut. This is going to be a textbook operation that will have the Russians running for home and not stopping!
The Russians are now incapable of launching a significant counterattack when the AFU front line troops exhausts themselves over these next couple of weeks. Its capacities are only in defense and it is only the Russian mass and still lethal airpower elements that give it those qualities. But re-supply will become a nightmare in this next month whatever defensive positions are held on to. So they will have to either cut and run, dropping everything as they did last year in the Kharkiv liberation or surrender where they are. Either way the Maginot line is the historical example of being trapped in a powerful defense when the enemy goes around you and effectively destroys your artillery.
With equipment -piece by relentless piece- being destroyed at either end of these cut off defense lines, the good sense in surrendering will quickly start to dawn on the reluctant Russians. By the end of this Summer Russians who did not escape the encirclements by dropping the heavy equipment and running in the first place will be having a big rethink.
The Maginot line could not turn its guns even though they had all the ammo and trained troops. The French had to surrender! In this case because their ‘eyes’ are being progressively poked out and they are out-ranged and also seriously out shot they effectively are just as trapped.
The AFU can afford to pull back from the ‘front’ out of range and they can’t be followed. The breakthrough elements will then roll the Russians up in Sargent York manner by continually picking off the end gun. The same type of process as the Germanic tribes did to the Roman legions in the forests 2,000 years back! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
Once everything is in play, we can expect even more dramatic numbers than what is currently totally unsustainable right now.
So how the Russians get rid of Putin will soon be on the agenda! It already is on the private agenda for the very few men who have worked out that it may soon be a case of him or me, and it’s not going to be me! So I find myself in agreement with Steve Owens…Putin is now a dead man walking! But as we have seen with Assad, he may yet walk a long while.
Moldova is obviously now coming into play, and that’s a bloody good thing! Belarus can’t be that far behind.
This is a good take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEHYyILZ_uE from Ukraine Matters. and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDDgqoUYCBc probing right along the front and behind the lines. The week points will show up and then IT will start to pick up the required momentum that will break the Russians into unsustainable pockets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OYF0pnvLMY Ukraine ‘a step ahead of the Russians’ as shaping operations begin | Gen. Philip Breedlove
Very good (as usual).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igB0By6vT9Y Russia Destroyed the Dam and Has Worse Planned
They have already accepted that they are about to lose the central land bridge in the summer so they have destroyed this stuff in advance! Well explained. The eco warrior stuff is a bit more than incoherent. Still even they will understand the requirement to rebuild what the soviet Union under Stalin built! It is also of interest that they call the 1941 destruction of this dam to slow up the nazis a similar crime!!
This is a perfect example of one sided thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf72EHcXUMo Russia’s Desperate Move: Nova Kakhovka Dam explosion to delay Ukrainian counteroffensive
I agree the west must treat the coming destruction of the nuclear plant as if it was a bomb! Putin must understand it will make his situation even worse! So western troops of all types will have to be openly deployed to demonstrate serious intent!
this is fair https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/02/second-world-war-dnieper-dam-blown-up-by-russians-1941 and you can’t say that as a rule from this discredited rag!
Very interesting data breakdown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fosomnXWD9Y
Ukraine War Upd. EXTRA (20230606): Analysing Russian Losses – A Data Gift to You
independent spreadsheet plus graphs re Russian losses.
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=E33161B435D127BA%21115352&ithint=file%2Cxlsx&authkey=%21AIUgFlGIk8-n1hM I’ll be looking at this every fortnight over the next 12 weeks!
The uptick in trends is obvious and as we all know quantity has a quality all it’s own so at some point a new quality appears from a collapse in the quantity. This is what unsustainable looks like!
Putin’s rabble has probably lost about 300 Helicopters, 300 aircraft, 500 pieces of Special Equipment, about 3700 pieces of Artillery, 3800 Tanks, 350 Anti Aircraft systems, 6000 Vehicles and Fuel Tankers, 600 MLRS, 7500 APV, and lost over 210,000 personnel! The rate of loss is currently ramping up and territory is being liberated by the AFU.
So after he ordered the dam to be blown up and he gave all the signals that he would do so Putin WILL do something silly in the next few months and it looks very much like he will cause the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe to be damaged in a very big way! I don’t know what else he will surprise us with but he will keep going till he is personally stopped and the only ones that can do that are (for the foreseeable future Russian troops!
Perun from 10 months back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMEpxX7rS5I a very good listen.
It’s dawned on some people that massive numbers of large mine fields are going to take a long time to get some paths through and the Russians have laid out plenty of these.
But the big difference is in the drone warfare and night sight capabilities combined with the counter battery accuracy. The AFU have a big advantage that has been demonstrated over the last year and they are getting even better at what they do. They could still be weeks ‘shaping the numerous battlefields’ before the bigger momentum thunder run’s start to shock large numbers of Russians into running away or surrendering. But this period right now is the most difficult part and they are clearly making good progress! And what is more despite whatever unfortunate casualties they are taking it is clear they are not taking large scale casualties otherwise the Russians would be showing the bloody evidence of it! As pointed out by others the Russians are repeating the same footage of a bad incident, where nevertheless most of the troops involved obviously got away as there are no bodies lying around. And people can see for themselves that the Russians could not get to these vehicles! So this is in no-mans land that is day by day falling to the AFU; so unless they get hit again half of these vehicles look like they may well be recovered and repaired. They may not now be in easy range. All side show stuff of course but nevertheless of interest to the military minded.
This brings me to a reflection on 2 issues where it’s a case of ‘be careful what you wish for you just might get it’. Trump being charged and the lake being drained. Interesting what might now unexpectedly or be an unwanted result from these 2 now curiously interconnected events.
Whatever happens to Trump I can’t see him winning in November 2024 18 short months down the road!
No matter about all that stuff; people have correctly pointed out that these bad early losses are unfortunately to be expected in mine fields under fire with less experienced troops. It’s all about getting through and then getting the momentum going. Very sad to see what anti democrats have let loose but now they will reap what they themselves have sown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F7aYRwd2uM Thomas C. Theiner, a former artilleryman of the Italian army, the Russians have almost 70% of their soldiers engaged in active combat, while the Ukrainians use only 10% of their forces in their maneuver warfare offensive. Without another mobilization, the Russians will not be able to stop the Ukrainians. We talk to Joe Lindsley about „Ukrainian corruption”, the myths of which, fuelled by Russian online trolls, do a lot of damage to organizations that support the defence of Ukraine. According to the American journalist living in Ukraine since 2020, a deeper look at the case shows that most of this corruption has its roots not in Ukraine… but in Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ0JVTP-xnA Russia Loses Ground After First Week on Defense Jake Bro being pretty accurate in his report.
Utterly clueless BBC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HY7R-BsCMs
Putin has NOT won this round at all! The officer class has to ask themselves the question ‘have we lost in Ukraine?’ If they answer yes (even if they add sooner or later) then at some point they will be back with this current attack on Putin. So this will now unfold over weeks and then months, as Ukraine fights back and gains ground.
The breakdown in the Russian supply lines is now critical. This is a collapsing army!
This is how Arthur will make his argument https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3zgCVqqf3Q
It was all so different back then…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68bD8MHnJFk
Putin’s Diminishing Grip on Power | General Breedlove analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DTK4r4h-Jk
“The Legacy of Maoism Today” (6/08/23 panel)
On June 8th, 2023, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel called “The Legacy of Maoism Today.”
Hosted at UC Santa Cruz in McHenry Library.
Description:
Formative for many student radicals who came of age in the 1960 and ’70s were the Students for a Democratic Society, the Cultural Revolution, May 1968 in Paris, revolutions in the Third World, and the 1970s New Communist Movement. For many Leftists who sought to engage, critique, and advance these movements, Marxism meant Maoism, which they understood to be an advancement of Marxism–Leninism. Currently, as the Left of Generation Z comes of age, a kind of neo-Maoism is growing more popular, both on college campuses and online. What is Maoism, and what is its relationship with Marxism? How did Maoism emerge out of the Chinese Revolution? What made Maoism plausible, and what makes it appealing today? What may have rendered it implausible? What is the significance of Maoism as a political tendency on the Left, and why did Maoism seem in some ways to be more successful than Trotskyism?
What has Maoism been, and where is it going? How does its history weigh on us today — and why should we care about it?
Panelists:
-Alex Dillard (American Marxist-Leninist)
-David Ewing (New Communist Movement)
-Gerald Smith (ex-Black Panther Party, ex-Sparticist League)
Curious to learn more about Platypus? E-mail platypusvirtual@gmail.com to be connected with a chapter in your area.
The Platypus Affiliated Society organizes reading groups, public fora, research, and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the “Old” (1920s-30s), “New” (1960s-70s), and post-political (1980s-90s) Left, for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.
http://www.platypus1917.org
********************************************
Good grief where to start! Fancy lamenting the collapse of the USSR and any kind of ‘Maoist’ thinking there is something even vaguely positive in China today! Program first! Really? Ultra-leftist twaddle. Unlistenable rot! A bit like what went on in Melbourne the other day! https://c21stleft.com/ utter rot. Say one thing do another and then rinse and repeat. Better to deliver at least some work on the theory front then just repeat some semi religious words in an ever diminishing circle.
Even keeping a ‘diary’ like what I do on this site is obviously more productive than shuffling some old paper notes -at a small meeting- of some thoughts that have not developed in about 20 years!
So here is yet another diary entry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAJfEBn405g&t=524s
Ben Hodges – After the Wagner Coup what is the Likely Future for Vladimir Putin and the Russian Army
Curiously my old comrades scoff at me yet collect links themselves! Fucking weird!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzHRu0yNHIs
General Hodges: Sevastopol is a target №1, №2 and №3 for ATACMS! Ukrainian offensive is SUCCESSFUL
Spot on!
Ben doesn’t get the politics. Why is Russian gas still going through Ukraine? Why are Ukrainian ship leaving ports? Because its a partial war. This guy gets it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bIdcu0o9Pc&t=1585s
NO he doesn’t. He is even worse than Mearsheimer.
When this war went into unfreeze mode last year, I thought the Ukrainians would do well to win it in 5 years. Since then, I have thought they would do it even sooner, but I am by nature on the optimist side of the possibilist spectrum and always have to remind myself of Mao’s experience of protracted war but not just the advice to cast aside illusions and all that, more the reality that it is the masses that make war. The best and brightest Russian youth picked themselves up and shot through! The Ukrainian’s hugged their girlfriends goodbye and went to war. On average there is simply no comparison!
Once -and as- Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are liberated the Russian military will be in all kinds of bother as Hodges has pointed out. Then an isolated Crimea can’t be held for ‘long’ after such a catastrophe has befallen the Russians and the Donbas oblasts are then a matter of time as is I believe the armed Belarus people rumbling to their democratic revolution and a life pointing west!
This war is currently -still- essentially an artillery war and the trend line for the Russians losing it is both great and believable.
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=E33161B435D127BA%21115352&ithint=file%2Cxlsx&authkey=%21AIUgFlGIk8-n1hM
The cluster munitions are also going to be devastating for all manner of applications against these ww1 style trench systems as well! The Russian leadership might think they can outlast the West but it’s a delusional thought.
The mine fields will eventually be overcome in enough places to sufficient depth to start another round of maneuver warfare and after that offensive culminates the range will have totally closed on all the remaining occupied Ukrainian territories.
People can then find sufficient experts to talk logistics. After all if infantry is occupying and their artillery is being starved of shells AND have an average range and accuracy shortcoming time is not an ally for the Russians. Counter battery fire is doing it’s work day by day! The UAF are better at the drone warfare as well.
As for the politics at some future point if the west were to go weak at the knees, then the Poles and rest of the East Europeans and Turkey will ensure this war carries on till the Russians are driven right out! Anyway, it will be apparent to all (even any next POTUS) at some point that a Russian defeat is a vital western interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGnkISdIrz4 this is the right spirit from13 months ago!
Everyone has their own interests. Sometimes these interests coincide sometimes they diverge. We have seen the high point of convergence but as the war drags on divergence will become more pronounced. We saw that at the NATO summit with Zelensky spitting the dummy and the UK politician saying that he would be better served to show some gratitude. I heard a commentator the other day pro Ukraine but he said as to Donbass most Ukrainians don’t give a shit. The Ultra Nationalists do and they may again threaten Zelensky with violence if he negotiates.
Putin occupies a position similar to Saddam after oil war 1 where the US decided to help him rather than let him fall to the popular uprising. But thats imperialism isn’t it you just can’t trust them.
NO. Western interest are (as Jake just above has indicated) tied to Ukraine! If some western leaders make the mistake to think it is not there would still be enough clear thinking from enough countries to see this through to victory.
Here is a good talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWZbmi2sb8I
CRIMEA IN UKRAINE’S CONTROL IS A KEY TO ANY GENUINE PEACE AND PROSPERITY
I hope Jake is right but I think his argument is flawed, in that he says this is Russia population 150 million v Ukraine/NATO/Plus population 1 Billion but NATO and NATO plus aren’t fighting, Ukraine and Russia are fighting. Military strength Russia 830,900 Ukraine 200,000. That’s a 4 to one advantage to Russia. The Russians have had 6 months to dig in, in the newly conquered area and 9 years to dig in in their pre 2022 positions. It wont surprise me if Ukraine cant make anymore headway. What they have done so far has been remarkable. Russia has been inept up to this point but guess what the Russian anti tank weapons are pretty good. As I pointed out over a year ago the balance between tanks and anti tank weapons has tipped firmly in the anti tank weapon favour. Has Syria taught you nothing?
Hodges from a year ago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-U4MuAPi3Y and clearly he has moved towards my firmer position re Crimea and Donbass and now puts all the territory on the agenda and NATO membership as the only way to end this war and secure Ukraine from Russia restarting it at a later date! Russia must be defeated is now his stand.
I’m a cruise missile Marxist that has all along believed that Russia would have to be defeated and driven out of territories it is making war in.
Steve Owens is -I think- glad of the British supplying Storm Shadow missiles and would welcome ATACMS being delivered by the US. So that old problem is quietly resolved with a silent acceptance that the western world is not engaged in an alternative imperialism with NATO expansion and that the alliance is to be supported by cruise missile cluster bombing liberal (or insert what would now describe you best as your old stand is now long gone).
I Have always argued in favour of victory to Ukraine and support any measure that would bring this forward.
However, I don’t think that NATO or specifically the imperialist power that runs NATO (the USA) shares my victory at all costs mentality because well they have their own interests that may or may not coincide with those of the Ukrainian people.
This is a very different struggle from Kuwait where the Kuwaiti royal family lead their people’s struggle from the penthouse of the Savoy in London.
The USA will do what the Pentagon thinks is in the USA’s best interest. Just as one day they were urging Iraqis to overthrow Saddam and the next day they were opening their lines so that the Iraqi troops could get at the insurgents.
Hodges is committed to total victory. Here’s why I think Ukraine won’t get it.
The US won’t want to push Putin out of Crimea. The US is committed to having Vlad run Russia the last thing they want is to see Russia with 10s of thousands of nukes collapse and fall into rival fiefdoms. Which is way more probable if Putin loses Crimea.
Crimea is mainly pro Russia I am assuming that a lot of Ukrainians don’t want it. To them this meat grinder of a war is tolerable to push the Russians out of Kherson but do they really want to sacrifice sons and daughters for Crimea. Ukrainians only have to be older 2 years older than you or me to remember when Crimea was Russia.
Sevastopol is majorly important to Russia it’s home to the fleet, and it’s a hero city from WW2. As I said 9 years ago Putin will not let Ukraine walk Sevastopol into NATO.
If the Russian army doesn’t collapse how does Ukraine take Crimea?
We can see how politics trumps the military by explaining why Russian gas still transits Ukraine. If you understand that you will understand why this war won’t end in total victory. I may be wrong I didn’t think that Putin was stupid enough to invade but then sometimes stupidity trumps everything.
Steve Owens
(mistakenly posted on the wrong thread)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3G8T1no8TI
Why ATACMS Are Better Than You Think
Massive day! https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=E33161B435D127BA%21115352&ithint=file%2Cxlsx&authkey=%21AIUgFlGIk8-n1hM Whatever brought this about the game is right now full on!
Apparently the russkies largely brought it on themselves with their own attacks! Record troops loss at 1380, record tank 55 and record APV’s at 120 IN 1 DAY and this is just after a record Helicopter loss at 9.
But there is also right now the river crossing underway!
21 Oct: Russians Are Losing Control Over the Eastern Bank of the Dnipro River | War in Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L0lVdXgB8Y
This might be a hard war for the AFU but considering what they have to do it’s going very well! They now have a big enough stretch of river front to keep up the re-supply and to get ready for a big push! They want to bring Crimea into play and full range of all HIMARS not just ATACAMS before winter I guess and there is a desert to move across down this way so can avoid the mud!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhON52gz6Bk
Ukraine’s river crossing can change the war. Anders Puck Niels
His reasoning is sound in my book.
And there are now rumors of 3 brigades (presumably of infantry) being involved! You’ve just got to love the rumor milling process. But anyway, it seems clear that the Russians are in big strife trying to deal with this almost winter offensive in the only region that is good for quick movement when it rains at this time of year before it all freezes in the mud regions further north.
Mearsheimer is comprehensibly WRONG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvFn7KUCTvE
How the war in Ukraine will end | John Mearsheimer and Lex Fridman
He says he hopes he is wrong; well he had better like humble pie!
Oh dear…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on1RrmspFIQ
Bout right https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwWth5AgNxY
riveting talk from Lieutenant General Ben Hodges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vylAgmyr95U and more good news
Very good on sanctions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpXOJFuGkAU
Bill Browder stuns MPs as he exposes Putin’s oil loopholes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8wB_5LR6d4 Russia’s War Machine Is Peaking. Next Year, It Runs Out of Steam | Ep. 26 Dr. Jack Watling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVVBoIl39es
Aug 14, 2024
As the 25 year anniversary of the Moscow Apartment bombings nears, famed Russian historian and author David Satter explains why Ukraine is right to be alarmed that Moscow may plot false-flag operations, to discredit Ukraine and the West, in order to distract from Ukraine’s successful incursion into Belgorod and Kursk Russia. These operations, if they were to happen, could include Russian-organized attacks on a nuclear power station, on a Russian school, or some other heinous crime that Putin would execute to preserve his power.
In this conversation with the Kyiv Post’s Jason Smart, the depths of Vladimir Putin’s evil, something that many Westerners struggle to believe could be true, is examined carefully – leading to some interesting conclusions of how what happens next, could change the course of world history.
According to his author’s bio on Amazon, “David Satter is one of the world’s leading commentators on Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is the author of four books on Russia and the creator of a documentary film on the fall of the U.S.S.R. In May, 2013, he became an adviser to the Russian Service of Radio Liberty and in September, 2013, he was accredited as a Radio Liberty correspondent in Moscow. Three months later, he was expelled from Russia becoming the first U.S. correspondent to be expelled since the Cold War.
David Satter is a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He is also a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and an associate of the Henry Jackson Society in London. He has been a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He teaches a course on Russian politics and history at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Academic Programs and has been a visiting professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and a visiting fellow in journalism at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan.
David Satter’s first book was Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union, which was published in 1996. He later made a documentary film on the basis of this book which won the 2013 Van Gogh Grand Jury Prize at the Amsterdam Film Festival. In addition, David Satter has written three other books about Russia, Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (2003), It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past (2011), and The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin. His books have been translated into eight languages.”
Jason Jay Smart and David Satter recorded this interview from Kyiv, Ukraine and Washington, DC, USA.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:12 What will happen in the Kursk and Belgorod regions?
03:46 The Moscow apartment bombings in 1999
09:07 How do the criminal networks of Putin’s Russia operate with the Kremlin?
18:46 What would happen if tomorrow Putin were to lose the war in Ukraine?
22:36 End
The top 10 days for Russian casualties are currently
1 1950 12/11/24 today
2 1770 11/11/24 yesterday
3 1740 13/05/24 6 months ago
4 1710 21/10/24 3 weeks ago
5 1690 26/10/24 2 weeks ago
6 1680 28/10/24 2 weeks ago
7 1660 09/11/24 3 days ago
8 1630 25/10/24 3 weeks ago
9 1580 08/11/24 4 days ago
10 1560 30/10/24 2 weeks ago
I think the Russians in conducting their massive summer ‘probing offensive along almost the entire front have not only culminated but are now well past the culmination point and risk significant breakdowns in crucial supply of both men and material required to avoid large areas of encirclement and collapse. Western weapons are now having their expected effects in 1/ an area where a fluid mobile war is being fought out and 2/ a very long but now badly supplied static line of WW1 type dug in opposing defence lines that are from the Russian side approaching exhaustion.
Ukraine has a lot to play for in this coming short term and Putin looks in real trouble! So we can at least hope that over the next quite desperate 2 months of fighting, as ‘General Winter’ turns up on the 2024 battlefields and then Trump becomes POTUS, that significant numbers of Russians will be killed and captured!
If the F16s, ubiquitous drones, the much lauded HIMARS and the as yet unheralded GLSDB’s, and all the rest of the kit start to have the expected effect on the mass of now significantly untrained Russian conscripts and ne’er do wells etc that now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BIpI04LsAo constitute the Russian rabble THEN I would guess that none of the above figures will remain in the top ten by inauguration day.
That brave prediction would be worthy of yet another gold medal and we will know soon enough.
It seems to me that the Russians tried to achieve some very important and seasonal driven results and they actually failed! So they will now pay the price for their very small advances achieved at such a vast price.
Now the mud season will be making a big impact and I think it is the Ukrainians that are better placed for both it and also the coming winter fighting.
69 days and we will know just how good a condition both sides are then in.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=inaugurration+countdawn
It’s a big ask.
I was completely wrong when I became overly optimistic after ‘Russia lost nearly all of the northern region of Kharkiv with a blitzkrieg thrust by Ukrainian fighters when Ukraine retook over 500 settlements and 12,000 square kilometers of territory in the Kharkiv region.’ and so I got the next offensive wrong; so who can say; but the Russians look in bad shape to me. The 69 day clock starts to tick.
This is the sort of stuff to expect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz-7ErrJ9G4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-wmn_ATf9s and I like this Russian Dude.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJPd29Sop-k This was the usual good stuff then at the 1:02:37 point re Chinese bike riding youth! Looks like funny money economics and unemployment are still the big problems looming right across the world.
Drill baby drill! Trade baby trade. Let capitalism work and bring down the price of commodities as it can did and will again when the carbon dioxide fear is rejected. Say no to Greta and just stop oil cranks and the ALP and Trot and Green types that enable them!
Trade baby trade. Are you endorsing Trumps tariffs?
Drill baby drill. Can you explain why under Biden there were 9,000 available permits not taken up? Can you explain why under Biden there was almost 12 million acres under permit but not in production?
I will give you a hint. Oil in Texas can cost up to $70 a barrel to produce. Right now, West Texas Intermediate crude is selling for $68.26.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC3hl27cJSU
These are the type of observations making people remember the old saying ‘take note of what he actually does not what he says’.
I agree that there are a lot of ‘normal people’ being appointed.
Big changes are underway. The woke can weep all they like.
It will dawn on people soon enough that Putin is unable to give Trump what he requires so Trump will have to arm the UAF and then they can do the job!
But the struggle for democracy will go on and that issue (together with countries want independence and Nations want liberation) escapes people like Steve. Here is what he said above
‘Putin occupies a position similar to Saddam after oil war 1 where the US decided to help him rather than let him fall to the popular uprising. But thats imperialism isn’t it you just can’t trust them.’ So despite all his double talk and confected explanations that oil was a sort of short hand explanation there it is 21 yrs on bold as brass. The liberation of Kuwait is classified as oil war 1 and by simple deduction the liberation of the Iraqi people from the anti democratic Sunni dominated Baathists and the revolutionary war to bring a democracy into being that could deal with the reality of a country where 60% were Shia another 20% Kurds and just 1 in 5 that is another 20% Sunni! But it is oil war 2!! Then Libya would have to be oil war 3! The Trot idiocy outs itself! We can be glad that the Assad reaction to the Arab spring events is not to be dumped at the god of oils feat I suppose. Events in Gaza and Lebanon and Egypt would destroy any war for oil activity but that does not bother the brain dead Trot returning to the discredited No blood for oil’ chant! ‘Oil war 1’ Pathetic!
I ask again
Trade baby trade. Are you endorsing Trumps tariffs?
Drill baby drill. Can you explain why under Biden there were 9,000 available permits not taken up? Can you explain why under Biden there was almost 12 million acres under permit but not in production?
I will give you a hint. Oil in Texas can cost up to $70 a barrel to produce. Right now, West Texas Intermediate crude is selling for $68.26.
Fuck your Iraq war
https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/legalise-child-rape-iraq-to-lower-the-age-of-consent-for-girls-to-nine/news-story/8a8b35af6db735ad9e86cd5368b054fc
You mean oil war 2?
and again I ask again
Trade baby trade. Are you endorsing Trumps tariffs?
Drill baby drill. Can you explain why under Biden there were 9,000 available permits not taken up? Can you explain why under Biden there was almost 12 million acres under permit but not in production?
I will give you a hint. Oil in Texas can cost up to $70 a barrel to produce. Right now, West Texas Intermediate crude is selling for $68.26.
You are as dumb as they come!
For a start, I think that the Apartheid state of South Africa ought to have had sanctions placed upon it! Now you may well be in favor of free trade however I am not so sure you could not find plenty of examples where that ought to not be the case. We don’t have to go back to pre-WW2 to find examples either.
Perhaps the step before or on the way to sanctions I guess is tariffs so… is China a really bad egg of a country? Yes they are! Ought we think about this issue? Yes. Are there a swag of other countries that we western democracies ought not be trading with as well? Well yes including Israel even if our ALP overlords think differently.
As for stupid ALP supporting Trots who have never even recognized that when you go out of your way to spread a global emergency crisis about carbon based fuels with the only option being to make them more expensive; then the mind boggles at the refusal to deal with the result of such a policy. Is that the end of their and your stupidity? NO.
But here is a heads up. Just because some green/trot anti democrat tells you that something can cost x then you can tell them it can also cost y! So what are the policies in place that push up or down the price that by the logic of capitalism ought to be falling over time? YOUR policies push them up mine push them down.
You only do it to save the planet from the externalities that you and all your kind have special powers to actually know!
Well as usual you are wrong. Reproducing your drivel while huge pipelines get shut down as almost the first action taken is nothing short of gobsmackingly stupid. Then to repeat your question 3 times as if you have a ‘gotcha’ moment when all you are doing is demonstrating how you get lost in the weeds.
The world is complicated.
I support Ukraine and Trump was a better tweedle than dum Harris or ga ga Biden for that matter even if there are Ukraine issues and big worries from Trump in this direction.
TRUMP IS A SHOCKER! BUT….
As for you well it is the ALP DEM Trot line and that is all!
Trump is arguing that tariffs will be beneficial to the US economy. It is the cornerstone of his economic policy.
The simple question I am asking you is do you think he is correct. Will tariffs help or hurt the US economy.
It’s a simple yes or no.
Just a point about your previous nonanswer about me reproducing my drivel while huge pipelines get shut down. I would just like to state that my preferred option for transporting oil is via pipeline. The Keystone pipeline was the big political event. My position on the Keystone pipeline is that it was a mistake to shut it down. For many years I have been a supporter of the Keystone pipeline.
Come on you have had plenty of time to look up what a tariff is. No more diversion into South African sanctions. Tariffs a step along the way to sanctions LOL. I just asked if you think Trump is right on tariffs, don’t worry about South Africa, or China or Israel or Trots or the ALP, or carbon-based fuels or pipelines or Ukraine.
Trump is arguing that tariffs will be beneficial to the US economy. It is the cornerstone of his economic policy.
The simple question I am asking you is do you think he is correct. Will tariffs help or hurt the US economy.
It’s a simple yes or no.
It appears that you are trying to out do pig iron Bob Menzies when the Japanese were knee deep in Chinese blood. Capitalism is not a simple stairway to heaven no matter how much simpletons like you (who STILL talk about Oil war 1,2 and 3 to your mates and then forget yourself and say the same thing to sane people) want it to be. The reason a simpleton like you so often wants the world’s problems solved with a yes or no answer is because complexity is quite beyond you. Your the one who could not even work out what the one trick pony Putin was doing.
Now Trump talks about tariffs so you in the grip of TDS feel the urge to tell me with a long interest in economic theories how problematic tariffs are and how US interests as a whole may not derive any benefit but that it will bite them as well and could instead of in the long run helping them hinder. Enter the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and now Steve can wax lyrical about how it made everything worse. Well we all know that…so…are we now supposed to believe that technocrats are all that is required to solve the problems we actually face?
That is what you are in your own stupid and predictable way saying.
Or do we just pretend that we are not really facing these problems and instead are facing the carbon dioxide monster that is coming to burn down the country or flood the country or raise the seas and bring droughts and famine etc etc? That seems a lot like fiddling while Rome burns to me. All the idiocy of the Population Bomb rubbish that underpins the carbon monster thinking.
Are we to remind our overlords that having been tried once Smoot-Hawley must like oil war 1 never be repeated as oil war 2 and then 3… Yet I think that their advisors already know about the Great Depression.
Capitalism is producing some very nasty wars of late in places like Syria, Georgia, Ukraine and the occupied Palestinian territories to name just the first few to spring to mind and some interesting problems of trade wars and so problems in how to deal with the looming actual monster that is capitalist Chinese (otherwise known as anti Mao -the monster- Communist China) will have to get a lot like old fashioned push and shove. Naturally you will pretend that revolution is not required and the countries do not really want their independence Nations don’t really require their full liberation and the people couldn’t possibly want revolution because it is so damned bloody. All we need is ‘left’ ALP types running the show like Syriza in Greece! Yanis Varoufakis for finance minister!!
Buckle up for the ride and remember your long list of foolish thinking.
BTW I immediately saw my over optimistic mistake above with the top 10 days of Russian casualties. 2 days later the bottom 2 numbers have already dropped of! The smallest number is now 1630 but that can’t help me!! All the numbers would have to be above 1950! I will most probably have to settle for a silver medal unless the Russians start to wise up and start to shoot or arrest their officers and surrender to the Ukrainians as the front starts to fully collapse. Then I remind myself that we are still not 3 years into what I thought would take at least 5 years to accomplish and tell myself to calm down! Nevertheless what is going on right now is remarkable! It is terrible to think that this is what is required but it is.
There is only a military solution. Putin must be stopped and the Chinese warned off as a consequence!
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=E33161B435D127BA%21115352&ithint=file%2Cxlsx&authkey=%21AIUgFlGIk8-n1hM
OMG another non answer. Trump campaigned on a program of 60% tariffs on China and 10% on every other country except for Mexico at 20%. The numbers are fluid as he came up with different numbers at different times. He stated things like tariffs had built American greatness and they could again. He suggested that income tax could be replaced by tariffs. He also stated that China could avoid tariffs by building factories in the USA. These are all things he has said although it’s possible that he’s just lying. However he did introduce tariffs at the beginning of his last term. These tariffs and the Chinese retaliatory tariffs on US agriculture and the subsidies paid to agriculture IMO are the reason Trumps growth rate failed to match Obama’s growth rate.
All I’m asking from you is do you agree with Trump on the matter of Tariffs or do you see Tariffs and the trade war that will follow to be bad for growth.
Your comment “Trade baby trade” would indicate that you are OK with Trump’s tariff plan although getting a straight answer from you seems quite difficult.
I understand why you struggle to take your argument to the logical conclusion. The arguments over free trade have a long history in the Marxist tradition.
A far more interesting investigation of the tariff issue and of moral issues re trade that are current (and this guy only has a mild case of TDS). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc8d2hc3baU
Tariffs are part of the free trade v protectionist argument which has been going on in economic theory circles for the best part of 200 years. Karl Marx came down on the free trade side of the argument, arguing that protectionism delayed development and he was all for development. 44 years latter Engels reiterated this position as being correct. So free trade is the position of revolutionaries. At the start of the 20th century, we see the rise of reformist Marxism lead by Bernstein, the revisionists. Part of the revisionist platform was to embrace protectionism.
Tariffs represent backwardness
one they cause immediate inflation
two they restrict free trade
three they induce counter measures
four they entrench a section of society who become rent seekers
five tariffs are a barrier to efficiency and innovation.
Trump’s model is not trade baby trade but protect baby protect. Karl would not approve.
BTW the guy talking among the trees he says he’s a grower. My impression is that he must be smoking what he grows because he is seriously fucked up.
No and that is why it all goes over your head. There is the moral and political aspect and only in the ideal world would there be no issues. We do not have the perfect world! It’s as if uncle Karl never even thought about war and the trade consequences leading to it and from it. As for the monetarist economist example he is putting (the standard) your argument and then adding the moral dimension. But I would like to know what makes him so seriously fucked up?
Right at the beginning he gives it away that he is probably stoned, at 1:22 mark he says “…cleaning offices or houses or heavy-duty bricklaying. He wants to bring this all back to America…”
So Trump according to this guy plans to bring cleaning and bricklaying back to America. The whole clip is full of this non-sense.
I can’t say I don’t like the guy he talks about the people who globalization left behind. He says they should self-actualize, wow what a trip to 1970’s catch phrases. Yes, the jobless and homeless should just self-actualize and just get better jobs you know in the imagination industry. Those jobs are gone and they aren’t coming back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-vl3VSsh2s
The guy among the trees and you are pushing a fantasy. The fantasy is that there is a moral position in capitalist trading relations. He says we should not trade with China because of moral concerns. Capitalism has no morals. The correct position is that it is very moral to trade with China.
China offered capitalism workers who would work at 1/30 of what a US factory worker was getting. The move of industry to China was the worlds biggest ever anti poverty program as hundreds of millions of Chinese people were lifted out of absolute poverty.
But capitalists didn’t go to China to make Chinese people have a better life. They went to China to make money as Marx predicted that Capitalism would leave no place in the world untouched.
The development of the world by capitalism is something we should celebrate.
Capitalism has a logic but it has no morals.
You are lost! Stop long enough to realize you have exactly zero connection to any viable theory in your ALP/Green/Trot delusion.
For example; at what point ought Australian capitalists have stopped shipping pig iron to the Japanese militarists; 1 day before or one day after Pearl Harbor was attacked?
If you think that they ought to have stopped trading long before the fighting broke out then we are in agreement and that is -of course- not a place you want to be, so now you will have to waffle on about the capitalists having nothing but the raw profit motive driving their decisions. You know that to be false but you say it anyway! All manner of policy positions are taken and have been good bad and indifferent. There is nothing but constant tensions and issues that get in the way of a preferred position. Just as there were in Karl’s day.
So here we are with sanctions on Russia, North Korea, Iran etc and I want them extended! You waffle instead of dealing with the reality of the anti democratic countries making war round ‘us’ and on ‘us’. Western liberal democracies are part of the democratic revolution and the woke elite are the current big problems that are getting in the way of the people making more democratic progress.
The world situation is, at least arguably, spiraling into a pre-war decent where it seems that the liberal democracies must produce new policies and self reliance issues also come up. We saw issues come up in the pandemic period that are not optimum in efficiency at first blush but nevertheless are better for other ‘insurance style’ reasons. You know this yet you waffle.
Democrats like myself have to respond or react if we get caught playing catch up to real events. So political actions of what to do with the economic connections to the enemy (anti-democrats) are already in our lap! They do not appear to be in yours.
I have quite some sympathy as we are watching the mass slaughter of the Palestinian people while our liberal elites pretend to not being the enablers of this blatant criminality. That is a problem for you anti-communists defenders of bourgeois democracy not something that has ever troubled me a defender of multi party democracy for western countries but with no delusions about what happens when wars break out.
How the world gets past this long period of gangster style domination is not clear but the necessity for armed struggle against these elements like Saddam and Putin etc is! You argue against fighting because there is no military solution and I say there is only a military solution.
Now I bet you are not for negotiating with Putin and would laugh at anyone who thinks a deal could ever be done with this mass murdering war monger! But you, being slippery as an oil coated bird, make the harming the trade relations of all manner of countries an issue that Trump is supposed to be so horrendous in not realizing that we MUST trade because TINA.
You seem unable to walk and chew gum. There are alternatives. Putin has found out that trade is quite complicated in the modern world and the 2 sides are shaping up with China not on my side!
In order to solve the problems that arise for this 21st Century I start by taking a class stand and support the full development of capitalism. That has always been the case but tells us nothing about how we fight the wars that arise now as they did in Marx day when he wrote to Lincoln to tell him the workers of the world were behind the stars and stripes.
Some dickheads could not even work out that it was fine to oppose the US imperialists in the Vietnamese war of National liberation and welcome ‘Soviet’ weapons being supplied to our side (the Vietnamese) while fully opposing the imperialist invasion of Czechoslovakia by the up coming and more dangerous imperialism.
That has been your constant failure. When collective security jumps up as the obvious problem you disappear into Trot peace-nick land of never unite blah and start carrying on about the imperialists.
You will never make progress with your foolishness until you stand up for the 3 wars that mark our era. Countries do want their independence so you should support this desire so that everybody understands it is a very bad move to overturn this judgement of history. Do NOT sell out the people of Kuwait with the trash thinking that this is all just oil war 1. Accept that YOU have blundered badly over the obvious liberation of the Iraqi people (and you are 100% correct that you and I wouldn’t want to live there). But I would not be comfortable in 1950’s Australia either.
Nations do want Liberation so try to understand when and how that actual liberation is at hand and do not back reactionary nationalism when it keeps on going past that point; Think of Ireland and the IRA. Don’t do as you have done with the very badly led Kurdish masses who ought not be in anyway uniting with the anti democratic Assad types who constitute HIRISE. They ought to be working with the democratic revolutionary conservative Erdogan! Unlike the likes of Israel and Assad the Erdogan government is a genuine peace partner that has had to fight off deadly anti democrats.
Remember that things do turn into their opposites so it is never a permanent solved issue that we can set and forget. That is so obviously the case when a lifetime later we are faced with a monstrosity like North Korea.
As for trading with the enemies of all human progress, well lets just say time to think before you sprout this dogma.
sanctions
a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule.
tariff
a tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports.
Clearly sanctions are a political action, and tariffs are an economic issue. That Trump sees this as economic rather than political is his invitation for Chinese companies to circumvent tariffs by directly investing in the USA.
The tea leaves on Ukraine do not look good, first it’s Donald Trump Jr taunting Zelensky on social media saying that there are only so many days left before your allowance is cut off. Then there is the massive rocket barrage launched by Putin just after Trump had phoned him asking for restraint and now the German election where Schulz is running on the platform that he will not approve Ukraine using German supplied missiles into Russia.
https://www.politico.eu/article/olaf-scholz-campaign-germany-election-long-range-missiles-war-in-ukraine/
There is a lot happening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEXkuMzcxhI
and this German is a ‘realistic’ honest broker. I think he is a bit pessimistic, but he is pro-Ukrainian and tries his best. He’s an ex-military type and always of interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExQfHktbJek
Are we in a war already? My answer is yes.
‘Nov 21, 2024 After 1000 days of war, Russia has failed to conquer Ukraine. But across the globe, off the military battlefield, Russia is continuing to advance in its undeclared war against the West. Gen. Ben Hodges explains to Kyiv Post’s Jason Smart that the Russian-Iranian-North Korean-Chinese alliance is a threat to the West and one that we must wake up and defeat before it is too late. General Ben Hodges, who commanded the US Army in Europe from 2014 until 2017, says that Western policymakers need to open their eyes to a hard truth: Russia is only emboldened by the empty phrases we use to describe support for Ukraine, as we are unwilling to say that “we will do all that we can for Ukraine to win.” ’
Almost everyone that I have been following who are Ukraine supporters of one sort or another are now and have long been suffering from a large dose of TDS; so you Steve are not alone! I don’t like the man much from my pro Ukrainian perspective but I’m inclined to think that he will ‘probably’ be better than what Biden has been and he has been BAD news. I largely share Ben Hodges views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFE1uRy0F9U
But just consider what you have just pointed out. Putin has -as he must in order to get some through the Ukraine defence and in order to smash Ukrainian electrical infrastructure before winter- saved up a quantity of cruise missiles for what amounts to a big slap in the face to Trump.
So Trump is being painted into a corner by events and it’s too early to tell what he will do.
The logic of going full tilt for the Ukrainian win in order to deter China and Iran, North Korea etc is pretty compelling to me. But as you might point out ‘it would be a dumb thing for Putin to re-launch this war’ yet it seemed to me like the ‘best’ move from his 3 choices. I thought he would do it and that he would lose in about 5 years or so. He is right on track to achieve that great loss. Right now all manner of European political and military leaders ought to be far less scared of the Russian Bear than they used to be even 6 months ago! Nukes are about all he can now wave about and at minimum I think they do not make sense before Trump takes office anyway! They don’t make sense after either but they still worry people.
Even without the USA, Europeans now have the clear power and need to assist the Ukranians till they win. 1,000 days ago that was not the case. But the mighty Russians have been so damaged and the anti-Russian forces so built up that the old calculations no longer apply. The Russians are in deep trouble from all directions.
As Jake Bro says about Trump ‘There is no plan right now!’ So let’s see what unfolds after 20 Jan. The news right now is that the current US POTUS has given permission to make use of the longer range missiles that have a US component to them (and so require US permission). Biden has been appalling at every step over every weapons system all the way along. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl_5A9BNk9I Jake Bro
Scholz is, I think, on the way out! The Germans will after their election I hope be in a better place and lift their game! Taurus after the British and French have gone first would be my guess that is how it’s been on every other system BUT they have just done a deal on ‘little Taurus’ and that is great. They are incredible!
This whole 1,000 days has been like pulling teeth! Too little too late at every stage! But still the ‘teeth’ get puled. The Ukrrainians are not playing the role that western liberals had worked out was best for them!
IMV the fighting is going very well; even when the UAF have been giving up small amounts of territory the price the Russians have had to pay has been strategically significant.
What do the logistic profiles of both sides now tell us about this war? The Russian army has failed and the artillery statistics gone from 10-1 down to 2-1. But with range and accuracy allowance probably now more like 1:1.
From my POV the tea leaves are looking up because Germany is IMV going to get a new leader and one that is better for Ukraine! Donald Trump Jr might be irrelevant chatter. ‘Trump had phoned him asking for restraint’ and got a slap in the face for his trouble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVYE7NOsqI0&t=1913s ‘Trump’s Ukraine plan will ‘blow-up’ in Putin’s face | Bill Browder & Brandon Silver’
and this is the sort of thing that people are noticing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at8GFB2Lrc4
Professor Gerdes
and this one was good including Ryan McBeth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZE_CjjxP80
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCamYq29wNA
Nukes? Escalation? WW3?! Its Putin Propaganda! Combat Vet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPE8qBS8yDo and Hods again