ukraine is not a battle of democracy vs tyranny, kiev is run by oligarchs, even more blatantly than the eu and usa.
west ukraine is filled with bandera-ists. poland and rumania are the historic place for that region.
usa, eu and nato are not oath keepers, ukraine is planned to be the same as the soviets wanted cuba, that is ukraine armed to the teeth that jfk denied in 1962.
i am american, a retired military officer and i judge my country is on an immoral and dangerous path since moving nato east of the elbe!
Morality is besides the point. The expansion of NATO made no real military sense. It did not make the US safer. It did not add capacity. It just exposed the alliance to greater risks of unneccesary conflict and warped strategic thinking.
The profits to the defense contractors from NATO need to be compared to the costs to the military itself from warped priorities in procurement and weapons development. Costs that will almost certainly get paid in excess and preventable losses in combat in future.
The former Warsaw Pact countries have to normalise relations with Russia sooner rather than later. The US needs to reestablish the credibility of its diplomacy and the combat reliability of its forces.
As for Ukraine, the OUM-B and its offshoots are batshit crazy and very dangerous. Serious countries do not compromise themselves the way the US has done by sponsoring those sorts. Normalizing people that extreme guarantees disaster.
eu countries are unarmed to fight in ukraine, especially that their supply lines are 2000 miles long, and some f-16 parts come from california.
usa is worse its supply lines are 5000 miles long, and a lot of its ammunition stock has already been fired by ukraine.
as to graham, an air national guard lawyer officer: the 'on runway' support to launch XX f-16's requires hundreds of technical and logistics soldiers, and a supply chain that reaches to the usa for parts required for the next aircraft launch. to say nothing of the lake of mil spec fuel and mountain of iron aka ordnance.....
The war reveals the over-reliance on complex weapons, fragile supply chains, vulnerable logistics etc. And production is not on a scale comparable to Russia. The industrial weakness of the US is now exposed.
As for Europe, they are parade ground armies (the exceptions being France and Poland). The UK is using super-glue to hold the bolts on the pipes in the cooling system of their nuclear submarines. Germany is effectively demilitarized.
They also have a rich tradition of sponsoring revolutionaries too.
The West only sponsors troublemakers when they need a proxy. The West detests nationalists in power unless they can be used against a neighbour. Ideology is nothing. Control everything.
And the extreme right in Ukraine has a global or extra-national dimension...they are in league with nutters from across the world, especially North America and Scandinavia. Just like the originals in the 30s and 40s who were pan-European racists, not genuine nationalists.
Yes. The Christchurch shooter in New Zealand made a pilgrimage to Ukraine, and the Buffalo shooter in the United States had expressed his support of the various neofascists there.
These had to be quickly swept under the rug, as they sullied the narrative.
The trouble is that the rubbish going on Ukraine will corrupt the USA itself. Convergence (acknowledged or otherwise) is integral to global integration. And corrupt politicians and the intelligence communities on both sides are the perfect means to fortify this process.
I'd put it differently. Zelenskiy is an opportunist who fronts a puppet regime, a police state run by gangster politicians, extremists and the intelligence services on behalf of a consortium of foreign powers (America, EU, UK, Canada).
The ideology is a blend of historic ethnic grievances (a political and ideological legacy of one or two regions plus the Ukrainian diaspora), authoritarianism and PR bullshit. The delusions run deep and the regime has been played by the US. Genuine nationalists would have built up the Ukraine, not deindustrialise and depopulate it for NATO and the multinationals. Zelenskiy was a cynical choice by the kingmakers, who wanted a weakling in power. The Ukraine is a political project in a state fast approaching collapse.
Thanks. I find that unless people are explicit about what they mean by such terms, Left and Right are meaningless.
As far as the political class, the alignment is more about personal greed and geopolitics. The ultra-nationalist bloc in the Rada are 'Left' in that sense, but in no other. The Ukrainian Irish and Scottish nationalists hope to leverage the geopolitics of the day to their advantage. I would not bet a penny on their chances of success.
Given replacement level immigration, the loss of agency attendant on integration into the global economy under neoliberal rules and the 'Rainbow' pieties of their allies (masters in all but name), their nationalism is as quaint as green dye in the beer on Saint Patrick's day. In the case of Ukraine the absurdity is magnified to catastrophic proportions because the Banderists (Banderisty?) cannot admit that they are just like their forebears: utterly disposable puppets of alien masters reveling in opportunities to express hatreds that make them ever more defenceless against foreign exploitation.
In my opinion the only serious nationalists in the Western bloc are Orban, Netanyahu and the Japanese and these are very cautious. The rest are nationalist in their self-understanding and posturing only.
People keep confusing money with power, how American.
It's POWER , not money.
And it's the State Department, not the DOD that are Warmongers.
The MIC - which never quite existed even in WW2 - makes sh*t.
The combined profits of the big 5 Defense firms in 2020 were $286B, Walmart alone made $523B. All 5 defense firms combined make a little over half of what Walmart makes.
Strangely we never hear of the Walmart Industrial Complex.
Most of the $800B Defense budget goes to pay, healthcare, Housing, pensions -we're talking 60%+ of the Budget is personnel costs. It's so bad that the last 25 years the National Guard went from being Strategic Reserve and local disaster force to deploying every 2-5 years depending on Operational needs. Why?
Because the National Guard and Reserves aren't full time and cost a fraction of what the active forces personnel cost.
So one weekend a month and 2 weeks in the summer became for the last generation deployments every 3 years for a year - or 18 months - or in my case 2 years.
Honestly one can understand why people stare at the uniforms and the weapons, ignoring the suits and doing their homework on the actual facts, but at least one person, myself is becoming annoyed, Thanks for reading !
Thanks for that. It helps clarify things immensely. It all sounds like an iteration of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY scripted by accountants, with purely financial exploitation of those at the bottom front and centre. A post-industrial parody of military service as a form of late feudal enlistment of serfs so common in Central and Eastern Europe.
As I understand it, State is just the combination PR/Potemkin village for the IC, with visible crazies (neocons and neoliberals) fronting for the alpha villains. The ostensible authors of the foreign policies take the credit, but they get their instructions from planning units that prefer discretion. Much of the apparatus of policy making is pure theatre for the lost souls who find Washington fascinating.
I once read an article that claimed to utilise a source placed in a fairly highly level within the IC. The tone of the source's comments re the Pentagon leadership were quite contemptuous, not least because the generals were paid so very poorly compared to the senior executive of the private sector. I got the impression that the IC were super-corporate in worldview. The very embodiment of white collar privilege as it were.
I have heard this as well. Really, they start weeding them out beyond Captain.
I read two incidents from Desert Storm that involved warrior-captains responding to circumstances in ways that would have upset the larger narrative. One captain found a trusted Ba'athist officer, took all his insignia off, negotiated a complete stand-down of all regime loyalists for the whole city, and put him in a subordinate role reassuring his people and communicating their concerns to him. Saved dozens of Iraqis and his own soldiers' lives. Violated anti-Ba'athist directive. Same sort of thing tripped Patton up--we're getting rid of the only competent patriotic people.
They will have neither competence nor Patriotism, nor courage moral or physical.
Truth is they who get promoted game and work the system, and of the last generation this century more and more avoided combat as controversial and dangerous to one’s career.
“This isn’t the Hill to Die on”.
They never find that Hill, and IRL never see it. It is exactly Clown World, total reversal of values.
You see the same Uvalde Freeze don’t do anything, just freeze in the military and its grown to epidemic and possibly soon pandemic levels. Its a lack of confidence in leadership that gave you Uvalde, and Military increasingly same. I mean soldiers including elite forces freezing in combat-entire units. That’s leadership, or leaderless rather. No one wants to be the next Abu Gharib, or Chauvin.
1-2 cowards on them personally: entire unit freezes (and they do) that’s leadership, or rather JAG ROE paralysis -Rules of Engagement- which constantly change.
Geographic isolation and world’s reserve currency combined with a rich, fat, and detached from reality 🇺🇸 population allow a lot of slack. We’re running out.
"As for Ukraine, the OUM-B and its offshoots are batshit crazy and very dangerous. Serious countries do not compromise themselves the way the US has done by sponsoring those sorts. Normalizing people that extreme guarantees disaster."
The United States has form. To give the most infamous example, the same people who later became the Taliban were invited to the White House, and proclaimed by President Reagan himself to be "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers". That did not age well.
Then there were the neocons agitating for the United States to take on the role of being al Qaeda's (and ISIS') air force in Syria. What could ever have possibly gone wrong?
Or the lavishly documented track record of American support for the worst death squads in Latin America, not to mention the Khmer Rouge regime, both before and after 1979.
i like what zoki says!
ukraine is not a battle of democracy vs tyranny, kiev is run by oligarchs, even more blatantly than the eu and usa.
west ukraine is filled with bandera-ists. poland and rumania are the historic place for that region.
usa, eu and nato are not oath keepers, ukraine is planned to be the same as the soviets wanted cuba, that is ukraine armed to the teeth that jfk denied in 1962.
i am american, a retired military officer and i judge my country is on an immoral and dangerous path since moving nato east of the elbe!
That makes 2 of us.
Watch this first 10 mins.
https://rumble.com/v281edg-tucker-carlson-tonight-2123-fox-breaking-news-february-1-2023.html
i suggest that a nuclear exchange would expand to billions dying and the lucky ones would be those within the blast zone killed right out!
Morality is besides the point. The expansion of NATO made no real military sense. It did not make the US safer. It did not add capacity. It just exposed the alliance to greater risks of unneccesary conflict and warped strategic thinking.
The profits to the defense contractors from NATO need to be compared to the costs to the military itself from warped priorities in procurement and weapons development. Costs that will almost certainly get paid in excess and preventable losses in combat in future.
The former Warsaw Pact countries have to normalise relations with Russia sooner rather than later. The US needs to reestablish the credibility of its diplomacy and the combat reliability of its forces.
As for Ukraine, the OUM-B and its offshoots are batshit crazy and very dangerous. Serious countries do not compromise themselves the way the US has done by sponsoring those sorts. Normalizing people that extreme guarantees disaster.
eu countries are unarmed to fight in ukraine, especially that their supply lines are 2000 miles long, and some f-16 parts come from california.
usa is worse its supply lines are 5000 miles long, and a lot of its ammunition stock has already been fired by ukraine.
as to graham, an air national guard lawyer officer: the 'on runway' support to launch XX f-16's requires hundreds of technical and logistics soldiers, and a supply chain that reaches to the usa for parts required for the next aircraft launch. to say nothing of the lake of mil spec fuel and mountain of iron aka ordnance.....
The war reveals the over-reliance on complex weapons, fragile supply chains, vulnerable logistics etc. And production is not on a scale comparable to Russia. The industrial weakness of the US is now exposed.
As for Europe, they are parade ground armies (the exceptions being France and Poland). The UK is using super-glue to hold the bolts on the pipes in the cooling system of their nuclear submarines. Germany is effectively demilitarized.
The West has a rich tradition of sponsoring right wing nationalists. This is nothing new.
They also have a rich tradition of sponsoring revolutionaries too.
The West only sponsors troublemakers when they need a proxy. The West detests nationalists in power unless they can be used against a neighbour. Ideology is nothing. Control everything.
And the extreme right in Ukraine has a global or extra-national dimension...they are in league with nutters from across the world, especially North America and Scandinavia. Just like the originals in the 30s and 40s who were pan-European racists, not genuine nationalists.
Yes. The Christchurch shooter in New Zealand made a pilgrimage to Ukraine, and the Buffalo shooter in the United States had expressed his support of the various neofascists there.
These had to be quickly swept under the rug, as they sullied the narrative.
usa has no qualms propping the corrupt, as long as they obey the rules based dominion of empire.
The trouble is that the rubbish going on Ukraine will corrupt the USA itself. Convergence (acknowledged or otherwise) is integral to global integration. And corrupt politicians and the intelligence communities on both sides are the perfect means to fortify this process.
I'd call the Zelensky government left-wing nationalists.
I'd put it differently. Zelenskiy is an opportunist who fronts a puppet regime, a police state run by gangster politicians, extremists and the intelligence services on behalf of a consortium of foreign powers (America, EU, UK, Canada).
The ideology is a blend of historic ethnic grievances (a political and ideological legacy of one or two regions plus the Ukrainian diaspora), authoritarianism and PR bullshit. The delusions run deep and the regime has been played by the US. Genuine nationalists would have built up the Ukraine, not deindustrialise and depopulate it for NATO and the multinationals. Zelenskiy was a cynical choice by the kingmakers, who wanted a weakling in power. The Ukraine is a political project in a state fast approaching collapse.
Why left-wing? I don't understand.
They're nationalist but they want to align with the liberal powers: US/NATO and EU. Like Ireland and Scotland.
Thanks. I find that unless people are explicit about what they mean by such terms, Left and Right are meaningless.
As far as the political class, the alignment is more about personal greed and geopolitics. The ultra-nationalist bloc in the Rada are 'Left' in that sense, but in no other. The Ukrainian Irish and Scottish nationalists hope to leverage the geopolitics of the day to their advantage. I would not bet a penny on their chances of success.
Given replacement level immigration, the loss of agency attendant on integration into the global economy under neoliberal rules and the 'Rainbow' pieties of their allies (masters in all but name), their nationalism is as quaint as green dye in the beer on Saint Patrick's day. In the case of Ukraine the absurdity is magnified to catastrophic proportions because the Banderists (Banderisty?) cannot admit that they are just like their forebears: utterly disposable puppets of alien masters reveling in opportunities to express hatreds that make them ever more defenceless against foreign exploitation.
In my opinion the only serious nationalists in the Western bloc are Orban, Netanyahu and the Japanese and these are very cautious. The rest are nationalist in their self-understanding and posturing only.
People keep confusing money with power, how American.
It's POWER , not money.
And it's the State Department, not the DOD that are Warmongers.
The MIC - which never quite existed even in WW2 - makes sh*t.
The combined profits of the big 5 Defense firms in 2020 were $286B, Walmart alone made $523B. All 5 defense firms combined make a little over half of what Walmart makes.
Strangely we never hear of the Walmart Industrial Complex.
Most of the $800B Defense budget goes to pay, healthcare, Housing, pensions -we're talking 60%+ of the Budget is personnel costs. It's so bad that the last 25 years the National Guard went from being Strategic Reserve and local disaster force to deploying every 2-5 years depending on Operational needs. Why?
Because the National Guard and Reserves aren't full time and cost a fraction of what the active forces personnel cost.
So one weekend a month and 2 weeks in the summer became for the last generation deployments every 3 years for a year - or 18 months - or in my case 2 years.
Honestly one can understand why people stare at the uniforms and the weapons, ignoring the suits and doing their homework on the actual facts, but at least one person, myself is becoming annoyed, Thanks for reading !
Thanks for that. It helps clarify things immensely. It all sounds like an iteration of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY scripted by accountants, with purely financial exploitation of those at the bottom front and centre. A post-industrial parody of military service as a form of late feudal enlistment of serfs so common in Central and Eastern Europe.
As I understand it, State is just the combination PR/Potemkin village for the IC, with visible crazies (neocons and neoliberals) fronting for the alpha villains. The ostensible authors of the foreign policies take the credit, but they get their instructions from planning units that prefer discretion. Much of the apparatus of policy making is pure theatre for the lost souls who find Washington fascinating.
I once read an article that claimed to utilise a source placed in a fairly highly level within the IC. The tone of the source's comments re the Pentagon leadership were quite contemptuous, not least because the generals were paid so very poorly compared to the senior executive of the private sector. I got the impression that the IC were super-corporate in worldview. The very embodiment of white collar privilege as it were.
Yes the IC, Finance, State Dept is where the Ivy’s concentrate power. Which would be acceptable, even desirable if they weren’t insane.
No Warrior advances past Colonel.
Instead of a field marshal's baton, the rucksacks of the ambitious are stuffed with CVs.
"No Warrior advances past Colonel."
I have heard this as well. Really, they start weeding them out beyond Captain.
I read two incidents from Desert Storm that involved warrior-captains responding to circumstances in ways that would have upset the larger narrative. One captain found a trusted Ba'athist officer, took all his insignia off, negotiated a complete stand-down of all regime loyalists for the whole city, and put him in a subordinate role reassuring his people and communicating their concerns to him. Saved dozens of Iraqis and his own soldiers' lives. Violated anti-Ba'athist directive. Same sort of thing tripped Patton up--we're getting rid of the only competent patriotic people.
They will have neither competence nor Patriotism, nor courage moral or physical.
Truth is they who get promoted game and work the system, and of the last generation this century more and more avoided combat as controversial and dangerous to one’s career.
“This isn’t the Hill to Die on”.
They never find that Hill, and IRL never see it. It is exactly Clown World, total reversal of values.
You see the same Uvalde Freeze don’t do anything, just freeze in the military and its grown to epidemic and possibly soon pandemic levels. Its a lack of confidence in leadership that gave you Uvalde, and Military increasingly same. I mean soldiers including elite forces freezing in combat-entire units. That’s leadership, or leaderless rather. No one wants to be the next Abu Gharib, or Chauvin.
1-2 cowards on them personally: entire unit freezes (and they do) that’s leadership, or rather JAG ROE paralysis -Rules of Engagement- which constantly change.
Geographic isolation and world’s reserve currency combined with a rich, fat, and detached from reality 🇺🇸 population allow a lot of slack. We’re running out.
"As for Ukraine, the OUM-B and its offshoots are batshit crazy and very dangerous. Serious countries do not compromise themselves the way the US has done by sponsoring those sorts. Normalizing people that extreme guarantees disaster."
The United States has form. To give the most infamous example, the same people who later became the Taliban were invited to the White House, and proclaimed by President Reagan himself to be "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers". That did not age well.
Then there were the neocons agitating for the United States to take on the role of being al Qaeda's (and ISIS') air force in Syria. What could ever have possibly gone wrong?
Or the lavishly documented track record of American support for the worst death squads in Latin America, not to mention the Khmer Rouge regime, both before and after 1979.