Two things died today, 2/24/22

[Fenris]

Here's a good article on how to hit back at Putin...

He's right. But I don't know if the west has the stomach for it. I hope I'm wrong.

[RandyPNW]

I'm kind of a follower of Tucker Carlson. But  on the issue of our involvement overseas in foreign wars, I'm more hawkish than him. He's been stating that Ukraine is important to certain elitists, eg Biden, but not to most avg. Americans.

I used to like Tucker, but he's been wrong on so much lately. He is unfortunately 100% wrong on the Ukraine. They're a sovereign nation being invaded by an expansionist neighbor. If we're suddenly going to say that it's permissible because it's a "quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing" (Neville Chamberlin, 1938, referring to Germany and Czeckeslovakia) then all of a sudden it's going to be permissible in a lot of other places.

Yes absolutely, that's where I'm coming from. Tucker is a bit of an isolationist, and I follow the rule, "Be your brother's keeper." If I care what happens to Jewish Israel in a sea of hostile Muslim Arabs, then I must care about everywhere in the world.

The principle is one of social justice. If we don't care about social justice in Ukraine, then why should others care about social justice where I live?

I reject the notion that NATO has pushed Putin too far. Here's where my prophetic views take hold, which could be totally wrong. I think  the Prophet Daniel anticipated all this.

He saw 4 great powers leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Daniel envisioned a Roman Empire with two great legs, East and West. This current battle between Putin and the rest of Europe is between these two great traditions, which is roughly separated between the Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions.

I personally think the only way the world will resolve this is by uniting East and West in one great European power. I could be wrong, but presently, I think this is where it's going. It's certainly not going that way now, but how else can it be resolved?

I'm not even saying I want this, or that this is the right thing to do. I just think it is prophesied to happen, that this 4th great power  will be resurrected in the endtimes to persecute and attack people who love God's Law, both Christian and Jew. We'll see...

I'm just throwing out some very theoretical speculation. My main concern is that Europe not give Putin the green light to destroy any country he thinks he owns.

I think Germany has tried to build a bridge to Russia, and now that pipeline is being threatened by a military imbalance between Russia and NATO. This has pushed Russia towards China.

I think Russia would more naturally gravitate towards Europe. But in being pushed towards China, Russia is embracing a country that sees size as the most important factor in governing the world. And that's hardly social justice. It is only the Law of God that protects the individual against being bullied by the State.

[Slug1]

I wonder if a Ukraine that hadn't demilitarised/denuclearized would have given the Soviets pause to reconsider.

Zelenskyy is trying to arm the citizens again... too late.

[Athanasius]

Zelenskyy is trying to arm the citizens again... too late.

I think so, I hope not, but we'll see. As Fenris said, Ukraine's sovereignty was meant to be guaranteed by demilitarising, but given the US has a senile President, and Russia is led by an actually insane megalomaniac, what use have those assurances been? Besides, Putin threatened outright nuclear war, and is that a bluff you want to call when your military has been discussing gender identity and pronouns for the last few years?

Welcome back to the real world. Russia is no Iraq or Afghanistan.

Tucker can also dig himself a ditch on this one, and if he feels lonely he can invite Putin to join him. Russia has been expanding into Ukraine since 2014, and it will expand into the whole of Ukraine this year unless something miraculous happens (another Russian revolution; actual boots on the ground in support of Ukraine; Ukraine unleashes One Punch Man). The West is ideologically weak, Putin knows it, and is capitalising on our decline. Europe, as always, shines pretty lights at things in moral support. Germany, once again, doing its best to support the most insane man it can find.

Drip, drip, goes the oil pipeline.

[Fenris]

I think so, I hope not, but we'll see. As Fenris said, Ukraine's sovereignty was meant to be guaranteed by demilitarising, but given the US has a senile President, and Russia is led by an actually insane megalomaniac, what use have those assurances been? Besides, Putin threatened outright nuclear war, and is that a bluff you want to call when your military has been discussing gender identity and pronouns for the last few years?

Welcome back to the real world. Russia is no Iraq or Afghanistan.

Tucker can also dig himself a ditch on this one, and if he feels lonely he can invite Putin to join him. Russia has been expanding into Ukraine since 2014, and it will expand into the whole of Ukraine this year unless something miraculous happens (another Russian revolution; actual boots on the ground in support of Ukraine; Ukraine unleashes One Punch Man). The West is ideologically weak, Putin knows it, and is capitalising on our decline. Europe, as always, shines pretty lights at things in moral support. Germany, once again, doing its best to support the most insane man it can find.

Drip, drip, goes the oil pipeline.

100% this.

[Fenris]

I think Germany has tried to build a bridge to Russia, and now that pipeline is being threatened by a military imbalance between Russia and NATO. This has pushed Russia towards China.

I think Russia would more naturally gravitate towards Europe. But in being pushed towards China, Russia is embracing a country that sees size as the most important factor in governing the world.

Russia is not a free country. It's ruled by one man, who uses the country's budget as his own personal slush fund. Nothing has "pushed" Russia towards China. Putin is a dictator and so he sides with other dictators, like Iran and China. No amount of outreach, hugs and kisses, or whining and complaining is going to change that. The only thing that Putin understands is force.

[Fenris]

Worth a read on the topic-

A Pre-Modern War Demands Pre-Modern Thinking

by Noah Rothman

We are witnessing something that just should not be. In Europe, a nationalist autocrat has launched a war of naked aggression.

Vladimir Putin has not invaded Ukraine to secure its natural resources or to win Russia a better seat at the global negotiating table. He did not commit the Russian military to regime change in Ukraine because a complex web of alliances forced him to, nor did he make a thoughtful realist consideration involving the balance of power in his region. Putin is waging a war of conquest and territorial expansion to satisfy national ambition and prestige. He is prepared to subsume a whole people into a social covenant they do not accept. Moreover, if Putin’s desire to see to the “denazification” of Ukraine (a country so committed to Nazism that its elected president is Jewish) is any indication, he is prepared to liquidate those who resist. This just isn’t supposed to happen anymore. But it is.

In this one brazen display of hard power, all the diplomatic pieties of the modern world are dissolving like the gauzy fantasies they always were. Only a dedicated commitment to ignoring the evidence of one’s own eyes could lead observers to avoid concluding that the trappings of internationalism are a feeble veneer.

Take, for example, the United Nations. At the level of the General Assembly, the glittering talk-shop on Turtle Bay has been a lost cause for some time. Yet some critics of the institution still reserved judgment on the Security Council. Its five permanent members, whose status is a spoil of World War II and is therefore predicated on each state’s capacity to project force, were capable of maintaining the post-War order. That is, as long as that order was typified by a predictable power balance. It survived the end of the Cold War, when bipolarity was replaced with unipolarity, because both conditions lent themselves to predictability. But an emerging dynamic that involves a variety of poles engaged in great power competition has scuttled that bargain.


The world is now treated to the spectacle of Russia, the current rotating president of the Security Council, presiding over an emergency meeting in response to its own aggression. Who can still defend the value of such a useless institution?

What about non-treaty obligations and commitments to the supposed “norms” that govern the international order? Those have been on life support for years, and Russia has effectively pulled the plug. The United States and Russia are parties to an unratified 1994 treaty guaranteeing “the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine,” so long as Ukraine surrendered the nuclear stockpile it inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine lived up to its end of the bargain, but Russia and America did not.

Is it any wonder then that the Ukrainians lament their failure to develop a nuclear deterrent? A nuclear umbrella is quite clearly the chief guarantor of security. You can bet that Ukraine isn’t the only nation living in the shadow of an aggressive neighbor that is coming to that same conclusion. What imperiled nation would allow itself to be negotiated out of its commitment to its own survival?

Pity the institutionalists who banked on a future dominated by geostrategic cooperation over luxury crises like climate change, arms control, corruption, and economic development. Statements like those made by Joe Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, expressing his “hope that President Putin will help us stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate” are laughably naïve. All of this was predicated on the fantasy that there is such a thing as “international law.” Raw, hard power was always the chief arbiter of events in the anarchic—that is to say, lawless—international environment.

The law is dispassionate. It is applied neutrally, and it is enforced by a constabulary empowered to preserve comity by virtue of a political consensus on its legitimacy. In the global environment, there is no consensus, no neutrality, and no constabulary. There is only force. “I thought we lived in a world that had said no to that kind of activity,” Kerry has lamented without acknowledging his terrible misapprehension.


We have not been thrust into a new world today because of Russia’s act of unprovoked violence. We’ve merely been reintroduced to the world as it always was. For decades, global peace was preserved by an international security architecture we all take for granted. That enterprise was underwritten by the preponderance of American military might, not some illusory matrix of diplomatic niceties, international agreements, and bureaucratic red tape.

If there’s any silver lining to be found in this horror show, it is that perhaps the West will wake up and recognize the delusions it has labored under for generations. A Western world resolved to check the threat posed by revisionist actors with overwhelming force—one that doesn’t put its faith in modern contrivances to do the work of compelling aggressors to abandon their perfectly rational ambitions—might emerge from this crisis with a more durable conception of how to preserve the peace. Maybe, but I doubt it.

[Athanasius]

That's the harsh reality: those who are bad force those who are good to act in ways they'd rather not but must.

Russia's "GDP" has been Putin's personal bank account for how long, now? They've been preparing for sanctions since 2014. They haven't been preparing for military intervention, or heck, an internal coup (and this one is on Russians to enact, which they should). You can't talk to someone who communicates with their fists.

[RandyPNW]

I think Germany has tried to build a bridge to Russia, and now that pipeline is being threatened by a military imbalance between Russia and NATO. This has pushed Russia towards China.

I think Russia would more naturally gravitate towards Europe. But in being pushed towards China, Russia is embracing a country that sees size as the most important factor in governing the world.

Russia is not a free country. It's ruled by one man, who uses the country's budget as his own personal slush fund. Nothing has "pushed" Russia towards China. Putin is a dictator and so he sides with other dictators, like Iran and China. No amount of outreach, hugs and kisses, or whining and complaining is going to change that. The only thing that Putin understands is force.

Putin is indeed a horrible man--an Antichrist figure, in my book. However, I'm treating Russia as a people, and not just the Dictator over those people. People do bear responsibility for subscribing to the evil Communist system, and also electing an evil man as leader. But people are manipulated, and not fully cognizant of what they're being led to do by their political leaders and by their media.

My own country, the U.S., is going down the same path. But I'm hardly going to sell out my country simply because we have a media that is supporting a socialist-leaning Democrat Party! I would condemn Biden and the Left, and not the whole country who have been manipulated by them and elected him.

So I agree with Tucker to some degree. Why is Russia our enemy?--Putin is our enemy. Communism is our enemy. If we're going to buy their oil we need to at least respect them as a people!

I don't fault Germany for seeking Russian oil and energy. And I don't fault them for wanting to get rid of nuclear reactors. Here in WA State we have a couple of moth-balled nuclear reactors, as well, reminding us of things like 3 Mile Island, and the tsunami-inspired disaster in Japan in 2011.

I do think Climate Change is subterfuge, although it does touch a chord in all of us who love the earth. Superficial causes are one means by which a government and political party can claim they are bringing positive benefits to the people and so win re-election. Yes, Biden might even try to claim he "defeated coronavirus" and provides the country with "sunny days" and "plenteous rainfall." Supported by the Left-leaning Media, Biden might be able to sell the American People on the idea that it is his climate-change initiatives that are helping to end fires and various disasters, though nothing would be farther from the truth.

For some reason NATO has still been directed at Russia and targeting that country, when the Warsaw Pact no longer exits as such. And this does in fact coerce Russia to look eastward to China, in my opinion.

And so, I would agree with Tucker that this "hate Russia" rhetoric is hurting foreign policy in the U.S. It appears to be a capitalist scam by the military-industrial complex, who thrives, financially, on supporting "democratic causes." Really, it's not so much a "scam" as selfish people pursuing their own financial interests and paying no attention to the long-range consequences for our country.

But it's over my head--I'm listening to all sides.

[Fenris]

Putin is indeed a horrible man--an Antichrist figure, in my book. However, I'm treating Russia as a people, and not just the Dictator over those people.

Nope. This is completely wrong. The people in Russia have no say so in what Putin does. This is the same as putting the Iranian people (who are pro democracy, pro west, and perhaps even pro Israel) in the same basket as their genocidal lunatics who run the country.

So I agree with Tucker to some degree. Why is Russia our enemy?--Putin is our enemy.

Russia is Putin's toy. It does as he demands. Tucker is either being deliberately provocative (for rating, perhaps?) or morally obtuse.

For some reason NATO has still been directed at Russia and targeting that country, when the Warsaw Pact no longer exits as such. And this does in fact coerce Russia to look eastward to China, in my opinion.

If Putin wasn't acting like a dictator, there'd be no need for NATO to surround him. So here we are. 

[Athanasius]

So I agree with Tucker to some degree. Why is Russia our enemy?--Putin is our enemy. Communism is our enemy. If we're going to buy their oil we need to at least respect them as a people!

Unfortunately, one must fight Russians to fight Putin.

As you know, no one with a brain wants to go to war and kill someone else (and anyone who does needs to watch a few of those videos that are Reddit; nothing like the sobering reality of watching a Russian, frozen in terror, get smoked by small arms fire), but war is game theory at its most brutal and the horrible reality is that you can't risk not shooting first. Why doesn't the Russian military refuse? They believe in the cause, they need the pay, or they're just following orders.

So, yeah, Putin is the bad guy. Communism is a wretched political philosophy, and the people will fight because Putin tells them to, to defend their country, and whatever else. A lot of Russians don't want war, but we can't pretend that no Russians other than Putin want this. There are plenty of soldiers that don't have a brain and love what war gives them.

[Fenris]

LOL and now even Tucker is backpedaling after initially defending Putin.

“Vladimir Putin started this war,” he said. “He is to blame tonight for what we’re seeing tonight in the Ukraine.”

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-02-24/ukraine-russia-vladimir-putin-tucker-carlson-laura-ingraham-fox-news

[RandyPNW]

LOL and now even Tucker is backpedaling after initially defending Putin.

“Vladimir Putin started this war,” he said. “He is to blame tonight for what we’re seeing tonight in the Ukraine.”

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-02-24/ukraine-russia-vladimir-putin-tucker-carlson-laura-ingraham-fox-news

Yes, I did notice Tucker is backpedaling. I've been, for some time, informing my wife that Tucker is too far out in left field--I usually agree with him. So don't think I was agreeing with his isolationist views--I was doing just the opposite.

But I do agree with him that we were treating Russia as an enemy during the Russian Hoax, which was ill-fated due to the Russian Hoax itself being a lie. But I don't really want to be seen as justifying Putin's war in any way.

In fact, I'm just the opposite--I've been very hostile to Putin and his intentions from the very start. And I never thought Biden presented serious sanctions from the start, or gave any sense of strength in challenging Putin.

And I'm doubly mad that Putin presents a threat to Finland and Sweden, since my grandparents were Finns who spoke Swedish. I hope Putin comes to a quick demise.

[Athanasius]

And I'm doubly mad that Putin presents a threat to Finland and Sweden, since my grandparents were Finns who spoke Swedish. I hope Putin comes to a quick demise.

Let him, then use that as an excuse to take Karelia and Kola.

[RandyPNW]

And I'm doubly mad that Putin presents a threat to Finland and Sweden, since my grandparents were Finns who spoke Swedish. I hope Putin comes to a quick demise.

Let him, then use that as an excuse to take Karelia and Kola.

I'm against anybody taking anything that belongs to an independent or autonomous region. The only justification for taking action on another's sovereign territory is a threat to the national survival in matters of defense, health, and economic viability.

That's why nations are best divided by geographical features that provide clear defensible boundaries, large enough to provide the natural resources necessary to sustain a large group of related people.

Manifest Destiny is in league with developing countries in parts of the world that are still being pioneered, and does not necessarily have to do with adventurism. Since developing nations can include a number of diverse peoples, problems may develop but can be overcome.

Empire-building is the danger in our age. When alliances between great and powerful countries begin to form, watch out. When ethnic groups form alliances outside of their own countries, watch out. But I do believe realities in the world require a "balance of powers."