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Back in the 1980s, there was a vast Nuclear Freeze campaign in Western Europe and North America to not irritate Moscow. Interestingly, for many years, Wikipedia refused to host an article on this immense but memory-holed movement. I see from Web Archive that Wikipedia did not have an “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Freeze_campaign” listing until 2019.
The origin of the Nuclear Freeze was in an arcane but important Cold War dispute.
Moscow ruled a mighty empire, but it was inherently more fragile than the West, especially the expansive but relatively non-diverse United States. The Kremlin’s claim to rule a vast empire from Vladivostok to East Berlin rested on its foreign policy performance, such as winning World War II and being treated by the United States as a superpower.
But that required a foreign policy whose audacity made up for the Soviet Union’s lack of capacity.
Initially, both the US and Soviet Union had built short and then medium range nuclear missiles such as the Jupiters that the US installed in Turkey and the medium-range Soviet missiles installed in Cuba. But both sides developed long range intercontinental ballistic missiles that could devastate each other’s homelands from their own homelands.
In the late 1970s, however, the Soviets began deploying their SS20 intermediate-range missile that could only reach Western Europe rather than the United States. This was a curious development in that it was technologically backward in its capabilities, but that was its political point: the Soviets launching nuclear missiles that could only reach Western Europe might not set off WW3 but instead might merely initiate WW2.5.
If you were the President of the United States of America and the Soviet Union launched nuclear-armed missiles that, rather than threatening the US, could only reach Western Europe, would you launch American missiles from the Dakotas at Russia, thus inviting a Soviet counterstrike on the American mainland? After all, that’s what the US doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) demanded.
Or would you feel sorry for the poor Western Europeans but figure that a Western hemisphere without nuclear devastation was, now that you mention it, not all that bad?
But if the American President would not be willing to fight a nuclear war over Western Europe to deter the Soviets, what was the point of resisting the Soviets rather than negotiating a Finlandization? After all, Finland didn’t have it so bad …
So the 1979 decision by NATO to counter the Soviet medium-range missiles by installing their own medium-range missiles in Western Europe was intended to avert this logic by providing Western Europe with its own missiles.
In response, the Russians promoted a massive movement among its sympathizers in the West to “freeze” the West in a position of disadvantage relative to the Soviet initiative.
This was prestigious in the West during the early Reagan-Thatcher years, with colossal demonstrations in 1982 against NATO countering the Warsaw Pact’s initiative. But in 1983, France’s leftist President Mitterrand came over to the NATO side, and that year the right won crucial parliamentary elections in Italy, Great Britain, and, most importantly, West Germany.
Strikingly, Ronald Reagan (President from 1981-1989) was appalled when informed of the MAD doctrine. He tried to negotiate away nuclear weapons with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 but stuck on his Star Wars defensive system.
Less than a decade later, the Soviet Union broke apart, with the most disastrous defection that of Ukraine on August 24, 1991, following the collapse of the Communist hardliner’s coup against Gorbachev two days before.
Reagan and the Nuclear Freeze movement were on opposite sides … but their mutual revulsion at the idea of nuclear war shared a common, not unreasonable root.
Nuclear war is about the worst idea humanity has ever come up with.
Let’s not do it. It would be really stupid to have deftly side-stepped nuclear war during the Cold War only to stumble into it today when so much less is at stake.
The most likely possibility of nuclear war during the Cold War was that the Kremlin would begin to lose its grasp on its diverse empire and thus up the stakes.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
These days, however, nobody cares about the threat of nuclear war. Climate change is vastly more concerning. But still …
The massive, uncontrolled black/brown immigration into Europe and north America – something that the western powers-that-be are unanimous and iron willed in imposing – is infinitely more destructive than atomic weapons ever were or are likely to ever be.
The world's nuclear armories need to be dismantled, along with the world's GOF labs.Replies: @Nikolai Vladivostok
Supposedly they support mass immigration because it boosts a declining population. That could make some sense, even if it introduces potentially destructive diversity. But promoting policies that actually discourage native whites from wanting to have children makes no sense if you're trying to boost your population.
Some would say that teaching young girls that growing up to be mothers is an incredibly valuable and important thing amounts to "brainwashing." But it is no more "brainwashing" than telling them that they need to grow up and become programmers - even though they may have no real interest in programming; or telling them that it's totally cool if they want to pump their bodies with male hormones and cut off their boobs. Somehow that's totally reasonable.Replies: @al gore rhythms, @Dmon, @PhysicistDave
Honestly peeps, I'm cringing for Steve here. He aint gonna be taken seriously when his commenters line up to AGREE with the hot take that the sudden murder of hundreds of millions of (ahem, WHITE) people aint nearly as bad as immigration.
I get it through. You're sad or angry or scared so you are shouting. And you don't need to shout about nukes because others, with some actual power, are already doing that. So you hyperbole your point about immigration to give that idea some air.
I get it and I don't disagree.
But Steve actually has a teeny bit of power and it would suck if new readers thought his loyal followers were all soft in the head. So, for his sake, I am bravely stating that I, for one, would prefer not to be nuked.
Around the same huge numbers of American blacks moved to northern and mid western American industrial cities. Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, Oakland, Baltimore etc etc are just bywords for existential Hell.
Can’t argue with that. Whatever the Ukraine is it’s not worth glowing in the dark.
...and then kick yourself for getting ripped off.
They seem to have come a long way since then buf not long enough that I want the world's owners to risk my getting nuked over them.
Steve,
The US intermediate nuclear missile was the Pershing and Pershing II missile. Many missile engineers will tell one that the Pershing II was the best weapons system the U.S. never had to use. It was designed for accuracy and for ground penetration to take out deep bunkers in the Western Soviet Union. The program ended with the Intermediate nuclear force treaty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pershing_II
Sounds like a lot of the protests spun up over the US going mano-a-mano with the USSR via tactical nuclear weapons.Replies: @guest007
At West Point, back in the mid-eighties, the senior class chose the branches of the Army in which they would serve according to class rank: A composite rating of academics and demerits, or lack thereof. The highest ranking cadets generally choose the Corps of Engineers, with Infantry coming in close second for all the career ladder climbers. The Army had a quota as to how many slots in each combat branch had to be filled at a minimum, so if the cadets didn't voluntarily fill the required slots, then those at the bottom of the class didn't have choice and were assigned to fill the branch minimums.
Field Artillery, my graduating year, did not have the minimum number of volunteers, so the goats of the class were assigned to that branch.
Within the branches, cadets were again ranked and chose, by ranking, which unit they would serve in as first assignment. The elite-unit slots filled up first. Last choice in Field Artillery was the Pershing units. My roommate, recruited to West Point as an athlete, was a great partier and a real lady's man, but, by his own admission not very studious or organized. He got involutarily assigned to FA and slotted into Pershing missiles as the last available unit from which to choose.
He and all the rest of us got a great laugh out of that. The least smart in the whole company was going to be in charge of the most destructive weapons in the entire Army.
Thanks for not blowing us all to kingdom come, George!
Footnote: Prior to the admission of women, all graduates had to serve in the combat arms. With women on board, all the REMF branches opened up, for both women and men to choose. Any guy who chose a non-combat arms branch was looked-down on. Those who weren't gung-ho, but didn't want to be openly labelled as a sissy, chose Air Defense Artillery, about as far from offensive combat as one can get, manning a Patriot Missile battery. Now that women can be Rangers, maybe the non-combat arms option should be terminated. If not, why not?Replies: @guest007
If you oppose nuclear war, you oppose the Nulands and Vindmans, and default to wanting a neutral Ukraine which never joins NATO or the EU.
Ideally we wouldn't have a Russian president who put himself in the situation of having to worry about being term limited by a polonium cocktail. That's the kind of stress you don't want someone in charge of the ICBMs to have to deal with.
Instead all I see and hear, not that I am paying that much attention, is how can we, the West, hurt Putin. Is anyone asking to talk with him and his people as equals? Anyone?
What else can one expect from our above-the-law elites who are used to bullying their enemies, foreign and domestic?
If the West is able to get Putin to back down by using crushing sanctions, without a nuke exploding, that will be a good thing, but they will have earned a nuclear-armed enemy for life. Heckuva job, Brandon.Replies: @Thea, @Achmed E. Newman
A country that has a much more powerful neighbor is foolish if it allies itself with its neighbor's enemies. The sane choices are either to make an alliance with the neighbor, or to choose strict neutrality.
The moves by the US to entice Ukraine into joining NATO were not only toxic for Ukraine - they were doomed to failure, because NATO membership must be unanimously approved by the existing members, and France and Germany had already signaled that they would veto Ukrainian membership. It is a pity that the leaders of those countries did not publicly remind the world of their position.
Whatever else they are, the Nulands of this world are not fools. They would have known that NATO membership for Ukraine was not a possible outcome, and that the pretended friendship of NATO would be harmful for Ukraine. So the question arises, what were they trying to achieve? They wanted to draw the Russians into a war, just as Zbigniew Brzezynski and Jimmy Carter had done in the late 1970s when they funded the Afghan Mujahideen. The offer of cash and friendship to Ukraine belied the callousness of a plan in which the Ukrainians were expendable.
The US State Department certainly knew Putin's weaknesses. Nostalgia for the Soviet Union, especially the union of "all the Russias"; a wish to be treated with respect and as an equal; and the expectation that his reasonable concerns about Russia's security would be taken seriously and not stonewalled. The USA successfully played both Russia and Ukraine as suckers.Replies: @mc23, @HA
I feel like the world is going crazy right now.
Why are all these NATO countries shipping ever more lethal weapons into Ukraine?
Why are they imposing financial sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy? (And seem to be working)
Putin has warned against “interfering” in Ukraine. A lot of interference is going on right now.
Don’t chase and corner a man who has a suicide vest strapped to his chest.
All of these NATO countries are so giddy to poke the Russian bear in the eye. It’s stupid beyond belief.
Who is responsible for this insanity?
America explicitly claims Ukraine as part of the American Empire. If it loses Ukraine, it will reveal it has lost the Mandate of Heaven. Hungary will secede of its own accord and that will merely be the beginning.
Biden's boss, one of America's Thousand Emperors, stands to lose only pride and prestige. Is this enough? This is enough. He feels like he's dying. Like worse than death.
Ironically nuclear war has likely been vastly overblown. Radioactivity is largely a nutrient, not dangerous. E.g. the cobalt-60 apartments in Taiwan reduced all-cause mortality by 60%. Dockworkers who handle uranium shipment are likewise in unexpectedly robust health. (Iodine not included to concentration in the thyroid.) The odds that "devastating wildfires" would occur and blot out the sun is almost certainly pure propaganda. (Though they lie so much, if they told the truth for once it would slip through the cracks.)
That and it's more than possible the missiles have gone stale. Do they still work? Rather a lot of folk would rather not find out - not because they might get blown up, but because it will be immensely embarrassing of the answer is "no."
Basically they think they know exactly where Russia's line is and think they can be all edgy and step right up to the edge of it. They're not so dumb as to explicitly declare war on Russia - they believe they would get domed by a nuclear counter-strike instantly, the same way they shit the bed at night thinking of St. Rittens - but they've gotten away with hiding behind the flimsiest cat's paws ever since, what, Vietnam? Political equivalent of "stop hitting yourself," basically.Replies: @S. Anonyia
It’s Putin’s War.Replies: @Alrenous
Surprisingly the Biden WH has not succumbed to this hysteria as much as Europe, yet.
Climate change was named as an issue by Steve. Another poster mentioned immigration.
There is a difference between a large problem that is already underway and a potential problem which could lead to wiping out every civilization everywhere on the planet and possibly lead to the extinction of the human race.
Why are all these NATO countries shipping ever more lethal weapons into Ukraine?
Why are they imposing financial sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy? (And seem to be working)
Putin has warned against "interfering" in Ukraine. A lot of interference is going on right now.
Don't chase and corner a man who has a suicide vest strapped to his chest.
All of these NATO countries are so giddy to poke the Russian bear in the eye. It's stupid beyond belief.
Who is responsible for this insanity?Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Dnought, @guest007, @Professional Slav, @Alrenous, @Corvinus, @Ed, @NickG
Going crazy right now? It seems to have been going crazy for quite some time.
As far as who is to blame, I suspect Patton was correct that we fought the wrong enemy. All we did by destroying Nazi Germany was allow the criminally insane Bolsheviks to flourish, and their insanity has subsequently infected the entire globe…and taken deep root in the US, amongst others.
Like, whatever, Vlad’s just, like, being a total drama queen again. And Jen and her friends are, like, totally over it. K?
“White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to put his nation’s nuclear deterrent forces on a state of heightened alert was part of a “pattern” of “manufacturing threats that don’t exist.”
“This is really a pattern that we’ve seen from President Putin through the course of this conflict, which is manufacturing threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression,” Psaki told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “And the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism.”
There is a difference between a large problem that is already underway and a potential problem which could lead to wiping out every civilization everywhere on the planet and possibly lead to the extinction of the human race.Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Gordo, @silviosilver, @Thea, @AndrewR
I presumed Steve mentioned Climate Change with tongue slightly, if not wholly, in cheek–i.e., our moral and intellectual superiors have long been obsessing about the imminent disaster caused by us plebs eating steak and driving cars, yet seem to be completely oblivious to the unequestionable global catastrophe waiting to happen with their pigheaded drive to whip up WWIII.
Why are all these NATO countries shipping ever more lethal weapons into Ukraine?
Why are they imposing financial sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy? (And seem to be working)
Putin has warned against "interfering" in Ukraine. A lot of interference is going on right now.
Don't chase and corner a man who has a suicide vest strapped to his chest.
All of these NATO countries are so giddy to poke the Russian bear in the eye. It's stupid beyond belief.
Who is responsible for this insanity?Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Dnought, @guest007, @Professional Slav, @Alrenous, @Corvinus, @Ed, @NickG
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/russia-as-the-great-satan-in-the?utm_source=url
Why are all these NATO countries shipping ever more lethal weapons into Ukraine?
Why are they imposing financial sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy? (And seem to be working)
Putin has warned against "interfering" in Ukraine. A lot of interference is going on right now.
Don't chase and corner a man who has a suicide vest strapped to his chest.
All of these NATO countries are so giddy to poke the Russian bear in the eye. It's stupid beyond belief.
Who is responsible for this insanity?Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Dnought, @guest007, @Professional Slav, @Alrenous, @Corvinus, @Ed, @NickG
If Putin is allowed to take over the Ukraine and refusing to use diplomacy to achieve foreign policy goals, then what does one say if Putin invades the Baltic States. Invading other countries is a bad thing and it makes sense to support the Ukrainian defending their own country rather than appeasing the Russian invaders.
Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. That's in the last 20-odd years alone.
Theodore Bilbo siad something along those lines, cannot find the quote, you are right.
The missing part of media promotion of the Ukraine war is that there is no upside for the US. Even if the hated Putin is humiliated, or even if there is regime change in Russia, the US gets nothing.
I suppose I am complaining about the non stop coverage treating this as though it were some sort of sporting event. And that people are encouraged to root for the home team, in this case freedom loving Ukrainians vs our enemy, Russia.
In fact, Ukraine can’t win this conflict in any normal sense. The only thing that remain are the details of the future settlement with Russia. It isn’t at all clear to me that Ukraine’s position will depend on how well it resists Russia’s military. It’s just as likely that fighting will produce a worse outcome. Russia could bomb them at least as thoroughly as allied bombing flattened Germany in WW 2.
Even some of the preppers I watch online are really buying the corporate media narrative about Putin reaching for the button.
After the J6 lies, the Russia Hoax, the Impeachment Hoaxes, and the 2020 Fraudulent Election.
Remember that whatever those liars tell you is a lie. They don’t stop lying because its a different subject. Steve and the preppers I watch need to chillax. If they are telling you about Putin going nuclear its 100% true he is NOT going nuclear.
But whether Fake President Joe’s handlers do a false flag or launch one of their own is another story.
There is a difference between a large problem that is already underway and a potential problem which could lead to wiping out every civilization everywhere on the planet and possibly lead to the extinction of the human race.Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Gordo, @silviosilver, @Thea, @AndrewR
The extinction of the White race is the extinction of the human race.
However things turn out, Ukraine 2022 is up there with the most dangerous international crises of the modern age.
When Hungary rebelled in 1956, the concerns Steve discusses were top of mind for President Eisenhower.
Kennedy’s and Khruschev’s teams were more reckless during the Cuban missile crisis.
Indo/Pak wars, seems that luck played more of a role than skill in averting an exchange.
Putin acts like a neo-Czar with a penchant for gambling. My prior had been that there were always underlying rational (if brutal) calculations, and contingency plans. Now adjusted downwards.
Steve’s quip “the growing childishness of discourse” captures so much about the West, U.S. elites in particular. The insights on display by leading government and media figures are not very impressive. Are any of Biden’s senior people aware of what happened in July 2014, and what followed from those decisions? My prior on that is not adjusted, unfortunately.
Two of the best backgrounders I have read about this war.
Ukraine: What Russia wants, what the West can do. For those who understand Moscow’s establishment and view of their country’s vital interests, none of this should be a surprise. By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft website. February 25, 2022.
Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble. By tying itself to a reckless and dangerous America, the Ukrainians made a blunder that client states will study for years to come. by Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine. February 25, 2022.
20141914?Answer: The decisions that led to the start of World War I ("The Guns of August").LOL. Wait until they get their hands on the nukes. President Yolanda Jackson-Five and head of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan’tavious Gomez will threaten to nuke Florida for not getting vaccinated.
The world’s nuclear armories need to be dismantled, along with the world’s GOF labs.
If our civilisation starts to crumble at a more rapid pace, I hope wise heads will discretely remove a few vital and hard-to-produce components from nuclear missiles. Not a good thing to leave lying around for future Millenial wokelords to get their hands on.
This is truly, the problem
Typo.
> Are any of Biden’s senior people aware of what happened in July
20141914?Answer: The decisions that led to the start of World War I (“The Guns of August”).
Sean Hannity has just held a Press Conference…15 minutes ago….
And in this Press Conference this morning Sean stated in no uncertain terms that he supports Hillary Clinton’s position on Eastern Ukraine going back to 2014…………
And that he wants to be parachuted into Donbass with an m-16 and Bowie knife so that he can slit the wombs open of young pregnant Russian Women so as to stop the spread of Putinism……
Sean Hannity despite his differences with Hillary Clinton has thankfully understood the importance of bi-partisan consensus…..yes Fox News can get along with Democrats on America’s vital National Security Issues…..
I don’t know about you guys….but this bipartisan consensus makes me proud to be an American!!! How bout you guys?
All of Russia’s “strategic” interests concerning NATO expansion are about as beneficial to the average Russian as blowing up Iraq benefited the average American. And the EU is just one big market for Russia’s gas and grain which is one of the only reasons Russia can keep its head above water in the first place.
Ideally we wouldn’t have a Russian president who put himself in the situation of having to worry about being term limited by a polonium cocktail. That’s the kind of stress you don’t want someone in charge of the ICBMs to have to deal with.
Are you stupid?
People of Color are young fertile and creative.
They make your food, create all entertainment, build your homes, and keep the infrastructure going.
Do you even go outside and look at the real world?
Who is having children? Who is accomplising? Who is joining the miltary? Who is busting tight rhymes and dances? Who is getting the prizes? Who is sexually active? Who is not committing mass murder and pedophilia?
If you love Russia so much go leave and join there army.
https://thesaurus.plus/img/synonyms/983/accomplice.png
Agree. And it is intentional. Furthermore, bear in mind that there are no bomb shelters or fallout shelters for the civilian population; but the political class has its shelters.
Then the role of Russia useful idiots was played by the leftoids. Now that role is played by the rightoids as you can see here in iSteve commentariat and TUR selection of articles.
The (illegal) Communists sat in their seats, sullen and jeering. The (legal) AfD mostly sat and looked shell-shocked (but occasionally a few of them clapped). I don't think they jeered.
That's what the divide looks like in Europe. "Former" Communists and marginal anti-immigration/anti-EU people. All of them Putin whisperers.
The Danish angle: as it happens, some of them left their party -- Danish People's Party -- recently, but for other reasons. They dislike the newly elected party chairman so they slammed the door on the way out. Marie Krarup was one of them. The "totally for peace, man" in the Unity List (Enhedslisten) were also against helping Ukraine. The Unity List is a Communist party that got 25% of the votes in the recent local elections in Copenhagen. Everybody else is pretty much behind Ukraine and against Putin.
The European angle: Germany rearms and *everybody* is relieved. Yes, really.
Re: the strategic situation in Ukraine, this map may be today’s most important news.
If it’s accurate, the Ukrainian army has the urgent task of extracting the large fraction of its men and equipment who have been facing the breakaway ‘republics’ in the east (blue ovals), in circumstances where their opponent has air superiority (if not air supremacy).
If the Russian forces from Crimea in the south link up with those from Kharkiv in the north, remaining Ukrainian units to the east will be forced to surrender as they run out of food, fuel, and ammunition.
Concentrations around the port city of Mariupol have already been encircled. Barring a cease-fire, they will be reduced.
One is the morale of the troops of the invaded nation. The US troops had to move slowly at times because so many Iraqi soldiers surrendered. It took time to process the surrenders.
You are correct that wars are often very slow. The exceptions being blitzkrieg type operations. For example the Six Day War was shocking because of just how quickly the Israeli Army advanced.
There is some speculation that Putin expected a blitzkrieg which would take Kyiv and a few other major cities in a very short time in order to establish a puppet regime. If that was the case, then that plan certainly failed — so far.Replies: @Paperback Writer, @ic1000
Putin and the Russian commanders may not want to surround and reduce Ukrainian cities.
First, urban fighting is often costly, especially for armor not well supported by infantry. It may be better to let the Ukrainian army withdraw and thus become more vulnerable to encirclement and destruction in the open (Mongol tactics) or let them stay put as long as they are unable to effectively reply to the overall thrust of the campaign ("wither on the vine", the US strategy in the Pacific).
Second, war is politics by other means and Putin is a shrewd politician. Scenes of urban fighting with lots of civilian casualties will have political repercussions in the West. That in turn might pressure them to take more effective countermeasures, whatever those might be. The best political scenario for Russia is a swift victory. Since it it's too late to do anything about, let's not bicker about who killed who...
Putin put Russian nuclear forces on alert. I sort of wonder if that was his first choice, since it's a clear warning of very dire consequences for interference. Needful from his point of view, but not exactly the sign of a guy who's got everything going his way.
The other thing is that I'm pretty sure everyone on Eastern Europe is now convinced that you need to be in NATO. NATO went from being an anti-Soviet alliance to an alliance for anybody except Russia, which looked an awful lot like an anti-Russian alliance. If NATO's anti-Russian, then invasions of Georgia and Ukraine make a lot of sense. Which in turn is a pretty convincing argument that Russia's neighbors need to be in NATO. I don't see how this merry go round is good for America, but our elites sure like riding it.
Not trying to be a fanboy (I don't think I get a prize if either side wins).
The US intermediate nuclear missile was the Pershing and Pershing II missile. Many missile engineers will tell one that the Pershing II was the best weapons system the U.S. never had to use. It was designed for accuracy and for ground penetration to take out deep bunkers in the Western Soviet Union. The program ended with the Intermediate nuclear force treaty.Replies: @mmack, @Joe Stalin, @Old Prude
Interestingly enough, the Pershing II Wiki has info on the Nuclear Freeze/Plowshares movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pershing_II
Sounds like a lot of the protests spun up over the US going mano-a-mano with the USSR via tactical nuclear weapons.
Everything initially claimed about Ukraine’s successes (and everything on offer by neocon High Hewitt this morning) has quickly turned out to be an outrageous lie. Anonymous claim at 4chan, which is unverifiable but which hangs together well with what trustworthy information has come out:
I have access to lectures given on the daily by experts paid by finance firms. Today so far pic related, Admiral James Stavridis, talked about the situation on the ground in Ukraine. He’s getting paid to tell people in charge of billions of dollars what’s really going on, not propaganda in corporate media or social media sites. I’ll mention some points he confirmed that have been in “contention” by randoms on the internet:
>Russia established air superiority day 1 and can strike anywhere at any time
>NATO surprised that a cyberattack to take down Ukraine’s grid has not been orchestrated
>Ukrainian army is desperate for manpower, which is why they armed criminals
>Civilian resistance is expected to be stiff, not clear how Russian forces will handle occupation. ‘Ukranians are tough!’
>’Zelensky is not reckless’ and will extract himself to Poland at some point if Russia continues to take Kiev (80% chance)
>There is a distinct possibility that he will be captured (20% chance)
>Putin is calling for peace talks because of pressure from China, likely demanding Ukraine to commit to never joining NATO
>’If I were Zelensky, I would seriously consider taking a deal at the current juncture. Just don’t go to Minsk, hold talks in Geneva.’
>Where does NATO go from here? Further ‘personalized’ sanctions that target oligarchs to ratchet up internal political pressure on Putin
>Only place to go from here is cyber retaliation by NATO, treaty does not include cyber so technically not covered under Article 5. ‘This needs to be updated.’
>’Kinetic damage’ due to cyber will likely be considered an attack, despite treaty language
>Article 4 would be triggered and council would determine if it’s to be treated under Article 5
>’It is striking to me how well our system is holding together’ < referencing political unity in the US and media narrative
———–
Assuming this is good information, none of it looks good for Ukraine. What will NATO do? Sanctions — something Russia does not care about. What will Russia do if Ukrainian resistance exhausts Russian patience? You know the answer. Cyber's a mess, but this is Russia and America we're taking about, America allowed Russians into Pentagon systems because Americans cannot be expected to keep a SIPR thumb drive out of a NIPR box. And as for the Kiwi Ghost, these delusions of invisible planes will come to a disappointing reality.
I can’t tell whether you are being serious or joking with this one, Steve (I hope the latter):
People’s motives are not always pure, just as you noted regarding the Nuclear Freeze movement. (I do remember that too, but also those who called for unilateral disarmament by the US – hmmm, who exactly were behind the scenes of these people’s rallies??)
Could you entertain the thought that maybe the Climate Crisis™ – that is the new term, so GET WITH IT! – is being pushed as a big worry for nefarious reasons and that not too many people behind the politics are really stupid enough to think mankind will be affected adversely by the not really so out-of-the-ordinary changes in the Earth’s climate.
That one’s about CONTROL and destruction of certain country’s economies and not others. I wonder why the biggest REAL polluter in the world, not “Carbon emitter” BS, China, is never lectured about all this. Too much Carbon emitted by the Gulfstream V on the flight to Peking or too worried about being told by Mr. Xi to GTFO?
Our elites don't believe it* themselves - see Obama's seafront estate on Martha's Vineyard. Why didn't he buy a hilltop if sea level rises are real?
* on the precautionary principle, I think it's a good idea not to pump CO2 into Gaia at ever-increasing levels. That doesn't mean I think we're all going to drown this century.
ic1000 - I too have seen that map but have no idea if it's accurate. If it is, it's very bad news for Ukraine and very good news for those of us who want this conflict resolved as quickly and as bloodlessly as possible. But there's so much disinformation around.
Agree, but let’s not forgive or forget that the same people want to inflict both deaths on us.
Then there was the whole Nuclear Winter scenario touted by Carl Sagan billions and billions of times. I recall it was later said to be a bogus bit of modeling, reminding me of something else that involves lots of bogus modeling …
I remember very specifically Mr. Sagan’s “Choose Life” bit, subsequently parodied by billions and billions of college students with “Choose Beer” T-shirts.
There is a difference between a large problem that is already underway and a potential problem which could lead to wiping out every civilization everywhere on the planet and possibly lead to the extinction of the human race.Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Gordo, @silviosilver, @Thea, @AndrewR
The burgeoning African population and its subsequent emigration – “Out Of Africa II” – is going to be a major global problem, I agree.
The 1983 James Bond movie Octopussy has the “freeze” as one of its subplots. The USSR’s berserk General Orlov plans on blowing up a nuke on an American AFB in Germany, making the West think it’s an accident involving one of their own warheads. Then the disarmers win the argument, the weapons disappear, and the Soviets march into Western Europe.
They made it into a movie with a pre-Bond Pierce Brosnan.
https://youtu.be/IfkyYE0XNrM
No it’s not, Sailer himself talks about the Camp of the Saints and the most important graph in the world, if those trends are allowed to continue then the world will be in a much worse condition than even nuclear war. Think of those images of comparing Hiroshima and Detroit of 1945 and now. The argument that nuclear war will end all humans were always just overblown hysteria, nuclear strikes on major cities such as New York, Washington, London will be the end of those nightmare regimes, if those regimes are allowed to continue on their current path this could be considered the worst case dystopian world imaginable.
A high level Reagan White House guy said that Ronald Reagan told them not only wouldn’t he use nukes against the Soviets first but that he wouldn’t even use them in response because, quote, “What would be the point?”
I do not understand this logic.
You could just launch American missiles from Dakota to target western European targets, as well.
Instead of targeting Russia directly.
A long-range missile does not have to only be used at long-range, I’m assuming?
I suppose, a launch from Dakota might be detected and the Soviets might retaliate against America itself, before they figure out, that Russia was not actually targeted directly.
But I figure there would be enough lead time to figure out intentions and hold back?
In the meantime if you want a good source of news on the war that isn’t terribly biased and is very detached, this guy is good. Also more timely most of the time than the news.
Tweets by RALee85
I remember very specifically Mr. Sagan's "Choose Life" bit, subsequently parodied by billions and billions of college students with "Choose Beer" T-shirts.Replies: @Whereismyhandle
In “comrade J” the highest level KGB defector we ever got said “nuclear winter” was a KGB op and they were shocked at how it took off, with Carl Sagan on national TV, etc.
The global warming/climate change/crisis is a 3 decade long scam to take more wealth and power from the middle classes.
You understand that’s why they keep changing its name, don’t you? The earth isn’t cooperating by warming to extinction level temperatures. Every single prediction the climate modals and preachers have made has not happened.
However, the evidence for a cooling cycle beginning is much more concerning, as we near what’s called a Grand Solar minimum.
Hey global warming nutters, you do realize that warming is better for sustaining life than cooling, right? The warmer it is, the more precipitation there is and the lower the crop line drops. Meaning, we grow more food.
https://twitter.com/bazaarofwar/status/1498120272184029185
If it’s accurate, the Ukrainian army has the urgent task of extracting the large fraction of its men and equipment who have been facing the breakaway 'republics' in the east (blue ovals), in circumstances where their opponent has air superiority (if not air supremacy). If the Russian forces from Crimea in the south link up with those from Kharkiv in the north, remaining Ukrainian units to the east will be forced to surrender as they run out of food, fuel, and ammunition.Concentrations around the port city of Mariupol have already been encircled. Barring a cease-fire, they will be reduced.Replies: @Paleo Liberal, @Twinkie, @Tex, @Steve Sailer, @Almost Missouri
There are many differences between the US invasion of Iraq and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
One is the morale of the troops of the invaded nation. The US troops had to move slowly at times because so many Iraqi soldiers surrendered. It took time to process the surrenders.
You are correct that wars are often very slow. The exceptions being blitzkrieg type operations. For example the Six Day War was shocking because of just how quickly the Israeli Army advanced.
There is some speculation that Putin expected a blitzkrieg which would take Kyiv and a few other major cities in a very short time in order to establish a puppet regime. If that was the case, then that plan certainly failed — so far.
I don't believe this.
BTW, am I the only one who is laughing out loud about the Chechens in Ukraine? How'd this happen? Wasn't Vlad pounding them a few years ago? I read that one of their leaders submitted Roman-style and simply switched allegiance. It's like something out of Rome.
Look at this swagger. Wonder what their pronouns are.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1498103469240160256?s=20&t=mz2DpYjH0Yj_mh5YZLMktQReplies: @Alrenous, @AndrewR, @Lurker
Here is a link to a thread by Thomas deWaal, who self-describes as Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and the author of articles and a book on Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. It supports your claim, beginning:By the way, a follow up to @Altai's link, above, to Rob Lee's twitter account. There is a similarly-prolific breaking-news compilation of battlefield videos, links, etc. by Bashkarma, whose sympathies are with the Russian side.
I remember that Democratic Party debate in 2019, when all the candidates were asked what is the greatest threat facing America (or perhaps it was the World). All but one of them answered “climate change”.
Tulsi Gabbard said “nuclear war”.
I spent my teenage years during the nineteen eighties fully expecting war in Europe with the Soviets to break out and to go nuclear within a week or two (first tactical nukes used against Soviet forces then the inevitable strategic exchange). I got Herman Kahn’s venerable work On Thermonuclear War out of the local town library and had the curious hobby of calculating blast radii of various yields centred on the neighboring city which I regularly visited (30 minutes travel away to the middle of Manchester, England). My old house would certainly have suffered damage Despite my fear of nuclear war I still went about my school with a mate displaying pro-cruise missile ‘bumper stickers’ hand-drawn on our school satchels at the time of the Greenham Common women’s protest against the deployment of these mobile weapons at an RAF base in Berkshire, England. Every week there was an air-raid siren test at the town during the morning while I was on my paper-round which was a reminder of what might occur.
Now I live a mile from Sandhurst College, the British equivalent to West Point, and I’m sure Ivan will have a warhead ready to drop on it should it become necessary.
Conversations about what to do with my teenage mates in the event of the four-minute-warning sounding predictably for young males often came down to ‘Find some girl and get it on’ which should ensure that at least one person went out with a smile on his face.
If Turkish drones can do such things, what then to expect from the American ones …
I get a feeling from a lot of the left that they really would prefer to blow it all up, thus saving the planet from humanity and pwning Putler for banning drag queen story time.
Meanwhile the Russian move to go to Defcon 1 is entirely the result of British foreign secretary Truss, a fact which the Russians confirmed. Her reckless comments about this conflict spilling over into NATO nations were the trigger for the Russian move.
So if we’re all vaporized in the next week, we can thank a dim affirmative action blonde from Cuck Island who doesn’t even know where the Baltics are.
In the US Air Force Strategic Air Command we defined Defcon 1 as nuclear war is being fought.
Hm, nuclear war.
I guess it’s time to switch the moral panic inflicted on us to now require schoolkids practice hiding under desks, for safety in event of a nuclear attack, from the equally effective requirements for wearing surgical masks to stop an aerosolized virus.
OT – Good morning, Steve. Today is the 25th anniversary of the North Hollywood Bank Robbery and Shootout.
Are there any white criminals left in the 110 (higher?) IQ range who will meticulously assemble body armor and automatic weapons and the pre-crime drug cocktail for a morning of ultra-violence? If there’s been anything like this since 1997 I’m not recalling it.
https://amp.palmbeachpost.com/amp/6227770001
The Godless boomer End-of-Life Crisis makes for some interesting mass hysteria. This, I think, is the stand in for the Lake of Fire.
Irony of ironies: In the supposed “information age” of the World Wide Web and live-streaming and a billion blogs and real time news and Instagram and TikTok… I get the feeling I have the same or less of an idea of what’s really going on over there than some guy in America did back in 1914. There’s just so much propaganda and agenda-driven “news.”
Parallel irony: The “nuclear world” probably has avoided lots of big and small wars because of MAD. We’ve probably made it years, decades, and might make it a century without a Really Big One (1914-1945). That said, if and when it does happen, perhaps because of “irony of ironies” listed above, Oooooo – boy it would be BAD.
I remember in my ancientness how, the last scary time, some “experts” were saying that if there is a nuclear war, in five years the US would be back to normal. In reply, someone quipped “It takes five years for a baseball expansion franchise to become competitive.”
I found the recent novel “2034” to be quite plausible. A confrontation at sea with China sets-off a cascade of escalation, culminating in a nuclear exchsnge. Various cofactors created plausibility. We can today add, to those cofactors, a “President” who is cognitively snd emotionally impaired. And, he is advised by people whose pattern of thought is to be obsessed by an irrational contentiousness.
The decision has been made it is that important to us that we will risk nuclear war in Russia in order to put nuclear weapons in the Ukraine.
This is all lame and boring
The only people having fun is the Media
Ukraine, please surrender to Russia (you will never be an independent country, get over it)
And let’s all go back to Instagram and Travel and Dinners Out
Thank you.
The media just wants to be top dog and have everyone focused on it, instead of being focused on ourselves and our own lives.
I am in full agreement, but am desperately about reading it from you, as someone whose tastes tend to predict what ideas will not succeed. And it’s the sort of terrible decision that Putin won’t make (because he’s a grown up) but that NATO may well make (because everything suggests that military decisions made by politicians in NATO are not being made by grown-ups).
We live in strange times when a random American schlub makes a video from a hotel room in Kiev, and he provides more truth than all of the MSM combined since the start of this very local affair.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Lira
I “am desperately sad about reading it from you”, let me correct myself.
I’ve said a lot of stupid things in my time but nothing this idiotic.
One is the morale of the troops of the invaded nation. The US troops had to move slowly at times because so many Iraqi soldiers surrendered. It took time to process the surrenders.
You are correct that wars are often very slow. The exceptions being blitzkrieg type operations. For example the Six Day War was shocking because of just how quickly the Israeli Army advanced.
There is some speculation that Putin expected a blitzkrieg which would take Kyiv and a few other major cities in a very short time in order to establish a puppet regime. If that was the case, then that plan certainly failed — so far.Replies: @Paperback Writer, @ic1000
Speculation from blue-checks on Twitter.
I don’t believe this.
BTW, am I the only one who is laughing out loud about the Chechens in Ukraine? How’d this happen? Wasn’t Vlad pounding them a few years ago? I read that one of their leaders submitted Roman-style and simply switched allegiance. It’s like something out of Rome.
Look at this swagger. Wonder what their pronouns are.
They're pretending to know gossip I don't know; even if they do, their gossip is saying Putin's operation going as well as can be expected.
Ukraine and Russia have non-trivial numbers of West Africans studying in universities there due to much cheaper foreign student fees. So naturally the media has now solved the problem of the victims of the war all being white and slavic.
https://twitter.com/i/events/1498280391299547148
It seems that everywhere you turn now, somebody is wetting their panties over Russia using nuclear weapons. “Will they, won’t they?” Last time I looked, only one country had gone down that road, and it wasn’t Russia. Food for thought.
There is a difference between a large problem that is already underway and a potential problem which could lead to wiping out every civilization everywhere on the planet and possibly lead to the extinction of the human race.Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Gordo, @silviosilver, @Thea, @AndrewR
Perhaps Mother Nature is trying to exterminate the human race as payback for the industrial revolution. Gaia would be just fine but we’re screwed as George Carlin used to say.
Since a nuclear winter is the opposite of global warming the green lobby maybe the environmentalists are actually behind all this.
The late Colin Powell once said that our nuclear weapons would never be used (which, of course, implies that Russia’s nukes wouldn’t be used either). Unfortunately, he should have said that they would never be used intentionally (in the very broadest sense of that word, including even events spiraling out of control). Indeed, the odds of an unintentional nuclear holocaust must be at least 100 (and without the neocons probably even 10,000) times greater than than an intentional nuclear holocaust. As such, what the hell are we doing trying to surround Russia with nuclear capable missile batteries? Is this supposed to be funny? Haha. All we are doing is increasing the possibility of an unintentional nuclear holocaust.
P.S. What ever happened to the antiwar left?
Inasmuch as today's prowar left are generally either the children of or the very same people as yesterday's antiwar left, it is safe to say that they were never really antiwar, just anticivilization.
Now that they are in a position to attack civilization using war, they are prowar. Previously they were only in a position to surrender civilization by invoking "peace", so they were antiwar.
It’s not just that they’re in favor of the immigration – it’s that they appear to be head-over-heels in love with a culture that literally encourages low birthrates.
Supposedly they support mass immigration because it boosts a declining population. That could make some sense, even if it introduces potentially destructive diversity. But promoting policies that actually discourage native whites from wanting to have children makes no sense if you’re trying to boost your population.
Some would say that teaching young girls that growing up to be mothers is an incredibly valuable and important thing amounts to “brainwashing.” But it is no more “brainwashing” than telling them that they need to grow up and become programmers – even though they may have no real interest in programming; or telling them that it’s totally cool if they want to pump their bodies with male hormones and cut off their boobs. Somehow that’s totally reasonable.
Condoleeza Rice agrees that invading a sovereign nation is a war crime.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1498026998265909250Replies: @Tex
Most heterosexual males in STEM that I have known feel the same way.
But the truth is that most females are more interested in being mothers than programmers.
Which of course is a good thing for the species, even though we STEM guys wish more wanted to be programmers.
We are really damaging our young people by trying to convince them that biology does not exist. In the end, biology will win for most of them, but quite a few, among adolescents I have known personally, may end up scarred for life.
And in this Press Conference this morning Sean stated in no uncertain terms that he supports Hillary Clinton’s position on Eastern Ukraine going back to 2014…………
And that he wants to be parachuted into Donbass with an m-16 and Bowie knife so that he can slit the wombs open of young pregnant Russian Women so as to stop the spread of Putinism……
Sean Hannity despite his differences with Hillary Clinton has thankfully understood the importance of bi-partisan consensus…..yes Fox News can get along with Democrats on America’s vital National Security Issues…..
I don’t know about you guys….but this bipartisan consensus makes me proud to be an American!!! How bout you guys?Replies: @War for Blair Mountain
Let’s post War for Blair Mountain’s comment….
The number of times that foreign countries have attacked Russia since the start of the 19th century is (at least) four, not two:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War
Russia’s greatest writer, Tolstoy, was an artillery officer in the Crimean War. The same geopolitically strategic region was the scene of major battles between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht during WWII.
History and literature matter to Russians. To Russians, the idea of one of its leaders ceding control of the Crimea to another country is as unthinkable as an American President ceding Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor to another country would be to Americans.
In the colonial era, Russia leased the warm-water port known then as Port Arthur from China. Japan attacked Port Arthur in 1904 to start the Russo-Japanese war, aided by the protection afforded by the 1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Japanese_Alliance
The German state-sponsored transit of Lenin through Germany, Sweden, and Finland to Petrograd in 1917 could be considered as a fifth (and quite devastating) form of attack.
Also, neither China nor the United States of America attained their current boundaries solely through diplomacy.
If people can be so easily programmed into clamoring for an escalation of this war, then perhaps the human race is indeed too stupid to deserve to survive. The Ukraine shills and bots are in full force, almost overnight. Next comes theater. They’ll be mandating nuclear attack drills in a week to drive the narrative and traumatize children -again – while boomers get all nostalgic.
Or perhaps, long after the symbol of God’s promise not to flood the world again after using a flood to get rid of degenerates, has been used as a banner of degeneracy, it simply has to be fire next time.
Why are all these NATO countries shipping ever more lethal weapons into Ukraine?
Why are they imposing financial sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy? (And seem to be working)
Putin has warned against "interfering" in Ukraine. A lot of interference is going on right now.
Don't chase and corner a man who has a suicide vest strapped to his chest.
All of these NATO countries are so giddy to poke the Russian bear in the eye. It's stupid beyond belief.
Who is responsible for this insanity?Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Dnought, @guest007, @Professional Slav, @Alrenous, @Corvinus, @Ed, @NickG
The eternal Russian empire is responsible. Under different names they’ve conquered, pillaged and ruined many nations and cultures. If Europe doesn’t stop them now, who’s to say Finland, the Baltics, Sweden, etc are not next?
Dominic Cummings quoting a former blogger here, he seems very concerned the clowns in charge are seriously risking nuclear war over something that really doesn’t matter to us, he is right to.
One is the morale of the troops of the invaded nation. The US troops had to move slowly at times because so many Iraqi soldiers surrendered. It took time to process the surrenders.
You are correct that wars are often very slow. The exceptions being blitzkrieg type operations. For example the Six Day War was shocking because of just how quickly the Israeli Army advanced.
There is some speculation that Putin expected a blitzkrieg which would take Kyiv and a few other major cities in a very short time in order to establish a puppet regime. If that was the case, then that plan certainly failed — so far.Replies: @Paperback Writer, @ic1000
> There is some speculation that Putin expected a blitzkrieg which would take Kyiv and a few other major cities in a very short time in order to establish a puppet regime.
Here is a link to a thread by Thomas deWaal, who self-describes as Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and the author of articles and a book on Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. It supports your claim, beginning:
By the way, a follow up to ’s link, above, to Rob Lee’s twitter account. There is a similarly-prolific breaking-news compilation of battlefield videos, links, etc. by Bashkarma, whose sympathies are with the Russian side.
Expanding NATO past Germany was insanely reckless.
The US intermediate nuclear missile was the Pershing and Pershing II missile. Many missile engineers will tell one that the Pershing II was the best weapons system the U.S. never had to use. It was designed for accuracy and for ground penetration to take out deep bunkers in the Western Soviet Union. The program ended with the Intermediate nuclear force treaty.Replies: @mmack, @Joe Stalin, @Old Prude
Should have brought back ALL the Pershing II missiles and stored them away instead of destroying them like a bunch of chumps. Could have leased them to Taiwan like the US Trident missiles to the UK for their submarines.
It looks like the second article has already been removed, unfortunately.
My bad, HA spotted that I had added a period at the end. Here is the correct link.
Ukraine's Deadly Gamble.
https://twitter.com/RALee85Replies: @ic1000
A good source of more reflective commentary on Twitter is Kamil Galeev, a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow siding with Ukraine. A current thread on the contrast between Ukrainian and Russian social-media presences is here.
P.S. What ever happened to the antiwar left?Replies: @EddieSpaghetti, @Almost Missouri
I made an error in this post. Unintentionally (not intentionally) should mean unintentionally in the broadest sense of the word including events spiraling out of control.
Supposedly they support mass immigration because it boosts a declining population. That could make some sense, even if it introduces potentially destructive diversity. But promoting policies that actually discourage native whites from wanting to have children makes no sense if you're trying to boost your population.
Some would say that teaching young girls that growing up to be mothers is an incredibly valuable and important thing amounts to "brainwashing." But it is no more "brainwashing" than telling them that they need to grow up and become programmers - even though they may have no real interest in programming; or telling them that it's totally cool if they want to pump their bodies with male hormones and cut off their boobs. Somehow that's totally reasonable.Replies: @al gore rhythms, @Dmon, @PhysicistDave
And also, the whole system relies on third world women continuing to be ‘brainwashed’ into having lots of children in order to act as baby farms for the West.
https://twitter.com/bazaarofwar/status/1498120272184029185
If it’s accurate, the Ukrainian army has the urgent task of extracting the large fraction of its men and equipment who have been facing the breakaway 'republics' in the east (blue ovals), in circumstances where their opponent has air superiority (if not air supremacy). If the Russian forces from Crimea in the south link up with those from Kharkiv in the north, remaining Ukrainian units to the east will be forced to surrender as they run out of food, fuel, and ammunition.Concentrations around the port city of Mariupol have already been encircled. Barring a cease-fire, they will be reduced.Replies: @Paleo Liberal, @Twinkie, @Tex, @Steve Sailer, @Almost Missouri
I don’t read NR normally, but this article is very sober and highlights some of the differences between U.S. and Russian performances and lays out observed deficiencies in the Russian military so far: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-the-russians-are-struggling/
Seems the Russian generals also realized this. Their doctrine is now extremely heavy on the artillery.I still find it hilarious that they're calling knocking on the capital's door within three days of operation "bogged down."Replies: @Paperback Writer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui2cUcUJ6Ow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKFSK_9e-g4
It seems there really is a Chesterton quote for everything:
*By "true", I mean if the assessment of Russian behavior is accurate-- there is a lot of false or incomplete information flying around and someone like me is not really prepared to sort it out. You are probably in a considerably better position than I am to do so, though.
At this point it may not matter for the Russians whether they are inside or outside armored vehicles.
Hey Steve: I know I am probably pissing you off for posting something off the topic. However, do gay men have a higher IQ than straight men on average? What is the reason for this difference in performance in your opinion?
More on the gay academic achievement gap.
Gay men earn undergraduate degrees at the highest rate of any group in the U.S., according to a new study on sexual orientation and academic achievement. Roughly 52 percent of gay men in the U.S. have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 36 percent of all adults and about 35 percent of straight men, the study found.Nov 30, 2021
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/11/30/gay-men-earn-degrees-highest-rate-us#:~:text=Gay%20men%20earn%20undergraduate%20degrees,straight%20men%2C%20the%20study%20found.
>a measure of intelligence
How many in STEM? How many with any sort of hard criteria or objective measures?Replies: @Almost Missouri
Nuclear war is so cheugy.
But examine the precedent we set. What if, instead, we had won the war properly by employing the bomb outside the cities, away from civilians? (The Pope didn’t have to condemn the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 because he had already done so in 1943. Who says the Vatican is behind the times?)
How differently would the Cold War have played out had nukes been introduced in this more limited way?
Note that at the time there was already a large and vigorous sister movement against domestic nuclear power throughout the West. (Notable exceptions were neutral Sweden and idiosyncratic France. Not to mention the USSR.) This is also mostly forgotten. Three Mile Island was as scary as Chernobyl would be a few years later.
Incidentally, an entertaining comic novel came out about the anti-nuke people in Northern California, Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate. Written in, of all things, Pushkin’s verse form. Remember, too, that the major “alternative” candidate in 1980 wasn’t the anti-nuke Barry Commoner, who finished fifth, but the very pro-nuke John Anderson. (A Swede.)
They still don’t have a page for Public Foot the Roman. You’d think a tech-savvy city like Cambridge would back their homeboys. The town’s big musical stars of the era, Katrina and the Waves, do have an American aerospace connection however. Native guitarist Kimberley Rew explains the geopolitics which led to their founding in 1981.
FWIW, we are halfway between Leap Days and New Hampshire primaries.
Another interesting thing is that both anti and pro nukes types don't realize we actually had a very serious accident (boiler explosion type of pressure vessel failure, worse than TMI) in the US. Of course, it was in an area that literally (and not how millenials use that term) was chosen for similar reasons as the Test Site. Did my prototype there. Pain in the ass hour long bus ride in and out.Replies: @Almost Missouri
NgmiReplies: @Reg Cæsar
Born in 1946 I spend a childhood living in fear of a nuclear holocaust. Wednesday noon air raid drills, cowering under your desk, Nike Missile batteries stationed just beyound the local cemetary. A fully armed and ready Air Force Fighter base at the Falls and our SAC bombers patrolling the skies over Canada. And yet, we lost 50,000 men in a conventional war in Nam and 1000s more in our battles across the Middle East and Afghanistan. Did Russians kill any of them? Maybe their weapons did.We were lead to believe Russia was our equal or even our better in war. Funny thing happened, we started to meet Russians and the people had shit. literally nothing. My friends hosted a Russian dance troupe because their son was fluent in Russian. They offered to let the dancers call home. The reponse…’we have no phones in our villages.’ Offered to buy them sneakers and jeans…’Thank you, but no. Can we have socks and underwear.” Russia the bear was more like a bearskin rug. But the military-industrial complex raked in the dough. What suckers are we.
A nuclear war would certainly quicken the pace of climate change. It would get cold out there awfully quick after the initial light show. Dark too. Rep. Adam Kininger’s tweets seem to indicate that he has little fear of nukes So brave are the Samurai. Thanks Illinois
I’m wondering if he was motivated by the thought 30 years later, he could show that the US isn’t the only country that can do this kind of military operation anymore. Don’t forget who the Iraqi army in 1991 was Soviet armed: and the fact that the USSR could be the only power in the world to check the US military was always the one thing that the regime could point to, despite its other failings.
Again, I stress that this is all speculation: but this would coincide neatly with my theory that Putin and his coterie underestimated the Chinese for too long.
I remember that movement in the early 80s, when I was in high school. Was very hard core, unilateral disarmament. Had some traction in the New Wave left. Remember “Ronnie Ray-gun”? There was sort of a fervent reaction against him. But it was kind of the last gasp of the 70s. I think even by 83-84 as we emerged from the recession, things seemed more stable (not getting backed into a war like I thought Carter would) that it died. Certainly by 84 re-election it was gone. But even before.
Wiki article portrays it more positively than I remember (go figure, biased). Also tries to say it was Gorbachev that ended it. But not really. Was more that America was more and more cruising with Reagan. Breakfast in America.
I think part of the memory holing is that the Donks don’t want to be associated with their past pacifist inclinations as the voters pretty much disliked those. E.g. they picked one of the very few Donks who voted for Gulf War 1 as VP for Clinton (and Clinton had not made a call on it either). Shrill Hill has tried to reinvent herself as a hawk also, lately.
And DC is full of ex McKinsey liberals now with TS clearances doing foreign affairs “strategy” work for the government. And CIA is a mess too. (State always was, of course.)
The funny thing of course is that the Donks voted much more for second Gulf War than the first. E.g. Kerry voted against the first and for the second. Made the wrong choices, I guess. Then again, Chimperor had everyone wrapped up with the moronic idea that since we couldn’t effectively strike back at Osama, we’d just strike someone else. Rumsfeld called this going after all terrorism. But it was a moronic and unstrategic idea to go after “all”. You need to be shrewd and selective…not Wolfowitz-Feith silly.
P.s. Looking at the Wiki edit history, that article existed in 2018. Maybe a lot earlier as it was well developed even then. Probably changed names and lost some of the edit history, because someone messed up the page move. It would still be biased of course. But I don’t think they ignored it.
“Nuclear war is about the worst idea humanity has ever come up with.”
Steve is chasing a chimera whilst his respected Western elites wage biological warfare on China, Iran, and their own people.
“Let’s not do it.”
Uninspired. Steve’s time in marketing — advertising’s smarter brother who had psychological warfare training — did bear fruit: “Truth is the first casualty of war.” He and his yuppie buddies conjured that standard whilst Ronnie Raygun invaded a small Caribbean island (they were worried the former star of Death Valley Days would reinstitute the draft after the slap-shtick tropical adventure).
The slogan Steve and his yellow-tied compatriots came up with was, surprisingly, somewhat wise. People, especially those with no skin in the game, get awfully soft-headed during wartime. Especially after consuming large quantities of media. So let’s say there is a nuclear conflagration. Brightside: it will eradicate the viral weaponry used in the past two years. And it will kill the Gates/Schwab, Etc. paramour Mother Earth. Not even the Israeli mafia will be able to make money after that bitch is dead.
What I want to say to you is way, way over the line that Sailer permits. Diversity is a very distant second in terms of the problems we face.
No, it’s split. Did you see the video of Olaf Scholz’ speech in the German Parliament? Everybody backed him loudly (with many standing ovations), except for the Communists (“Die Linke”) and AfD.
The (illegal) Communists sat in their seats, sullen and jeering. The (legal) AfD mostly sat and looked shell-shocked (but occasionally a few of them clapped). I don’t think they jeered.
That’s what the divide looks like in Europe. “Former” Communists and marginal anti-immigration/anti-EU people. All of them Putin whisperers.
The Danish angle: as it happens, some of them left their party — Danish People’s Party — recently, but for other reasons. They dislike the newly elected party chairman so they slammed the door on the way out. Marie Krarup was one of them. The “totally for peace, man” in the Unity List (Enhedslisten) were also against helping Ukraine. The Unity List is a Communist party that got 25% of the votes in the recent local elections in Copenhagen. Everybody else is pretty much behind Ukraine and against Putin.
The European angle: Germany rearms and *everybody* is relieved. Yes, really.
Interesting detail about Reagan not aware of MAD doctrine until in white house… I remember feeling very disenchanted when I learned that NATO doctrine called for nuclear first strike against a conventional Soviet invasion of western Europe
Sorry, but I’m gonna have to side with Putin on this one.
This fight is bigger than the United States, nukes or not. If Putin winning stops, or even slows down what’s coming, it’s good for the entire planet. His victory is far more important than us winning WWII.
Hopefully, his first targets will be Seattle and NYC. Then Los Angeles.
I’d prefer to be atomized with a smile on my face.
One would think, given the talk of Nuclear War in the air, there would be a big push for negotiating with Putin ASAP, Jaw-Jaw being, better than War-War and a helluva lot better than Thermo-nuclear War-War.
Instead all I see and hear, not that I am paying that much attention, is how can we, the West, hurt Putin. Is anyone asking to talk with him and his people as equals? Anyone?
What else can one expect from our above-the-law elites who are used to bullying their enemies, foreign and domestic?
If the West is able to get Putin to back down by using crushing sanctions, without a nuke exploding, that will be a good thing, but they will have earned a nuclear-armed enemy for life. Heckuva job, Brandon.
Why are all these NATO countries shipping ever more lethal weapons into Ukraine?
Why are they imposing financial sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy? (And seem to be working)
Putin has warned against "interfering" in Ukraine. A lot of interference is going on right now.
Don't chase and corner a man who has a suicide vest strapped to his chest.
All of these NATO countries are so giddy to poke the Russian bear in the eye. It's stupid beyond belief.
Who is responsible for this insanity?Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Dnought, @guest007, @Professional Slav, @Alrenous, @Corvinus, @Ed, @NickG
As I alluded to with Trudeau, power is an addictive drug. The worst kind, and I mean that very literally. The degeneration is worse, the shakes are worse. Everything is the worst.
America explicitly claims Ukraine as part of the American Empire. If it loses Ukraine, it will reveal it has lost the Mandate of Heaven. Hungary will secede of its own accord and that will merely be the beginning.
Biden’s boss, one of America’s Thousand Emperors, stands to lose only pride and prestige. Is this enough? This is enough. He feels like he’s dying. Like worse than death.
Ironically nuclear war has likely been vastly overblown. Radioactivity is largely a nutrient, not dangerous. E.g. the cobalt-60 apartments in Taiwan reduced all-cause mortality by 60%. Dockworkers who handle uranium shipment are likewise in unexpectedly robust health. (Iodine not included to concentration in the thyroid.) The odds that “devastating wildfires” would occur and blot out the sun is almost certainly pure propaganda. (Though they lie so much, if they told the truth for once it would slip through the cracks.)
That and it’s more than possible the missiles have gone stale. Do they still work? Rather a lot of folk would rather not find out – not because they might get blown up, but because it will be immensely embarrassing of the answer is “no.”
Basically they think they know exactly where Russia’s line is and think they can be all edgy and step right up to the edge of it. They’re not so dumb as to explicitly declare war on Russia – they believe they would get domed by a nuclear counter-strike instantly, the same way they shit the bed at night thinking of St. Rittens – but they’ve gotten away with hiding behind the flimsiest cat’s paws ever since, what, Vietnam? Political equivalent of “stop hitting yourself,” basically.
What’s missing in all of this seems to be the intense feeling of humiliation and seething anger and resentment felt by many Russians – Putin no doubt included – during the catastrophic Gorbachev/Yeltsin years, an era in which Russia was mocked, looted, kicked to the curb and was generally made to feel worthless, the punching bag of the big fat triumphalist neocon bullies.
The abused become the abuser. There is no anger on earth like that of the traumatized revisiting their period of abuse and victimisation.
Suffice to say, the neocons pushed Russia just too far.
I don't believe this.
BTW, am I the only one who is laughing out loud about the Chechens in Ukraine? How'd this happen? Wasn't Vlad pounding them a few years ago? I read that one of their leaders submitted Roman-style and simply switched allegiance. It's like something out of Rome.
Look at this swagger. Wonder what their pronouns are.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1498103469240160256?s=20&t=mz2DpYjH0Yj_mh5YZLMktQReplies: @Alrenous, @AndrewR, @Lurker
Indeed. Blucheka are obligate liars. The fact they’re saying it is evidence against the idea that they believe it.
They’re pretending to know gossip I don’t know; even if they do, their gossip is saying Putin’s operation going as well as can be expected.
Of course you can also just not bring armour in the first place…because the armour on the “armour” doesn’t work.
Covering fire from mechanized weapons is of course necessary, but blanketing the guns in metal is a huge waste of time, money, fuel, maintenance…
What’s a tank without armour called? Artillery?
Seems the Russian generals also realized this. Their doctrine is now extremely heavy on the artillery.
I still find it hilarious that they’re calling knocking on the capital’s door within three days of operation “bogged down.”
Could you entertain the thought that maybe the Climate Crisis™ - that is the new term, so GET WITH IT! - is being pushed as a big worry for nefarious reasons and that not too many people behind the politics are really stupid enough to think mankind will be affected adversely by the not really so out-of-the-ordinary changes in the Earth's climate.
That one's about CONTROL and destruction of certain country's economies and not others. I wonder why the biggest REAL polluter in the world, not "Carbon emitter" BS, China, is never lectured about all this. Too much Carbon emitted by the Gulfstream V on the flight to Peking or too worried about being told by Mr. Xi to GTFO?Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
“Could you entertain the thought that maybe the Climate Crisis™ – that is the new term, so GET WITH IT! – is being pushed as a big worry for nefarious reasons”
Our elites don’t believe it* themselves – see Obama’s seafront estate on Martha’s Vineyard. Why didn’t he buy a hilltop if sea level rises are real?
* on the precautionary principle, I think it’s a good idea not to pump CO2 into Gaia at ever-increasing levels. That doesn’t mean I think we’re all going to drown this century.
ic1000 – I too have seen that map but have no idea if it’s accurate. If it is, it’s very bad news for Ukraine and very good news for those of us who want this conflict resolved as quickly and as bloodlessly as possible. But there’s so much disinformation around.
“I spent a childhood living in fear of a nuclear holocaust.”
BJ, the irony* is the world was much more stable during the Cold War. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc brought with it Western hubris, a toxic psychological condition that eventually gave birth to Globohomo and its assorted creatures like men with wombs. Rumour on the street says a new bloc is forming — Russia, China, Iran, India — that will bypass Globohomo’s shady financial system. I also believe the absolute evil bio-terrorism instigated by Western security elites and the techno-priests of Science startled Vlad, Xi, the Persian guy, and the dot-head. The West is dangerous now; a rampaging monster that will soon lose its breath because it’s really a decaying corpse that doesn’t know it’s dead. Like Emmett. Fun times ahead!
* I do not claim to know what irony is or how to use it. Fun times!
Contrary to popular belief, professional gamblers *DO* actually exist, yes, yes, I can hear you cry “But surely that’s against the laws of mathematics”, and some make a very good and steady income out of it. “What’s all this got to do with Ukraine?” I hear you again, please bear with me.
The pro gamblers, few in number, who do make a good living out of it,care exclusively card sharps. Forget your horseracing, sports, roulette etc. These people don’t play against the House, but against other card players, that’s the crucial point. Now, how they make their riches is by exclusively, in their jargon ‘fleecing the c*nt’, in these circles you see, a ‘c*nt’ is generally used term of contempt used to describe a poor cardsman, but one with crucial conceit of actually believing himself to have talent. Now, a ‘c*nt’ and especially a rich one is paydirt for card sharp, and by gifts and flattery, subtle play and diligence, the c*nt’ or prize c*nt is kept with sweet talk and the kudos of ‘being amongst the big boys’ is kept as long as possible at the cards table, built up, geed up, only to be ruthlessly shorn of every penny he has.
The biggest ‘prize c*nt’ in history was Mikhail Gorbachev.
The most adept card sharks in history were the US State Department.
As was pointed out in “Albion’s Seed”, the Scots-Irish Appalachian crowd has never met a war it didn’t like. I was hoping maybe this time would be different. But no, the majority of them are willing to go to war against a White, Christian Russia on behalf of a US government that hates their guts.
They give the Medal of Honor for that type of action.
I was at a talk given by Herman K. He started off the speech by noting that his critics accused him of being pro nuclear war. He asked, “Is anyone really pro nuclear war?” I know someone.
Headline in the NYT: “Putin nukes DC. Blacks hardest hit”.
if i am misinterpreting your statement, i apologize, but if you are advocating some half baked hardline position on russia over ukraine, i will fire you out of my circus cannon in the direction of kiev, or however it is being spelled these days in the press. i can’t promise pin point accuracy, but i should be able to land you within 50 miles or so of the target. they’ll have a vietnam-era m16 waiting for you, or maybe a broom stick shaped like an m16. god speed!
M.A. Wright:
True dat! Someone tell Reg Cæsar and AnotherDad.
I am definitely hanging back ... it's getting close to nap time. But, please point me at the enemy i'm supposed to find, close with and kill?Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Jenner Ickham Errican
It was the proper way to start the Cold War: Nuking Japanese civilians provided ample gruesome evidence that lobbing nukes could go bad for the countries of MAD men.
Exactly.
I remember one of my engineer exam questions at NR was to “radcon math” (Fermi estimate) what would happen if we took a sub core, late in life, and distributed it all over the land surface of the planet. (The answer was that the entire planet would become a CSCA.) To which, I said…I thought the whole point of this was going to end up being some “nuke power isn’t that bad” argument. And he said, yeah…it’s not a walk in the park. They can be dangerous.
Another interesting thing is that both anti and pro nukes types don’t realize we actually had a very serious accident (boiler explosion type of pressure vessel failure, worse than TMI) in the US. Of course, it was in an area that literally (and not how millenials use that term) was chosen for similar reasons as the Test Site. Did my prototype there. Pain in the ass hour long bus ride in and out.
Reg replied to you, down there:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/lets-not-have-a-nuclear-war/#comment-5204014
Only a few days into the Russian invasion crisis and I already notice myself avoiding news and opinion outlets…even more than usual (and this includes those with more conservative or anti-woke perspectives) because I find all the warmongering tiring. I mean this in the same way I have found covid coverage tiring over the last year and a half; It’s not tiring because I hear about it too much, it’s tiring because the arguments being presented are so predictable and shallow. I know that I have at least another year and a half of media preoccupation with making Russia pay for this crime, and who the hell would look forward to that?
Putin made a major unethical move with this invasion, but the real reason the media thinks he should pay is because his world view is different than theirs – and his country is more nationalistic than theirs – so their position is little more than pretext. The “Putin wants to take over the world…or at least half of Europe” arguments being extrapolated from his Ukraine action seem profoundly stupid. Yet Putin was also stupid, because the waning support in the US for NATO that has evolved over the last several years may all dissipate as a result of his aggression.
Interesting if true*.
It seems there really is a Chesterton quote for everything:
*By “true”, I mean if the assessment of Russian behavior is accurate– there is a lot of false or incomplete information flying around and someone like me is not really prepared to sort it out. You are probably in a considerably better position than I am to do so, though.
This is a very interesting article. However, the problem with the example illustrating the effectiveness of the tactics is that they would have failed against a more effective weapon. In this case, the Iraqis were still able to hit the armored vehicle with an RPG. Fortunately, the RPG bounced off. If they had hit the vehicle with a Javelin missile, the vehicle would have been destroyed.
Putin has an incentive right now to grab the rest of Ukraine, because it’s hard to install a puppet government without having all the country, and he doesn’t want to leave any free and independent Ukraine land that can have NATO nukes placed inside it.
Feeding arms into Ukraine right now, which NATO is doing, is a very good way to have it all captured by the Russians in the next three weeks. Once Russian has all the northern border of the Black Sea–which they’re close to doing, and have encircled the Eastern Ukrainian forces–which they’re also close to doing, and have encircled Kiev, they can start sending their forces zooming west to seize the rest of the country.
Russian does not actually have to capture Kiev at the moment to grab the rest of the country, all they have to do is surround it so it can’t be resupplied, and capture Kiev later when they have time to reduce the city. The most important thing for them right now is to capture Kiev’s airports to stop any resupply attempts. Kiev is being cut off by land. Once it’s cut off by air, it’s only a matter of time before the city falls. Cutting off food, ammo, and fuel deliveries will force the city to surrender. Cities need a lot of resources to keep going, and they’re easy to strangle.
If you want to have a little trolling comment fun, go over to TheHill web site and post something like “I remember the Progressives nuclear freeze movement of the 1980’s” the ignorant responses and down votes are enlightening. Another fun item is mentioning the propaganda movie of movement, the made for TV, “The Day After”
Is it possible that Putin has evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction in the Ukraine? Cuz that would change everything. BTW, what’s going on in Yemen these days?
I wonder what they were researching at those sites?
Uh, no. Atomic weapons probably gonna be more destructive. Definitely not infinitely less destructive.
If you believe this, then you should be cheering on nuclear war, right? Because uncontrolled immigration is happening now, and according to your dumb ass it’s infinitely worse than nuclear war, so nuclear war would be an improvement, right? So yes or no: do you want a nuclear war? Because a nuclear war would likely stop immigration (along with a lot of other things.)
I don’t want either but I think a nuclear war is worse.
Please, don’t say dumb stuff. Don’t preach to the choir to whore out ‘agrees’. Everyone who agreed with this comment needs to stop the mutual masturbation. We are all against uncontrolled immigration. When Steve posts about golf course architecture there’s no need to write a comment about how it relates to immigration levels. This is like a ZeroHedge level of comment.
As a Michigan resident, I wouldn't mind seeing DC, NYC, L.A. and SF get targeted but we know it wouldn't stop there.
https://twitter.com/bazaarofwar/status/1498120272184029185
If it’s accurate, the Ukrainian army has the urgent task of extracting the large fraction of its men and equipment who have been facing the breakaway 'republics' in the east (blue ovals), in circumstances where their opponent has air superiority (if not air supremacy). If the Russian forces from Crimea in the south link up with those from Kharkiv in the north, remaining Ukrainian units to the east will be forced to surrender as they run out of food, fuel, and ammunition.Concentrations around the port city of Mariupol have already been encircled. Barring a cease-fire, they will be reduced.Replies: @Paleo Liberal, @Twinkie, @Tex, @Steve Sailer, @Almost Missouri
Surrounding and forcing the surrender of Ukrainian forces in the east sounds like that’s the main objective. If they can’t break out, then does Ukraine have anything left to fight with?
Putin and the Russian commanders may not want to surround and reduce Ukrainian cities.
First, urban fighting is often costly, especially for armor not well supported by infantry. It may be better to let the Ukrainian army withdraw and thus become more vulnerable to encirclement and destruction in the open (Mongol tactics) or let them stay put as long as they are unable to effectively reply to the overall thrust of the campaign (“wither on the vine”, the US strategy in the Pacific).
Second, war is politics by other means and Putin is a shrewd politician. Scenes of urban fighting with lots of civilian casualties will have political repercussions in the West. That in turn might pressure them to take more effective countermeasures, whatever those might be. The best political scenario for Russia is a swift victory. Since it it’s too late to do anything about, let’s not bicker about who killed who…
Putin put Russian nuclear forces on alert. I sort of wonder if that was his first choice, since it’s a clear warning of very dire consequences for interference. Needful from his point of view, but not exactly the sign of a guy who’s got everything going his way.
The other thing is that I’m pretty sure everyone on Eastern Europe is now convinced that you need to be in NATO. NATO went from being an anti-Soviet alliance to an alliance for anybody except Russia, which looked an awful lot like an anti-Russian alliance. If NATO’s anti-Russian, then invasions of Georgia and Ukraine make a lot of sense. Which in turn is a pretty convincing argument that Russia’s neighbors need to be in NATO. I don’t see how this merry go round is good for America, but our elites sure like riding it.
Not trying to be a fanboy (I don’t think I get a prize if either side wins).
Un… fucking… believable…
If anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be rootin’ for Putin,
I’d have said they were flipping bonkers!
The world is spinning upside down… again.
Reminds me of those French soldiers defending Hitler’s bunker.
And ya’ll thought ya hated your job!
Imagine you’re a French soldier 100 yards from the bunker
taking Soviet flack. You murmer to yourself, “fuck this world,”
followed by a feeble, incredulous chuckle.
Siding with an asshole to undermine evil.
Where have I seen this plot play out before?
There is a difference between a large problem that is already underway and a potential problem which could lead to wiping out every civilization everywhere on the planet and possibly lead to the extinction of the human race.Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Gordo, @silviosilver, @Thea, @AndrewR
Nuclear war between Russia and the US (and maybe France and the UK, as Steve implied), would lead to catastrophic death and suffering in and near the affected locations. But I don’t think most of Asia or Africa or South America or Oz/NZ or even much of Europe would be severely affected in the medium to long term. The nuclear winter theory is definitely debatable, to my knowledge. But as an American in the US I am definitely against the idea.
Free Republic, the formerly largest conservative website, has been totally dominated by crazed Russia hating neocons since this crisis started. They seem to be real ‘murican white man boomer types and not shills. They are reacting against Tucker Carlson, General McGregor and any conservative who is not a neocon. They are furious that currents in the conservative movement are moving in a nationalist direction. They have no concept of what Ukraine is and are treating this exactly like the war in Iraq. They see it as a democracy spreading crusade against “dictators.” Simple as that. They have no shame about preaching this childlike worldview and are shocked and angry that there is dissent from younger conservatives. They aggressively reject facts and embrace lies, even arguing that lying about the war is justified to help the morale of the “good guys.”
Comments must be 4-1 neocon. Boomers, man…
The Cold War was about trifles such as who should own the means of production, etc. Now, on the other hand:
Last time I saw Andriy he was in high heels. Now, like many of my friends, he’s taken up arms
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/last-time-i-saw-andriy-he-was-in-high-heels-now-like-many-of-my-friends-hes-taken-up-arms
I don't believe this.
BTW, am I the only one who is laughing out loud about the Chechens in Ukraine? How'd this happen? Wasn't Vlad pounding them a few years ago? I read that one of their leaders submitted Roman-style and simply switched allegiance. It's like something out of Rome.
Look at this swagger. Wonder what their pronouns are.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1498103469240160256?s=20&t=mz2DpYjH0Yj_mh5YZLMktQReplies: @Alrenous, @AndrewR, @Lurker
Ukrainians are much, much closer to Russians culturally, linguistically, historically and religiously than Chechens are. So Putin would just have to ask Ukrainians why Chechens are more loyal to Russia than Ukrainians are.
Well I suppose we could join in the bombing and help Russia bring the war to a quick end: we would reduce the risk of Russia going nuclear, no? Maybe they would think better of us and not want to nuke us in the future? Groveling is an under-rated strategy.
On the other hand, Ukraine gave up its nukes with assurances the rest of the world would come to its aid if it were attacked. Other nuclear non-proliferator states can see how well that is working out and might just rethink their commitments. Personally, I think a nuclear Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Norway, and Sweden would all be good things. Not just for discouraging future Russian aggression but for putting the increasingly aggressive and autocratic Germany and its sock puppet EU on notice. Yes, it would be a terrible thing if Brussels were nuked. But, objectively, a net gain or net loss? In strict terms of future human flourishing, one could make a good case for the former.
-Steve Sailer, extremist and journalistic pariah
Nuclear weapons are a hoax.
I pray President Putin bombs DC, San Fran, JYC, Chicongo, and Seattle. You have our full and heartfelt support, my droogie.
God bless President Putin! SLAVA.
And right hands are even MORE destructive! Think of the gazillions of White people murdered every day by your perfidious right hand! (To say nothing about your brother’s buttocks!)
Honestly peeps, I’m cringing for Steve here. He aint gonna be taken seriously when his commenters line up to AGREE with the hot take that the sudden murder of hundreds of millions of (ahem, WHITE) people aint nearly as bad as immigration.
I get it through. You’re sad or angry or scared so you are shouting. And you don’t need to shout about nukes because others, with some actual power, are already doing that. So you hyperbole your point about immigration to give that idea some air.
I get it and I don’t disagree.
But Steve actually has a teeny bit of power and it would suck if new readers thought his loyal followers were all soft in the head. So, for his sake, I am bravely stating that I, for one, would prefer not to be nuked.
The Eloi speak.
In September of ’94 I spoke to an adult I knew who had just returned from Ukraine doing charity work and he told me that you could buy the whole country for a dollar…
…and then kick yourself for getting ripped off.
They seem to have come a long way since then buf not long enough that I want the world’s owners to risk my getting nuked over them.
You didn’t like my take on thongs? Or what?
I am definitely hanging back … it’s getting close to nap time. But, please point me at the enemy i’m supposed to find, close with and kill?
https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/11052-1/%7BEDD84602-576C-431C-9DD9-16F689C775FF%7DImg100.jpg
Steve, there’s not going to be a nuclear war. Well maybe sometime somewhere, but not over this.
Go ahead and make your tee time.
At this tweet is an excerpt of Robert McNamara in Cuba, talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis with Fidel Castro, a few decades later. Not heartwarming.
Israeli mistaken for Chechen, killed by Ukranians.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-man-shot-dead-as-convoy-escaping-kyiv-comes-under-ukrainian-fire
>caring about elections
Ngmi
I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna roll a doobie and fire up the stereo with The Kinks…..
I don’t feel safe in this world no more
I don’t want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore
And live like an ape man
I’m an ape man, I’m an ape ape man, oh I’m an ape man
I’m a King Kong man, I’m a voodoo man, oh I’m an ape man
‘Cause compared to the sun that sits in the sky
Compared to the clouds as they roll by
Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
I am an ape man
https://youtu.be/UEjIJzxmM1EReplies: @roonaldo
Comments like his are useful because it lets you know who is worth taking remotely seriously. As much as I hate open borders combined with genocidal anti-white propaganda, I am going to go out on a limb here and say total nuclear war would be a lot worse.
As a Michigan resident, I wouldn’t mind seeing DC, NYC, L.A. and SF get targeted but we know it wouldn’t stop there.
The US intermediate nuclear missile was the Pershing and Pershing II missile. Many missile engineers will tell one that the Pershing II was the best weapons system the U.S. never had to use. It was designed for accuracy and for ground penetration to take out deep bunkers in the Western Soviet Union. The program ended with the Intermediate nuclear force treaty.Replies: @mmack, @Joe Stalin, @Old Prude
The Pershing II may indeed have been, as you say “the best weapon system”, but perhaps that doesn’t apply to the crews manning it.
At West Point, back in the mid-eighties, the senior class chose the branches of the Army in which they would serve according to class rank: A composite rating of academics and demerits, or lack thereof. The highest ranking cadets generally choose the Corps of Engineers, with Infantry coming in close second for all the career ladder climbers. The Army had a quota as to how many slots in each combat branch had to be filled at a minimum, so if the cadets didn’t voluntarily fill the required slots, then those at the bottom of the class didn’t have choice and were assigned to fill the branch minimums.
Field Artillery, my graduating year, did not have the minimum number of volunteers, so the goats of the class were assigned to that branch.
Within the branches, cadets were again ranked and chose, by ranking, which unit they would serve in as first assignment. The elite-unit slots filled up first. Last choice in Field Artillery was the Pershing units. My roommate, recruited to West Point as an athlete, was a great partier and a real lady’s man, but, by his own admission not very studious or organized. He got involutarily assigned to FA and slotted into Pershing missiles as the last available unit from which to choose.
He and all the rest of us got a great laugh out of that. The least smart in the whole company was going to be in charge of the most destructive weapons in the entire Army.
Thanks for not blowing us all to kingdom come, George!
Footnote: Prior to the admission of women, all graduates had to serve in the combat arms. With women on board, all the REMF branches opened up, for both women and men to choose. Any guy who chose a non-combat arms branch was looked-down on. Those who weren’t gung-ho, but didn’t want to be openly labelled as a sissy, chose Air Defense Artillery, about as far from offensive combat as one can get, manning a Patriot Missile battery. Now that women can be Rangers, maybe the non-combat arms option should be terminated. If not, why not?
I always thought Field Artillery was bad due having to spend a lot of time at Fort Sill Oklahoma.Replies: @Old Prude, @Brutusale
I am definitely hanging back ... it's getting close to nap time. But, please point me at the enemy i'm supposed to find, close with and kill?Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Jenner Ickham Errican
Don’t feed the sockpuppet.
Is this cover true? I just got a copy (free, for the crossword) but haven’t read it yet.
https://twitter.com/theragex/status/1498330184889606157?s=20&t=-BiD72Ie0-paigagXC_P5Q
If anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be rootin' for Putin,
I’d have said they were flipping bonkers!
The world is spinning upside down… again.
Reminds me of those French soldiers defending Hitler’s bunker.
And ya'll thought ya hated your job!
Imagine you’re a French soldier 100 yards from the bunker
taking Soviet flack. You murmer to yourself, "fuck this world,"
followed by a feeble, incredulous chuckle.
Siding with an asshole to undermine evil.
Where have I seen this plot play out before?Replies: @MGB
I’m sure the EU thing will go quickly for the Ukraine. The Germans can’t stand supporting the Greeks, etc., but they’ll welcome 3rd world Ukraine into the fold.
Go ahead and make your tee time.Replies: @ic1000
The risk of nuclear war is non-zero, and higher than last week. Both things are bad.
At this tweet is an excerpt of Robert McNamara in Cuba, talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis with Fidel Castro, a few decades later. Not heartwarming.
I am definitely hanging back ... it's getting close to nap time. But, please point me at the enemy i'm supposed to find, close with and kill?Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Jenner Ickham Errican
Oh, snap! AD, Wright’s “hanging back in perceived safety” sounds like your “separate nations” (within CONUS) plea.
Eventually, it could/will be those in close proximity whom you think you (we) can/should “separate” from within CONUS. Based on the content of your copious comments and complaints over the years, you already know who the enemies are.
Like Trump can never be elected. You’re making the same stupid mistake as the democrats, because you underestimate collective contempt for an existential doctrine.
I think it’s fair to assume that Russian decision makers read the New York Times. What are they to make of the hysterics generated by the Dems during the trump presidency, while attempting to suck the Russians into their collective hysteria? What are they to make of San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, LBGT mental patients with a microphone, or the national shakedown industry of BLM? What are they to make of an elderly stuttering lowbrow hack of a president, or his cheap hooker he refers to as his Vice President setting our national agenda, while our press generally urges him on?
Might it be reasonable to assume that the United States, much like prewar Germany, has gone batshit crazy, with zero moderation amongst its own politicians, and now it’s every nation for themselves? What should Putin do with an opposing world power in self-destruct mode?
Common sense would dictate getting control of his contentious border areas, and fast. The worst is yet to come by any reasonable observation. The U.S. is weak, and getting weaker, while fomenting discord around the world, that Putin must deal with.
Of course he’s going to invade Ukraine. It’s chock full of lowlifes and spooks getting \$14 billion dollars a year in aid by the United States, much of which is immediately deposited in Swiss bank accounts, with not a peep from Congress about the ridiculously obvious graft taking place.
Why do the Ukrainians have their pants around their ankles militarily now? One reason might be because the money that could have been applied to train and properly deploy a competent military went into Swiss bank accounts instead. There’s a reason they’re handing automatic weapons to grandma’s and hookers. That’s all they got!
The Ukrainians made their own bed. Stealing our money and shit-talking/harassing the Russians because they assumed the US would support their stupid, perverse behavior with the threat of sanctions and military response. They didn’t bother to prepare for conflict because they didn’t care. The decision-makers of that country is comprised of two-bit lowbrow thugs. They were cutting deals with a degenerate crackhead, simply because his creepy father was Vice President! They have zero moral/ethical agency. They deserve what’s coming. At least Putin is a comparatively orderly thug.
We’re weak, and Putin is sick of the border bullshit by comparative nobodies. He knows Biden’s overseers will wise up long enough to cut a deal. He’s a 78 year old mentally deficient political hack. He was chosen exclusively by Obama as assassination insurance, and wisely so.
Putin would be a poor leader if he haD not taken advantage of this opportunity.
I’m rooting for him. If anyone knows of a gofundme page to contribute to Putin’s war effort, I’d love to get a link. Americans should support him to get this over with as soon as possible.
This PDF contains 139 pages of official nuclear industry acronyms and initialisms, from AA (access authorization) and AAA (Agency Allegations Advisor) to ZTO (zero time outage) and ZWOK (zirconium-water oxidation kinetics). CSCA isn’t one of them.
NUREG-0544, Rev. 4, “NRC Collection of Abbreviations.”
Go nuts over ZNP.
In other words, a single submarine reactor can eff up the whole earth. Sobering thought for the day.
But I'm still wondering what the American nuclear accident that was worse than Three Mile Island that has already happened was. Somewhere in the Southwest, apparently.Replies: @Anonymous
NgmiReplies: @Reg Cæsar
Nobody said anything about caring.
More on the gay academic achievement gap.
Gay men earn undergraduate degrees at the highest rate of any group in the U.S., according to a new study on sexual orientation and academic achievement. Roughly 52 percent of gay men in the U.S. have a bachelor's degree, compared to 36 percent of all adults and about 35 percent of straight men, the study found.Nov 30, 2021
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/11/30/gay-men-earn-degrees-highest-rate-us#:~:text=Gay%20men%20earn%20undergraduate%20degrees,straight%20men%2C%20the%20study%20found.Replies: @J.Ross, @ScarletNumber
>undergrad degree
>a measure of intelligence
How many in STEM? How many with any sort of hard criteria or objective measures?
Just on more reason to pull the plug on that mockery of the ancient Academy.
From your first link:
“When the Russian government decided to invade Ukraine, it chose to accept that relations with the West would be basically hostile for a long time to come.”
It probably should also have accepted that their relations with Ukraine were going to be similarly hostile. Weird that that got omitted, and that’s more or less the TLDR of this comment. You don’t want a bunch of battle-scarred misfit kids trying to keep the “peace” in Donbas? Maybe don’t swipe a chunk of the country while expecting them to suddenly become nicer. You know the sleazy way that the elites in this country have been denigrating so-called “heartland” whites for decades (i.e., “toothless tub o’ lard rednecks”, cousin-shaggers, hillbillies, Trumpers, deplorables, etc…)? That’s eerily similar to how many upper-class Russians have been sneering at those “country bumpkins” over in Ukraine, for hundreds of years now. It worked to some extent — the Ukrainian I probably got to know best is adamant that Ukrainian language and culture are just cheap knockoffs of Russia in almost every way (and for that matter, plenty of pale-skinned people in the US seem to agree with the establishment types who think it’s definitely not OK to be white) — but overall, it failed spectacularly, because some of them have just gotten harder and meaner (partly because, as with poor whites, Ukrainians were especially useful when cannon fodder was needed and the “Tommy this an’ that, an’ Tommy, go away” routine gets old quick).
In other words, the “experts” can’t just worry about giving Putin a dignified “out”. There will have to be one for the Ukrainians as well. At this point, several centuries on, they’re going to be hard to root out. (It’s something some of the more anti-white elites of this country need to remember in their efforts to displace or “reform” hard-scrabble whites.)
Anyway, that brings us to your second link which is similarly myopic. “Ukraine had no existential or geopolitical reason to participate in the anti-Trump operation.” Really? The name “Manafort” doesn’t ring any bells with the Russia “expert” who wrote that piece? Hmmm. The point is, that if you don’t want the things you do in Ukraine to come back to haunt you, maybe don’t do those things. Yes, that goes for Hunter Biden, too. His number may well come up, too, at some future administration’s behest, and I suspect the Ukrainians will turn over what they have in that case as well. Don’t blame them for that. And consider also the possibility that the reason the Ukrainians chose the stupid Nuland approach was quite possibly because what Putin was offering was even worse. Maybe not to you and me, who would have shed no tears if Putin had managed to pull off in Ukraine what he managed to pull off with Belorussia. But he failed with that campaign, too. And some of you might still be stupid enough to believe that any promises or agreements he would have made would have been honored. But given the last few weeks, I understand why they don’t.
Finally, as for Putin lecturing us about how Ukraine doesn’t exist? Like I said, there are Ukrainians who will agree, but as for the rest, that kind of talk just drives them away faster. I understand Kurds similarly don’t like being told they’re just “mountain Turks” and Bosniaks don’t relish being told they’re just deluded Serbs or Croats.
To repeat, I think people need to start coming to terms with the fact that there are indeed Ukrainians in the world. Trying to ignore that altogether is like trying to ignore that Bosnians or Serbs want a say in how the world is carved up, too, and then being surprised by Gavrilo Princips who pop up. Young men are surprisingly eager to die for surprisingly stupid things, and that’s the kind of thing you want to limit. I know some will want to say to the Ukrainians “Sorry guys, you’re not in the nuclear club so you’re gonna be ignored.” But if that’s the hold-up, then they’ll bribe someone in Russia or Kazakhstan to trigger something. If an American (or, say, any Native American) did that in order to prevent his culture from being wiped out, plenty of Americans would be calling him a hero, or at least admitting he had a point.
The fact that Ukrainians do indeed exist on some level doesn’t mean they won’t lose big-time, but simply ignoring that fact won’t make the world a more peaceful place.
At West Point, back in the mid-eighties, the senior class chose the branches of the Army in which they would serve according to class rank: A composite rating of academics and demerits, or lack thereof. The highest ranking cadets generally choose the Corps of Engineers, with Infantry coming in close second for all the career ladder climbers. The Army had a quota as to how many slots in each combat branch had to be filled at a minimum, so if the cadets didn't voluntarily fill the required slots, then those at the bottom of the class didn't have choice and were assigned to fill the branch minimums.
Field Artillery, my graduating year, did not have the minimum number of volunteers, so the goats of the class were assigned to that branch.
Within the branches, cadets were again ranked and chose, by ranking, which unit they would serve in as first assignment. The elite-unit slots filled up first. Last choice in Field Artillery was the Pershing units. My roommate, recruited to West Point as an athlete, was a great partier and a real lady's man, but, by his own admission not very studious or organized. He got involutarily assigned to FA and slotted into Pershing missiles as the last available unit from which to choose.
He and all the rest of us got a great laugh out of that. The least smart in the whole company was going to be in charge of the most destructive weapons in the entire Army.
Thanks for not blowing us all to kingdom come, George!
Footnote: Prior to the admission of women, all graduates had to serve in the combat arms. With women on board, all the REMF branches opened up, for both women and men to choose. Any guy who chose a non-combat arms branch was looked-down on. Those who weren't gung-ho, but didn't want to be openly labelled as a sissy, chose Air Defense Artillery, about as far from offensive combat as one can get, manning a Patriot Missile battery. Now that women can be Rangers, maybe the non-combat arms option should be terminated. If not, why not?Replies: @guest007
I think West Pointers could go Combat support such as Signal Corps or MPs. I did not think that cadets could go combat service support such as quartermaster or adjutant general corps.
I always thought Field Artillery was bad due having to spend a lot of time at Fort Sill Oklahoma.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fhot-town-images.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fkwtv%2Fproduction%2F2019%2FMay%2F22%2Fwest-point-is-about-to-graduate-its-largest-class-of-black-women-ever.1558549163000.jpeg%3Fw%3D1050%26h%3D590.617%26fit%3Dcrop&f=1&nofb=1
Photo is from an article headlined "West Point Is About to Graduated Its Largest Class of Black Women". Just don't touch their hair.
People pushed into a corner will do reckless things. People high on their own hubris will push others into a corner.
Obama got caught by surprise with Georgia.
The Doomsday clock was as close to zero as it has ever been before this war started. 100s to midnight as of Jan 2022. Now? It may be a minute or less.
It doesn’t necessarily start with a launch of ICBMs either. One thing leads to another. Imagine how WW1 started, but imagine both sides have nukes. The nuclear exchange may begin with tactical nukes but it ends with ICBMs.
It is a real risk and for what?
Nuclear war will make COVID-related suffering look like a Utopia.
Very possible (there are American-connected biowarfare labs in Ukraine and they have been repeatedly accused of developing plagues, including by one guy who was immediately SWATted), but there’s no credible claim or proof, to include any made by Putin. Now that we’ve lived through the lockdown, cynical elites plotting to poison hundreds of thousands of innocent people to enable dictatorahip cannot be dismissed. But the best advocate is not making the case.
https://twitter.com/clandestinenot/status/1498461956080119811?s=21
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pershing_II
Sounds like a lot of the protests spun up over the US going mano-a-mano with the USSR via tactical nuclear weapons.Replies: @guest007
Thanks for finding that. I got to visit Seneca Army Depot twice while it still existed and still had nuclear weapons. Our hosts took us by the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice. Of course, at the time the policy of the DoD was to neither confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons there. The problem was that the special weapons storage and maintenance area was at the edge of the facility and could be observed from off government property. And unlike the the movies, nuclear weapons storage areas are very unimpressive.
I guess it's time to switch the moral panic inflicted on us to now require schoolkids practice hiding under desks, for safety in event of a nuclear attack, from the equally effective requirements for wearing surgical masks to stop an aerosolized virus.Replies: @guest007, @Hamlet's Ghost
I have always suspected that a lot of people who claim to remember nuclear attack drills and hiding under their desks to actually be remembering tornado drills that also involve hiding under desks along with holding an open book around one’s. In once working in veterans health and disability claims, I was always amazed that the veterans seems to conform their statements with information that could be found online or at the library.
“Then the role of Russia useful idiots was played by the leftoids. Now that role is played by the rightoids…”
It’s the horseshoe theory in action. Both sides are (were) proud to line up to become traitors and spies to Moscow for pretty much the same reasons — America is just a corrupt, cheap, plastic, “in dollar we trust” Ponzi scheme run by oligarchs and corrupt politicians.
I actually kind of understand the sentiment as much as I condemn the response. In any case, for people like that to take solace in affirming Putin’s Russia? It ain’t Tchaikovsky and Bolshoi and caviar over there right about now. I like Russian culture, too, but does anyone think Snowden is breathing the sweet air of surveillance-free freedom? Moreover, all the stuff that the current crop of sellouts are claiming ruined America — feminism, homosexual lobbies, Emmet-Till-all-the-time — all that was stuff that Marxists were pushing for decades (but not there — none of that diversity nonsense for their own locals, no sir, comrade). And those Marxists were, for the most part, Moscow stooges down to a man, openly, and so much so that being against Russia made you a real oddball, even a traitor. Even a “fascist”. If you read about people like Orwell, or Bertrand Russell, or Camus or Muggeridge who took a stand against Stalin — they were considered weirdoes by the rest of the left.
Anyway, the fact that a lot of the earlier generation were Jews, and those this time around are hard-core antisemites makes it that much more comical. One of their favorite Russia analysts these days is dinosaur Stephen F. Cohen, a die-hard old-school leftist relic. I kid you not. At this point, it’s like that Evelyn Waugh novel about white-supremacist Abyssinians.
George F. Kennan supported the Nuclear Freeze movement.
“Invading other countries is a bad thing”
Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. That’s in the last 20-odd years alone.
Will the possibility – even if remote – of nuclear war over Ukraine stop any would would be migrants from crossing the southern border?
Pretty sure there is no nuke danger in Central America.
I think it will deter no one.
Meanwhile the Russian move to go to Defcon 1 is entirely the result of British foreign secretary Truss, a fact which the Russians confirmed. Her reckless comments about this conflict spilling over into NATO nations were the trigger for the Russian move.
So if we're all vaporized in the next week, we can thank a dim affirmative action blonde from Cuck Island who doesn't even know where the Baltics are.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Alfa158
Peskov (asked why Russia put nuclear forces on alert): “There were unacceptable statements about possible conflict situations and even confrontations and clashes between Nato and Russia. I will not name the authors of these statements, although it was the British foreign secretary”
HA – at least Snowden is alive and not serving 40 years in some third-world (US) jail. You have to take the best deal you can get.
That's a fair point, but in terms of surveillance and state control, I wish Snowden had had a chance to talk to, say, Navalny as to whether the US or Russia is in general "the best deal you can get". He might have gotten a different take on things. Unfortunately, Navalny is currently unavailable for comment.
And in my opinion, if someone is going to sell out his country for whatever reason, I'd think the least he could do is not be so gleeful and boisterously proud about it. Snowden certainly wasn't, from what I recall. As for some of the people hyping Putin on these threads -- I'm not so sure.
I don't want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore
And live like an ape manI'm an ape man, I'm an ape ape man, oh I'm an ape man
I'm a King Kong man, I'm a voodoo man, oh I'm an ape man'Cause compared to the sun that sits in the sky
Compared to the clouds as they roll by
Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
I am an ape manReplies: @Zoos
Well, if the nukes start flying, the time scale will be radically compressed. The Chinese and Russians both tried to give us a hedzup in the past few years by making sure their nuclear subs were spotted off of Catalina Island, fully equipped with their latest high-speed nukes. I noticed the sparse coverage came and went surprisingly quickly. They were trying to make an important point: It’s not your grandpa’s Cold War.
Their proximity to the shore was intended to underline the fact that they could deliver a nuke from our own coastline to directly up Steve’s ass in just a few minutes. No more of that “you have 30 minutes to find a bunker” stuff. Now ya got under five minutes to ponder your future, if that. Chances are you won’t even know what hit you. Imagine the last words you hear on earth is Rachael Maddow on msnbc spinning a heartwarming home-spun anecdote about Vice President Kamala Harris earnestly interacting with some cute child actors, who are unaware they’re about to be atomized.
It’s a happy and sad scenario, that fares well with the story of mankind.
Imagine after the nuclear heat has diminished, the only decision-maker left alive in California is a fat below-the-line props manager from 20th Century Fox, bunkered in a cheap mini-mansion in Hesperia.
Jung would be satisfied:
In the recesses of my memory is the movie A Boy and His Dog, set after nuclear war, starring Don Johnson, where he telepathically talks to his dog and enters a bizarre underground world and emerges above ground for the twist at the end. I seem to recall that it would get tedious, then shift gears just in time to make it worthwhile. Might have to see it again for old times sake.Replies: @Zoos
Unless their tank parasols are really effective against Javelins, I think we have just found out that Russia won’t be invading anybody else anytime soon.
Yeah, yeah, the nuclear thing. Are they really going to go nuclear with even China not on their side?
By the way iSteve, a nuclear counterforce first-strike capability (against command-and-control and their weapons, not their civilian population) has been the dark secret of US policy. A “war nerd” at Caltech told me this, and I have other evidence to not, not believe the guy.
That is what the Pershing II was all about along with the Nuclear Freeze — Soviet Propaganda. The Cold War and Soviet Union was done for with the deployment of the counter-force accurate MIRVed Poseiden D1 missile — Gorby told as a much.
Semi-OT: Lyingpress ignoring huge anti-lockdown rallies, focusing on small rallies for Ukrainian massacre.
https://xyz.net.au/2022/02/massive-global-protests-continue-against-vaccine-mandates-dwarf-small-anti-war-protests/
Stevesie is (sadly) a godless boomer so maybe you are right.
The mistake was getting involved at all. The US should have let the Germans and Russians destroy each other then carpet bombed the ruins into dust. Both the Nazis and the commies were insane.
America explicitly claims Ukraine as part of the American Empire. If it loses Ukraine, it will reveal it has lost the Mandate of Heaven. Hungary will secede of its own accord and that will merely be the beginning.
Biden's boss, one of America's Thousand Emperors, stands to lose only pride and prestige. Is this enough? This is enough. He feels like he's dying. Like worse than death.
Ironically nuclear war has likely been vastly overblown. Radioactivity is largely a nutrient, not dangerous. E.g. the cobalt-60 apartments in Taiwan reduced all-cause mortality by 60%. Dockworkers who handle uranium shipment are likewise in unexpectedly robust health. (Iodine not included to concentration in the thyroid.) The odds that "devastating wildfires" would occur and blot out the sun is almost certainly pure propaganda. (Though they lie so much, if they told the truth for once it would slip through the cracks.)
That and it's more than possible the missiles have gone stale. Do they still work? Rather a lot of folk would rather not find out - not because they might get blown up, but because it will be immensely embarrassing of the answer is "no."
Basically they think they know exactly where Russia's line is and think they can be all edgy and step right up to the edge of it. They're not so dumb as to explicitly declare war on Russia - they believe they would get domed by a nuclear counter-strike instantly, the same way they shit the bed at night thinking of St. Rittens - but they've gotten away with hiding behind the flimsiest cat's paws ever since, what, Vietnam? Political equivalent of "stop hitting yourself," basically.Replies: @S. Anonyia
Environmental long-term impact of nuclear war is perhaps overblown, but what about the tens to hundreds of thousands (or more, depending on the scale of the attack) of random civilians near the various strike targets who get instantly vaporized or catastrophically wounded (if a tad further from the immediate blast radius)? Lots of us live near important cities and military bases. The U.S probably won’t provide much warning in the event of an impending nuclear attack, either; unlike some other countries, U.S has no real bunker network for ordinary citizens to ride things out.
When America apologizes for firebombing Dresden I'll maybe consider taking the hand-wringing about "civilian casualties" off the crocodile-tears list. A great line I saw on Unz recently: the Pope didn't have to condemn the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 because he'd already done that in 1943. Haha, oops.
As usual, it's none of my business. I would recommend a limited nuclear exchange away from population centres. Open, formal war. Maybe ask China to use one of their fake cities nobody lives in. Nuclear war is inevitable sooner or later; your options are to be prepared or to be unprepared.
Until it's happened and you know what a nuclear blast actually does, your option is: be unprepared. Honour Mars or get fucked.
Secondly, I advise living far away from places like DC and Kyiv if you don't feel like getting nuked. (Among other reasons, such as honk-honk.)
Nobody who takes my advice is getting nuked in the first place. Hence: anyone who does get nuked is not taking my advice; my opinion is irrelevant to them; I thus put zero weight on what happens to them when crafting it.
Here is a video of the president of Ukraine. He’s the second one from the left. I am not hopeful that this guy can win the war.
https://gab.com/UniversalDelirium/posts/107877449926956052
Are there any white criminals left in the 110 (higher?) IQ range who will meticulously assemble body armor and automatic weapons and the pre-crime drug cocktail for a morning of ultra-violence? If there's been anything like this since 1997 I'm not recalling it.Replies: @Corvinus, @Steve Sailer
I’ll do you one better.
https://amp.palmbeachpost.com/amp/6227770001
Why are all these NATO countries shipping ever more lethal weapons into Ukraine?
Why are they imposing financial sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy? (And seem to be working)
Putin has warned against "interfering" in Ukraine. A lot of interference is going on right now.
Don't chase and corner a man who has a suicide vest strapped to his chest.
All of these NATO countries are so giddy to poke the Russian bear in the eye. It's stupid beyond belief.
Who is responsible for this insanity?Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Dnought, @guest007, @Professional Slav, @Alrenous, @Corvinus, @Ed, @NickG
“Who is responsible for this insanity?“
It’s Putin’s War.
Eat it nerds.
I demand one million dollars! Ho ho ho!
You understand that’s why they keep changing its name, don’t you? The earth isn’t cooperating by warming to extinction level temperatures. Every single prediction the climate modals and preachers have made has not happened.
However, the evidence for a cooling cycle beginning is much more concerning, as we near what’s called a Grand Solar minimum.
Hey global warming nutters, you do realize that warming is better for sustaining life than cooling, right? The warmer it is, the more precipitation there is and the lower the crop line drops. Meaning, we grow more food.Replies: @TontoBubbaGoldstein
And more precipitation means more clouds which will reflect more of the sun’s energy back into space cooling the earth. It’s almost like there is a …balance in nature.
Not have a nuclear war?! Are you listening to yourself? What are you, Steve, a Russian stooge? How much is Putin paying you?
They’re warming us to its reality (pun intended).
Notice the singular in the headline. Russia has 20 thermonuclear warheads (MIRVs) for each its hypersonic ICBMs. So think of 20 top American or European cities and realize that just one missile could turn them to ash. Russia has roughly 5,0o0 nuclear warheads.
But you didn’t really believe that you weren’t the last generation on earth, right?? This is how it ends. Over protecting a State Department created and controlled puppet-state run by a Jewish comedian whose signature comedy routine involves playing the piano with his penis.
In two days it is Ash Wednesday. In more way than one?
As always, nobody learns anything from history. Making the whole Russia very poor is only going to get Russians very angry at the external enemy. Here is a book detailing how sanctions pushed Japan into attacking the US:
Well, it seems like there are about eight, maybe as many as twelve biolabs in Ukraine funded by the NIH.
I wonder what they were researching at those sites?
Thanks for reading the linked pieces, HA.
> The fact that Ukrainians do indeed exist on some level doesn’t mean they won’t lose big-time, but simply ignoring that fact won’t make the world a more peaceful place.
That’s not what I took from those (or from Mearshiemer), I’ll re-read them. Instead, basic take-home to me was that Russia-adjacent steppelands is a rough neighborhood. Elite American politicos with fancy titles shouldn’t have made promises to their new Ukrainian friends that they couldn’t keep. Words that ended up being no better than “let’s you and him fight” and “guess it sucks to be you.”
That this tragedy was predictable is proven by the fact that Mearshiemer and others predicted it.
Was it preventable? I don’t know. The fecklessness and recklessness of people like Victoria Nuland and Joe Biden are hardly excused by “probably woulda happened anyhow,” in my opinion.
It is important to point out that Russia/U.S.S.R never had the sheer economic size to sustain a decades-long Cold War with the U. S and come out victorious. Russia’s economy now is 7 X smaller than the U.S’. But even back in Soviet times, the smallest gap between the two countries was back in the mid 1960’s, when the U.S.S.R was fully recovered from WW2, and yet the Soviet economy was never more than about 30% the size of the U.S. The only area where the Soviets could compete to some degree as far as economics was “heavy” industry like coal and steel production, where the U.S.S.R produced as much as 50% as the U.S.
The U.S.S.R came out from WW2 with a huge handicap compared to the U.S in that as much as 80% of it’s entire infra-structure had suffered massive structural damage. on top of that, the entire Soviet population was smaller than the U.S’. The U.S, conversely, protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, emerged from WW2 not only intact, but the World’s largest creditor nation.
What allowed the Russians/Soviets to compete with America was their formidable scientific/technological capabilities, and the fact that Soviet leaders were wise enough to never let an abundance of resources to not be available for their top research scientists and engineers. Russia before the October Revolution of 1917 had been an European country imbued with the European tradition of science, universities and research institutes. It was a Russian after all, Mendeleyev, that formulated the Periodic Table of Elements.
Americans decry that the Sovietic atomic bomb was the result of espionage on America’s Manhattan Project. That is true, but remember that most of the scientists that worked on that project were not American either. But still, for a country that had suffered extreme destruction from the War, going from zero to an atomic bomb in only 4 years goes to show how formidable the Russians are as scientists and engineers.
Then, the Russians gave America perhaps it’s biggest humiliation ever when they beat America at putting a man in space. By 1961/62, the Russians were just fulling recovering from WW2. America got the cream of the crop of German rocket scientists, and Americans had a much larger and more diverse industrial base to work with. When you consider all the handicaps that Russia had and the advantages that America had, Russia beating America at putting a man in space was an embarrassing defeat for the U.S.A.
Americans love to brag about winning the space race by putting a man on the Moon, but the reality is that Russia never had an economy and indutrial base that could support such a project. Putting a man on the Moon is more than just a feat of science: it requires a very large and diversied economy to support such a project, and Russia never had that. They had the scientific capabilities to do it, but not the resources. IMO, Russia beating America at putting a man in space when you consider that they were still recovering from WW2, that their economy was much smaller and that they didn’t get much of the benefit of German rocket scientists like America did is a *much* more impressive feat than America putting a man on the Moon several years latter.
But the Sputnik showed America what a truly formidable threat the Russians were, and at that moment there was a switch in American consciousness. That was when America decided to channel it’s multi-trillion Dollar economy into beating the U.S.S.R by whatever means necessary. Once that determination was made, it was only a matter of time for the U.S.R.R to collapse by trying to keep up with the U.S. Again, they never had an economy big enough and sophisticated enough to keep up with America forever. The fact that they pushed America for almost 50 years on their scientific capabilities alone is incredible.
But despite the much smaller oil and coal-based economy that it has, Russia is several tiers above the typical Banana Republics that the U.S pushes around. And might I remember you that the U.S has declined so much as a superpower that nowadays even the Banana Republics ocasionally give the U.S a bloody nose.
Treating the Russian Bear as if it were Guatemala could have dire consequences. A Russian Subot S-9 missile with an 18 megaton yield detonates over Los Angeles: look at the children in the park being reduced to Carbon as the thermal wave hits them, and then moments latter exploding into clouds of dust as the shock wave hits them:
To quote The Iliad: “Man is nothing but shadow and dust.”
That being said, I prefer this absurdist, darkly-humorous sequence from the early-1980s anti-nuke documentary The Atomic Cafe. All of the footage is taken from 1950s-era governmental "educational" films (such as the infamous "Duck and Cover" cartoon):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=291cy2JgiC8Replies: @Zero Philosopher
(And the US could have put a satellite in orbit before the Soviets. They just didn't want to use their "German" military rockets for the purpose and their Vanguard rockets kept exploding. Could they have put a man in orbit earlier? Almost certainly, if they had taken their "German" rocket capabilities seriously sooner.)Replies: @Zero Philosopher
Russia/USSR is a blank screen onto which we project our hopes or fears.
…said some old dead racist white guy.
Obviously one of Putin’s agents.
NUREG-0544, Rev. 4, "NRC Collection of Abbreviations."
Go nuts over ZNP.Replies: @Almost Missouri
Haha. I too wondered what “CSCA” was (and “NR” … “nuclear research”?). After snooping a bit, I’m going with “Controlled Surface Contamination Area”, which I’m still not sure what that means in plain English, but I think Anon[781] is saying that if the juice in a naval nuclear reactor core got out and were to spread evenly across the surface of the earth, the entire earth would be radioactively toxic to a degree that nuclear researchers require preventive safety protocols to operate in it.
In other words, a single submarine reactor can eff up the whole earth. Sobering thought for the day.
But I’m still wondering what the American nuclear accident that was worse than Three Mile Island that has already happened was. Somewhere in the Southwest, apparently.
Controlled Surface Contamination Area
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiy94bK_qP2AhU5qXIEHXBFC3cQFnoECAQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.directives.doe.gov%2Fdirectives-documents%2F400-series%2F0441.1-EGuide-09%2F%40%40images%2Ffile&usg=AOvVaw2wFdJviMINtWwhgS6tcYC1
Essentially an area with radioactive debris on it, such that you could take a swipe and put it in a device and measure it...so like dust, not airborne, not just high rad from nearby, not some point source (like a barrel). Requires a roped enclosure, stepoff pad, controlled access, etc. I forget the exact regs, but you have a certain size of sort of filter paper circle, swipe it for a certain small distance, and then put it in a device to measure it. Spec is pretty low, towards detection limit, so it doesn't imply a high rad area, with immediate danger. [I was involved in making one of those in a barrel too...much worse...got my peepee slapped for that.] But pretty much you're not supposed to just have a bunch of radioactive dust laying around. (If so, you clean it up.) I forget the exact math but it was something like 10-25 times over the limit for a CSCA.
NR is Naval Reactors. The reactor pressure vessel explosion was SL-1.
(All public. Not going to share anything classified.)Replies: @Mr. Anon
Indeed, Putin should not have invaded Ukraine with the Russian army as he did.
He should instead have clandestinely recruited a couple hundred thousand sub-Saharan Africans, transported them to the Russian-Ukranian border, disarmed them of any weaponry, taught them the Ukranian word for ‘asylum’, and then directed them enmasse to cross the Ukranian border in the middle of the night.
Almost assuredly some Ukranians would of shot these invaders.
The headlines would then read ‘Unarmed Black Men (Asylum Seekers to Boot!) Shot By White Ukranian Men’.
Putin, now with full US and NATO support, could then offer up the obvious solution of his army needing to enter Ukraine for social justice reasons, and keeping the peace between Ukranians and the newly arrived Black refugees.
1) Putin wants to capture Ukraine, not destroy it. Every Russian is familiar with the consequences of the sealed train carrying the bacillus of Bolshevism in the form of Lenin. How much worse would would be the consequences of a sealed delivery of 100,000 Africans. Putin's pre-invasion speech specifically cited forced demographic changes as a "weapon of mass destruction". He does not want to WMD his own country. (Unlike the Western rulers.)
2) Putin doesn't give a crap about the Western media. ("How many divisions has CNN?") If only Westerners were as wise.Replies: @S, @nebulafox, @Professional Slav
Yeah, only the united states and Israel get to do that. How dare he think he can act like us.
Steve
Off topic:
Looks like Skip Baylis is a big time cuck…..
The Ghanaian lady looks like M’onique playing Gone With the Wind’s Mammy at a pussy hat protest.
P.S. What ever happened to the antiwar left?Replies: @EddieSpaghetti, @Almost Missouri
A good question also raised by Old Prude and another commenter I can’t find now.
Inasmuch as today’s prowar left are generally either the children of or the very same people as yesterday’s antiwar left, it is safe to say that they were never really antiwar, just anticivilization.
Now that they are in a position to attack civilization using war, they are prowar. Previously they were only in a position to surrender civilization by invoking “peace”, so they were antiwar.
Another interesting thing is that both anti and pro nukes types don't realize we actually had a very serious accident (boiler explosion type of pressure vessel failure, worse than TMI) in the US. Of course, it was in an area that literally (and not how millenials use that term) was chosen for similar reasons as the Test Site. Did my prototype there. Pain in the ass hour long bus ride in and out.Replies: @Almost Missouri
Hey yo 781!
Reg replied to you, down there:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/lets-not-have-a-nuclear-war/#comment-5204014
Ha! How else is the West to rid itself of its economically worthless and politically suicidal cities? And, on the bright side, foreigners pay for the entire demolition.
Here Steve, Here’s a sorta statistically related quest you can get behind. The creation of the FNG Scale.
https://foundingquestions.wordpress.com/2022/02/27/the-official-fng-scale/
Meanwhile the Russian move to go to Defcon 1 is entirely the result of British foreign secretary Truss, a fact which the Russians confirmed. Her reckless comments about this conflict spilling over into NATO nations were the trigger for the Russian move.
So if we're all vaporized in the next week, we can thank a dim affirmative action blonde from Cuck Island who doesn't even know where the Baltics are.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Alfa158
Do the Russians use the terminology Defcon?
In the US Air Force Strategic Air Command we defined Defcon 1 as nuclear war is being fought.
“That this tragedy was predictable is proven by the fact that Mearshiemer and others predicted it.”
That’s a fair point and maybe I’m being too hard on him. I didn’t realize the Mearshimer connection with regard to Lee Smith, and I should re-read the article with that in mind. In general, I find that the pundit/wonk/ambassadorial class tends to take on the prejudices of the ruling elites in and around the capital of whichever country they’re in, and like I said, from my very non-expert perspective, Moscow-centric analyses inevitably overlook Ukrainians. (I once spent some enjoyable time in Dalmatia at one point, and got a distinctly different take on Croats and Slovenes than what the “expert” analyses written by foreign bureau and press types in Belgrade had led me to expect, and I think that’s where that observation originated, for whatever it’s worth.)
I also suspect many wonks/analysts from foreign countries who live in and around DC have similarly jaded views on white folk, too. If they actually took the effort to meet up with some of these so called inbred, toothless, hillbilly hicks that folks in DC sneer at (as opposed to just the whites in and around that area who tend agree that people like that are regrettable, forgettable, flyover trash), they’d probably get a different take on them, too.
By the way, that second link doesn’t work on my browser (at least until one deletes the final period), so I’ll repeat it here if anyone else wants a read and wasn’t able to get the link to work:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraines-deadly-gamble
After the J6 lies, the Russia Hoax, the Impeachment Hoaxes, and the 2020 Fraudulent Election.
Remember that whatever those liars tell you is a lie. They don't stop lying because its a different subject. Steve and the preppers I watch need to chillax. If they are telling you about Putin going nuclear its 100% true he is NOT going nuclear.
But whether Fake President Joe's handlers do a false flag or launch one of their own is another story.Replies: @Mike Tre
The preppers get more views if there is a real or imagined threat of nuclear war, so it’s in their interest to promote that narrative.
The argument made in Israel by some was that constant warfare kept economic migrants out. Less African deluge if rockets are hitting every day. Does that apply to the US? Don’t know. I do know that Putin if he wants to can deluge the US and Europe with immigrants, not the amount now but a hundred million at once. Imagine a Russian boatlift taking over 60 million West Africans to Spain and France, and 40 million Arabs into Poland via airlift. Its not as if Western nations would be allowed to shoot down those airplanes or sink those boats. Not with noble, magical non-White migrants. The kind that get lady defense ministers those special lady tingles.
I think the chance of nuclear war is unacceptably high. Adam Kinzinger and some weirdo journalist slut and ex MP from the UK (Louise Mensch) are pronouncing on Twitter that Putin “won’t be allowed” to use his nukes. As if there was some giant Twitter council telling him what he could or could not do. The cost of turning over our leadership to emotional, stupid, and hysterical women and gays (but I repeat myself) is high. The nuclear alert was in response to UK Defense Minister Truss, some blonde idiot bimbo who likely got her job providing Harris-like favors, threatening Russia with air strikes. Putin does not care that Miley Cyrus AND Kim Kardashian blasted him on Twitter. He does not really care about sanctions, as he has most of the marginal output gas and oil and fertilizer and grain in his hands. If Europe wants to stay warm and eat they need Putin and Russia. Meanwhile hysterical gays and women figure that Putin is like a Trucker in Ontario. A Deplorable Dirt person who can be settled soon without much trouble.
That is the danger of a ruling class solidified around the idea of making war on internal enemies. Soon enough everyone looks like a working class trucker with his bank account seized.
Given this guy I figure Putin must at least think he just needs to maybe nuke Berlin to put some sense into the ruling class. But they are far too gone for that, debauchery and degradation are a habit, and being hysterical women and gays will push the button for MAD and global nuclear war just for feelz. Because its not all real. They literally cannot do anything but feelz and literally cannot think rationally and non-emotionally.
Right, once the US had submarine missiles as accurate as its land missiles (roughly end of the 1980s), all sorts of Soviet nuclear war strategy became irrelevant, which appears to have had a psychologically depressing effect on Soviet leadership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand
1. The sheer size of their nuclear arsenal(largest in the World).
2. Their delivery capabilities(most armed to sophisticated missiles capable of hitting any spot on Earth
3. The sheer power of their nukes. Russian nukes, unlike most American nukes, which are in the 200 to 500 kiloton range, are multi-megaton range from 2.5 megatons up to almost 20 megatons. Make *no* mistakes about this, Steve Sailer: Russia can destroy all American citiies with a population of 1 million people or more at least 20 X over, killing at least 80 million Americans in a single day, and poisoning to death the remaining 250 million Americans with massive radioactive fallout. In fact, the radioactive fallout would be so huge that it would poison the entire World. The difference is that people thousands of miles from America would get sick but live. Americans would not.Be assured: this is a war that the U.S *cannot* win. Quit your hubris.Replies: @PhysicistDave, @Inquiring Mind
Nuclear war is inevitable. It’s not as if this whole thing could have been avoided,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-says-putin-wanted-to-join-alliance-early-on-in-his-rule
What alternatives are there to such naked aggression?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS1oVMsrUcUReplies: @Twinkie
Yup. People remember the Long Telegram and containment, but don’t remember him going full Soviet shill (or useful idiot) later in life.
Those readers who don’t know what this means, look up counterforce vs. countervalue online.
I don’t think anybody has yet mentioned that the State of the Union speech is tomorrow night. This is an ideal time for a nuclear strike on Washington because the president and congress are all gathered together in one place. If the US government is taking its own propaganda seriously, they are going to be making some rather intense (that is, not merely pro forma) arrangements for “continuity of government.”
Anybody who works anywhere adjacent to the federal apparatus in DC (of which, among iSteve readers, there has to be at least one) should be able to sense something heavy in the air if the government is really worried, even if they ain’t sayin’ nothin’.
So report back, brave soul, and give us the mood from the inside. My sense from the periphery is that the government is not very much worried and is still mainly concerned with how to stuff the night full of kabuki theater.
I always thought Field Artillery was bad due having to spend a lot of time at Fort Sill Oklahoma.Replies: @Old Prude, @Brutusale
You are correct: JAG was not an option. I do not know about QM, but you are probably correct. As for Ft Sill being the arm-pit of the Army: Really? Worse than Ft Rucker, or Ft Bliss? Maybe, but think of how demented that is: The most technically challenging of the branches, the one with nuclear weapons, selects the most unqualified as its officers. It is to laugh…
“You have to take the best deal you can get.”
That’s a fair point, but in terms of surveillance and state control, I wish Snowden had had a chance to talk to, say, Navalny as to whether the US or Russia is in general “the best deal you can get”. He might have gotten a different take on things. Unfortunately, Navalny is currently unavailable for comment.
And in my opinion, if someone is going to sell out his country for whatever reason, I’d think the least he could do is not be so gleeful and boisterously proud about it. Snowden certainly wasn’t, from what I recall. As for some of the people hyping Putin on these threads — I’m not so sure.
Seems the Russian generals also realized this. Their doctrine is now extremely heavy on the artillery.I still find it hilarious that they're calling knocking on the capital's door within three days of operation "bogged down."Replies: @Paperback Writer
Richard Engel is tweeting satellite photos of Russian convoys and asking for NATO to bomb them.
Agreed – and this is one of only two sane positions for Ukraine.
A country that has a much more powerful neighbor is foolish if it allies itself with its neighbor’s enemies. The sane choices are either to make an alliance with the neighbor, or to choose strict neutrality.
The moves by the US to entice Ukraine into joining NATO were not only toxic for Ukraine – they were doomed to failure, because NATO membership must be unanimously approved by the existing members, and France and Germany had already signaled that they would veto Ukrainian membership. It is a pity that the leaders of those countries did not publicly remind the world of their position.
Whatever else they are, the Nulands of this world are not fools. They would have known that NATO membership for Ukraine was not a possible outcome, and that the pretended friendship of NATO would be harmful for Ukraine. So the question arises, what were they trying to achieve? They wanted to draw the Russians into a war, just as Zbigniew Brzezynski and Jimmy Carter had done in the late 1970s when they funded the Afghan Mujahideen. The offer of cash and friendship to Ukraine belied the callousness of a plan in which the Ukrainians were expendable.
The US State Department certainly knew Putin’s weaknesses. Nostalgia for the Soviet Union, especially the union of “all the Russias”; a wish to be treated with respect and as an equal; and the expectation that his reasonable concerns about Russia’s security would be taken seriously and not stonewalled. The USA successfully played both Russia and Ukraine as suckers.
Was it the West's hubris or it's Pride?
https://twitter.com/ChiefMI6/status/1497287654441984007?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1497287654441984007%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fmi6-chief-faces-backlash-saying-ukraine-war-about-lgbt-rightsReplies: @AndrewR
Instead all I see and hear, not that I am paying that much attention, is how can we, the West, hurt Putin. Is anyone asking to talk with him and his people as equals? Anyone?
What else can one expect from our above-the-law elites who are used to bullying their enemies, foreign and domestic?
If the West is able to get Putin to back down by using crushing sanctions, without a nuke exploding, that will be a good thing, but they will have earned a nuclear-armed enemy for life. Heckuva job, Brandon.Replies: @Thea, @Achmed E. Newman
Yes that would be the wise move. unless this all kabuki theater. Zelensjy is straight outta central casting.
Sunny, thank you for the reply. Born at the very end of WWII, I was raised by my father and his brothers, all vets of WWII. They spent years overseas and lived through terrible days. We were indoctrinated to fear the Russians and Nuclear weapons. You had to live back then to understand. A walk down the major street in my Buffalo neighborhood, Bailey Ave., took you past buldinga with Air Raid shelter signs. These were not WWII leftovers but the places we would flee to survive. Remember, I said there were Nike Missile bases nearby, just beyond the cemetary. People built cellar and backyard shelters. Russia, USSR, couldn’t touch us by sea, but the attack would come from the sky.We thought it was real. Stay safe.
That’s why the Soviets developed the “Dead Hand”, which is like a semi-automatic doomsday device and said to be still operational today. We still don’t know all the details about the Dead Hand system and how it exactly works, degree of automation, etc. Frankly, it’s crazy that such systems are still around and hard to believe that automated systems like it won’t go wrong someday and blow up the planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand
Follow-up to this, it is being claimed, but you’re not going to see a word of it in the lyingpress, and it’s still just a reason among other reasons. The real reason is we decided we had the right to start to set up an attack on Russia.
https://twitter.com/clandestinenot/status/1498461956080119811?s=21
Announced today: A Russian cargo ship was seized in The English Channel because it was “strongly suspected of being linked to Russian interests targeted by sanctions,” she (the French ) said, adding that while such a measure was “rare” it is “a sign of “firmness”.
I posted above how, in the recent novel “2034,” an incident at sea begins a plausible cascade of escalation that culminates in a strategic exchange. So here we go. Some people might think that “sanctions” entail esoteric entries on financial ledgers. But sanctions can also involve confrontations among vessels at sea, involving “firmness.”
You really think Putin would stop with the Ukraine?
Just like those Vietnamese communists eventually had to be fought off at the Golden Gate.
More on the gay academic achievement gap.
Gay men earn undergraduate degrees at the highest rate of any group in the U.S., according to a new study on sexual orientation and academic achievement. Roughly 52 percent of gay men in the U.S. have a bachelor's degree, compared to 36 percent of all adults and about 35 percent of straight men, the study found.Nov 30, 2021
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/11/30/gay-men-earn-degrees-highest-rate-us#:~:text=Gay%20men%20earn%20undergraduate%20degrees,straight%20men%2C%20the%20study%20found.Replies: @J.Ross, @ScarletNumber
Remember that gay men are just women with penises, so whatever reason women feel the need to earn useless degrees, so it goes for gay men.
OT
I haven’t looked at the 179 comments.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/596231-gop-blocks-house-bill-to-ban-race-based-hair-discrimination
No, let’s have one.
If nothing else, it will furnish a range of opportunities for the victims of the political-parasite class to butcher the members of that claque of exploistive narcissistic grifters. It will also disabuse even the most retarded prole, of their continued belief that the parasite classes are motivated by ‘public service’ or any other such tosh.
Plus, if Hiroshima and Nagasaki are anything to go by, the aftermath of being nuclear-bombed is that you have some nice parkland.
I also quite like the idea that cities are over-represented with tax-funded palaces (Westminster; the White House; the Houses of Congress; l’Élysée) and thus, wiping those out (along with other major grift-palaces – Cathedrals, the Louvre etc) would put a spring in my step for at least a few hours.
There’s nobody in any major city in the world that I would miss (Melbourne’s not a major city and has nothing worth targeting). Conversely, every major city is host to tens (or hundreds) of thousands of bureaucrats that I would not piss on if they were on fire.
So on net it seems like it’s mostly upside.
Come friendly nukes…
.
I don’t think that Putin is a Bolshevik though. The mistake that the west made was humiliating the Russians in the 90s and/or not accepting Putin’s overtures of friendship in the early 2000s.
https://youtu.be/x99njmZxaMAReplies: @Milo Minderbinder
Frederick Forsythe’s The Fourth Protocol also has the same plot. Russia plans to set off a nuke in England, blame the Americans, and topple the Conservative UK gov’t.
They made it into a movie with a pre-Bond Pierce Brosnan.
What are you some kind of sissy?
The U.S.S.R came out from WW2 with a huge handicap compared to the U.S in that as much as 80% of it's entire infra-structure had suffered massive structural damage. on top of that, the entire Soviet population was smaller than the U.S'. The U.S, conversely, protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, emerged from WW2 not only intact, but the World's largest creditor nation.
What allowed the Russians/Soviets to compete with America was their formidable scientific/technological capabilities, and the fact that Soviet leaders were wise enough to never let an abundance of resources to not be available for their top research scientists and engineers. Russia before the October Revolution of 1917 had been an European country imbued with the European tradition of science, universities and research institutes. It was a Russian after all, Mendeleyev, that formulated the Periodic Table of Elements.
Americans decry that the Sovietic atomic bomb was the result of espionage on America's Manhattan Project. That is true, but remember that most of the scientists that worked on that project were not American either. But still, for a country that had suffered extreme destruction from the War, going from zero to an atomic bomb in only 4 years goes to show how formidable the Russians are as scientists and engineers.
Then, the Russians gave America perhaps it's biggest humiliation ever when they beat America at putting a man in space. By 1961/62, the Russians were just fulling recovering from WW2. America got the cream of the crop of German rocket scientists, and Americans had a much larger and more diverse industrial base to work with. When you consider all the handicaps that Russia had and the advantages that America had, Russia beating America at putting a man in space was an embarrassing defeat for the U.S.A.
Americans love to brag about winning the space race by putting a man on the Moon, but the reality is that Russia never had an economy and indutrial base that could support such a project. Putting a man on the Moon is more than just a feat of science: it requires a very large and diversied economy to support such a project, and Russia never had that. They had the scientific capabilities to do it, but not the resources. IMO, Russia beating America at putting a man in space when you consider that they were still recovering from WW2, that their economy was much smaller and that they didn't get much of the benefit of German rocket scientists like America did is a *much* more impressive feat than America putting a man on the Moon several years latter.
But the Sputnik showed America what a truly formidable threat the Russians were, and at that moment there was a switch in American consciousness. That was when America decided to channel it's multi-trillion Dollar economy into beating the U.S.S.R by whatever means necessary. Once that determination was made, it was only a matter of time for the U.S.R.R to collapse by trying to keep up with the U.S. Again, they never had an economy big enough and sophisticated enough to keep up with America forever. The fact that they pushed America for almost 50 years on their scientific capabilities alone is incredible.
But despite the much smaller oil and coal-based economy that it has, Russia is several tiers above the typical Banana Republics that the U.S pushes around. And might I remember you that the U.S has declined so much as a superpower that nowadays even the Banana Republics ocasionally give the U.S a bloody nose.
Treating the Russian Bear as if it were Guatemala could have dire consequences. A Russian Subot S-9 missile with an 18 megaton yield detonates over Los Angeles: look at the children in the park being reduced to Carbon as the thermal wave hits them, and then moments latter exploding into clouds of dust as the shock wave hits them:
https://youtu.be/xjatJ36cJvM
To quote The Iliad: "Man is nothing but shadow and dust."Replies: @Stan Adams, @Peter Lund, @vinteuil
That’s from Terminator 2. Aside from the attack scene in Threads, it’s one of the most viscerally-effective cinematic depictions of nuclear war.
That being said, I prefer this absurdist, darkly-humorous sequence from the early-1980s anti-nuke documentary The Atomic Cafe. All of the footage is taken from 1950s-era governmental “educational” films (such as the infamous “Duck and Cover” cartoon):
Japan recovered from being bombed in ww2, as has germany. But it is unlikely that Detroit will ever recovery with current demographics
This is one of the dumber talking points out there.
Not my problem. But yes, I do think he’ll stop with Ukraine.
He didn’t go “full Soviet shill.” He came to believe that containment had gotten out of control and led to disasters such as the Vietnam War.
Supposedly they support mass immigration because it boosts a declining population. That could make some sense, even if it introduces potentially destructive diversity. But promoting policies that actually discourage native whites from wanting to have children makes no sense if you're trying to boost your population.
Some would say that teaching young girls that growing up to be mothers is an incredibly valuable and important thing amounts to "brainwashing." But it is no more "brainwashing" than telling them that they need to grow up and become programmers - even though they may have no real interest in programming; or telling them that it's totally cool if they want to pump their bodies with male hormones and cut off their boobs. Somehow that's totally reasonable.Replies: @al gore rhythms, @Dmon, @PhysicistDave
There’s a little bit of cheerful news on the immigration front.
Condoleeza Rice agrees that invading a sovereign nation is a war crime.
People of Color are young fertile and creative.
They make your food, create all entertainment, build your homes, and keep the infrastructure going.
Do you even go outside and look at the real world?
Who is having children? Who is accomplising? Who is joining the miltary? Who is busting tight rhymes and dances? Who is getting the prizes? Who is sexually active? Who is not committing mass murder and pedophilia?
If you love Russia so much go leave and join there army.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Birds of a feather:
The news out of Utah today is that the Republican majority, legislative caucus couldn’t muster enough votes to pass a voucher bill (good). The RINO governor opposed the bill, at least in a preliminary form.
In order to help grease the deal, bill sponsors recently revised it to allow the school districts to continue receiving per- [warm body] funding after a kid had accepted a voucher and exited the district, i.e. “hold harmless”.
Pennsylvania has been a ‘hold harmless’ state for a while, in regards to its charter schools. If a school parent opts for a district charter (41% of Philly kids have moved to charters), even though charters cost less (they don’t receive a share of capital funds), the state will continue to give [the ex-student’s] capital funds to the district, i.e. charters cost the same.
That’s still unacceptable to the greedy, PA teachers union. Its leaders point out that charters which are 100% virtual operate at a very low cost, and therefore they should not even receive the standard, per- warm body rate. They’re working with their friends in Harrisburg to cut the reimbursement to ~⅓ of what it is now, with the difference reverting to the district.
The public schools have declared nuclear war on taxpayers.
Steve’s already jerking off to 2300 validations, should we be concerned? Kafka wanted everything he’d ever written burned.
Anybody who works anywhere adjacent to the federal apparatus in DC (of which, among iSteve readers, there has to be at least one) should be able to sense something heavy in the air if the government is really worried, even if they ain't sayin' nothin'.
So report back, brave soul, and give us the mood from the inside. My sense from the periphery is that the government is not very much worried and is still mainly concerned with how to stuff the night full of kabuki theater.Replies: @Bragadocious, @Dmon, @ScarletNumber
No stealing ideas from Dieter Von Cunth.
That being said, I prefer this absurdist, darkly-humorous sequence from the early-1980s anti-nuke documentary The Atomic Cafe. All of the footage is taken from 1950s-era governmental "educational" films (such as the infamous "Duck and Cover" cartoon):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=291cy2JgiC8Replies: @Zero Philosopher
No ST it’s from Terminator 2. It’s the most realistic depiction of what a nuclear explosion does to Human flesh. So I fail to see the validity of your critisim.
The attack sequence in Threads is pretty effective, even if it's not quite as slick as the T2 scene.
I also said that, for purely subjective reasons, I preferred the absurdist montage of cheesy 1950s propaganda films. Nuclear war is a ludicrous concept that invites dark mockery. It's the folly to end all follies - the ultimate expression of man's stupidity and self-destructiveness.
In the Atomic Cafe documentary, the shot of the father saying "Nothing to do now but wait for orders from the authorities and relax" is followed by scenes of men in radiation suits scanning the ground with Geiger counters. Very relaxing, indeed.
It may or may not be worth noting that in his follow-up to T2, True Lies, James Cameron featured a "real" nuclear explosion and treated it as a joke. (By "real" I mean that it was part of the actual plot of the movie - it "really happened" in the universe of the film - and was not a dream sequence.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HBj8OGw3ek
Anybody who works anywhere adjacent to the federal apparatus in DC (of which, among iSteve readers, there has to be at least one) should be able to sense something heavy in the air if the government is really worried, even if they ain't sayin' nothin'.
So report back, brave soul, and give us the mood from the inside. My sense from the periphery is that the government is not very much worried and is still mainly concerned with how to stuff the night full of kabuki theater.Replies: @Bragadocious, @Dmon, @ScarletNumber
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/570409109025452178/
https://www.amazon.com/Bankrupting-Enemy-Financial-Before-Harbor/dp/1591145201/Replies: @Hapalong Cassidy
Not a good comparison, since Japan has always been resource-poor and geographically isolated. Russia has several orders of magnitude more resources than Japan, and a population only about 20% larger.
Agreed; I think that’s why he’s so hated–because he’s not a Bolshevik, whereas the US is run by them. (Well, neo-Bolsheviks or whatever you want to call them. Basically I mean psychopaths who find a billion dead civilians an acceptable cost to achieving their utopia, which is just around the corner…any day now…just gotta do it right…)
I think the chance of nuclear war is unacceptably high. Adam Kinzinger and some weirdo journalist slut and ex MP from the UK (Louise Mensch) are pronouncing on Twitter that Putin "won't be allowed" to use his nukes. As if there was some giant Twitter council telling him what he could or could not do. The cost of turning over our leadership to emotional, stupid, and hysterical women and gays (but I repeat myself) is high. The nuclear alert was in response to UK Defense Minister Truss, some blonde idiot bimbo who likely got her job providing Harris-like favors, threatening Russia with air strikes. Putin does not care that Miley Cyrus AND Kim Kardashian blasted him on Twitter. He does not really care about sanctions, as he has most of the marginal output gas and oil and fertilizer and grain in his hands. If Europe wants to stay warm and eat they need Putin and Russia. Meanwhile hysterical gays and women figure that Putin is like a Trucker in Ontario. A Deplorable Dirt person who can be settled soon without much trouble.
That is the danger of a ruling class solidified around the idea of making war on internal enemies. Soon enough everyone looks like a working class trucker with his bank account seized.
Given this guy I figure Putin must at least think he just needs to maybe nuke Berlin to put some sense into the ruling class. But they are far too gone for that, debauchery and degradation are a habit, and being hysterical women and gays will push the button for MAD and global nuclear war just for feelz. Because its not all real. They literally cannot do anything but feelz and literally cannot think rationally and non-emotionally.Replies: @Anon
Putin could do a lot if he would simply bomb Twitter’s servers, along with the servers for CNN and Msnbc. A cyber-attack on these three would tamp down on a lot of nonsense.
In other words, a single submarine reactor can eff up the whole earth. Sobering thought for the day.
But I'm still wondering what the American nuclear accident that was worse than Three Mile Island that has already happened was. Somewhere in the Southwest, apparently.Replies: @Anonymous
Didn’t mean to be coy.
Controlled Surface Contamination Area
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiy94bK_qP2AhU5qXIEHXBFC3cQFnoECAQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.directives.doe.gov%2Fdirectives-documents%2F400-series%2F0441.1-EGuide-09%2F%40%40images%2Ffile&usg=AOvVaw2wFdJviMINtWwhgS6tcYC1
Essentially an area with radioactive debris on it, such that you could take a swipe and put it in a device and measure it…so like dust, not airborne, not just high rad from nearby, not some point source (like a barrel). Requires a roped enclosure, stepoff pad, controlled access, etc. I forget the exact regs, but you have a certain size of sort of filter paper circle, swipe it for a certain small distance, and then put it in a device to measure it. Spec is pretty low, towards detection limit, so it doesn’t imply a high rad area, with immediate danger. [I was involved in making one of those in a barrel too…much worse…got my peepee slapped for that.] But pretty much you’re not supposed to just have a bunch of radioactive dust laying around. (If so, you clean it up.) I forget the exact math but it was something like 10-25 times over the limit for a CSCA.
NR is Naval Reactors. The reactor pressure vessel explosion was SL-1.
(All public. Not going to share anything classified.)
No, obviously Russian soldiers would eventually invade New York, blow up the Statue of Liberty, and hog all the good seats in Manhattan restaurants, banging on the tables and shouting “Bistro! Bistro!”
Just like those Vietnamese communists eventually had to be fought off at the Golden Gate.
Last time I saw Andriy he was in high heels. Now, like many of my friends, he’s taken up arms
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/last-time-i-saw-andriy-he-was-in-high-heels-now-like-many-of-my-friends-hes-taken-up-armsReplies: @mc23
And I thought the Checkens were bad.
I suppose I am complaining about the non stop coverage treating this as though it were some sort of sporting event. And that people are encouraged to root for the home team, in this case freedom loving Ukrainians vs our enemy, Russia.
In fact, Ukraine can't win this conflict in any normal sense. The only thing that remain are the details of the future settlement with Russia. It isn't at all clear to me that Ukraine's position will depend on how well it resists Russia's military. It's just as likely that fighting will produce a worse outcome. Russia could bomb them at least as thoroughly as allied bombing flattened Germany in WW 2.Replies: @Mr. Anon
Douglas MacGregor, interviewed on Tucker Carlson’s show last week, said that the Russians won’t be able to maintain their offensive for long as they lack the supplies. He’s been right about a lot. Several weeks ago (also on Tucker’s show) he predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine sometime soon after the Olympics concluded.
Wrecking a place isn't all that hard. In addition, the West has been stingy regarding investment in Ukraine.
But I don't know...wars are full of unintended consequences. And surprises.Replies: @anon
Another fun thing to mention would be Ted Kennedy’s colluding with Soviet Premier (and former KGB head) Andropov back in 1983 to get Soviet help in defeating Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election.
https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html?sh=cb15484359ab
https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-the-left-longed-for-russian-political-interference
That really happened. Democrats need to have their noses rubbed in it 24/7. Especially Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.
Thanks for the links. By now, I shouldn't be surprised at being surprised by accounts from the archives.
Next thing you know, one American politician playing footsie with Ukrainian leaders about corruption prosecutions will be headline news that's grounds for impeachment. While another American politician playing footsie with Ukrainian leaders about corruption prosecutions will be disinformation that's grounds for deplatforming. Of the reporter.
I guess some animals are more equal than others.
I guess it's time to switch the moral panic inflicted on us to now require schoolkids practice hiding under desks, for safety in event of a nuclear attack, from the equally effective requirements for wearing surgical masks to stop an aerosolized virus.Replies: @guest007, @Hamlet's Ghost
I’ve been saying for the last two years that surgical mask wearing for non-surgeons and social distancing were the “Duck and cover” of our age.
I understand Ron Unz is in Silicon Valley. Does anyone know if SV is known to be one of the first targets of Russian nuclear missiles?
(I value this site highly and would hate to lose it.)
As for Seattle and LA, I have a difficult time of thinking of a nuclear attack on them as being anything other than a good start.
A country that has a much more powerful neighbor is foolish if it allies itself with its neighbor's enemies. The sane choices are either to make an alliance with the neighbor, or to choose strict neutrality.
The moves by the US to entice Ukraine into joining NATO were not only toxic for Ukraine - they were doomed to failure, because NATO membership must be unanimously approved by the existing members, and France and Germany had already signaled that they would veto Ukrainian membership. It is a pity that the leaders of those countries did not publicly remind the world of their position.
Whatever else they are, the Nulands of this world are not fools. They would have known that NATO membership for Ukraine was not a possible outcome, and that the pretended friendship of NATO would be harmful for Ukraine. So the question arises, what were they trying to achieve? They wanted to draw the Russians into a war, just as Zbigniew Brzezynski and Jimmy Carter had done in the late 1970s when they funded the Afghan Mujahideen. The offer of cash and friendship to Ukraine belied the callousness of a plan in which the Ukrainians were expendable.
The US State Department certainly knew Putin's weaknesses. Nostalgia for the Soviet Union, especially the union of "all the Russias"; a wish to be treated with respect and as an equal; and the expectation that his reasonable concerns about Russia's security would be taken seriously and not stonewalled. The USA successfully played both Russia and Ukraine as suckers.Replies: @mc23, @HA
The US certainly used Ukraine to goad Russia. Did the people of power and influence expect or desire this outcome,instability and war?
Was it the West’s hubris or it’s Pride?
Why are all these NATO countries shipping ever more lethal weapons into Ukraine?
Why are they imposing financial sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy? (And seem to be working)
Putin has warned against "interfering" in Ukraine. A lot of interference is going on right now.
Don't chase and corner a man who has a suicide vest strapped to his chest.
All of these NATO countries are so giddy to poke the Russian bear in the eye. It's stupid beyond belief.
Who is responsible for this insanity?Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Dnought, @guest007, @Professional Slav, @Alrenous, @Corvinus, @Ed, @NickG
Twitter, no joke. It’s an insidious outrage loop that influences decision makers in politics & corporate world.
Surprisingly the Biden WH has not succumbed to this hysteria as much as Europe, yet.
Instead all I see and hear, not that I am paying that much attention, is how can we, the West, hurt Putin. Is anyone asking to talk with him and his people as equals? Anyone?
What else can one expect from our above-the-law elites who are used to bullying their enemies, foreign and domestic?
If the West is able to get Putin to back down by using crushing sanctions, without a nuke exploding, that will be a good thing, but they will have earned a nuclear-armed enemy for life. Heckuva job, Brandon.Replies: @Thea, @Achmed E. Newman
Great take on it, Old Prude!
https://youtu.be/UEjIJzxmM1EReplies: @roonaldo
That was great!
In the recesses of my memory is the movie A Boy and His Dog, set after nuclear war, starring Don Johnson, where he telepathically talks to his dog and enters a bizarre underground world and emerges above ground for the twist at the end. I seem to recall that it would get tedious, then shift gears just in time to make it worthwhile. Might have to see it again for old times sake.
“Compassion” and “Empathy,” ladies and gentleman. Choose love, not hate.
People die in war, it’s a a thing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When America apologizes for firebombing Dresden I’ll maybe consider taking the hand-wringing about “civilian casualties” off the crocodile-tears list. A great line I saw on Unz recently: the Pope didn’t have to condemn the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 because he’d already done that in 1943. Haha, oops.
As usual, it’s none of my business. I would recommend a limited nuclear exchange away from population centres. Open, formal war. Maybe ask China to use one of their fake cities nobody lives in. Nuclear war is inevitable sooner or later; your options are to be prepared or to be unprepared.
Until it’s happened and you know what a nuclear blast actually does, your option is: be unprepared. Honour Mars or get fucked.
Secondly, I advise living far away from places like DC and Kyiv if you don’t feel like getting nuked. (Among other reasons, such as honk-honk.)
Nobody who takes my advice is getting nuked in the first place. Hence: anyone who does get nuked is not taking my advice; my opinion is irrelevant to them; I thus put zero weight on what happens to them when crafting it.
(I value this site highly and would hate to lose it.)
As for Seattle and LA, I have a difficult time of thinking of a nuclear attack on them as being anything other than a good start.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
The unz servers are probably underground and hardened though. We’ll still be able to post and comment, but we won’t learn anything more about Fort Detrick and the American economic bioweapons that backfired, much less the back story on who was really behind the nukes that hit silicone valley.
I believe you are alluding to Scoop (1938), is that correct?
Are there any white criminals left in the 110 (higher?) IQ range who will meticulously assemble body armor and automatic weapons and the pre-crime drug cocktail for a morning of ultra-violence? If there's been anything like this since 1997 I'm not recalling it.Replies: @Corvinus, @Steve Sailer
Yes, the 1997 North Hollywood shootout was assumed at the time to be the beginning of a new era of criminality, but it looks instead like the end.
https://twitter.com/bazaarofwar/status/1498120272184029185
If it’s accurate, the Ukrainian army has the urgent task of extracting the large fraction of its men and equipment who have been facing the breakaway 'republics' in the east (blue ovals), in circumstances where their opponent has air superiority (if not air supremacy). If the Russian forces from Crimea in the south link up with those from Kharkiv in the north, remaining Ukrainian units to the east will be forced to surrender as they run out of food, fuel, and ammunition.Concentrations around the port city of Mariupol have already been encircled. Barring a cease-fire, they will be reduced.Replies: @Paleo Liberal, @Twinkie, @Tex, @Steve Sailer, @Almost Missouri
Like I said, the Russians have a lot of options. They don’t have to win on every front. I haven’t seen much on Twitter from Ukrainians about huge successes against the Russians in the southeast, so I suspect the Russians are doing better there than elsewhere.
Unless Putin is dumber than I think (this is possible), he does not even want all of Ukraine -- he just wants Ukraine demilitarized and the Russophone parts either independent or annexed by Russia (he'd be smart to let them be nominally independent).
As another commenter noted earlier, while Ukraine has never formally joined NATO, they have been cooperating with NATO for years, at least since the 2008 agreement to consider their membership, and specifically have been receiving weapons for some time from the West.
Re NATO welcoming Ukraine eventually joining NATIO back in 2008:All this does have to stop. There has to a formal and binding repudiation of the 2008 agreement. (Yes, I know no one now thinks Ukraine will ever join NATO, but as our friend Jack D has reminded us, agreements among nations are not binding until formally put into writing.)
I am very much afraid that Zelensky and his cohorts are so ignorant of international affairs that they cannot realize the actual position they are in: they are still asking for immediate EU admission and, quite insanely, a NATO-enforced no-fly zone!
Of course, the one point that everyone from Jen Psaki to Tucker has publicly agreed on is that there will not be a NATO-enforced no-fly zone.
I hope it will not take immense civilian casualties in one of their major cities to cause them to see the world as it is.
I haven’t looked at the 179 comments.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/596231-gop-blocks-house-bill-to-ban-race-based-hair-discriminationReplies: @Reg Cæsar
I lived by Seal Beach, CA, which also featured a navy base chock full of WWII storage items we drove past every day. Anti-sub buoys stacked four stories high going for a quarter mile along the side of the Pacific Coast Highway. Just part of the landscape to me. In 1964 thru ’67, in grammar school, we had daily drills at school with a school siren, by which we were expected to get under our desks and “duck, and cover” the back of our heads with interlaced fingers, as practice for the real thing.
All us kids just thought of it as a chore. None of us worried about obliteration. The teachers didn’t get into any details, and my parents seemed to have no worries, even though we would have been a prime target of the Soviets, I guess. They never talked about it. Didn’t seem that interested. It just wasn’t a topic in my world.
Maybe Southern California folks were just more laid back in general. Or maybe because we were predominantly republicans back then, we weren’t prone to collective hysterics, like too many Californians certainly are now.
To us, it was just one of those things. We rolled with it. Some entrepreneurs made some money off it. Most of us had surfin’ to do.
Nothing to put a scratch in your groove over…
https://sbfoundersday.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/where-the-buoys-are/
https://sbfoundersday.wordpress.com/2019/03/07/tdisbh066/Replies: @epebble, @Zoos
Swalwell already rubs his nose in Chinese.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-man-shot-dead-as-convoy-escaping-kyiv-comes-under-ukrainian-fireReplies: @acementhead
Sounds to me as though he was murdered. There is zero chance that he was armed so even were he Chechen military he should have been taken captive, not killed. The Ukies seem to be very uncivilised.
Controlled Surface Contamination Area
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiy94bK_qP2AhU5qXIEHXBFC3cQFnoECAQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.directives.doe.gov%2Fdirectives-documents%2F400-series%2F0441.1-EGuide-09%2F%40%40images%2Ffile&usg=AOvVaw2wFdJviMINtWwhgS6tcYC1
Essentially an area with radioactive debris on it, such that you could take a swipe and put it in a device and measure it...so like dust, not airborne, not just high rad from nearby, not some point source (like a barrel). Requires a roped enclosure, stepoff pad, controlled access, etc. I forget the exact regs, but you have a certain size of sort of filter paper circle, swipe it for a certain small distance, and then put it in a device to measure it. Spec is pretty low, towards detection limit, so it doesn't imply a high rad area, with immediate danger. [I was involved in making one of those in a barrel too...much worse...got my peepee slapped for that.] But pretty much you're not supposed to just have a bunch of radioactive dust laying around. (If so, you clean it up.) I forget the exact math but it was something like 10-25 times over the limit for a CSCA.
NR is Naval Reactors. The reactor pressure vessel explosion was SL-1.
(All public. Not going to share anything classified.)Replies: @Mr. Anon
Of course there is no mechanism that could do that. That scenario is somewhat similar to the one that was invoked by opponents to NASA’s Cassini mission (which was powered by RTGs). One of their number claimed that there was enough Plutonium on board the spacecraft to kill every human being on Earth. Of course the same could be said of straight razors and lawn darts.
Why are all these NATO countries shipping ever more lethal weapons into Ukraine?
Why are they imposing financial sanctions designed to destroy the Russian economy? (And seem to be working)
Putin has warned against "interfering" in Ukraine. A lot of interference is going on right now.
Don't chase and corner a man who has a suicide vest strapped to his chest.
All of these NATO countries are so giddy to poke the Russian bear in the eye. It's stupid beyond belief.
Who is responsible for this insanity?Replies: @Matthew Kelly, @Dnought, @guest007, @Professional Slav, @Alrenous, @Corvinus, @Ed, @NickG
Putin, he initiated the invasion of Ukraine, for the second time in 8 yrs.
Russia to this day has nuclear-armed submarines roaming next to both it’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts all the time. It is a delusion on your part that America could nuke Russia without immediately 50 American cities disappearing in clouds of ashes and smoke in retaliation. You have obviously not watched “Hunt for Red October”. While a fictional story, it;s one of the most realistic portrayals of how bad it would get if an ICBM-armed Russian submarine went rogue *or* received orders from moscow to fire.
If there is one country in the World that truly can glass the U.S.A and wipe if from off the face of the Earth, it is Russia. They have some 6,500 nuclear warheads, and most of them are armed to I.C.B.Ms. In fact, Russia has the World’s largest nuclear arsenal, even larger than America’s. Even China cannot wipe out the U.S. While China has a lot of nukes, only a fraction of them are armed to I.C.B.Ms. France and England also have nukes, but relatively small arsenals with, again, only part being fully ballistic. Third World countries that have nukes, like Pakistan, are even less of a threat. Not only is the Pakistani nuclear arsenal tiny, but they don’t have I.C.B.Ms at all.
What makes Russia so terryfying are three things:
1. The sheer size of their nuclear arsenal(largest in the World).
2. Their delivery capabilities(most armed to sophisticated missiles capable of hitting any spot on Earth
3. The sheer power of their nukes. Russian nukes, unlike most American nukes, which are in the 200 to 500 kiloton range, are multi-megaton range from 2.5 megatons up to almost 20 megatons.
Make *no* mistakes about this, Steve Sailer: Russia can destroy all American citiies with a population of 1 million people or more at least 20 X over, killing at least 80 million Americans in a single day, and poisoning to death the remaining 250 million Americans with massive radioactive fallout. In fact, the radioactive fallout would be so huge that it would poison the entire World. The difference is that people thousands of miles from America would get sick but live. Americans would not.
Be assured: this is a war that the U.S *cannot* win. Quit your hubris.
But the society we now live in -- no, it would be gone.
By the way, I had a friend and a step-brother who were submariners in nuclear-armed subs back around 1980: our tech capabilities (e.g., quiet, undetectable sub operations) vastly exceeded the Soviets'.
But, yeah, whether a massive nuclear exchange would set us back to 1000 AD or merely to 1800 AD, it would be a very bad idea.Replies: @Inquiring Mind, @Anonymous
Supposedly they support mass immigration because it boosts a declining population. That could make some sense, even if it introduces potentially destructive diversity. But promoting policies that actually discourage native whites from wanting to have children makes no sense if you're trying to boost your population.
Some would say that teaching young girls that growing up to be mothers is an incredibly valuable and important thing amounts to "brainwashing." But it is no more "brainwashing" than telling them that they need to grow up and become programmers - even though they may have no real interest in programming; or telling them that it's totally cool if they want to pump their bodies with male hormones and cut off their boobs. Somehow that's totally reasonable.Replies: @al gore rhythms, @Dmon, @PhysicistDave
Wilkey wrote:
The funny thing is that, as a STEM guy, I am all in favor of females going into STEM if that is truly what they want to do.
Most heterosexual males in STEM that I have known feel the same way.
But the truth is that most females are more interested in being mothers than programmers.
Which of course is a good thing for the species, even though we STEM guys wish more wanted to be programmers.
We are really damaging our young people by trying to convince them that biology does not exist. In the end, biology will win for most of them, but quite a few, among adolescents I have known personally, may end up scarred for life.
I wasn’t criticizing anything. I said that the T2 clip was “one of the most viscerally-effective cinematic depictions of nuclear war” – that’s a compliment.
The attack sequence in Threads is pretty effective, even if it’s not quite as slick as the T2 scene.
I also said that, for purely subjective reasons, I preferred the absurdist montage of cheesy 1950s propaganda films. Nuclear war is a ludicrous concept that invites dark mockery. It’s the folly to end all follies – the ultimate expression of man’s stupidity and self-destructiveness.
In the Atomic Cafe documentary, the shot of the father saying “Nothing to do now but wait for orders from the authorities and relax” is followed by scenes of men in radiation suits scanning the ground with Geiger counters. Very relaxing, indeed.
It may or may not be worth noting that in his follow-up to T2, True Lies, James Cameron featured a “real” nuclear explosion and treated it as a joke. (By “real” I mean that it was part of the actual plot of the movie – it “really happened” in the universe of the film – and was not a dream sequence.)
It’s Putin’s War.Replies: @Alrenous
No no obviously I’m solely responsible.
Eat it nerds.
I demand one million dollars! Ho ho ho!
In the recesses of my memory is the movie A Boy and His Dog, set after nuclear war, starring Don Johnson, where he telepathically talks to his dog and enters a bizarre underground world and emerges above ground for the twist at the end. I seem to recall that it would get tedious, then shift gears just in time to make it worthwhile. Might have to see it again for old times sake.Replies: @Zoos
In the recesses of my memory is the movie A Boy and His Dog, set after nuclear war, starring Don Johnson, where he telepathically talks to his dog and enters a bizarre underground world and emerges above ground for the twist at the end. I seem to recall that it would get tedious, then shift gears just in time to make it worthwhile. Might have to see it again for old times sake.
Good choice. Back in the day when even desperate skinny young men could still perform as a full alpha male, and Don Johnson played it beautifully. You don’t see young men like that character anymore. Twenty-something men tend to act like bitchy teen girls now. Sad.
I always thought of the dog as Harlan Ellison in canine form. The last line is a movie classic.
The entire movie is available…
Ellison says in the foreword to the 2003 edition of A Boy and His Dog: "There is much of Blood in me."
People of Color are young fertile and creative.
They make your food, create all entertainment, build your homes, and keep the infrastructure going.
Do you even go outside and look at the real world?
Who is having children? Who is accomplising? Who is joining the miltary? Who is busting tight rhymes and dances? Who is getting the prizes? Who is sexually active? Who is not committing mass murder and pedophilia?
If you love Russia so much go leave and join there army.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Not bad, 6/10. I feel like you are missing some opportunities with the Oxford comma.
Sailer wrote:
Yeah, what is going on now is jockeying for position on the battlefield to improve one side or the other’s position at the bargaining table (unfortunately, this means people continue to die).
Unless Putin is dumber than I think (this is possible), he does not even want all of Ukraine — he just wants Ukraine demilitarized and the Russophone parts either independent or annexed by Russia (he’d be smart to let them be nominally independent).
As another commenter noted earlier, while Ukraine has never formally joined NATO, they have been cooperating with NATO for years, at least since the 2008 agreement to consider their membership, and specifically have been receiving weapons for some time from the West.
Re NATO welcoming Ukraine eventually joining NATIO back in 2008:
All this does have to stop. There has to a formal and binding repudiation of the 2008 agreement. (Yes, I know no one now thinks Ukraine will ever join NATO, but as our friend Jack D has reminded us, agreements among nations are not binding until formally put into writing.)
I am very much afraid that Zelensky and his cohorts are so ignorant of international affairs that they cannot realize the actual position they are in: they are still asking for immediate EU admission and, quite insanely, a NATO-enforced no-fly zone!
Of course, the one point that everyone from Jen Psaki to Tucker has publicly agreed on is that there will not be a NATO-enforced no-fly zone.
I hope it will not take immense civilian casualties in one of their major cities to cause them to see the world as it is.
1. The sheer size of their nuclear arsenal(largest in the World).
2. Their delivery capabilities(most armed to sophisticated missiles capable of hitting any spot on Earth
3. The sheer power of their nukes. Russian nukes, unlike most American nukes, which are in the 200 to 500 kiloton range, are multi-megaton range from 2.5 megatons up to almost 20 megatons. Make *no* mistakes about this, Steve Sailer: Russia can destroy all American citiies with a population of 1 million people or more at least 20 X over, killing at least 80 million Americans in a single day, and poisoning to death the remaining 250 million Americans with massive radioactive fallout. In fact, the radioactive fallout would be so huge that it would poison the entire World. The difference is that people thousands of miles from America would get sick but live. Americans would not.Be assured: this is a war that the U.S *cannot* win. Quit your hubris.Replies: @PhysicistDave, @Inquiring Mind
Zero Philosopher wrote to Sailer:
I’m pretty certain Sailer gets this. In his original post, he did say:
The human race probably would survive a massive nuclear exchange. After a couple centuries, civilization might even recover.
But the society we now live in — no, it would be gone.
By the way, I had a friend and a step-brother who were submariners in nuclear-armed subs back around 1980: our tech capabilities (e.g., quiet, undetectable sub operations) vastly exceeded the Soviets’.
But, yeah, whether a massive nuclear exchange would set us back to 1000 AD or merely to 1800 AD, it would be a very bad idea.
I think John Mearsheimer’s perspective is that Russia isn’t there to win hearts and minds, but has the limited objective of keeping Ukraine neutral and the West (NATO) out. And if Russia simply wrecks the country, it will succeed.
Wrecking a place isn’t all that hard. In addition, the West has been stingy regarding investment in Ukraine.
But I don’t know…wars are full of unintended consequences. And surprises.
Prior to being President of Ukraine, Zelensky was primarily known for playing a piano with his dick.
Not joking.
Then again, that is a much more impressive resume than Joe Biden has.
Wrecking a place isn't all that hard. In addition, the West has been stingy regarding investment in Ukraine.
But I don't know...wars are full of unintended consequences. And surprises.Replies: @anon
From NYT
Russia never could win in a manner that is to American tastes. But they can wreck the place. Why all the shock about blood? It is war after all. And when a settlement is sorted out, it was all for a matter of principle, without substance.
Not like Baghdad 2003, what?
https://youtu.be/0yr-LaMhvro?t=103
The U.S.S.R came out from WW2 with a huge handicap compared to the U.S in that as much as 80% of it's entire infra-structure had suffered massive structural damage. on top of that, the entire Soviet population was smaller than the U.S'. The U.S, conversely, protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, emerged from WW2 not only intact, but the World's largest creditor nation.
What allowed the Russians/Soviets to compete with America was their formidable scientific/technological capabilities, and the fact that Soviet leaders were wise enough to never let an abundance of resources to not be available for their top research scientists and engineers. Russia before the October Revolution of 1917 had been an European country imbued with the European tradition of science, universities and research institutes. It was a Russian after all, Mendeleyev, that formulated the Periodic Table of Elements.
Americans decry that the Sovietic atomic bomb was the result of espionage on America's Manhattan Project. That is true, but remember that most of the scientists that worked on that project were not American either. But still, for a country that had suffered extreme destruction from the War, going from zero to an atomic bomb in only 4 years goes to show how formidable the Russians are as scientists and engineers.
Then, the Russians gave America perhaps it's biggest humiliation ever when they beat America at putting a man in space. By 1961/62, the Russians were just fulling recovering from WW2. America got the cream of the crop of German rocket scientists, and Americans had a much larger and more diverse industrial base to work with. When you consider all the handicaps that Russia had and the advantages that America had, Russia beating America at putting a man in space was an embarrassing defeat for the U.S.A.
Americans love to brag about winning the space race by putting a man on the Moon, but the reality is that Russia never had an economy and indutrial base that could support such a project. Putting a man on the Moon is more than just a feat of science: it requires a very large and diversied economy to support such a project, and Russia never had that. They had the scientific capabilities to do it, but not the resources. IMO, Russia beating America at putting a man in space when you consider that they were still recovering from WW2, that their economy was much smaller and that they didn't get much of the benefit of German rocket scientists like America did is a *much* more impressive feat than America putting a man on the Moon several years latter.
But the Sputnik showed America what a truly formidable threat the Russians were, and at that moment there was a switch in American consciousness. That was when America decided to channel it's multi-trillion Dollar economy into beating the U.S.S.R by whatever means necessary. Once that determination was made, it was only a matter of time for the U.S.R.R to collapse by trying to keep up with the U.S. Again, they never had an economy big enough and sophisticated enough to keep up with America forever. The fact that they pushed America for almost 50 years on their scientific capabilities alone is incredible.
But despite the much smaller oil and coal-based economy that it has, Russia is several tiers above the typical Banana Republics that the U.S pushes around. And might I remember you that the U.S has declined so much as a superpower that nowadays even the Banana Republics ocasionally give the U.S a bloody nose.
Treating the Russian Bear as if it were Guatemala could have dire consequences. A Russian Subot S-9 missile with an 18 megaton yield detonates over Los Angeles: look at the children in the park being reduced to Carbon as the thermal wave hits them, and then moments latter exploding into clouds of dust as the shock wave hits them:
https://youtu.be/xjatJ36cJvM
To quote The Iliad: "Man is nothing but shadow and dust."Replies: @Stan Adams, @Peter Lund, @vinteuil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
(And the US could have put a satellite in orbit before the Soviets. They just didn’t want to use their “German” military rockets for the purpose and their Vanguard rockets kept exploding. Could they have put a man in orbit earlier? Almost certainly, if they had taken their “German” rocket capabilities seriously sooner.)
“I always thought of the dog as Harlan Ellison in canine form.”
Ellison says in the foreword to the 2003 edition of A Boy and His Dog: “There is much of Blood in me.”
>a measure of intelligence
How many in STEM? How many with any sort of hard criteria or objective measures?Replies: @Almost Missouri
Yeah, someone’s been spamming that “Homos get most degreeeees!!1!!1!” link in a bunch of posts lately. It’s a nothingburger. Academia is totally ghey now so of course it is full of gays bitchily establishing their sinecures.
Just on more reason to pull the plug on that mockery of the ancient Academy.
That’s a good plan for getting Western media on board with a Ukraine invasion (or at least shutting them up by putting them in a memetic hammerlock), but
1) Putin wants to capture Ukraine, not destroy it. Every Russian is familiar with the consequences of the sealed train carrying the bacillus of Bolshevism in the form of Lenin. How much worse would would be the consequences of a sealed delivery of 100,000 Africans. Putin’s pre-invasion speech specifically cited forced demographic changes as a “weapon of mass destruction”. He does not want to WMD his own country. (Unlike the Western rulers.)
2) Putin doesn’t give a crap about the Western media. (“How many divisions has CNN?”) If only Westerners were as wise.
In fact recently it was announced Russia was giving amnesty to at least 160k Uzbeks with a new website specifically to make it easier for the next batches to migrate to Russia. They're Russia's Mexicans.
Also, how do you think Kadyrov (and by extent tons of other little war chiefs from random RF's ethnic wonders) stays loyal to Putin? Grozny is now hailed as the next great Russian capital.
Putin calls nationalists nazis, like the Western powers that be do to you.Replies: @Rosie, @Almost Missouri
(And the US could have put a satellite in orbit before the Soviets. They just didn't want to use their "German" military rockets for the purpose and their Vanguard rockets kept exploding. Could they have put a man in orbit earlier? Almost certainly, if they had taken their "German" rocket capabilities seriously sooner.)Replies: @Zero Philosopher
“Coulda”, “woulda”, doesn’t matter. The fact is that the U.S was committing a large part of it’s Federal Budget to the Space Program, and yet a country with half of it’s population size and a third of it’s economy that, on top of all that, had barely recovered from taking the blunt of the damage from the Biggest War Ever still beat America at putting a man in space. Don’t let patriotism blind you with pride.
However, the Vanguard programme had been given the go-ahead because the timeframe its supporters gave for it to put a satellite into orbit was the same as the Army/Von Braun/Jupiter C group gave for their programme. The problem was that the Vanguard people could not deliver on time, the programme was rushed, and the result that the Americans ended up with an exploding rocket.
This passage from Abigail Foerstner's book James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles sums it up:And there you have it. The Russians won the battle to put a man-made satellite into orbit, not because of their technical superiority, but because the Americans could not stop fighting amongst themselves.
None of this is to take away from the space achievements of the Russians; their technical know-how is perfectly worthy of respect. Rather, I mention it in the interests of pointing out that the Space Race was a near-run thing and some aspects of it simply came down to dumb luck rather than technical superiority by one side or the other.
“Russian military doctrine toward taking cities is both grimly practical and deadly, favoring heavy artillery, missiles and bombs to terrify civilians and push them to flee”
Not like Baghdad 2003, what?
I enjoy using that quote from time to time as well. Even my most warmongering of friends agree. Sometimes I just want off this world.
Certainly it’s a very bad idea, but who decided nuclear war is being ‘stumbled’ into? It seems, rather, that with the powers that be and hangers on long confessed desire to reduce the world population to 500 million, that nuclear war is perhaps part of a ‘combined arms’ effort, a central objective for them to achieve, along possibly with global plague, and famine, all part of bringing about the global reset.
Bearing in mind they come with a bit of a different perspective in regards to all this, as a good many of the elite and hanger on nuclear war promoters probably do indeed have those much rumored about extensive hardened underground radiation resistant facilities, which are liberally stocked with a ten year supply of food, water, oxygen, and entertainment facilities.
Meanwhile, should anything nuclear go down, the rest of us, the vast majority of humanity, will be in the much undesired position of being left ‘outside’, as a post apocalyptic Logan’s Run gently described it.
I don't believe this.
BTW, am I the only one who is laughing out loud about the Chechens in Ukraine? How'd this happen? Wasn't Vlad pounding them a few years ago? I read that one of their leaders submitted Roman-style and simply switched allegiance. It's like something out of Rome.
Look at this swagger. Wonder what their pronouns are.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1498103469240160256?s=20&t=mz2DpYjH0Yj_mh5YZLMktQReplies: @Alrenous, @AndrewR, @Lurker
Putin understands that it is better to have them on the inside of his tent pissing out than on the outside pissing in.
1) Putin wants to capture Ukraine, not destroy it. Every Russian is familiar with the consequences of the sealed train carrying the bacillus of Bolshevism in the form of Lenin. How much worse would would be the consequences of a sealed delivery of 100,000 Africans. Putin's pre-invasion speech specifically cited forced demographic changes as a "weapon of mass destruction". He does not want to WMD his own country. (Unlike the Western rulers.)
2) Putin doesn't give a crap about the Western media. ("How many divisions has CNN?") If only Westerners were as wise.Replies: @S, @nebulafox, @Professional Slav
Ah, yes, the law of unintended consequences.
Point well taken. 🙂
> Ted Kennedy’s colluding with Soviet Premier (and former KGB head) Andropov back in 1983 to get Soviet help in defeating Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election.
Thanks for the links. By now, I shouldn’t be surprised at being surprised by accounts from the archives.
Next thing you know, one American politician playing footsie with Ukrainian leaders about corruption prosecutions will be headline news that’s grounds for impeachment. While another American politician playing footsie with Ukrainian leaders about corruption prosecutions will be disinformation that’s grounds for deplatforming. Of the reporter.
I guess some animals are more equal than others.
In order to help grease the deal, bill sponsors recently revised it to allow the school districts to continue receiving per- [warm body] funding after a kid had accepted a voucher and exited the district, i.e. "hold harmless".
Pennsylvania has been a 'hold harmless' state for a while, in regards to its charter schools. If a school parent opts for a district charter (41% of Philly kids have moved to charters), even though charters cost less (they don't receive a share of capital funds), the state will continue to give [the ex-student's] capital funds to the district, i.e. charters cost the same.
That's still unacceptable to the greedy, PA teachers union. Its leaders point out that charters which are 100% virtual operate at a very low cost, and therefore they should not even receive the standard, per- warm body rate. They're working with their friends in Harrisburg to cut the reimbursement to ~⅓ of what it is now, with the difference reverting to the district.
The public schools have declared nuclear war on taxpayers.Replies: @Ray P
“Never compromise.” “Not even in the face of Armageddon.”
Apparently, black immigrants in the Ukraine are upset because they want to flee to Poland, but there’s only so many trains coming in at a time, and preference is being given to Ukrainian women and children citizens first, who tend to be white.
Ukrainian soldiers have informed them that Romania is willing and able to take African immigrant refugee’s and provide safe accommodations, with far less waiting time, but many Africans are being ridiculous and willful, while lousing up the progress for legit Ukrainian refugee’s and screaming about the racism of Ukrainians on videos posted on twitter, which is generally false.
Africans who follow advice and travel to Romania have had a smooth ride.
I always thought Field Artillery was bad due having to spend a lot of time at Fort Sill Oklahoma.Replies: @Old Prude, @Brutusale
There’s an idea!
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fhot-town-images.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fkwtv%2Fproduction%2F2019%2FMay%2F22%2Fwest-point-is-about-to-graduate-its-largest-class-of-black-women-ever.1558549163000.jpeg%3Fw%3D1050%26h%3D590.617%26fit%3Dcrop&f=1&nofb=1
Photo is from an article headlined “West Point Is About to Graduated Its Largest Class of Black Women”. Just don’t touch their hair.
1. The sheer size of their nuclear arsenal(largest in the World).
2. Their delivery capabilities(most armed to sophisticated missiles capable of hitting any spot on Earth
3. The sheer power of their nukes. Russian nukes, unlike most American nukes, which are in the 200 to 500 kiloton range, are multi-megaton range from 2.5 megatons up to almost 20 megatons. Make *no* mistakes about this, Steve Sailer: Russia can destroy all American citiies with a population of 1 million people or more at least 20 X over, killing at least 80 million Americans in a single day, and poisoning to death the remaining 250 million Americans with massive radioactive fallout. In fact, the radioactive fallout would be so huge that it would poison the entire World. The difference is that people thousands of miles from America would get sick but live. Americans would not.Be assured: this is a war that the U.S *cannot* win. Quit your hubris.Replies: @PhysicistDave, @Inquiring Mind
My hubris?
I am simply invoking sources. Such as the cover of IEEE Spectrum Magazine that showed a photo of 6 reentry vehicles from 2 Minuteman III missiles converging on 3 targets at the Kwajalein (Marshall Islands) Test Range.
The only use for such a capability is a “counterforce” first strike. I doubted my personal source in the late 1970s as you now doubt me, and I was shocked to see that magazine cover.
Why are US nuclear warheads in the “low power” range of under 500 kilotons if their principal use is not in a counterforce attack? Why were Star Wars and Pershing II such a worry to the Soviet leadership and the Trident D5 submarine-launched high-accuracy multi-warhead missile credited by Mr. Gorbachev with the political collapse of the Soviet Union? To what purpose are the Dallas class attack submarines and the P-3 Orion and P-8 Poseiden long-range anti-submarine patrol aircraft if even what “leaked through” would turn the continental US into a radioactive desert?
I am making no mistake that this counterforce strike is not a decision to be made by the US President except in the most dire circumstances, if not for ethical and moral reasons but for the reason that all its elements would have to be executed perfectly.
On the other hands, the brave statements, bolded typeface and directives as what thoughts one should harbor are characteristic of the anti-nuclear movement in the West, going back to the days when Soviet arsenals were a Potemkin bluff prior to their 1970s building program, with evidence that many of such statements were generated by Soviet propaganda furthering their national interest, namely, that they could stand a chance of having a militarily capable second-strike deterrent to the US forces.
As far as military capabilities, who would have thought that the massed might of the Russian Federation conventional forces could not have swarmed over Ukraine, several times over by now? The perception of that capability was a powerful deterrent against a conventional-arms attack against Russia or even the deterrent offered by an attack by Russia against its neighbors.
That Russian conventional deterrence, poof, gone in a matter of a few short days. Why do you think that the Baltic states, Poland, Germany and Switzerland (!) have pivoted to aggressive non-neutrality of financial war, NATO expansion and Ukraine arms resupply were Russian capabilities not shown to be that hollow? They cannot even keep their forces supplied with food and fuel right now, will you tell me that is all pro-Ukraine propaganda?
Mr. Putin is reduced to threatening a nuclear strike. Should Mr. Sholz go, “Ach du Lieber! The Russians will attack America and the radioactive winds alone will machen alles Deutchlander todt! I must rescind our participation in the SWIFT boycott and call back the convoys delivering weapons!” The logical conclusion of your remarks is that he is a German War Criminal unless he takes those actions to avoid catastrophe?
One of the strengths of iSteve was discussion at a reasonable decibel level of topics that could not be even hinted at in any other forum. The shrieking going on over Ukraine suggests that participants will be driven off from iSteve for incorrect thinking on this topic.
It seems like that to me. If that is what you are advocating, well, I think Russian Roulette has much better odds.
You would have none of this hadn’t the US betrayed its principles, not “allies”, again & again…
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/from-ukraine-to-iran-non-proliferation-and-never-again-at-risk/
………………………………………
Consider first, the West’s failed dealings regarding Ukraine. The story begins with the post-Cold War breakup of the Soviet Union, which left the newly independent state of Ukraine possessing 1,900 nuclear weapons, the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. Under intense pressure from the Clinton administration, Ukraine agreed in 1994 to adopt the “Budapest Memorandum,” by which it surrendered those weapons back to Russia in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and Britain.
This involved a huge leap of faith for Ukraine, where there remain strong memories of the Soviet-imposed collectivization of agriculture and the resulting genocidal famine of 1932-33, in which over five million Ukrainian farmers and their families starved to death. Nearly 20 percent of Ukraine’s population was murdered by the brutally enforced policies of Russian apparatchiks.
Even amid the peaks of post-Cold War euphoria, some critics foresaw that Ukraine would later pay a steep price for sub-contracting its security to Russia and America. Professor John Mearsheimer warned in 1993 that “Ukraine cannot defend itself against a nuclear-armed Russia with conventional weapons, and no state, including the United States, is going to extend to it a meaningful security guarantee. Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression.”
At least no one has used those nukes in the last thirty years.
But the society we now live in -- no, it would be gone.
By the way, I had a friend and a step-brother who were submariners in nuclear-armed subs back around 1980: our tech capabilities (e.g., quiet, undetectable sub operations) vastly exceeded the Soviets'.
But, yeah, whether a massive nuclear exchange would set us back to 1000 AD or merely to 1800 AD, it would be a very bad idea.Replies: @Inquiring Mind, @Anonymous
I “get” why the almost unanimous anti-Russian response of nations of consequence (China!) has people on iSteve agitated.
Hopes were pinned on Putin for his sticking his finger in the eye of “globo-homo”, the homogenous New Global Order empowering freaks and intellectually disabled persons to rule our lives and livelihoods. Vladimir Putin, defender of Orthodox Christians and traditional moral values. Vladimir Putin, friend of The Donald, and we think that to be a great thing.
Mr. Putin had his shortcomings, like the time his operatives poisoned that British Police officer to get back at a traitor expatriate of the Russians. I had folks on iSteve “down my throat” for me offering the suggestion of criticism of that “operations.” If we abandon Mr. Putin, who is left to stand up against Globo-Homo?
Now, Mr. Putin has really dropped his shorts and taken a dump in the punch bowl. What is happening in Ukraine is all propaganda, yes, but a whole lot of leaders of Western European and other countries are believing the propaganda and are taking really, really aggressive actions to put the hurt not only on Putin but Russia collectively.
That Mr. Putin is even muttering nuclear threats indicates to me that he has backed himself into a corner. It appears that most of Europe is not taking those threats the least bit seriously. As much as we on iSteve need a champion to poke their finger in the correct eyes, as much as it is painful to be aligned even slightly with the Junior Senator from Utah, this is not going to end well for Mr. Putin, this will go badly for the Russian people, there is the potential of serious damage to the global economy, and the iSteve commentariat is right now in a brawling free-for all, with the anti-Globo-Homo faction taking seriously pro-Soviet anti-Cowboy Reagan early-1980s talking points.
And he rules a country that has over 5,000 nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
If Russian conventional military prowess comes up short - not proved yet, but not impossible - that actually presents a pretty dangerous situation. Perhaps it were better that Russian belief in the might of their conventional forces were left untested (like for example if they hadn't invaded). Without that, what do they have? Just those 5,000+ nuclear weapons.
After U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union started, the US Government realized that a lot of the Soviet's claims about the strength of their military (including their strategic nuclear forces) were hollow. They could credibly claim such things because they were a closed society, but once we could peek behind the fence, the US realized that a lot of it was sham. A lot of hawks wanted to publicly reveal this and rub the Soviets noses in it. Eisenhower said 'No'. Let the Soviets go on believing that we believed them to be stronger than they are. It's a better outcome for us. If we let them know we were on to them, they would only build out their strategic capability for real.
Sadly, western nations no longer have chief executives as wise as Eisenhower.Replies: @Almost Missouri
In fact, by being anti-Globo-Homo, we are pretty much anti-Communist, as that's who the whole Globo-homo set pretty much represent, at least culture wise. They are destroyers of traditional culture, just like the Bolsheviks of a century ago and other Commies throughout the ages.
I very well remember the "Reagan is a cowboy" theme, but I always wondered why that was a bad thing. What the heck is wrong with cowboys? (Again, anti-tradition.)
Oh wait -- the West put in carve-outs in the sanctions so that they could keep buying fossil fuels from Russia, didn't they?
The West is a paper tiger.
IM also wrote:Don't you think that if Putin had really poisoned some guy, the guy would have actually died?
I don't know what happened -- the whole world of espionage is mirrors within mirrors.
But neither do you, much less the Western media idiots.
IM also wrote:Why would any American pin his hopes on Putin? What does Putin have to do, either positively or negatively, with the degradation of American society?
No, I would say that some of us have merely been pointing out that Putin is not Stalin or Hitler and that he seems to be a good deal smarter than recent American Presidents -- to be sure, a very low bar.
I wish Putin had not gone into central Ukraine: if he had asked me (alas, he didn't!), I would have recommended that, at the most, he liberate the Donbass.
But we are now stuck with the fact that the West's and Zelensky's poking of the Russian Bear -- via the repression in the Donbass and the dance NATO has been engaged in with Ukraine for more than a decade -- has led to tragic results.
And all we can do now is try to see through the idiocy and lies of the corrupt, sycophantic Western media.Replies: @James N. Kennett
A Boy and his Dog was a great movie! Nobody here spoil the ending, please.
You mean, don't leave it out in the sun too long? Read the book, guessed the ending, easy enough to do if you understand it's really a buddy movie, like Midnight Cowboy. Ellison dedicated it to his dog.
Condoleeza Rice agrees that invading a sovereign nation is a war crime.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1498026998265909250Replies: @Tex
Well, Rice would know about war crimes wouldn’t she.
Detroit is not the result of “mass uncontrolled immigration” you absolute clown. There is no way to get rid of blacks in the US without a very bloody war. Yes, open borders are bad but no one alive today is to blame for the insanely idiotic act of bringing millions of blacks here for slave labor, and blacks aren’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future. And your political goal to end mass immigration is not at all helped by saying diversity is worse than global thermonuclear war. You wignats are the #1 threat to the white race, by far.
Do you really for one moment fancy the chances of that rump white population at the hands of a black/brown government who despise them?Replies: @AndrewR
Zoos, great reply, but it was a fact that we were prepped for the unthinkable. Catholic School kids, keep your soul pure,weekly confession, daily communion. The Falls and their massive hydro plant was considered a major target. As was the huge Bethlehem Steel plant stretching for a couple miles along Lake Erie. We would get the radiation blow over. The Nike bases eventually were turned over to local towns and villages. Nearby Hamburg, NY turned their base into a sports complex. Don’t know where the missiles went. Used to be a few around mounted on pedestals. Stay safe.
But the society we now live in -- no, it would be gone.
By the way, I had a friend and a step-brother who were submariners in nuclear-armed subs back around 1980: our tech capabilities (e.g., quiet, undetectable sub operations) vastly exceeded the Soviets'.
But, yeah, whether a massive nuclear exchange would set us back to 1000 AD or merely to 1800 AD, it would be a very bad idea.Replies: @Inquiring Mind, @Anonymous
The society we now live in is already gone, rather like a building after the demolition charges have detonated but before the building has started to fall.
1) Putin wants to capture Ukraine, not destroy it. Every Russian is familiar with the consequences of the sealed train carrying the bacillus of Bolshevism in the form of Lenin. How much worse would would be the consequences of a sealed delivery of 100,000 Africans. Putin's pre-invasion speech specifically cited forced demographic changes as a "weapon of mass destruction". He does not want to WMD his own country. (Unlike the Western rulers.)
2) Putin doesn't give a crap about the Western media. ("How many divisions has CNN?") If only Westerners were as wise.Replies: @S, @nebulafox, @Professional Slav
>Every Russian is familiar with the consequences of the sealed train carrying the bacillus of Bolshevism in the form of Lenin
Sazonov and Izvolsky brought bad karma unto Russia much like Bismarck ultimately did for Germany. I’m a superstitious bastard. That means I’m worried about the US.
The west hates Putin because he’s not on board with LGBT and global warming.
“A Boy and his Dog was a great movie! Nobody here spoil the ending, please.”
You mean, don’t leave it out in the sun too long? Read the book, guessed the ending, easy enough to do if you understand it’s really a buddy movie, like Midnight Cowboy. Ellison dedicated it to his dog.
> It looks like the second article has already been removed, unfortunately.
My bad, HA spotted that I had added a period at the end. Here is the correct link.
Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble.
Hope by whom? A few perhaps, but not most people here. I am under no illusions what Putin is. He is an ex-secret-policeman, a thug, a dictator, and a kleptocrat.
And he rules a country that has over 5,000 nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
If Russian conventional military prowess comes up short – not proved yet, but not impossible – that actually presents a pretty dangerous situation. Perhaps it were better that Russian belief in the might of their conventional forces were left untested (like for example if they hadn’t invaded). Without that, what do they have? Just those 5,000+ nuclear weapons.
After U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union started, the US Government realized that a lot of the Soviet’s claims about the strength of their military (including their strategic nuclear forces) were hollow. They could credibly claim such things because they were a closed society, but once we could peek behind the fence, the US realized that a lot of it was sham. A lot of hawks wanted to publicly reveal this and rub the Soviets noses in it. Eisenhower said ‘No’. Let the Soviets go on believing that we believed them to be stronger than they are. It’s a better outcome for us. If we let them know we were on to them, they would only build out their strategic capability for real.
Sadly, western nations no longer have chief executives as wise as Eisenhower.
Once elected, JFK, now the prisoner of his own bellicose electioneering, had to walk the talk, so he promptly got into a near-nuclear confrontation with the Soviets over Cuba.
One wonders if in an electoral republic, perhaps a little more sunlight would have inoculated this particular issue, saving the world a near brush with disaster?
That was the original idea of the British: let them duke it out! Until Churchill, that US stooge, stepped in.
https://youtu.be/1vdiEABLFooReplies: @The Wild Geese Howard
Gonzalo is actually a pretty interesting guy:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Lira
We took it seriously. Not frightened, but dutiful. Possibly it was the mentality of our “Asian” mentality, but more likely that ours was the only county in the US that ever saw enemy bombers. Pearl Harbor was less than ten miles away.
Was it the West's hubris or it's Pride?
https://twitter.com/ChiefMI6/status/1497287654441984007?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1497287654441984007%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fmi6-chief-faces-backlash-saying-ukraine-war-about-lgbt-rightsReplies: @AndrewR
At this point I almost welcome nuclear war. It might be the only way to save humanity.
1) Putin wants to capture Ukraine, not destroy it. Every Russian is familiar with the consequences of the sealed train carrying the bacillus of Bolshevism in the form of Lenin. How much worse would would be the consequences of a sealed delivery of 100,000 Africans. Putin's pre-invasion speech specifically cited forced demographic changes as a "weapon of mass destruction". He does not want to WMD his own country. (Unlike the Western rulers.)
2) Putin doesn't give a crap about the Western media. ("How many divisions has CNN?") If only Westerners were as wise.Replies: @S, @nebulafox, @Professional Slav
That’s news to Russians! Have you been to Moscow lately? Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens, Dagestanis, Ingush, you name it. A real multiculti melting pot.
In fact recently it was announced Russia was giving amnesty to at least 160k Uzbeks with a new website specifically to make it easier for the next batches to migrate to Russia. They’re Russia’s Mexicans.
Also, how do you think Kadyrov (and by extent tons of other little war chiefs from random RF’s ethnic wonders) stays loyal to Putin? Grozny is now hailed as the next great Russian capital.
Putin calls nationalists nazis, like the Western powers that be do to you.
And whatever the non-Russians are in Russia, Russia is serious about assimilating immigrants, not submitting to them.
As Rosie says, Russians may have their differences or even difficulties with Turkic, Mongol, Caucasian, etc. peoples, but those problems are a rounding error compared to the black undertow in America. And the heights of culture and institutional power remain defiantly Russian-European. There is no Russian equivalent to the lunatic negrolotry infecting the West, to say nothing of tranny-mania, homo-worship, and the other pathologies of wokism.
Where The Buoys Are
https://sbfoundersday.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/where-the-buoys-are/
https://sbfoundersday.wordpress.com/2019/03/07/tdisbh066/
I have seen some videos of Russian soldiers on foot, flanking their tanks, as they move between tower blocks. I’d be scared to death, outside or inside the vehicle in such settings. Any of the hundreds of balconies can be hosting a sniper, a Javelin operator or both.
At this point it may not matter for the Russians whether they are inside or outside armored vehicles.
I am on the FoV (Friends of Vlad) side of the discussion you describe very well, I.M. I have no argument except with your last sentence. Of course we are not pro-Soviet, as we are not supporting Communists, as per your (great way to put it) “anti-Cowboy Reagan early-1980s” people WERE.
In fact, by being anti-Globo-Homo, we are pretty much anti-Communist, as that’s who the whole Globo-homo set pretty much represent, at least culture wise. They are destroyers of traditional culture, just like the Bolsheviks of a century ago and other Commies throughout the ages.
I very well remember the “Reagan is a cowboy” theme, but I always wondered why that was a bad thing. What the heck is wrong with cowboys? (Again, anti-tradition.)
I don’t have time to read 270 comments, so my apologies if I’m repeating something already said.
Russia has had a doctrine of “nuclear de-escalation” for many years. Basically, it calls for nuking some major military base or small city if a war in Eastern Europe goes poorly, to prove they’re not fooling around. The idea being that this would make other nations think twice about getting involved.
If it weren’t for double standards, …
https://sbfoundersday.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/where-the-buoys-are/
https://sbfoundersday.wordpress.com/2019/03/07/tdisbh066/Replies: @epebble, @Zoos
I used to drive on the 405 South during ’90-’05. Some mysterious flatland labelled naval weapons station was there between Seal Beal Blvd and Bolsa Chica Road on the West side of 405S. What did they have there?
mostly because I have no frickin’ idea
Okay, sea lions and C-4
Oddly enough, born in 1960, I never experienced any of the “duck and cover” stuff. We never had drills. My older sisters did. I don’t know what changed, because the Cold War was still going strong when I was in school from 1965 to whatever.
I lived in Seal Beach for 9 months in 1978-79. My sister and her husband had an apartment one block from the beach. Her husband flew a seaplane, the Grumman Goose, for Air Catalina, between Long Beach and Catalina Island. I knew about the Navy base, because one night my brother-in-law got into a bar fight with some British sailors and came home with a black eye. (My brother-in-law was Australian. He had been a fighter pilot for the RAAF during WWII. Yes, he was older than my sister, and he still picked a fight with those no-doubt young sailors. He called British people “Pommies.”)
The second stage of the Saturn V moon rocket was built by North American Aviation in Seal Beach, and the third stage was built next door by Douglas in Huntington Beach, where my sisters and I lived as kids in the 1960s. I remember one night in the car with our parents coming home when we got behind a huge truck that was carrying an S-IVB third stage.
As for what’s going on now, I repeat my opinion: All of this was caused by OUR leaders meddling in foreign affairs and overthrowing the legitimate, Russia-friendly government of The Ukraine in 2014.
Lee Smith has been saying this for years and he's right.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraines-deadly-gambleReplies: @Johann Ricke
I think, perhaps, you might be missing Mr. Lund’s point. Namely, that the Americans were not competing with the Russians to launch the first satellite as much as they were competing amongst themselves. As he mentioned:
What he is alluding to is the combination of a) animus toward Von Braun and b) a wildly overoptimistic estimate of the time needed for the Naval Reasearch Laboratory’s Vanguard programme. The result was that the Americans had a rocket on hand (the Army’s Jupiter-C) that was fully capable of launching a satellite, but they were not allowed to use it because the Vanguard programme had already been given the go-ahead.
However, the Vanguard programme had been given the go-ahead because the timeframe its supporters gave for it to put a satellite into orbit was the same as the Army/Von Braun/Jupiter C group gave for their programme. The problem was that the Vanguard people could not deliver on time, the programme was rushed, and the result that the Americans ended up with an exploding rocket.
This passage from Abigail Foerstner’s book James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles sums it up:
And there you have it. The Russians won the battle to put a man-made satellite into orbit, not because of their technical superiority, but because the Americans could not stop fighting amongst themselves.
None of this is to take away from the space achievements of the Russians; their technical know-how is perfectly worthy of respect. Rather, I mention it in the interests of pointing out that the Space Race was a near-run thing and some aspects of it simply came down to dumb luck rather than technical superiority by one side or the other.
Failed president Biden faces popular rejection of his illegitimate regime, problems of his making or worsening in every sector of American life, and the second* biggest land invasion in postwar Europe. Will he attack Russian energy? Will he call for the building of new submarines? Will he —
Axios: Biden SOTU will promise an end to cancer in our lifetimes.
… what?
——–
*Biggest is the Merkelboner. Bigger by numbers, bigger by nations affected, much much bigger by consequences. And the governmental approval of and advocacy for the Merkelboner needs to be brought up every time a government disapproves of Putin’s police action.
No. Their claim was always based on the supposed scientifically proven superiority of marxism-leninism. They claimed they ruled for humanity and brighter future. Socialism didn’t give it then, doesn’t now.
Reagan, like almost everoyone else, knew about MAD. My reading of the documents is that he, like the admirals that informed him, was shocked about MIRV’ing:
One 1 missile gets 10 nukes.
One sub gets 20 missiles.
One sub submerged outside D.C has 200 thermonuclear bombs.
THIS is massively unstable. Even the commies saw it. MIRV was banned under agreement.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/defiantlsukraine.jpgReplies: @Twinkie, @Reg Cæsar
That’s because they are the Russians here.
I think some of those bunkers used to store nukes. That proximity is what caused Sunset Beach / Surfside to become a coke capital.
That’s exactly right. It’s Obama retreads Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, etc. playing the Great Game as if they were modern day incarnations of Metternich and Kissinger combined. The Russians have said for years that they consider the Ukraine their near abroad, like we do Mexico, and will not allow it to join NATO.
Lee Smith has been saying this for years and he’s right.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraines-deadly-gamble
And the Germans are just one example. Not just in Europe but just about every country in the world has some history of being overrun while taking huge casualties at some point in the their history. Where are their buffer states?Replies: @Steve Sailer, @J.Ross, @Jim Don Bob
Inquiring Mind wrote to me:
Like what? Like refusing to buy fossil fuels from Russia?
Oh wait — the West put in carve-outs in the sanctions so that they could keep buying fossil fuels from Russia, didn’t they?
The West is a paper tiger.
IM also wrote:
Don’t you think that if Putin had really poisoned some guy, the guy would have actually died?
I don’t know what happened — the whole world of espionage is mirrors within mirrors.
But neither do you, much less the Western media idiots.
IM also wrote:
Why would any American pin his hopes on Putin? What does Putin have to do, either positively or negatively, with the degradation of American society?
No, I would say that some of us have merely been pointing out that Putin is not Stalin or Hitler and that he seems to be a good deal smarter than recent American Presidents — to be sure, a very low bar.
I wish Putin had not gone into central Ukraine: if he had asked me (alas, he didn’t!), I would have recommended that, at the most, he liberate the Donbass.
But we are now stuck with the fact that the West’s and Zelensky’s poking of the Russian Bear — via the repression in the Donbass and the dance NATO has been engaged in with Ukraine for more than a decade — has led to tragic results.
And all we can do now is try to see through the idiocy and lies of the corrupt, sycophantic Western media.
A country that has a much more powerful neighbor is foolish if it allies itself with its neighbor's enemies. The sane choices are either to make an alliance with the neighbor, or to choose strict neutrality.
The moves by the US to entice Ukraine into joining NATO were not only toxic for Ukraine - they were doomed to failure, because NATO membership must be unanimously approved by the existing members, and France and Germany had already signaled that they would veto Ukrainian membership. It is a pity that the leaders of those countries did not publicly remind the world of their position.
Whatever else they are, the Nulands of this world are not fools. They would have known that NATO membership for Ukraine was not a possible outcome, and that the pretended friendship of NATO would be harmful for Ukraine. So the question arises, what were they trying to achieve? They wanted to draw the Russians into a war, just as Zbigniew Brzezynski and Jimmy Carter had done in the late 1970s when they funded the Afghan Mujahideen. The offer of cash and friendship to Ukraine belied the callousness of a plan in which the Ukrainians were expendable.
The US State Department certainly knew Putin's weaknesses. Nostalgia for the Soviet Union, especially the union of "all the Russias"; a wish to be treated with respect and as an equal; and the expectation that his reasonable concerns about Russia's security would be taken seriously and not stonewalled. The USA successfully played both Russia and Ukraine as suckers.Replies: @mc23, @HA
“The moves by the US to entice Ukraine into joining NATO were not only toxic for Ukraine…”
Whenever I see lines like this, and I see them a lot, I can tell that someone never bothered to get to know any Ukrainians (or gets his propaganda by way of RT or the like). The reason some of them turned to Hitler, and subsequently to Nuland, required little in the way of “enticing”. It was more a case of seeing what people like Putin had in mind for them and saying “anything is better than this”.
Ironically, that’s the very same enemy-of-my-enemy attitude that drives angry rednecks into thinking Putin is a good guy who will help them in their fight with the elites driving them down. Historically, that strategy has often proved to be disastrously misguided, and as I already mentioned, the alt-right cheering the Russians who think Ukrainians are just a bunch of thugs harboring a dangerously high percentage of fascists in their midst are being especially hypocritical, in that the ruling elites who rule this country regards the alt-right in exactly the same way: ignorant white trash with a penchant for fascism. I know enough angry whites to know that that’s grossly unfair, but I’ve met some Ukrainians over the years too, and for that reason, Putin’s not gonna fool me about them either.
That being the case, those alt-righters who side with Putin against Russia DESERVE to have their culture and their values and their way of life trashed by their we-know-better-than-you elites — at the least, it’s poetic justice. I’m reminded of that Polish saying about how if you plan to put someone in a grave, you should dig two of them.
Are you suggesting that the reward of confronting Putin over Ukraine is worth the risk of being able to wage a counterforce first-strike without any of the 6k warheads of Russia getting through to targets of value, especially those in the submarines giving a second-strike capability?
It seems like that to me. If that is what you are advocating, well, I think Russian Roulette has much better odds.
“I haven’t seen much on Twitter from Ukrainians about huge successes against the Russians in the southeast, so I suspect the Russians are doing better there than elsewhere.”
You can also tell that from the fact that there was no agreement about a cease-fire. A cease-fire is generally used to try to freeze in whatever gains an invader has made (or to give them time to replenish supplies, at which point they can always start up again by claiming the other side violated the terms).
So as long as the Russians are gaining, that cease-fire will prove elusive.
Then what is to be done to fix things? Or is it just going to be the long, slow whimper? Unless we get the nuclear bang of course.
This may be true, but a leader must take a more thoughtful approach. Compare Ukraine with Ireland, which lost half its population to famine and emigration in the 1840s while under British rule. 80 years later Ireland won its independence, and it would have been understandable if the country had sought an alliance with anybody but the British. Fortunately Irish leaders had the good sense to realize that the only way to keep the British out was to choose neutrality. They decided to pursue their country’s rational self-interest instead of following their hearts.
The magnitude of the suffering of Ireland and Ukraine at the hands of their larger neighbor are comparable; the chief difference being that the Ukrainian famine was entirely man-made and included the prevention of emigration, while the Irish famine was caused by Potato Blight compounded by the hostile neglect of the British authorities.
I certainly do not see Putin as a “good guy”. He is clearly hostile to the West, and is responsible for Russia’s unnecessary war of aggression against Ukraine. However, the war has a back-story, which is that Western countries deliberately tried to provoke the Russian invasion.
Again, having made the effort to hear Ukrainians themselves, I do not presume to tell them they lack thoughtfulness. To most people, there is no difference between a Russian and Ukrainian worth splitting a country over. Same goes for Serb and Croat, Swede and Norwegian, etc.
And yet, they see things about that that we don't. Unless you can factor in what it is that they regard so important that they're willing to fight for it, I don't think your assessment of who's being thoughtful will be complete. Who would ever stand against a numerically and militarily superior foe in that case? It's irrational, it's insane, and not "thoughtful".
In the end, we're all just blind men trying to understand the elephant. I don't dispute your assessment (and know that mine is equally skewed because of the things I have experienced), but I think that -- especially given the reliance on RT and other Moscow-centric news sources among the alt-right -- the Ukrainian side gets overlooked and ad hoc arguments about the Russian world-view (when did having a "buffer state" become some fundamental right?) which for the reasons I noted, is especially bizarre, and downright hypocritical. Even if I'm just another blind man myself, I can at least try and not make my case worse by avoiding situations like that.Replies: @PhysicistDave
In fact recently it was announced Russia was giving amnesty to at least 160k Uzbeks with a new website specifically to make it easier for the next batches to migrate to Russia. They're Russia's Mexicans.
Also, how do you think Kadyrov (and by extent tons of other little war chiefs from random RF's ethnic wonders) stays loyal to Putin? Grozny is now hailed as the next great Russian capital.
Putin calls nationalists nazis, like the Western powers that be do to you.Replies: @Rosie, @Almost Missouri
Maybe, but that demographic change doesn’t seem to be translating to the kind of mass urban destruction and mayhem we see here. And besides, some of those people look huwitish to me. I can’t imagine Ukrainians doing any better aligned with the West rather than Putin.
The second “mentality” should read “majority”. Not autocorrect this time, but autosuggest.
Oh wait -- the West put in carve-outs in the sanctions so that they could keep buying fossil fuels from Russia, didn't they?
The West is a paper tiger.
IM also wrote:Don't you think that if Putin had really poisoned some guy, the guy would have actually died?
I don't know what happened -- the whole world of espionage is mirrors within mirrors.
But neither do you, much less the Western media idiots.
IM also wrote:Why would any American pin his hopes on Putin? What does Putin have to do, either positively or negatively, with the degradation of American society?
No, I would say that some of us have merely been pointing out that Putin is not Stalin or Hitler and that he seems to be a good deal smarter than recent American Presidents -- to be sure, a very low bar.
I wish Putin had not gone into central Ukraine: if he had asked me (alas, he didn't!), I would have recommended that, at the most, he liberate the Donbass.
But we are now stuck with the fact that the West's and Zelensky's poking of the Russian Bear -- via the repression in the Donbass and the dance NATO has been engaged in with Ukraine for more than a decade -- has led to tragic results.
And all we can do now is try to see through the idiocy and lies of the corrupt, sycophantic Western media.Replies: @James N. Kennett
Agreed. This would have been both a quick victory, and would have created a “frozen conflict” that would have made Ukraine ineligible for NATO membership.
Sadly, Putin is not pursuing Russia’s rational self-interest. It is difficult to advise a person who has this frame of mind. If they are not being rational, they cannot be reasoned with.
I suggested in another comment that the Ukrainians have not been following their rational self-interest either. Our helpful advice brings us uncomfortably close to Gore Vidal, who said
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/defiantlsukraine.jpgReplies: @Twinkie, @Reg Cæsar
When they say you have no right to impose your morality on others, what they mean is that you have no right to.
Moments ago I suggested to my High School sophomore daughter she may want to watch Biden’s SOTU address. She flipped on the tube, the first word spewed from the president of these United States of America’s mouth was “transgender”.
I’m not at liberty to divulge that
mostly because I have no frickin’ idea
Okay, sea lions and C-4
But you didn’t really believe that you weren’t the last generation on earth, right?? This is how it ends. Over protecting a State Department created and controlled puppet-state run by a Jewish comedian whose signature comedy routine involves playing the piano with his penis.
In two days it is Ash Wednesday. In more way than one?Replies: @Joe Stalin
As a corollary, speaking English loudly at foreigners (John Cleese/Basil Fawlty style) and expecting them to understand is now permissible according to the latest progressive thought. It will save money on translators.
You are being full of hubris because you have the typical attitude “America best, better than all the rest”. None of your facts are factual. They are hyperbole or flat out mischaracterizations. The fact is the U.S.S.R collapsed due to it’s inefficnet economy. It did not collapse because “MAD” became obsolete(favoring America) due to massive and revolutionary American nuclear counter-striking capabilities. Nothing but crap, pure American jingoism out of control. MAD continued valid in 1991 as it was in 1961.
If what you said were true, and it very obviously isn’t, the U.S wouldn’t fear any nuclear power out there. The U.S would flat out threaten China with nukes if it were to invade Taiwan, for instance. The fact that the U.S does fear nuclear powers shows that 100% of what you said is crap.
Do you think that the Russians do not have forces to hunt American nuclear submarines, fool? Fact: you cannot hunt down and catch all submarines before they fire.
As for Russian not having crushed Ukraine so far, has it ever occured to you that the reason for that is not because they are not capable of it, but because they don’t want to?
Hey, buddy, why didn’t the U.S crush the Taliban back in Afghanistan? I mean, since the U.S military is as mighty as you say.
Your post is 100% garbage, patriotic chest-thumping. If America could do even 105 of what you claim, neither China or Russis would have any nukes by now, all taken out by U.S.A
Anybody who works anywhere adjacent to the federal apparatus in DC (of which, among iSteve readers, there has to be at least one) should be able to sense something heavy in the air if the government is really worried, even if they ain't sayin' nothin'.
So report back, brave soul, and give us the mood from the inside. My sense from the periphery is that the government is not very much worried and is still mainly concerned with how to stuff the night full of kabuki theater.Replies: @Bragadocious, @Dmon, @ScarletNumber
You’ve never heard of the concept of the Designated Survivor?
“This may be true, but a leader must take a more thoughtful approach.”
Again, having made the effort to hear Ukrainians themselves, I do not presume to tell them they lack thoughtfulness. To most people, there is no difference between a Russian and Ukrainian worth splitting a country over. Same goes for Serb and Croat, Swede and Norwegian, etc.
And yet, they see things about that that we don’t. Unless you can factor in what it is that they regard so important that they’re willing to fight for it, I don’t think your assessment of who’s being thoughtful will be complete. Who would ever stand against a numerically and militarily superior foe in that case? It’s irrational, it’s insane, and not “thoughtful”.
In the end, we’re all just blind men trying to understand the elephant. I don’t dispute your assessment (and know that mine is equally skewed because of the things I have experienced), but I think that — especially given the reliance on RT and other Moscow-centric news sources among the alt-right — the Ukrainian side gets overlooked and ad hoc arguments about the Russian world-view (when did having a “buffer state” become some fundamental right?) which for the reasons I noted, is especially bizarre, and downright hypocritical. Even if I’m just another blind man myself, I can at least try and not make my case worse by avoiding situations like that.
There is indeed no "right" to a buffer state, just as JFK had no "right" to demand that missiles be taken out of Cuba.
But prudent statesmen recognize the reality of power politics, whatever the niceties of international law, and try to prevent war.
In the cliffhanger of October 1962, both JFK and Khrushchev, in the end, recognized that fact and thereby avoided World War III.
Let's call it the "Kennedy-Khrushcev doctrine": do not simply insist on "international law" but rather take into account the vital interests of the other side so as to avoid war.
Western leaders and, above all, Zelensky, are ignoring the Kennedy-Khrushchev doctrine.
And so innocent people are dying.
Take care, my friend.Replies: @utu, @HA
The world's nuclear armories need to be dismantled, along with the world's GOF labs.Replies: @Nikolai Vladivostok
That’s actually a good point.
If our civilisation starts to crumble at a more rapid pace, I hope wise heads will discretely remove a few vital and hard-to-produce components from nuclear missiles. Not a good thing to leave lying around for future Millenial wokelords to get their hands on.
He’s only doing it for attention and you’re giving it to him. A few months with zero response and he’d find another hobby.
Again, having made the effort to hear Ukrainians themselves, I do not presume to tell them they lack thoughtfulness. To most people, there is no difference between a Russian and Ukrainian worth splitting a country over. Same goes for Serb and Croat, Swede and Norwegian, etc.
And yet, they see things about that that we don't. Unless you can factor in what it is that they regard so important that they're willing to fight for it, I don't think your assessment of who's being thoughtful will be complete. Who would ever stand against a numerically and militarily superior foe in that case? It's irrational, it's insane, and not "thoughtful".
In the end, we're all just blind men trying to understand the elephant. I don't dispute your assessment (and know that mine is equally skewed because of the things I have experienced), but I think that -- especially given the reliance on RT and other Moscow-centric news sources among the alt-right -- the Ukrainian side gets overlooked and ad hoc arguments about the Russian world-view (when did having a "buffer state" become some fundamental right?) which for the reasons I noted, is especially bizarre, and downright hypocritical. Even if I'm just another blind man myself, I can at least try and not make my case worse by avoiding situations like that.Replies: @PhysicistDave
HA wrote to JNK:
HA, most of us are relying primarily on Western media. RT tends to give the same facts as Western media but with less editorializing: I think that RT has hired a number of Western journalists who are choosing to do actual journalism.
There is indeed no “right” to a buffer state, just as JFK had no “right” to demand that missiles be taken out of Cuba.
But prudent statesmen recognize the reality of power politics, whatever the niceties of international law, and try to prevent war.
In the cliffhanger of October 1962, both JFK and Khrushchev, in the end, recognized that fact and thereby avoided World War III.
Let’s call it the “Kennedy-Khrushcev doctrine”: do not simply insist on “international law” but rather take into account the vital interests of the other side so as to avoid war.
Western leaders and, above all, Zelensky, are ignoring the Kennedy-Khrushchev doctrine.
And so innocent people are dying.
Take care, my friend.
As the man said, the only two places on earth to be destroyed by atomic bombs, namely Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are now, 77 years after the fact, civilized, high income, high standard of living, pleasant, happy places in which to live.
Around the same huge numbers of American blacks moved to northern and mid western American industrial cities. Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, Oakland, Baltimore etc etc are just bywords for existential Hell.
Lee Smith has been saying this for years and he's right.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraines-deadly-gambleReplies: @Johann Ricke
Lee Smith comes from the Russians have legit grievances camp. Thing is – *everyone* has legit grievances. The Germans lost 50% of their population during the 30 Years War vs 10% of the Russian population during WWII. Who thinks Germany should have a land area Russia’s size (50x Germany’s current land area) *and* a buffer state the size of Ukraine (2x Germany) *and* a buffer state the size of Belarus (0.6x Germany)? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?
And the Germans are just one example. Not just in Europe but just about every country in the world has some history of being overrun while taking huge casualties at some point in the their history. Where are their buffer states?
I feel bad for the Ukes. They live in a bad neighbor hood.
But none of that changes the fact that the USA has no/none/nada/zilch/zero national interest in Ukraine. To paraphrase Bismarck, the Ukraine is not worth the bones of a single American.
Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or
shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and
her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters
to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence
of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
- John Quincy Adams July 4, 1821
Still true 200 years later.Replies: @Paperback Writer
Put it this way, whites in western Europe and north America – due to elitist policies of massive uncontrolled black/brown immigration – are *for sure* destined to become a small, hated, impotent minority in their own homelands by year 2100, a mere blip in time away in the historic record.
Do you really for one moment fancy the chances of that rump white population at the hands of a black/brown government who despise them?
And the Germans are just one example. Not just in Europe but just about every country in the world has some history of being overrun while taking huge casualties at some point in the their history. Where are their buffer states?Replies: @Steve Sailer, @J.Ross, @Jim Don Bob
England’s buffer states: Belgium and Ireland.
US: Mexico.
Following Spielberg’s new rule, and the overwhelming sentiment of modern Hollywood, the Peruvian bear should have been voiced by a Peruvian (preferably ursine), speaking his native tongue, with no subtitles.
As a corollary, speaking English loudly at foreigners (John Cleese/Basil Fawlty style) and expecting them to understand is now permissible according to the latest progressive thought. It will save money on translators.
Apparently he was shot in the head at close range, if we can believe anything coming out of this war.
Not Ireland, Steve. Buffer against who? Atlantic grey seals?
The Low Countries were the buffer – “a coastal lowland region in Northwestern Europe forming the lower basin of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and consisting of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg”.
Churchill said in the 1930s that for the last 400 years English foreign policy was
a) to oppose the strongest power on the European continent, whoever it was – at various times Spain, France and Germany fitted that role
b) to prevent the Low Countries falling into said power’s hands
There is indeed no "right" to a buffer state, just as JFK had no "right" to demand that missiles be taken out of Cuba.
But prudent statesmen recognize the reality of power politics, whatever the niceties of international law, and try to prevent war.
In the cliffhanger of October 1962, both JFK and Khrushchev, in the end, recognized that fact and thereby avoided World War III.
Let's call it the "Kennedy-Khrushcev doctrine": do not simply insist on "international law" but rather take into account the vital interests of the other side so as to avoid war.
Western leaders and, above all, Zelensky, are ignoring the Kennedy-Khrushchev doctrine.
And so innocent people are dying.
Take care, my friend.Replies: @utu, @HA
“RT tends to give the same facts as Western media but with less editorializing”. – You are really dumb.
And the Germans are just one example. Not just in Europe but just about every country in the world has some history of being overrun while taking huge casualties at some point in the their history. Where are their buffer states?Replies: @Steve Sailer, @J.Ross, @Jim Don Bob
Your argument is “people should just accept death”? Does that apply to Israel? People should just accept offensive weapons pointed at them seven minutes away? Will Israel accept Iranian nukes on this logic?
That's basically what the Putin lackeys are offering Ukraine, isn't it? Submit to the one killing you, or else, accept death. Now, all of a sudden, you realize that isn't much of an option?
If you follow news, RT is the objectively fastest legitimate news alert by far. They are attuned to any news story that makes the US look bad, so you get a lot of hand-wringing over “mass shootings” which turn out to be “urban culture,” but that’s not editorializing, and they’re not lying like NPR or making stuff up like CNN. You could argue that the focus itself is a form of editorializing, but that’s lawyering, and the dishonest threshold setting of the American mainstream lyingpress is massively more egregious. The argument against RT appears to be some sort of leftover Cold War reasoning that outrageous outright lying, which characterized many early Soviet propaganda efforts and depended completely on censorship, are surely to be found there, because the last names sound similar. Besides the fact that this has no basis, that situation all too well describes American dinosaur media. The lyingpress is surely at its weakest when bleating Stalinist-level whoppers, which are easily deflated with a little internet research, precisely because they think their ineffective self-censorship applies to everyone.
English and French language Russian media that are watched and read in Canada had twice as many articles (about 1,200) as Fox about the Freedom Convoy. Freedom Convoy paralyzed the government in Ottawa when lobbying and disputes about military aid to Ukraine were taking place in Canada in January and February. Canada has close relations with Ukraine. Canada was the first country that recognized Ukraine independence because of strong and politically active Ukrainian diaspora. Canada position was very important for Ukraine.
The arguments about objectivity of Russian media are not very convincing when they come from the useful idiots who have been victimized by the Russian media.Replies: @J.Ross
Do you really for one moment fancy the chances of that rump white population at the hands of a black/brown government who despise them?Replies: @AndrewR
I’ll be long dead. As for other whites, including my own kin, I’ve tried to reach them. Whites are suicidal en masse and I can’t stop it, nor do I see a change in the forseeable future. At a certain point it’s better to just accept the inevitable. Either way, I’ve done what I can.
Totally off topic…
I find it very odd that no one here has picked this up yet.
Why is there no looting in the Ukrainian cities?
Would it be a certain demographic is not in the population.
How come our illustrious news agencies have not pointed that out.
There is indeed no "right" to a buffer state, just as JFK had no "right" to demand that missiles be taken out of Cuba.
But prudent statesmen recognize the reality of power politics, whatever the niceties of international law, and try to prevent war.
In the cliffhanger of October 1962, both JFK and Khrushchev, in the end, recognized that fact and thereby avoided World War III.
Let's call it the "Kennedy-Khrushcev doctrine": do not simply insist on "international law" but rather take into account the vital interests of the other side so as to avoid war.
Western leaders and, above all, Zelensky, are ignoring the Kennedy-Khrushchev doctrine.
And so innocent people are dying.
Take care, my friend.Replies: @utu, @HA
“HA, most of us are relying primarily on Western media. RT tends to give the same facts as Western media but with less editorializing:…”
Who are you trying to fool? If RT is skipping on editorializing (more on that in a moment), it’s not the only thing they’re skipping on:
If RT has changed its tune since then, I suspect that has more to do with growing calls that its license be revoked for being the blatant Putin lackeys that everyone but other Putin lackeys admits they are.
And as for editorializing, they had no problem with that during the Ferguson riots:
You know when riots are NOT the answer? When they’re used to kick out a court-meddling press-restricting law-thwarting Putin stooge like Yanukovych. But as for Ferguson riots? Oh yeah, according to RT-featured editorials, they need to grow.
I dunno, PhysicistDave. It seems your assessment of who is and isn’t editorializing is about as Orwellian as your invocations of peace and friendship. We can all see what those amount to. And as for your lame attempts to blame Zelensky for the deaths of innocents, let’s recall that even by your own inadvertent admission, Putin is the sole person responsible for determining when that killing of innocents will stop. See, THAT’s the kind of stuff you blurt out that I actually believe PhysicistDave, far more so than any friendship you might claim to offer.
A month or so ago, you were all on about Covid, 24/7, peddling the official story.
Now you're all on about Ukraine - peddling the official story.
Apparently, it has never, ever, not even once in your life, occurred to you tell truth and shame the devil.Replies: @Brutusale
What on earth are talking about?
You do not need a license to have a website on the Internet.
What country are you posting from, my friend?
“Your argument is ‘people should just accept death’”?
That’s basically what the Putin lackeys are offering Ukraine, isn’t it? Submit to the one killing you, or else, accept death. Now, all of a sudden, you realize that isn’t much of an option?
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/from-ukraine-to-iran-non-proliferation-and-never-again-at-risk/
.............................................
Consider first, the West’s failed dealings regarding Ukraine. The story begins with the post-Cold War breakup of the Soviet Union, which left the newly independent state of Ukraine possessing 1,900 nuclear weapons, the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. Under intense pressure from the Clinton administration, Ukraine agreed in 1994 to adopt the “Budapest Memorandum,” by which it surrendered those weapons back to Russia in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and Britain.
This involved a huge leap of faith for Ukraine, where there remain strong memories of the Soviet-imposed collectivization of agriculture and the resulting genocidal famine of 1932-33, in which over five million Ukrainian farmers and their families starved to death. Nearly 20 percent of Ukraine’s population was murdered by the brutally enforced policies of Russian apparatchiks.
Even amid the peaks of post-Cold War euphoria, some critics foresaw that Ukraine would later pay a steep price for sub-contracting its security to Russia and America. Professor John Mearsheimer warned in 1993 that “Ukraine cannot defend itself against a nuclear-armed Russia with conventional weapons, and no state, including the United States, is going to extend to it a meaningful security guarantee. Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression.”Replies: @Thea
The collapse of the Soviet Union was uncharted territory. Kazakhstan also had a lot of nukes. Gathering them all in Moscow was based on the logic that no one new how any of these new states would develop. The world could look very differently if the new states were allowed to hang on to those missiles. Perhaps better perhaps much worse.
At least no one has used those nukes in the last thirty years.
Wow, HA – what a busy bee you are.
A month or so ago, you were all on about Covid, 24/7, peddling the official story.
Now you’re all on about Ukraine – peddling the official story.
Apparently, it has never, ever, not even once in your life, occurred to you tell truth and shame the devil.
A month or so ago, you were all on about Covid, 24/7, peddling the official story.
Now you're all on about Ukraine - peddling the official story.
Apparently, it has never, ever, not even once in your life, occurred to you tell truth and shame the devil.Replies: @Brutusale
He was all but fellating the execrable Jeffrey Sachs on another thread, so we know his head’s firmly embedded in his ass on ALL topics.
And the Germans are just one example. Not just in Europe but just about every country in the world has some history of being overrun while taking huge casualties at some point in the their history. Where are their buffer states?Replies: @Steve Sailer, @J.Ross, @Jim Don Bob
OK, let’s say that Putin is solely at fault here and that the Ukes are plucky victims fighting to defend their homeland against a rapacious tyrant.
I feel bad for the Ukes. They live in a bad neighbor hood.
But none of that changes the fact that the USA has no/none/nada/zilch/zero national interest in Ukraine. To paraphrase Bismarck, the Ukraine is not worth the bones of a single American.
Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or
shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and
her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters
to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence
of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
– John Quincy Adams July 4, 1821
Still true 200 years later.
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-06/arms-control-today/opposition-nato-expansion
The U.S.S.R came out from WW2 with a huge handicap compared to the U.S in that as much as 80% of it's entire infra-structure had suffered massive structural damage. on top of that, the entire Soviet population was smaller than the U.S'. The U.S, conversely, protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, emerged from WW2 not only intact, but the World's largest creditor nation.
What allowed the Russians/Soviets to compete with America was their formidable scientific/technological capabilities, and the fact that Soviet leaders were wise enough to never let an abundance of resources to not be available for their top research scientists and engineers. Russia before the October Revolution of 1917 had been an European country imbued with the European tradition of science, universities and research institutes. It was a Russian after all, Mendeleyev, that formulated the Periodic Table of Elements.
Americans decry that the Sovietic atomic bomb was the result of espionage on America's Manhattan Project. That is true, but remember that most of the scientists that worked on that project were not American either. But still, for a country that had suffered extreme destruction from the War, going from zero to an atomic bomb in only 4 years goes to show how formidable the Russians are as scientists and engineers.
Then, the Russians gave America perhaps it's biggest humiliation ever when they beat America at putting a man in space. By 1961/62, the Russians were just fulling recovering from WW2. America got the cream of the crop of German rocket scientists, and Americans had a much larger and more diverse industrial base to work with. When you consider all the handicaps that Russia had and the advantages that America had, Russia beating America at putting a man in space was an embarrassing defeat for the U.S.A.
Americans love to brag about winning the space race by putting a man on the Moon, but the reality is that Russia never had an economy and indutrial base that could support such a project. Putting a man on the Moon is more than just a feat of science: it requires a very large and diversied economy to support such a project, and Russia never had that. They had the scientific capabilities to do it, but not the resources. IMO, Russia beating America at putting a man in space when you consider that they were still recovering from WW2, that their economy was much smaller and that they didn't get much of the benefit of German rocket scientists like America did is a *much* more impressive feat than America putting a man on the Moon several years latter.
But the Sputnik showed America what a truly formidable threat the Russians were, and at that moment there was a switch in American consciousness. That was when America decided to channel it's multi-trillion Dollar economy into beating the U.S.S.R by whatever means necessary. Once that determination was made, it was only a matter of time for the U.S.R.R to collapse by trying to keep up with the U.S. Again, they never had an economy big enough and sophisticated enough to keep up with America forever. The fact that they pushed America for almost 50 years on their scientific capabilities alone is incredible.
But despite the much smaller oil and coal-based economy that it has, Russia is several tiers above the typical Banana Republics that the U.S pushes around. And might I remember you that the U.S has declined so much as a superpower that nowadays even the Banana Republics ocasionally give the U.S a bloody nose.
Treating the Russian Bear as if it were Guatemala could have dire consequences. A Russian Subot S-9 missile with an 18 megaton yield detonates over Los Angeles: look at the children in the park being reduced to Carbon as the thermal wave hits them, and then moments latter exploding into clouds of dust as the shock wave hits them:
https://youtu.be/xjatJ36cJvM
To quote The Iliad: "Man is nothing but shadow and dust."Replies: @Stan Adams, @Peter Lund, @vinteuil
Eh, Gladiator, the Iliad, whatever.
England’s most important buffer state is the English Channel. Saw off Philip II, Napoleon, and Hitler. It was the best value few miles of water the Normans ever lucked into.
In fact recently it was announced Russia was giving amnesty to at least 160k Uzbeks with a new website specifically to make it easier for the next batches to migrate to Russia. They're Russia's Mexicans.
Also, how do you think Kadyrov (and by extent tons of other little war chiefs from random RF's ethnic wonders) stays loyal to Putin? Grozny is now hailed as the next great Russian capital.
Putin calls nationalists nazis, like the Western powers that be do to you.Replies: @Rosie, @Almost Missouri
Perhaps, but Mexicans aren’t America’s biggest problem. Blacks are. Which is what the Ukraine will be getting under the tender mercies of the Globohomo oligarchs.
And whatever the non-Russians are in Russia, Russia is serious about assimilating immigrants, not submitting to them.
As Rosie says, Russians may have their differences or even difficulties with Turkic, Mongol, Caucasian, etc. peoples, but those problems are a rounding error compared to the black undertow in America. And the heights of culture and institutional power remain defiantly Russian-European. There is no Russian equivalent to the lunatic negrolotry infecting the West, to say nothing of tranny-mania, homo-worship, and the other pathologies of wokism.
I was too young to remember this. It was September 1959 and all the air raid sirens went off. Dad thought WW III had started. He took us down in the basement. After a few hours, he learned the fire commissioner was celebrating the victory the clinched the pennant for the White Sox. Dad was not a baseball fan, so he was angry. A lot of our neighbors felt the same way. So lets not a nuclear war.
And he rules a country that has over 5,000 nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
If Russian conventional military prowess comes up short - not proved yet, but not impossible - that actually presents a pretty dangerous situation. Perhaps it were better that Russian belief in the might of their conventional forces were left untested (like for example if they hadn't invaded). Without that, what do they have? Just those 5,000+ nuclear weapons.
After U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union started, the US Government realized that a lot of the Soviet's claims about the strength of their military (including their strategic nuclear forces) were hollow. They could credibly claim such things because they were a closed society, but once we could peek behind the fence, the US realized that a lot of it was sham. A lot of hawks wanted to publicly reveal this and rub the Soviets noses in it. Eisenhower said 'No'. Let the Soviets go on believing that we believed them to be stronger than they are. It's a better outcome for us. If we let them know we were on to them, they would only build out their strategic capability for real.
Sadly, western nations no longer have chief executives as wise as Eisenhower.Replies: @Almost Missouri
I agree that Chief Executive wisdom has been sparse the last few decades, and I may very well have done the same as Eisenhower were I in his shoes, yet it is worth noting that by keeping the Soviet’s military hollowness secret, Ike created the electoral path for JFK to run in 1960 on the [non-existent] “missile gap”, leaving Ike’s VP, Nixon, twisting in the wind, unable to respond to a political accusation about the Republican administration he knew was false.
Once elected, JFK, now the prisoner of his own bellicose electioneering, had to walk the talk, so he promptly got into a near-nuclear confrontation with the Soviets over Cuba.
One wonders if in an electoral republic, perhaps a little more sunlight would have inoculated this particular issue, saving the world a near brush with disaster?
https://sbfoundersday.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/where-the-buoys-are/
https://sbfoundersday.wordpress.com/2019/03/07/tdisbh066/Replies: @epebble, @Zoos
Well, I guess one great feature in the isteve comment section is the participants might actually fact check my anecdotes!
That is indeed what I was referencing specifically. Since my memory was a number of decades old, I was relieved to see I hadn’t exaggerated about the buoys:
“Holy cow, they fact checked me! I was going from memory! Let’s see… I said the buoys were four stories high… yeah that looks like a good call. And I said a quarter mile long? Hmmm… that looks about right. Whew! Thanks, dim memories from 1964!”
I feel bad for the Ukes. They live in a bad neighbor hood.
But none of that changes the fact that the USA has no/none/nada/zilch/zero national interest in Ukraine. To paraphrase Bismarck, the Ukraine is not worth the bones of a single American.
Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or
shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and
her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters
to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence
of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
- John Quincy Adams July 4, 1821
Still true 200 years later.Replies: @Paperback Writer
Up until fairly recently, it was OK to oppose NATO expansion. In fact it was considered good common sense by the most middle of the road Establishment types. Then Clinton/Bush took over. That’s when it all went to hell.
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-06/arms-control-today/opposition-nato-expansion
HA wrote to me:
License??????
What on earth are talking about?
You do not need a license to have a website on the Internet.
What country are you posting from, my friend?
Russian media during communism were targeting the leftoids in the West and were quite successful. During Putin they are targeting the rightoids like you so no wonder that you and PhysicistDave like them. And no wonder that after a heavy diet of Russia Today and Sputnik News articles you and PhysicistDave end up spouting Putin position on Ukraine. You two just sound like Putin. You are being played like the leftoids were played in the times of the Soviet Union.
English and French language Russian media that are watched and read in Canada had twice as many articles (about 1,200) as Fox about the Freedom Convoy. Freedom Convoy paralyzed the government in Ottawa when lobbying and disputes about military aid to Ukraine were taking place in Canada in January and February. Canada has close relations with Ukraine. Canada was the first country that recognized Ukraine independence because of strong and politically active Ukrainian diaspora. Canada position was very important for Ukraine.
The arguments about objectivity of Russian media are not very convincing when they come from the useful idiots who have been victimized by the Russian media.
Maybe I didn't mention this to you but I am a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal. Is that Russian propaganda?