That's a very old saying, coming to us from the ancient Greeks. I think it's also a very good description of President Biden's brief sortie into Ukraine this week, and all the international kerfuffle surrounding the war between that nation and Russia.
Understand, I'm neither pro-Ukraine nor pro-Russia. Russia is undoubtedly the aggressor, having broken treaties and promises galore to invade Ukraine last year; and there seems little doubt that its forces have committed what are generally termed "war crimes". On the other hand, Ukraine was (and probably still is) one of the most corrupt nations on earth, and is undoubtedly guilty of war crimes against separatists in its border regions, and is probably wasting (or redistributing, in the form of bribes to Western politicians) a very large proportion of the aid it's being given. As far as I'm concerned, I trust neither party to this war, and wish a plague on both their houses.
What's deeply concerning to me is how the "establishment", both in the USA and in Europe, is treating the Russo-Ukraine war as nothing more than a political ploy, which might have been custom-designed to let them direct billions upon billions of dollars in "support" to Ukraine; siphon off many of those billions by corrupt maneuverings to benefit themselves; and treat the ordinary people most affected by the war as mere pawns on a geopolitical chessboard, of no value or importance in themselves. As Sundance has pointed out:
In the bigger picture I don’t think many Americans outside the DC beltway give a flip about internal Ukrainian squabbles and Russia’s support for the Eastern Ukrainian independence effort. However, inside the DC beltway Ukraine is very important, stunningly important, because Ukraine functions as the corrupt money laundry operation for DC politicians to receive taxpayer kickbacks from their financial support into Ukraine.
I think he's right.
Trouble is, chickens come home to roost. What you've sown grows into a harvest you may not want to reap. Actions have consequences - and we're the ones who are going to have to bear, and live with, those consequences. Those pulling the geopolitical strings think (wrongly) that they've insulated themselves from that reality. I suspect they're about to find out that they were wrong.
Big Country Expat has some profane thoughts on the matter.
Look, I know intimately how badly things are ****ed up. Like irretrievably ****ed up.
. . .
Thing of it is, it's obvious that we're on some sort of precipice...
And yeah yeah... I know, we've been here before. Thing of it is, and man, I hate going back to old saws so to speak, but "this time it's a bit different." (UGH!) Back in the original good old days of the Cold War, we knew, (the Untied Staatz Whypeepo) and they knew (them damned dirty Rooskis) the Untied Staatzs' population believed that "Their Government was here to help and protect the cit-tie-zens of the US".... and that the Rooskis were "a bunch of dirty, back stabbing pile of subhuman Slavic Communist Sumbitches who'll enslave us and kill your puppy..."
This time however, well, this time "Team 'Murica" isn't bright enough to know the true depth of the 'game' they're playing mainly because...
They've never been punched in the face.
Think about it. Lots of these folks I see who're pushing oh-so-many-things to deepen and 'harden'? (not sure if thats a good term or not for it...anyways) the folks pushing to increase the whole Military Industrial Complex into mad overdrive for mad fun and profits? They've never been on the end of a proper asswhupping. Trust me, I know of what I speak. I have had my ass kicked... professionally in Germany when I got into it with a former Golden Gloves Kickboxer who at one point was rated as the #1 Kickboxer for the state of Oklahoma. He put me in intensive care for 4 days. Man that sucked. Apologies... to continue and re-interate
They've never been punched in the face.
Because of that, we're possibly in for a real-time ****-****festivus of epic proportions.
NONE of the characters involved, outside of Buttplug, served legitimately in the Armed Forces. The very fact that the MAJORITY of these ****ing fools are all "nepo-babies", i.e. nepotism: (from wiki) ..."the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives, friends, or associates, especially by giving them jobs." Look at Chelsea Clinton for a prime example of a ***** that they tried to elevate faaar above her intelligence and ability. "Sons of/Daughters of" doesn't grant special insight, just as a shiny badge doesn't confer Godlike ability to pass judgement(s) on people of ALL colors...
. . .
So, yeah, gloves are coming off...
There's more at the link.
To see how the gloves are coming off, and what that might mean, look no further than President Putin's speech to Russia's parliament yesterday. He may be as corrupt, evil and violent as any other dictator, but he knows he has nowhere to go but up. If he doesn't win in Ukraine, he's going to lose power - probably terminally - and his nation will slide even further down the road to ruin. Therefore, he doesn't plan to lose. He's willing to go all-in, probably up to and even including nuclear weapons, if that's what it will take to come out on top.
Meanwhile, we have an utterly incompetent administration in Washington that can't figure out what date tomorrow is, much less deal with real crises like the Ohio pollution incident or a war in Ukraine that threatens to drag the whole of NATO into it - not to mention China as well, because China doesn't want to lose Russia as a major chess piece on its side of the geopolitical divide, and will get more involved if it has to. Why should China heed "warnings" from the USA, after all? It knows how incompetent and corrupt our leaders are, and sees no reason why it should pay any attention to their pompous blustering.
And we - the "ordinary people" in Russia, in Ukraine, in Europe and in the USA - will pay the price for such fecklessness on both sides. That's already happening, right in front of our eyes, in so many sectors of our economy that it's almost impossible to miss them. One example from England yesterday:
Vegetable rationing could last 'weeks' as Morrisons becomes second major supermarket to limit sales: NFU president warns shoppers face further restrictions on tomatoes, potatoes, cucumber and broccoli as UK farmers are forced to switch off greenhouses.
That's right. The energy crisis caused by the Ukraine invasion, and the shutting off of supplies of natural gas from Russia, has caused a fresh produce crisis in Britain, and in many other parts of Europe as well. It's happening in the USA as well, as we've discussed in these pages on several occasions over the past year.
Parts of the world are going to get "punched in the face" by food shortages this year. The USA may well be among them. Who among us trusts our current Administration to deal with them?
Peter
28 comments:
"Russia is undoubtedly the aggressor, having broken treaties and promises galore to invade Ukraine last year"
I think Ukraine having spent the prior 8 years shelling Russians towns and villages, killing over 40,000 Russian civilians, might have had something to do with it.
Peter
Find yourself a copy of John Steinbeck's "Once there was a war" and read thye section on Mussolini - which might be alternatively titled something like "Rumours that develop on a trans Atlantic troop ship travelling under radio silence".
And then look at what we are being fed
Yes Ukraine is corrupt. But it has been making efforts to become less corrupt. And while prior to 2014 it is possible a majority of the Donbas wanted to join Russia, the abuses of the Russia-appointed puppets and Russian "advisors" meant that by 2022 there was no support for becoming part of Russia.
That's because Russia is actually more corrupt and unpleasant that Ukraine. I personally think that Russia needs to collapse properly and balkanize because the Moscow region has hogged all the money developed by the rest of the country. That's not at all healthy
Goodness Peter your moderation talents will be under siege on this subject.
Protect your families. If you don't have 90+ days of groceries in the house your way behind the curve.
https://bustednuckles.net/mercy-buckets-reposted-by-request/
My article is a little old but prices are not that much better. Comments worth reading.
If you don't have a copy of Nuclear War survival get a download and read it. Odds are the grid and your internet will be out when you need that info.
Pray for wisdom
I think this article makes a decent case for continuing to support Ukraine over Russia.
https://unherd.com/2023/02/the-ukraine-war-is-not-complicated/
I'll add that the costs to European consumers are occurring more thanks to the idiocies of European governments who have been closing coal and nuclear powered power stations and generally raising the price of energy for a decade or more. The fact that the UK and EU (I think) governments have banned fracking should tell you everything you need to know. Sadly the winter hasn't been cold enough for that idiocy to have been fully recognized by their population
There’s a benefit to losing. You get to learn from your mistakes.
-- Megamind (2010)
I have a customer who helps train snipers in Ukraine.
Everything he buys he pays with money gathered from donations.
I know people who regularly drive from Germany to Ukraine as paramedics, helping to build hospitals for civilians and transporting wounded civilians into polish hospitals. They also live only from donations.
The billions of Dollars and Euros are not helping the people of Ukraine.
The connected people get rich while the civilians are dying and the sons are killing each other.
Read elsewhere a comment to the effect that the current crop of uni-party members are used to Dems making a proposal, with the Reps making some early but ineffectual protests, with the Reps then going along with the Dems. This has been going on long enough that those at the levers of power in DC think they can treat the rest of the world the same way.
Putin does not, and will not, play that game.
Remember the cheering that took place during the movie "Independence Day", when the space aliens zapped the White House? Extremely short sighted, but I can almost see people cheering if DC got zapped today.
I really don't want to live in interesting times.
Food and energy, for heating purposed in particular, are already in short supply in Europe. So short that in several places on the continent people are gathering firewood in hopes to keep from freezing to death through the rest of the winter.
Our own Northeast regions by all reports are running short of natural gas as much of US production is already being shipped to Europe to replace the cut off Russian supplies.
How long before America is also asked to help out our cousins as their food supplies run low? The Ukraine has always been a major supplier of grains and other food stuffs, and much of that production has been destroyed in the fighting and much planting of the next crops has been delayed or completely stopped for the same reason.
Aside from the obvious: "Oligarchy: It's a big club, and you ain't in it.", people need to stop looking at Russia-Ukraine as a football game.
Ukraine wins (and by that I mean "the people of", not the kleptocracy), and Russia takes it in the pants?
Europe is stabilized, less panicky, and better off for decades.
China is somewhat ascendant, but only because they're WWII Germany to Russia's Italy in terms of military power.
Which pulls Russia away from aggrandizing idiots like Putard, and back to sanity. Or else leaves them stewing in their own byzantine politics and national psychosis.
Which it shall be is a matter of complete indifference to me personally.
But Russia wins?
NATO goes back to full Cold War.
The Baltics are next on the menu.
That's actual WWIII, not sending a battalion of tanks to Ukraine in 10 months' time.
Russia, border-to-border with Norway, Finland (who wants into NATO), the Baltics and Poland, all Eastern Europe, Greece, and Turkey. NATO border from the North Pole to the Middle East.
All on Russia's new border. And Vlad's menu.
Yeah, that'll sure calm things down, and stabilize the world.
The Putards want to make specious claims Vlad is heroically fighting globohomo. The problem is, Vlad's just lining his own pockets, and those of his cronies. The rest is pretext. And he's not going to live forever.
Make a list of all the Putin successors you could think of that Europe and the US should trust on their borders, the next time one of them gets an urge to enlarge the Russian empire. Again.
America, the entire West, even the entire world, have plenty of crises looming just offstage.
We don't need to cope with a resurgent Russia re-igniting another century of Cold (and occasionally hot) War, let alone rebuilding another Iron Curtain.
And yapping about "the expansion of NATO"? Srsly??
Q. How many wars did NATO fight to get all those nations to come flocking under their banner?
A. One, From 1945-1990. By never firing a shot all that time against Russia. And all that "expansion". Those nations stampeded in all by themselves.
QED
That's blaming customers for shopping in your competitor's store, because he's got a better product: freedom.
All governments are some level of corrupt. Some more than others.
But totalitarian socialism has the gold, silver, and bronze medals for "Which countries have killed the most people, including their own, since the dawn of recorded history?"
If people still can't see the bigger problems, here and abroad, the myopia is at pandemic levels, and the Owner of world history is about to come in swinging a set of keys, and saying "Closing time, gentlemen."
Hey Peter;
They are talking vegetable rationing when they are forcing the Dutch to quit farming because of "Climate Change". Part of the coming famine is self inflicted. We have clowns running the show.
"clowns are running the show." Yes, clowns, senile old fools, greedy kleptomaniacs, and meglo-maniacal dictators.
Exactly what McChuck said above. I stopped reading after that sentence. Won't waste my time reading the content of someone as ill-informed as the writer.
"I personally think that (the USA) needs to collapse properly and balkanize because the (northeast corridor) had hogged all the money developed by the rest of the country. That's not at all healthy"
FIXED IT FOR YA
Your customer deserves a dose of return fire, imo.
.....and did those Germans volunteer as paramedics while Kiev was subjecting her own Russian speaking citizens in Donbas to artillery barrage for 8 years?
Dude, stay at your own house if you're gonna post multi paragraph diatribes.
I thinking you ain't getting enough attention at your own crib so you go posting like a fool everywhere else.
Remember the old story about the tar baby? it is about a doll made of tar and turpentine used by the villainous Br'er Fox to entrap Br'er Rabbit. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes entangled. Russia and Ukraine are in that situation. Nato and the West keep adding the tar and China keeps pushing Russia (don't worry, I'll stand behind you) alternating a push with a goad now and then. The more Resorces spent in the Ukraine, the less China has to face from anyone. Pushed into a corner and no way out, Russia could easily go nuclear.
And look at the idiots in the good ole US of A. Open borders, there are tons of drugs and precursors to drugs coming into the US via the Mexican cartels, much of it from China. What better way to weaken a populace than get them too stoned to notice they're dead.
Let's not overlook the thousands of illegal immigrants coming over those borders. It would be so easy to slip hundreds of soldiers or sapper teams into the US. The idiots in DC wouldn't notice or believe that that could happen. Think that the multiple attacks on the power grid in different states just 'accidentally' happened? Sounds more like probing attacks, preparatory to a big movement.
Am I a raving maniac seeing doom and destruction everywhere? I hope so. I don't think that votes or prayers are going to effect the outcome of this tragedy.
I wonder whether the author gives a flip about foreign nations funding BLM-Antifa?
David Lang speaking here (so I'm not confused with the other person posting who shows up as anonymous)
I support sending concrete aid, weapons, ammo, equipment (starlink being a great example), but we should not be sending gobs of cash that can be redirected trivially.
Yes, equipment can be resold and otherwise abused, but it's far harder to get away with that than with just moving money around.
“Actions have consequences”..
Ok, so what are the consequences of letting a militant dictator invade his neighbour and get away with it? What happened when we let Hitler do the same thing in 1938?
I am VERY keen on doing the cost-benefit analysis, but do them for the alternatives, too.
Putin, and those close to him, have made it very bloody clear that Ukraine is just the start. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland…… Exactly when were you planning on stopping him?
Ask yourself what kind of lessons will be learnt by China and Iran if they see Putin “proving” that invading your neighbour gets you what your want, and the West won’t fight? Might learn exactly the same lesson that the Germans learnt in the 30s.
Don’t get so bluffed by the panic-mongers that you can’t think things through.
Oh….. and crop production is ALWAYS variable. There is ALWAYS somewhere in the world that has a shortage. Prices for grain on the international market are not much different from two years ago. The is no worldwide shortage, and none of the people whose business is predicting such shortages, are expecting one. I have grain to sell. I’d LOVE prices to be high…. But they aren’t. Prices for nitrogen fertiliser are coming down, too.
“8 years shelling Russian towns and villages”
The VERIFIED civilian death toll during that period, from military action” was less than 1% per annum of those killed by the Russians in the year since their invasion.
Most of that conflict being promoted by Russia, including the covert supply of heavy weapons, contrary to signed agreements.
Russian propaganda is not a reliable source, no matter how much you want to believe it.
As for corruption, Transparency International rates Russia as 15 places WORSE than Ukraine on a listing of nations in order of integrity. https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022
Tell us again why you believe Putin is a valid source of information on any subject relating to this conflict?
In addition, it is outright dishonest to claim that Ukraine was shelling RUSSIAN villages. They are Ukrainian villages onUkrainian territory, as determined by a MAJORITY OF VOTERS in the only free referendum that has been held. That is a majority of voters IN EVERY REGION.
A majority in the Crimea.
A majority in the Donbass.
A majority in Kherson.
A majority in Kharkiv.
Ukrainian territory as ceded by Russia and guaranteed by Russia in multiple treaties.
Speaking Russian does not make your territory part of Russia, any more than speaking Spanish makes Kalifornia or Texas a part of Mexico. If you believe otherwise, it’s time you Anglophone gave up your pretence of independence and reverted to being part of the British Empire. If you can’t be consistent in your principles…….
David Lang..
Congressman Dan Crenshaw insists that there are no “pallets of cash” being delivered to Ukraine.
Only goods and services, and they are being accounted for.
It is possible, just possible, that the Biden Administration learnt something from the public response to their abandonment of Afghanistan , along with so much equipment - and does not want to be SEEN to be equally irresponsible in Ukraine. I don’t trust them to act in any way contrary to their own interests, but not having another public schemozzle of that magnitude, must rate high of their list of boxes to tick before the next election.
If there is a better man to listen to than Crenshaw - as a window into US politics - I’d be interested to hear who it is.
@Anon 11:45A,
Sorry reading so much without any pictures proved such a chore to you.
Since AFAIK, you were neither appointed the Jello Sheriff hereabouts, nor the Keeper of Commenting Privileges, I'm sure if you ask him nicely, the Bloghost will refund to you the full price of admission you paid to come here, and you can be on your way none the worse for wear.
Complaints about your unfortunate experience may be filed at the following location:
https://i.imgur.com/rWfEpq0.jpg
Who sez both of ya aren't correct, eh? The last 60 years weve had it pretty good, until the goony Leftists started the march thru our institutions.... the gravy train's about to derail at 90 mph....
Economic collapse or canned sunshine all empires fail when such "Awesome" Leadership like the Fed, CONgres, Mayor Pete "I'm taking personal time", General Milly, Joe the Sock puppet, and various traitors are promoted to "Lead us".
Looking like it's a race to see what pulls the plug on the former United States of America.
Protect your family, from the INACTION of the Bidenites in Palestine OH it seems pretty sure THEY will not do it.
"Putin, and those close to him, have made it very bloody clear that Ukraine is just the start. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland…… Exactly when were you planning on stopping him?"
I disagree that he has made any such thing clear. In fact, the Russian requests for peace talks that we sabotaged suggests the opposite. Sounds like Ukrainian agitprop to me.
MYOB…
It’s apparent that you have not been paying attention.
They way to get Peace is to NOT INVADE YOUR NEIGHBOUR.
Not one of Putin’s conditions for “peace” involves him pulling his troops out of occupied territory and respecting borders that Russia recognised and guaranteed multiple times.
All the talk about NATO, “national security” and “Russia’s sphere of influence” apply equally to otherNations formerly part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
All of Putin’s objections to a Rules-Based System are an explicit denial of the right of sovereign nations to self-determination if Russia is big enough to threaten or coerce them.
If that is “agitprop” then it comes from Georgia, Rumania, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova……. ,
Hitler wanted “peace” after he had conquered most of Europe.
The Imperial Japanese wanted “peace” after it had occupied most of the western pacific and SE Asia.
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