Monday, February 28, 2022

Rehabilitating Bandera

If Blackface Trudeau hears about this, he'll declare another 'emergency'. Just think of the hypocrisy in making such a big deal of the one red and black flag seen for a moment in Ottawa.

"Behind the push to freeze Moscow’s foreign cash" (Ling).  Guess who?

"Ukraine makes strange bedfellows" (Bhadrakumar).  It may not seem like it, but Russia's friends are still most of the world.

"Day 4 of the Russian offensive in the Ukraine" (The Saker).

"The American Response to Ukraine Situation is Baffling" (revolver).

"Many point out hypocrisy of media on nobility of Ukrainian resistance and illegitimacy of Palestinian resistance" (Weiss).  "Russia, Ukraine, Israel and the limits of BDS" (Ofir).  Israel, while all the boycotting of Russia is going on.
at 2/28/2022 02:19:00 PM View Comments

Yats is the guy

This is a bit of a surprise; 

''Explained: Why Saudi Arabia is siding with Russia and refusing to hike oil output". 

"Briefly in Ukraine" (Colonel Cassad via Niqnaq). 

"Yats is the guy", as Nuland famously said:  "Putin threatening Ukraine with 'final solution' in desperate attempt to secure victory" (Bosotti).  The (((media))) is publishing the most deranged things.

at 2/28/2022 12:02:00 PM View Comments

A field of global resistance

The 'geniuses' who are our politicians have already wrecked the world economy due to stupid COVID policies, but they can always make it worse:  "Disarming Ukraine - Day 5 | Money War On Russia - Day 1" (Moon of Alabama).

Germany has done extraordinarily well for itself over decades by cynically manipulating everybody to maximize gains for its bankers and, to a lesser extent, for its people.  Scholz threw it all out the window, and doesn't even seem to be aware of what he did. I think if Putin made an error, it was greatly overestimating the intelligence of German leadership.  He expected Merkel, and got clowns.

Can Germany deputize Merkel as a diplomat and send her to Moscow to work things out?

"US, Germany Continue To Allow Gas Transactions With Russia Despite SWIFT Ban" (Durden).

Note the wonderful conspiracy theory that Gazprom funded the Greens to get rid of nuclear in Germany!:

"From Russian Pipelines With Love" (Stoller):

"Russia exports about 4-5 million barrels of oil a day, and the price of Brent crude has gone up to $100 from about $80 at the beginning of the year. That means an additional $100 million a day of revenue for Russia, purely on the back of geopolitical tensions it created. These are back of the hand calculations, so they aren’t precise, but the reality is that in the last two months, Russia has financed part of its build-up and invasion by selling oil and natural gas at elevated prices, much of it to Western European countries now decrying what Russia is doing. In other words, despite the war of words, in the invasion of Ukraine, as former arms negotiator Lucas Kunce noted, Western Europe has provided some of the financing for the Russian attack."

It's fun to look for neo-Nazi flags at pro-Ukraine demonstrations (don't tell Blackface Trudeau when you find them, or he'd have to crawl under his desk again):

The completely normal country of Ukraine:  "Ukrainian Women in Womb Rental Industry Facing Unique Challenges after Russian Invasion" (Nobre). 

Dugin's clash of civilization and anti-civilization: "Alexander Dugin: ‘Why a War Will be Good for Russia’".  I don't know where this came from:
at 2/28/2022 10:07:00 AM View Comments

Long lost territories

I don't completely blame the Ukrainians - they are in an impossible situation and don't want people to just quit due to hopelessness - for doing this, but I definitely blame the (((media))) for retyping all of it, even the most ridiculous stories, without question. 

"A chance for Poland to regain its long lost territories?" (Milacic).  Polish 'peacekeepers', scouting the land they intend to take.

So when is she turning herself in to The Hague?: 

Some Ukrainian mayors have wisely tried to negotiate with the Russians to spare their cities, which isn't going over well with Ukrainian officials: 

The Ukrainian army kills its last civilians in eastern Ukraine, for old time's sake: It seems that it wasn't just Ze musing about nukes that got the Russians worried:

Literally trillions lost in supporting Israel, and this is the thanks the Americans get: 

"Ukraine Conflict Update 10"  (ISW).

'''Ukraine “War” – the Level of Disinformation Is Making Me Sick. Is There Even a War? (Anglin).  There is a lot of filtering going on:

The plans of the centers of American financial power:  "America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century: The MIC, BARE and OGAM Conquer NATO" (Hudson). 

I can't see sending jets to Ukraine as anything other than a direct act of war by NATO: "The Russian Way of War" (Doctorow).

Ze performed as expected:
at 2/28/2022 08:58:00 AM View Comments

Does victory go to the SWIFT?

"A Very Preliminary Look at the Partial Suspension of Russia’s Access to SWIFT" (Smith): 

"Commentators contend that one aim in freezing Russia’s central bank out of SWIFT is to make it unable to use its dollar reserves to defend Russia’s currency. Related to that, one way for Russia’s central bank to provide dollars to Russian banks who might need them to settle at the end of the trading day would be to swap roubles for dollars or need dollars to pay off net short term dollar debt exposures if they can’t roll the debt.

Yet the press reports all state that the West intends to have carveouts so that Western concerns can still buy oil and gas from Russia.

I don’t understand why Russia should go along with this. If I understand the economic proposition here, the West wants Russia to continue to take dollars for energy…which it won’t let it spend. Why not just give Russia a bag of feathers for its valuable oil? They’d be just as useful."

and:

"But let’s go back to the point made early on: why should Russia sell its very valuable oil and take dollars when the West won’t let most/all of Russia use dollars for much of anything (at least if we are to believe the press)?

The simplest play would be for Russia to refuse to sell energy under these terms. You either trade with us or you don’t. Embargoes on sensitive items are understandable, but not de facto shutdowns with only the stuff you really need to buy carved out.

Another route is to default:

:

It also led to the sale of Bankers Trust to Deutsche. Bankers Trust owned a lot of Russian debt.

Without going into details, despite Russia being in a lot of trouble domestically, it had adequate FX reserves, so the default caught the market by surprise. And as the writeup in Wikipedia suggests, Russia pulled out of that crisis quickly due to high oil prices back then. So as much as the 1998 experience may have scared citizens about trusting banks (hence the stories of large scale withdrawals sound credible), from the official perspective, the results weren’t too bad and in these circumstances, a rinse and repeat might be in order." 

The only reason to keep the gas flowing west was to keep Europe relatively sane.  Since the Euro-trash have gone full batshit American Empire, I don't know why Russia doesn't cut them off completely.  China will soon take up all the hydrocarbons Russia can extract. The Russian dream of a German-Russian-Chinese axis is impossible due to utter lack of leadership in Europe - the Euro-trash are bribed, blackmailed, very, very stupid, and all-in on the Schwab cult - so it will just be better to fully pivot to China.

at 2/28/2022 07:01:00 AM View Comments

Fringe, traitorous position

It appears the Russians have surrounded - 'kettled' - Ukrainian Army troops in eastern Ukraine: 

A big thread of maps:

"Putin’s Nuclear Threat" (Ritter):
". . . the reasoning behind Putin’s nuclear muscle-flexing. “[W]e have held consultations under Article 4 of the Washington Treaty,” the statement noted. “We have decided, in line with our defensive planning to protect all Allies, to take additional steps to further strengthen deterrence and defense across the Alliance.”

Under Article 4, members can bring any issue of concern, especially related to the security of a member country, to the table for discussion within the North Atlantic Council. NATO members Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland triggered the Article 4 consultation following the Russian incursion into Ukraine. In a statement issued on Friday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expanded on the initial NATO statement, declaring that NATO was committed to protecting and defending all its allies, including Ukraine.

Three things about this statement stood out. First, by invoking Article IV, NATO was positioning itself for potential offensive military action; its previous military interventions against Serbia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2004, and Libya in 2011, were all done under Article IV of the NATO Charter. Seen in this light, the premise that NATO is an exclusively defensive organization, committed to the promise of collective self-defense, is baseless.

Second, while Article V (collective defense) protections only extend to actual NATO members, which Ukraine is not, Article IV allows the umbrella of NATO protection to be extended to those non-NATO members whom the alliance views as an ally, a category Stoltenberg clearly placed Ukraine in.

Finally, Stoltenberg’s anointing of Ukraine as a NATO ally came at the same time he announced the activation and deployment of NATO’s 40,000-strong Response Force, some of which would be deployed to NATO’s eastern flank, abutting Ukraine. The activation of the Response Force is unprecedented in the history of NATO, a fact that underscores the seriousness to which a nation like Russia might attach to the action.
When seen in this light, Putin’s comments last Thursday were measured, sane, and responsible."

 "Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span - economy minister".

"Cuba Takes Position on Ukraine Conflict: “Russia Has the Right to Defend Itself”".  Mockingly tracking the standard American statement when Israel commits some atrocity. 

"The West Could Have Prevented The Russo-Ukrainian War, But Chose Not To" (Davidson):

"What’s more, the West’s encouragement of Ukraine did not match up with the West’s policies toward Moscow. You don’t tacitly commit to defending Ukraine from Russia while simultaneously making your nation energy dependent on Russia, as Germany and other European powers have done over the past decade, or flood your financial sector with billions from Russian oligarchs, as London has done.

The Biden administration not only encouraged European energy dependence on Russia (by waiving sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline last May) but substantially contributed to it by reversing the Trump administration’s achievement of U.S. energy independence. As my colleague Tristan Justice explains, President Biden’s energy policies have taken away the ability of the U.S. and its allies to sanction Russian oil exports, a key source of the Kremlin’s wealth:
“From Russia, the United States still imports nearly 600,000 barrels of oil every day. In contrast, the Keystone XL Pipeline Biden shut down was supposed to transport 830,000 barrels at peak capacity. Biden didn’t sanction the Russian energy sector, because he couldn’t have. Trump could have, and probably would have.”
All of this adds up to an historic failure by the West. For many years, the U.S. and its NATO allies knew that revisionist powers like Russia and China were unhappy with the post-Cold War international order, determined to revise it according to their strategic ambitions. It was up to the West, and especially the United States, to ensure that those attempts at revision did not take the form of all-out war, either on the European continent or in Asia.

Already, though, we see Beijing extending a hand to Moscow, calling for negotiations that could at this point only end with Russia achieving its strategic aims in Ukraine.

Simply put, the West has not done what is necessary to preserve the U.S.-led international order, and now that order is unraveling in real time."

"With Russian invasion comes new world order" (Kaiser): 

"Vladimir Putin has rejected the “unipolar” system of U.S. power from the beginning, and in Georgia, Crimea, and now all Ukraine, he has unilaterally used force to impose a preferred outcome himself. The United States and NATO are not challenging the Ukraine invasion militarily, but they want to compel Russia to give it up, it seems, with tough economic sanctions.   In effect, they are gambling that in the age of globalization, their control of international economic and financial institutions — combined, perhaps, with determined Ukrainian resistance — will make it impossible for an aggressor nation to defy their will.  

If that tactic succeeds it will vindicate the U.S. belief that it can work its will around the world on behalf of certain principles of law and self-determination.  If it does not, we will face two large rival powers — Russia and China — who explicitly reject many of our principles and our leadership and who may at any time use military force to achieve local goals of their own. If Putin does establish control over Ukraine the Baltic States will be the next logical target, while the Chinese threat to Taiwan will become more acute. 

What the United States can do, if economic power has failed, will depend upon local military realities. The Baltic States cannot easily be interdicted by the Russians are small enough to make NATO defense possible.  Taiwan, on the other hand, is now very vulnerable to a Chinese attack and the U.S. might suffer disastrous naval losses trying to stop one.  Meanwhile, the possibility of new great-power conflict will carry with it the possibility of a nuclear exchange.

There is nothing wrong with the principles of international law, respect for frontiers, and respect for the rights of peoples to choose their form of government for which the United States stands — even though the United States itself has violated those principles for various reasons at various times.  The world that Wilson and FDR dreamed of, in which all nations accepted these principles, would be a better one. Yet it is not clear that in a world of three great military powers, one of those powers can force the others to observe them. That is the issue that is now at stake in this crisis, and if Putin does seize Ukraine, we will have to face a new world of superpower competition and continual threats of local limited war."

at 2/28/2022 05:20:00 AM View Comments

Sunday, February 27, 2022

According to two people familiar his words

Ha!: "Putin humiliated as troops down weapons in massive collapse of Russian morale" (Varga). 

More PR:

"according to two people familiar his words":

The Ukrainians are saying the Chechen leader has already been killed, and his column of 56 tanks destroyed!:

"PSL Statement on Russia’s Military Intervention in Ukraine". 

"Quick interlude with a few quick comments" (The Saker).

"Russia-Ukraine Coverage Update: What Western Mass Media Downplays" (Averko). 

"Russian ex-official: Putin’s plan is full victory by March 2".

at 2/27/2022 04:41:00 PM View Comments

Neocon nirvana

"The Situation in the Ukraine: Predictions vs. Reality" (Orlov):

"Russia had the full legal right to invade the Ukraine from several perspectives: to defend its allies in Donetsk and Lugansk; to defend itself against Ukrainian WMDs, which the Ukrainian president threatened to start producing at the Munich Security Conference; and to stop NATO from continuing its advance toward Russian borders in violation of its previous commitment of “not an inch to the east.” Russia exercised its right of self-defense under article 51 of part 7 of the UN Charter. The Ukraine had forfeited its right to territorial integrity under the 1970 UN Declaration by refusing to honor the rights of its Russian-speaking population. It also refused to renew its Friendship Treaty with Russia and therefore no longer had a defined border with Russia that Russia was obligated to honor.

From a strictly legalistic perspective, claims that “Russia violated the Ukraine’s territorial integrity” or that this is “an act of Russian aggression” is just pure twaddle. From a moral perspective, the fact that the entire international community idly stood by and ineffectually discussed politics for eight years during which the civilian population of Donetsk and Lugansk was continuously shelled by the Ukrainian “anti-terrorist operation” is utterly shameful.

People who are now speaking out against Russia’s military action in the Ukraine need to answer a simple question: Where have you been for the last eight years while the carnage in Donetsk and Lugansk was going on, while people were being burned alive in Odessa, while the Ukrainian government organized terrorist operations on Russian territory and while the entire Ukrainian population has been forced to kowtow to Americans and to speak Ukrainian, most often against its will? If your answer is “I didn’t know” then you have forfeited your right to an informed opinion on what’s happening there now."

and (my emphasis in red):

"Do I care to make some more predictions about the Ukraine? Sure, why not!

1. Donetsk and Lugansk regions will continue on their path of closer and closer integration into the Russian Federation. They are already part of the Russian currency space, their educational systems are integrated with Russia’s (same standards and procedures), their defense systems are fully integrated and diplomatically they act as a well-synchronized unit.

2. An area further west, probably encompassing the entire basin of Dnieper River and the Black Sea littoral, from the Belorussian to the Romanian border, will be part of a Russian zone. The regions within this zone will be given political autonomy within a general security and economic framework linked to Russia. The rough outlines of this area can be determined from the following language map. The areas in red and orange—is Russian-speaking and is naturally part of the Russian zone. The only two exceptions will be a Carpatho-Russian enclave (in purple) which will need to be administered separately and a Hungarian enclave (in green) that might as well be absorbed into Hungary.

3. Further west will lie a zone that will be wrapped in fancy paper with ribbons and bows and presented as an extra-special present to the EU to love to cherish and to suffer migraines and aneurisms over. Roughly speaking, the yellow area is Ukrainian-speaking and is an all-you-can-eat (please don’t choke) buffet for the West. It has relatively poor soil and high incidence of iodine deficiency and imbecility in the general population. It is also where Ukrainian nationalism comes from and where the current Ukrainian Nazi plague originated. The Russian stance should be (if I may be so bold as to recommend what the Russian government should do) along the lines of “If you like your Ukrainian Nazis, you can have your Ukrainian Nazis.”" 

It is unlikely that Putin is unhappy with current progress - he is, however, furious with and disappointed in the infantile Europeans - and, even if he were, he would hardly fire his military head in the middle of a short war!: 

One thing we've learned from all the lying - never trust a Ukrainian, on any subject, ever. "War Propaganda About Ukraine Becoming More Militaristic, Authoritarian, and Reckless" (Greenwald).

"The European Commission President Announces in Effect That EU Is Joining the War Against Russia" (Roberts).  Von der Leyen.  Paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson on Nixon, she's so crooked she has to screw her pantsuits on.  So that's how they control her.

at 2/27/2022 03:37:00 PM View Comments

A dumb bunch driven by unquenchable demons

You can start to get a good idea of why I call them 'trash':  "Luongo: EU Sanctions On Russia Equal "Suicide By Cop"".

"U.S./NATO Is in the Grip of a Daemonic Death-Wish and the Entire World Is Threatened" (Curtin).

Politics is so embarrassing nobody of any substance wants anything to do with it:

From 2000, on an important part of the 'dumb bunch' (and we're learning more and more about his role in creating Russiagate)" "Biden’s Young Hawk: The Case Against Jake Sullivan" (Sjursen).

I used to follow Taleb, because he was supposed to be the smartest guy around, but his tweets are so mediocre, and he has such a giant chip on his shoulder, that I had to unfollow: 

"'Question All Of It' - The Current Western Propaganda For Ukraine Is Epic In Scale" ('Sundance'). 

The fact that Ukrainians at the Polish border are pushing all non-whites to the permanent back of the line kinda takes the sheen off the sympathy we're supposed to feel for the brave people of Ukraine. 

Yeah, sure, make the Chechens angry, what could possibly go wrong?: 

The Russians are not Americans.  This is good analysis:  "What Russia Wants From Its Invasion of Ukraine—and Why Zelensky Is Evil" (Coach Red Pill).  The part of Ze - 'frankly evil' - arming civilians to create atrocities for PR is exactly right.  Note also the refugees being created because men don't want to be shanghaied.

at 2/27/2022 02:33:00 PM View Comments

Separation

It seems doubtful that this will happen, unless Ze is afraid others will negotiate around him.  In any event, the combination of the neo-Nazis and State Department makes Ze, like the US itself, not agreement-capable:

Germans should be missing Merkel, a lot:  "Germany to ramp up military spending in major policy shift".  The clown (and trampoline) college graduates who now run Germany can't get anything right.  I assume this is seen as a bribe to the Americans to allow Germany to continue to buy energy.  For background, see:  "Trump directly scolds NATO allies, says they owe 'massive' sums" (Emmott/Holland).

A cheerier, more cynical, view:  "German military on the rebound" (Bhadrakumar).  The country will be poorer, but the generals will be able to play at war.

Colonel Cassad machine translations via Niqnaq.  "Ukraine Conflict Update 9" (ISW).

"Indian students stranded in Ukraine 'beaten up' at Poland border" (Raghunath).

Ze's vast larping picture collection will allow him to stay bravely in Kiev, forever:

A lot of places are going to be scrambling now that Russian wheat is off the market:  "As Ukraine crisis deepens, China lifts all wheat-import restrictions on Russia" (Tang). 

"Hedges: Chronicle of a War Foretold". 

"Immune to Irony: Nazi Collaborators and Authoritarian Personalities Denounce Russia" (Ehret).  Midgets on the world stage.

"The ‘Constructive Destruction’ of Russia’s Model of Relations with the West" (Crooke):

"They – the Russia-China Axis – want separation. This is to come about either through dialogue, (which is unlikely, since the core principle of today’s geo-politics is defined by the deliberate non-comprehending of ‘otherness’), or it must be achieved by a contest of escalating pain (defined in terms of red lines) until one side, or the other, buckles. Of course, Washington does not believe Presidents’ Xi and Putin possibly can mean what they say – and they believe that, anyway, the West has escalatory dominance in the field of imposing pain.

Less diplomatically put, Russia and China have concluded that sharing a global society with an America set on enforcing a hegemonic global order crafted to ‘resemble Arizona’ is no longer possible. Putin means what he says: Russia’s back is to the wall, and there is nowhere to which Russia can now retreat — for them it is existential.

The West’s denial that Putin ‘means it’ (thus ensuring the consequent failure of diplomacy) suggests that this crisis will be with us for at least the next two years. It is the start a drawn-out, high-stakes phase of a Russian-led effort to change the European security architecture into a new form, which the West presently rejects. The Russian aim will be to keep the pressures – and even the latency of war ever-present – in order to harass war-averse Western leaders to make the necessary shift.

Ultimately – after a painful struggle – Europe will seek reconciliation. America will be slower: the Beltway hawks will try to double-down. And it will be the western economic and market situation that may ultimately determine the ‘when’."
at 2/27/2022 09:46:00 AM View Comments

An alternative resolution

This is the kind of thing I would have expected by now.  The 'government' is fully in the hands of neo-Nazis and the US State Department, which is blocking any sane resolution of the conflict for Nazi/neocon reasons.  You would expect other power structures to rise up to fill the void:

at 2/27/2022 08:06:00 AM View Comments

The drunk fell off the tightrope

The show is over, the drunk fell off the tightrope:  "EU, UK, Canada, US pledge to remove selected Russian banks from interbank messaging system SWIFT" (Macias).  I have to assume there is enough wiggle room, in or outside of SWIFT, that the Euro-trash can still pay Russia for energy, but this is still a stunning example of government incompetence.  You have to wonder if the Russians weren't secretly hoping for this, as a long-term strategy to end the US dollar's status as reserve currency.  Never lose sight of the utter incompetence of the Brandon Administration.  "Fearing crypto and China, the US hesitates to pull Russia’s SWIFT access" (Chitkara).

A thread:

"A Look Back–How Long Did it Take the Nazis to Capture Ukraine?" (Johnson). 

The Russians could also shut down all the pipelines going to Ukraine (which would also cut off Europe, but maybe Europe needs a little reminder): 

The Americans are generally confused about this war as the Russians are going out of their way not to harm civilians, the exact opposite of how Americans fight wars. 

Maybe I'm being too hard on Ze, maybe the Americans are prohibiting him from negotiating to drag everything out as much as possible to hurt Russia's reputation as much as possible:

It seems that Russians are already entering Kiev:

Excellent thread on the killings by the neo-Nazis, America's newest heroes: 

Another thread of Ukrainian lies:

"The Battle for Kiev Is the Silliest War Yet, the Level of Disinformation Is Absurd" (Anglin). 

"One of the Winners from Mr. Putin's War: Lockheed" (Sailer).

"What You Should Really Know About Ukraine" (Greene).

See also:  "‘SNL’ Afghanistan invasion skit resurfaces as Taliban retake control" (Cost). 

at 2/27/2022 07:54:00 AM View Comments

Saturday, February 26, 2022

Bandera smoothies

"Russian military confirms seizure of Chernobyl nuclear power plant". 

Watching Germany is like watching drunk tightrope walker:  "Russia should not be cut off from SWIFT at the moment - Germany's Scholz".

"Did NATO Just Declare War on Russia?" (Whitney).

It is inevitable, and long overdue, that the full Nazi sartorial collection come back in fashion:

It is funny, but if you say you are the leader of Belarus, they laud you, but if you say you are the Queen of England, they put you in the nuthouse: 

at 2/26/2022 03:59:00 PM View Comments

Hemorrhaging consequences

As long as it is in full alignment with the goals of violent dictator Blackface Trudeau, protest by Canadians is allowed again!:  "UPDATE: About 200 gather outside Ottawa Russian embassy in first of two weekend protests".

It is odd that this is public knowledge:

Optics, but more importantly Russia intends to be friends again with Ukraine: We shouldn't be shocked when war causes 'journalists' to throw off the thin veil of objectivity:

Most of them are cowering in fear, wondering why their government is insane, but this is a Canadian 'journalist': 

It is like those countries that are impolite enough to place themselves amongst a big bunch of American military bases: 

"The Art Of Peace Requires Us To See The World Through The Eyes Of Our Enemies" (Lascaris).  It is worth remembering that had Ze given Russia an agreement not to join NATO and not to host weapons, neither of which would have had any effect on Ukrainians or their country, none of this would have happened.

"Anonymous claims responsibility for Russian government website outages" (Bonifacic).

I'm now reading that the dastardly  Russians have hit a children's hospital in Kiev, but, you know . . .:
I really believe this kind of thinking was behind the pundit shock when Putin invaded Ukraine:
at 2/26/2022 03:33:00 PM View Comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)