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April 26, 2023
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-100
Comments
@278
no prince profits from long war….. sun tzu
in late 1800’s france frederic bastiat said no country prpspers from building fortresses such as the french
but in the case of dire threat such as the neocon empire, you suffer what you must!
Posted by: paddy | Apr 27 2023 19:28 utc | 301
“So creative, yet it avoids the points I made. I wonder why ?”
Deplorable Commissar | Apr 27 2023 18:09 utc | 292
——
Thanks, but the edits are not creative at all and address your historically-ignorant points explicitly as a blindingly obvious inversion of reality. You conspicuously ignore US authorship of the current conflict and the devastating geoeconomic consequences it is already incurring as a result, unlike Russia, whose economy is growing. I rarely read your screeds and henceforth will ignore them, but I doubt that you are honestly as blind as you pretend to be.
Posted by: Doug Hillman | Apr 27 2023 19:52 utc | 302
Some NAFO boy here wants us to decry the SMO as s long war.
Heh.
Posted by: malenkov | Apr 27 2023 19:53 utc | 303
Food inflation in Russia: 0.8%
Overall inflation: 2.8%
Clearly the sanctions are collapsing the Russian economy.
Let’s look at Europe:
Oops — what? what? Food inflation in the UK: 21.0%
what? what? something ‘odd’ going on …
Posted by: Don Firineach | Apr 27 2023 20:47 utc | 304
Table of Food Inflation in Europe: March 2023
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/food-inflation?continent=europe
Euro area 17.5% EU 19.17% Russian Federation 2.57%
UK 19.1% Ukraine 26.8% France 15.9% Germany 21.2% Poland 24.0%
Check the table for the rest …..
Posted by: Don Firineach | Apr 27 2023 20:56 utc | 305
@ oldhippie | Apr 27 2023 16:42 utc | 285
Is that so surprising given the pumping of new money since ’08, against the background of a half-century of pumping via the petrodollar racket (itself now under pressure)?
What I think I’m trying to say is the money-supply has long been grossly artificially high to begin with.
A decade or so of single-digit contraction might be the softest possible landing.
Bad news for all the Ponzi-schemes, of course.
I admit I know little of economics and most economic theories strike me as balderdash.
Posted by: John Kennard | Apr 27 2023 21:02 utc | 306
re: BearN | Apr 27 2023 19:23 utc | 301
Regarding RFK Jr, you write:
“1. He sprang out of the woodwork just days ago.”
RFK Jr only “sprang out of the woodwork” if you rely on MSM for all you information, as MSM does its best to censor.misrepresent,and distort everything RFK Jr says. Regardless, his book “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health” has become a best-seller, with more than million copies sold. His work through Children’s Health Defense is also well known.
You say “ It sure seems like these views were prepared for him, rather than by him, no?
No. RFK Jr has been on record with his views for a long time. You are uninformed.
The Democratic National Committee has announced that it will not sponsor any debates in the coming Democratic national primaries, meaning that RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard will not be given anything but smear campaigns by MSM, while the much-loved demented Joe Biden will be a shoo-in for the final election theft.
And sorry, RSH, you are wrong about RFK Jr and unless you have taken the time to read his book and listen to him speak, then it is you who are the moron, for not doing your homework.
Posted by: Perimetr | Apr 27 2023 21:28 utc | 307
@Richard Steven Hack | Apr 27 2023 11:03 utc | 230
Pied Pipers and sheepdogs are political leaders now? How are the mighty (at least in their own estimation) fallen.
Posted by: Hermit | Apr 27 2023 22:26 utc | 308
Posted by: Deplorable Commissar | Apr 27 2023 16:10 utc | 278
The war actually led directly to economic equality and economic prosperity in the post-World War II era.
The Soviet victory in the war forced the bourgeoisie to compromise and concede to Marxism, which led to the so-called Golden Age after World War II.
The peace that maintains oppression is only tyranny.
Marxists aren’t peace absolutists.
Posted by: Colin | Apr 27 2023 22:34 utc | 309
Intelligent Dasein #232
So far, nobody seems willing to admit in public that Russia’s real strategy is to simply erase Ukraine altogether, and that that is merely the first step in a much larger global conflict that will bring about the demise of Western hegemony. If they admitted that, then they would have to admit that the killing must continue, and then they would no longer seem like high-minded advocate of peaceful global coexistence.
Thank you for that post, it certainly appears that Russia is merely reflecting the past 200 years of western real strategy to simply erase Russia altogether. The west is drinking its own bitter poison and Ukraine is the orifice to pour it into.
There is no rush. China has determined to add contrast to the SMO but I doubt the west is likely to ever stop – it is obsessed and possessed by a nazi spirit. So the SMO will proceed, perhaps with occasional lull but proceed it will and the hateful, spiteful, deluded residents of Novorossiya will take up residence in europe. So it goes.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Apr 27 2023 23:20 utc | 310
Chris #298
Zelensky has been curiously silent on Artemovsk, no more bluster about it “holding” or even the “it’s difficult” spin.
It seems he’s left his men to die in the cauldron, how shitty of a leader does that?
LBJ? Bush jr? Obama? Trump? Biden?
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Apr 27 2023 23:25 utc | 311
Marxists aren’t peace absolutists.
Colin | Apr 27 2023 22:34 utc | 310
——-
Quite so, nor am I. Is anyone an absolute pacifist?
Your point isn’t clear. Do you mean to contrast Marxism with mixed industrial capitalism of FDR’s era or today’s ’s global rentier neoliberalism? If so, this variant of militaristic finance “capitalism” is appallingly evil. (By their fruits you shall know them), and it has finally metastasized to stage-four, which is anti-democratic fascism. This, as we can plainly see, has an unparalleled record of both tyranny and massive violence. It ultimately brings ruin and the peace of the grave.
Posted by: Doug Hillman | Apr 28 2023 0:32 utc | 312
@Deplorable Commissar | Apr 27 2023 16:12 utc | 280
Au contraire. I suggest that the bar should dig a crypt under its cellars to inter such tripe. Something along these lines.
Funeral Dirge for a Departed Bigot
A cretinous bigot crept
from the darkest depths of the bar
And the patrons sniffed and curled their lips,
His fetid stench reeked from afar
He squatted low as if to show
His magnificent purple behind
Without a word he popped a turd
From his straining hole
In the punchbowl
Which he left for us to find.
So we slipped his turd into his mouth
Which silenced this lout forever
Well deserved, for he was not nice
Nor was he even clever.
His lips turned blue, to match down south
His eyes had opened wide
And in the cellar
Beneath the barr
We buried this Cercopithecide
Beneath the bar the cellars are
Far from the light of the sun
And there where the smoky candles flicker
Surrounded by barrels and crates of liquor
His loathsome life was done
And into the depths of the deepest crypt
Neath the smugglers cave
In an unmarked grave
Into the earth we slipped
This unkempt, uncouth,
ill-tempered and distempered
Vile blue based baboon
A coprophagic smile for the win
Also known as a shit eating grin
covered his face, in silent disgrace
And a warning for the morrow
To all those fools who break the rules
and who try to follow
They will come to a similar end
To our unlamented blue based friend
And when he has died like the other
Be interred side-by-side
With his hairy brother.
Posted by: Hermit | Apr 28 2023 4:17 utc | 313
Posted by: Hermit | Apr 28 2023 4:17
in RESPONSE to Deplorable Commissar | Apr 27 2023 16:12
“Au contraire. I suggest that the bar should dig a crypt under its cellars to inter such tripe. Something along these lines
Funeral Dirge for a Departed Bigot“
“FUNERAL DIRGE FOR A DEPARTED BIGOT” >(:)—))
Really BRILLIANT.
Thank you, SIR!
Posted by: LongCovid | Apr 28 2023 10:18 utc | 314
Zelensky expresses confidence in the effectiveness of the new PACE resolution on the genocide of Ukrainian children
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed confidence that the new resolution adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will help fight Russia for its responsibility for the genocide related to the deportation of Ukrainian children.
“Today there is an important political result in Strasbourg – at the PACE session. A resolution has been passed that determines that Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children contains signs of genocide. Practically speaking, this decision will significantly help our global work to bring Russia and its officials, including the head of the terrorist state, to justice precisely for genocide, genocidal policy against Ukraine,” he said in a video message on Thursday, April 27.
More information on manas.news: https://manas.news/
Posted by: Nikolay Litvin | Apr 28 2023 12:43 utc | 315
Dear Mr. Litvin,
If that’s the best your little Kyrgyz news site (which I see has spammed another MoA thread in the past few hours) can do, then I think we can safely ignore it.
Posted by: malenkov | Apr 28 2023 13:26 utc | 316
To scale the pinnacles of corporate, political or military power in the United States requires certain rigid deficiencies of character, specifically the absence of compassion, decency and humanity. In their personal lives, powerful individuals may possess these qualities, but as an elite class, they lack them utterly. How else to explain the abandoned cruelty of U.S. foreign policy since 1945, the wars, with napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, depleted uranium and white phosphorus in Iraq, the massive bombing campaigns that destroyed 85 percent of all buildings in Korea, to say nothing of the deliberate destruction of Iraq and Vietnam, the millions upon millions of dead all over the planet, the regime changes, setting countless countries back, developmentally, decades, even centuries, and installing fascist rulers throughout what used to be called the Third World?,,,
…Just look at Washington’s role in provoking and prolonging the war in Ukraine. What geopolitical American interest can possibly be worth this bloodshed, the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and tens of thousands of Russian ones? For the Russians, this war is existential. Russian leaders believe, probably correctly, that this is a fight for their survival. Ukrainian leaders, ditto – except there’s no “probably” about it; it’s definitely. And it is pointless to attempt to judge those leaders under such circumstances. But for American leadership, this is a proxy war. It is not existential. It is a proxy war of choice. That’s what makes the U.S. role, instigating and prolonging it, so horrible. …
…President Biden and his neocons – secretary of state Antony Blinken, undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland, national security advisor Jake Sullivan – all knew damn well that expanding NATO into Ukraine would provoke Russia into a war. They knew because top advisors had said so for generations and because the Russians told them so for decades. The only conclusion is that they wanted this conflict – something no person of any compassion, decency or humanity could want. Given reports that the Biden team’s plans to blow up the Nordstream pipelines predated Russia’s invasion by several months, it sure looks like these neocons engineered this war without a scintilla of regret for the lives it would claim. But maybe they’re not to blame. The job description demanded sacrificing the supposedly irrelevant virtues of compassion, decency and humanity and so they, along with presidents Clinton, Obama, Trump and Bush are just merely deficient. …
…Humanity stands at a crossroads. The American Empire’s hubris has brought our fate to a point where the two most heavily nuclear-armed nations could get into a shooting war. If nuclear war erupts, we’re not just talking about the incineration of American and Russian cities, but more – to repeat, those five billion people who starve to death due to nuclear winter. But this was the atrocious risk American elites were prepared to take when they provoked Russia.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/07/human-destiny-in-ukraine/
Posted by: Dosamuno | Apr 28 2023 13:39 utc | 317
@ Dosamuno, §318:
The Empire seems bent on over-stretching itself despite being bankrupt.
Their latest “adventure” seems to be to support the toxic Janjaweed movement of Sudan, led by ´Hemeti´ who has been given a White Helmet style makeover in preparation for installing him as the latest CIA proxy to stop Sudan agreeing a Russian naval base in Sudan´s Red Sea port.
Meanwhile, Somalia continues to simmer as well as the ISIS terrorization of the Tuaregs and the half dozen countries they live in. The Empire´s behaving like an addict: the MIC needs war to keep afloat.
Posted by: John Marks | Apr 28 2023 14:17 utc | 318
Should I be pleased that Counterpunch is no longer giving us the daily Ukronazi Two Minutes Hate by the likes of Draitser and Cockburn, or royally pissed off because Counterpunch is getting away with pretending that that shrieking never happened?
Posted by: malenkov | Apr 28 2023 14:45 utc | 319
So creative, yet it avoids the points I made. I wonder why ?
Posted by: Deplorable Commissar | Apr 27 2023 18:09 utc | 292
Nobody fking knows what points you are making.
Posted by: RB | Apr 29 2023 8:03 utc | 320
Wow….there are still seriously deluded people on this forum who are buying into the idea that somehow Ukraine is going to defeat Russia on the battlefield. The super secret counter offensive and the super duper western weapons……blah blah blah blah….
Posted by: Glen | Apr 29 2023 14:58 utc | 321