Russia is losing the war, so no reason to get agro here. Butt hurt is authorized.
:smileylaughing:
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Russia is losing the war, so no reason to get agro here. Butt hurt is authorized.
:smileylaughing:
The Chinese are starting to realize they are alone against the world because Russia is total shit at waging war these days.
:smileylaughing:
Let's be honest, China is as fucked as Russia is. Paper tigers for the shreading.
Don’t laugh at them too much. The incompetent assholes still have nukes to lob around. That is, if the nukes are actually working.
'Inhuman' Situation in Ukraine's Mariupol as Russia Claims Almost Full Control
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation in Mariupol is "inhuman" and called on the West to immediately provide heavy weapons, as Russia claimed it was in control of almost all of the strategic port city and urged its last defenders to surrender.
Moscow said Ukrainian forces in the city must lay down their arms by Sunday, after weeks of relative calm in the capital Kyiv were brought to an end by renewed Russian airstrikes.
Austria's chancellor, the first European leader to meet with Vladimir Putin in person since the invasion began, said he thought the Russian president "believes he is winning the war" in Ukraine.
But in the south, the devastated city of Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukraine's unexpectedly fierce resistance since Russian troops invaded the former Soviet state on Feb. 24.
Moscow officials now say they are in full control there, though Ukrainian fighters remain holed up in the city's fortress-like steelworks.
"The situation in Mariupol remains as severe as possible. Just inhuman," President Zelensky said in a video address.
"Russia is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there."
MORE 'Inhuman' Situation in Ukraine's Mariupol as Russia Claims Almost Full Control - The Moscow Times
Washington appears to be absent from the process, seemingly holding out for a preferred outcome while the violence rages.
Next to starting a war, the most reprehensible act would be keeping one going when more people will die with little hope the outcome will improve.
Yet, there are several lines of evidence that suggest that the U.S. is inhibiting a diplomatic solution in Ukraine.
Years prior to the war, when diplomatic avenues were open to prevent war, the United States already seemed to be setting up roadblocks.
In 2014, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was faced with the choice of economic alliance with the European Union or with Russia. In a country that was nearly evenly split, the choice of either partner was divisive and dangerous. But there was a way out of the dilemma: compromise was possible. Ukraine doesn’t have to choose, Putin offered. Both Russia and the EU could work economically with Ukraine.
There didn’t need to be a dangerous dilemma. But Washington and the EU rejected Putin’s peace offering. The late Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Politics and director of Russian Studies at Princeton, reminded in a 2014 interview that “it was the European Union, backed by Washington, that said in November to the democratically elected president of a profoundly divided country, Ukraine, ‘You must choose between Europe and Russia.’” There was a diplomatic solution to the catalyst of today’s crisis. The U.S. rejected it.
That rejection led to the coup that led to the civil war between Western Ukraine and the Donbas region in the east and set the stage for the current crisis.
In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected on a platform that featured making peace with Russia and signing the Minsk Agreement. The Minsk Agreement offered autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of the Donbas that had voted for independence from Ukraine after the coup. It offered the most promising diplomatic solution.
Facing domestic pressure, though, Zelensky would need U.S. support. He did not get it and, in the words of Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, he was “thwarted by the nationalists.” Zelensky stepped off the road of diplomacy and refused to talk to the leaders of the Donbas and implement the Minsk Agreements.
Having failed to support Zelensky on a diplomatic solution with Russia, Washington then failed to pressure him to return to the implementation of the Minsk Agreement. Sakwa told this writer that, “as for Minsk, neither the U.S. nor the EU put serious pressure on Kyiv to fulfill its part of the agreement.” Though the U.S. officially endorsed Minsk, Anatol Lieven, senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told this writer, “they did nothing to push Ukraine into actually implementing it.”
The Ukrainians gave Zelensky a mandate for a diplomatic solution. Washington did not support or encourage it.
Having inhibited diplomatic solutions prior to the war, the United States has been absent from negotiations since the invasion last month. The empty U.S. seat at the table is striking. Sakwa said that, “in the Cold War the U.S. would have taken the lead on diplomacy in a situation of the sort that we have today. Instead, now the U.S. is clearly not interested in peace negotiations — it is waiting for a Russian defeat, however many Ukrainian lives are lost in the process.”
In the direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, and even in the Turkish mediated talks, the United States seems invisible. Ambassador Chas Freeman, who served 30 years as a U.S. diplomat, told me that “it is the opposite of statecraft and diplomacy that the U.S. is not involved in any negotiations.”
“At best,” he said, “the U.S. has been absent and, at worst, implicitly opposed.”
Ukraine has delivered a proposal for a diplomatic settlement, including neutrality, but, according to Lieven, the U.S. has neither endorsed nor supported it, nor have they offered any proposals of their own. “The U.S.,” Lieven said, “has done nothing to facilitate diplomacy.”
Prior to the Russian invasion, the U.S. refused to seriously negotiate either the comprehensive European security structure that Russia proposed, or Russia’s demand of a halt to NATO encroachment on its borders, even though both the Biden administration and European governments told Zelensky that there was, in fact, no possibility of Ukraine being invited to join NATO in the foreseeable future. Because of pressure from the ultranationalists, Zelensky could not offer a treaty for neutrality at the time. Lieven said that the U.S. should have helped to push it. But the Biden administration refused.
Lieven added that France and Germany were interested in that diplomatic path but also did not propose a treaty of neutrality because they feared a split with the U.S.
Since the invasion, Ukraine has repeatedly stated a readiness to abandon its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality: a key concession for a diplomatic solution. Ukraine has proposed that a closed door to NATO membership be made more palatable by an open door to EU membership. Russia has agreed. But rather than fast tracking it, Freeman said, the EU has “slow rolled it.” The U.S. has said nothing in support but remains ambivalent.
Ukraine has also declared that it is prepared to negotiate the status of Crimea and the Donbas. Washington has seemingly not supported this avenue of diplomacy either, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisting on the need to defend the “basic principle” that “one country cannot simply change the borders of another by force.”
Then there is the issue of sanctions. Any peace agreement should tie incremental lifting of sanctions to a cessation in the violence, Russian withdrawal, and further diplomatic concessions. Indefinite sanctions — which is what some have implied are in order — would only undermine attempts at a diplomatic solution and to stop the bloodshed on the ground.
To protect Ukraine from further Russian attacks and loss of life, Zelensky has asked for security guarantees in return for neutrality. But the West will be reluctant to give Article 5-like guarantees for some of the same reasons it was reluctant to give Ukraine admission to NATO. Lieven points out, though, that one way to give Ukraine guarantees against future Russian invasions, destruction, and loss of Ukrainian lives would be to guarantee the reimposition of sanctions. But such a guarantee presupposes sanctions have an end point, revealing again that no end point for sanctions undermines a diplomatic solution.
Negotiations have a greater chance of succeeding with Washington’s participation. But as of now, the U.S. has not only said it will not pressure Ukraine to negotiate, particularly as reports of war crimes on the ground continue to dominate the headlines, it has discouraged it.
Even before today’s horrific images, U.S. State Department spokesperson Price seemed to articulate that Ukraine should not negotiate the points that might bring the war to an end. He discouraged Kyiv from negotiating the key issue of the war — that Ukraine not join NATO — because “there are principles at stake here . . . that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.”
Price added that “this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.”
From events that led to the war to the latest peace talks, the United States may be hindering negotiations rather than encouraging and facilitating them, seeming to hold out for a preferred outcome while the violence rages on the ground and more people suffer.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/20...matic-efforts/
U.S.A. has a hand in everything!
No, U.S.A. doesn’t get involved!
Either way, bad U.S.A!
Zelensky warns of Russian nuclear attack and calls for stockpile of radiation pills
Volodymyr Zelensky has warned Ukrainians to prepare for a possible Russian nuclear attack and called for a stockpile of radiation pills.
He told the world "we must prepare for" the bleak scenario and get hold of medicine which would help curb radiation sickness.
Zelkensky made the grim warning in an interview before sharing the clip on his Telegram channel on Saturday evening.
On Friday he made a similar announcement, and said nuclear weapons could could not be ruled out with Vladimir Putin considering the move as Russia's war with Ukraine stalls.
MORE Zelensky warns of Russian nuclear attack and calls for stockpile of radiation pills - World News - Mirror Online
Zealous anti-Russia voices are actually demanding that anyone opposing their views be silenced, and even criminally prosecuted.
A troubling pattern has developed over the decades in which foreign policy hawks smear their opponents and thereby seek to foreclose discussion of questionable U.S. policy initiatives.
The late Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his followers used that tactic to perfection during the Cold War. They branded anyone who suggested that Washington should consider adopting a less confrontational policy toward the Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of China as communist sympathizers or even outright traitors. Journalists and educators found themselves on blacklists, and dissenting officials found themselves in the ranks of the unemployed.
It was not until the late 1960s, when street protests erupted over the Vietnam War, that the atmosphere of intimidation began to weaken. When Richard Nixon’s administration pursued détente with Moscow and began to establish a normal relationship with China in the early 1970s, Americans could once again challenge U.S. policies without automatically being labeled as traitors.
The stifling of debate throughout the 1950s and much of the 1960s, though, facilitated the adoption of several unwise policies, not the least of which was the disastrous Vietnam military intervention.
In the aftermath of 9-11, McCarthy-style attacks made a strong reappearance. Efforts to oppose the repressive Patriot Act, which enabled intelligence and law enforcement agencies to violate civil liberties with impunity, drew immediate accusations of being “soft on terrorism.” So did criticism of the thoroughly unwise Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which gave the president virtually a blank check to wage military interventions around the world in the name of a “war on terror.” Hawks successfully broadened that tactic to inhibit badly needed discussion of George W. Bush’s campaign to initiate a regime-change war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. David Frum’s infamous article in National Review, “Unpatriotic Conservatives,” was the most flagrant example of the new McCarthyism, but it was far from being the only one.
The same pattern has emerged again with respect to U.S. policy toward Russia. Indeed, the smears were plentiful from a de facto alliance of neoconservatives and liberal hawks long before the Kremlin launched its current, brutal invasion of Ukraine. Experts who made the case that Washington’s meddling to help demonstrators unseat Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russia president in 2014 led to Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea found themselves targets of that alliance’s vitriol.
Princeton University Professor Stephen F. Cohen, a longtime distinguished scholar of the Soviet Union and its successor states, was a prominent early target. Critics impugned Cohen’s motives and sullied his reputation. Epithets such as “Putin’s American apologist” and “Putin’s Pal” were among the routine labels they applied.
Those tactics became even more flagrant as the crisis between Russia and Ukraine (and between Russia and NATO) deepened in the years after 2014. Analysts who dared argue that NATO’s expansion eastward to Russia’s border had needlessly provoked Moscow were derided as “Putin’s apologists,” “stooges,” “Russian trolls,” “patsies,” and “useful idiots.” Writing in Slate, William Saletan labeled Fox News host Tucker Carlson “America’s most watched Kremlin propagandist.” Anti-interventionist progressive journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, also became frequent targets.
Andreas Umland, one of Ukraine’s most ardent advocates and a notorious Russophobe, directed his fire at me, even though I had never said a single favorable word about Vladimir Putin. “Carpenter’s talking points would be instantly recognizable to Russian TV viewers, who have encountered similar disinformation on a virtually daily basis for the past seven years. One can only guess at Carpenter’s motives.” The echoes of McCarthyism were unmistakable—and loud.
Yet an array of reputable scholars had warned since the 1990s that NATO’s expansion toward Russia would poison East-West relations and ultimately lead to a new cold war (if we were lucky), or a hot war (if we weren’t). Those scholars included George Kennan, the intellectual architect of Washington’s Cold War containment policy toward the Soviet Union, and John Mearsheimer, the dean of realist international relations scholars. The mob of character assassins rarely bothered even to acknowledge that such sober critiques existed, much less tried to address their substantive points.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the mass suffering that it inflicted on innocent Ukrainian civilians, caused the level of intolerance toward advocates of U.S. restraint to spike. Hawks have exploited that shift in sentiment to the hilt. Zealous anti-Russia types demand that anyone who opposes their views be silenced and even criminally prosecuted. The hosts of “The View” lobbied their viewers to insist that the Justice Department investigate (and hopefully charge) Tucker Carlson and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for being Russian agents and committing “treason.” Host Whoopi Goldberg observed that “they used to arrest people for stuff like this.”
Furthermore, pundit Keith Olbermann called on the military to arrest Carlson and Gabbard as “enemy combatants” and hold them in jail to await trial for “participating in a campaign of [Russian] disinformation.” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), accused Gabbard, a distinguished veteran who had served in combat zones, of circulating “treasonous lies.”
Such rhetoric goes well beyond the usual innuendoes and smears directed against opponents of Washington’s crusade against Russia. They even exceed the stark McCarthyism of Max Boot, another alumnus of the crew that worked so hard to prevent meaningful debate during the build up to the Iraq War. The latest episodes pose outright threats against dissenters, and they’re reminiscent not just of the McCarthy era, but of the even worse domestic repression in World War I. On that occasion, the federal government embraced the “logic” that Goldberg, Olbermann, and Romney use and prosecuted more than 2,100 opponents of the war, sending most of them to prison.
It is especially important that advocates of a foreign policy based on realism and restraint not let such an atmosphere of intolerance prevail again. Not only might it do irreparable damage to America’s already frayed commitment to freedom of expression, but it would prevent discussion of a crucial foreign policy issue — perhaps the most important one since the dawn of the atomic age. The United States already is flirting with dangerous policies that could bring the country into a direct military collision with Russia. Such a clash could easily escalate to the use of nuclear weapons, the ultimate nightmare scenario.
The stakes are far too high to stand by while practitioners of the new McCarthyism again silence dissent. Advocating a policy of caution and restraint does not imply the slightest sympathy for Vladimir Putin or his war of aggression, and we must not allow reckless, unprincipled hawks to get away with asserting that it does.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/20...olicy-debates/
You really have to go out to the fringes for some of the stuff you post. The word McCarthyism is bandied about like Nazism is in the U.S.
Fringe MK? The author (Ted Galen Carpenter) is a Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute! He has also written 12 books. If that is what you call fringe, I bet you can hardly wait for Cattys next diatribe. :)
https://www.cato.org/people/ted-galen-carpenter
I know what Cato Institute is, over the top Conservative. Would be my guess that there would be no time in your posting on this forum that you have EVER agreed with anything the Cato Institute was pushing.
Oh, and since when do TV entertainers set policy? Worked up because someone said Tucker Carlson should be jailed? For god’s sake. What absolute tripe.
Not really-
I largely agree on their foreign policy stance, and their strident support of individual liberties (including Freedom of Expression!). In other areas, they are just plain too Libertarian for me- such as privatising everything, including health care.Quote:
Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, criticized many of the arguments offered to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. One of the war's earliest critics, Carpenter wrote in January 2002: "Ousting Saddam would make Washington responsible for Iraq's political future and entangle the United States in an endless nation-building mission beset by intractable problems."
Cato Institute - Wikipedia
You are a babbling moron at this point, desperate to find credible sources (jumping in bed with the Kock brothers) that back your pro-Putin wack job views.Quote:
Originally Posted by sabang
Oh, the baby is back. Have you had your bottle yet? Mum changed your nappy? Grreat, now lets see if you are grown up enough to comment on some actual content. :chitown:
I have commented on content, unfortunately your posts tend to lack substance and are far from credible content, so much so that I am just about the last person standing in opposition to you and the other Kremlin stooges. The others have just written this thread off.Quote:
Originally Posted by sabang
George F Kennan
John Mearsheimer
Noam Chomsky
Ted Galen Carpenter
Jack Matlock Jr
David Stockman
[sabang]
and so on...
Considering that partial list alone contains two of the prime architects of the dissolution of the USSR & Warsaw Pact, and fall of the Berlin Wall I reckon their credentials as 'Kremlin stooges' might reasonably be called into question. But perhaps I am being one sided- lets hear from a neo-con, y'know that genius cabal that has lead US foreign policy in such an enlightened direction this century. The husband of "Fuck the EU" Vicky no less. :)
Give War A Chance
More and more, we're told outright war isn't just necessary and right, but the thing that will solve America's existential problems
Robert Kagan, neoconservative writer and husband to Deputy Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, wrote a piece called “The Price of Hegemony” in Foreign Affairs last week that was fascinating. If I’d written his opening, people would denounce me as a Putin-concubine:
Although it is obscene to blame the United States for Putin’s inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading.Kagan went on to make an argument straight out of Dr. Strangelove. Instead of doing what some critics want and focusing on “improving the well-being of Americans,” the U.S. government is instead properly recognizing the responsibility that comes with being a superpower. So, while Russia’s invasion may indeed have been a foreseeable consequence of a decision to expand our hegemonic reach, now that we’re here, there’s only one option left. Total commitment:
Just as Pearl Harbor was the consequence of U.S. efforts to blunt Japanese expansion on the Asian mainland, and just as the 9/11 attacks were partly a response to the United States’ dominant presence in the Middle East after the first Gulf War, so Russian decisions have been a response to the expanding post–Cold War hegemony of the United States and its allies in Europe.
It is better for the United States to risk confrontation with belligerent powers when they are in the early stages of ambition and expansion, not after they have already consolidated substantial gains. Russia may possess a fearful nuclear arsenal, but the risk of Moscow using it is not higher now than it would have been in 2008 or 2014, if the West had intervened then. And it has always been extraordinarily small…
A month after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, blood seems to be rushing to all the wrong places across the Commentariat, which has begun in earnest the predictable process of asking the public to dismiss fears of nuclear combat. Headlines of the “We’ll take those odds” variety are springing up everywhere, from the Seattle Times (“Atrocities change the nuclear weapons calculus”) to Radio Free Europe (“Former NATO Commander Says Western Fears Of Nuclear War Are Preventing A Proper Response To Putin”) to Fox (which had on Sean Penn, of all people, to say to Sean Hannity, “Countries that have nuclear weapons can remain intimidated to use them, and we’re seeing that now with our own country”). This is fast becoming a bipartisan consensus. Check out Republican Adam Kinzinger’s recent comment:
https://cdn.substack.com/image/twitt...mKinzinger.jpgAdam Kinzinger @AdamKinzinger
If we let nukes prevent us from action then expect literally every country to try to get nukes in next few yearsApril 12th 2022
387 Retweets3,180 Likes
Most of us look back at 9/11 and wish we’d tried to narrow the scope of the problem, not expand it in grandiose ways and make it the central fact of the lives of every person on the planet. We were told right away that 9/11 meant so much more than a policing problem, that instead of a few nut-jobs slipping through the net, bin Laden’s Twin Tower attacks heralded an inevitable, and desirable, Final Battle between new and old worlds. We’re going through something similar now. The pundit excitement over the final clash between “Democracy and Autocracy” perhaps being at hand reminds me exactly of the open praying for signs of the Apocalypse I once heard among the Rapture-ready flock of pastor John Hagee in San Antonio.
We saw a ton of this thinking after 9/11. World-domination advocates who’d been laughed out of meetings for years were taken seriously overnight. Rigid with jingoistic fervor, they were suddenly in print and on air everywhere, bursting with "plans for everyone" as Iggy Pop put it. Such people always rush to the front of the debate in these moments and they’re always listened to, until about ten years later, when it quietly becomes okay to reflect on a question we probably should have pondered in the moment, i.e. “Hey, are these people crazy?”
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/give-war-a-chance?s=r
Give those same people that marched you into Iraq and Afghanistan another chance, and (unsuccessfully) try and shout down any and all dissenting voices. Sure, they are bound to get it right this time- third time lucky!
:deadhorsebig:
More whataboutism crap from another Three Stooges imbecile. What Russia is doing to Ukraine is far far worse than anything the US has ever done.Quote:
Originally Posted by sabang
You are just a blathering, grovelling Putin apologist who is attempting to cobble together a freak show of imbeciles to back up your utter idiocy about this war that you screamed for months would never happen.
Feel free to make another shit prediction, dippy.
Quote:
a freak show of imbeciles
:doglol:Quote:
George F Kennan
John Mearsheimer
Noam Chomsky
Ted Galen Carpenter
Jack Matlock Jr
David Stockman
[sabang]
and so on...
As folk probably are aware, I pretty much hold the human condition in contempt not least because it prizes stupidity over most other determinants in the deductive process.
The NATO thing that Putin fanboys, and other idiots who wish to avoid decisions that may pose a risk to their wealth accumulation, use to justify Russia's hegemonic ambitions is of course utter nonsense. NATO is a defence treaty, membership of which does not compel a member state to subscribe to any dogma of another other than honouring the primary directive that " an attack on one is an an attack upon all ". It's formation arose out of the USSR's quest for world domination under its bankrupt communist regime.
NATO has only mounted two concerted military operations since its inception : Bosnia/Serbia and Afghhanistan.
Russia since 1994 has invaded Chechnya, Georgia, and now Ukraine but has also subverted Belarus and is in the process of undermining the 'stans and has threatened the Baltic states.
Convincing third world Russian cocksuckers and the usual sleazy Asian dross, that citing NATO as a hegemonic tool of aggression by the US is beyond stupidity, is bad enough but when western saps with their pointy heads up their arses start spouting the same nonsense then you know you are in trouble.
Putin has been peddling this propaganda for so fucking long it has now become an orthodoxy of its own and certainly when the West did nothing after his invasions culminating in the 2014 Crimea occupation, other than tepid sanctions, he reckoned UKR was his for the taking.
Poland should now release its surplus aircraft with the tacit support of NATO.
The only way to deal with Russia is by the use of crushing force, militarily and by economic means.
Kruschev got his arse kicked out after the Cuba thing, now Putin is going down as the failed tyrant who led Russia back to the days of commie bankruptcy.
Sabang is an idiot.
Of that there is no doubt. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Seekingasylum
You flatter me- I am merely the orange boy for the Idiots team. :)
So lets see what the Neocon prodigy team and it's pom pom girls are saying-
1- Russia is losing this war, real bad. It's gonna be kicked out of east Ukraine.
2- Putin is doomed. His days as President are numbered.
Ok, it's not even quarter time yet. Lets see if your team can continue their spectacular winning streak from Iraq and Afghanistan. :chitown:
The aim in both those theatres was the removal of governments at the time, an aim that was successful on both counts. The problems arose thinking replacement governments could fill the vacuum that functioned in a democratic environment within a functioning rule of law.
Asian countries, particularly those constituting differing religious and ethnic minorities, simply cannot achieve such an outcome.
Ukraine is not so afflicted.
Truly, Sabang, you are a buffoon contrarian marinaded in adolescent perversity.
OK armchair quarterback. If irrelevant prose were any indicator, you would already have won. But lets see what happens on the field. :chitown:
Well, he is spot on, and he succeeded in making you look stupid. But I must admit that you usually do that on your own anyway. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by sabang