US and EU Began Preparing Ukraine for Negotiations Last Month

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So now that the US, EU and Ukraine know what we already knew six months ago they’re letting it leak out to the general public.

“The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said. Some of the talks, which officials described as delicate, took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the officials said.”

The problem with those talks is they don’t include Russia.

“The Biden administration does not have any indication that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate with Ukraine, two U.S. officials said. Western officials say Putin still believes he can “wait out the West,” or keep fighting until the U.S. and its allies lose domestic support for funding Ukraine or the struggle to supply Kyiv with weapons and ammunition becomes too costly, officials said.”

What’s wrong with this whole picture.  We convinced the Ukrainians that between their manpower and our weapons the Russians would be crushed in months.  That is probably because we believed that Ukraine was just a foreign possession of Russia.  And they wouldn’t expend the blood and treasure to fight for it.

But there are millions of Russians for whom the Donbass is their ancestral home.  It would be like California breaking away from the US and the Mexicans living there trying to force the Anglo residents of Northern California to give up their language and culture.  If it came down to pictures of Sacramento being ethnically cleansed would it be surprising if the US stepped in and tried to annex the Anglo areas?  I don’t think so.  Well at least if we had a president who didn’t hate America.

After this I’m guessing the Baltic states and the Eastern Europeans will begin reevaluating their relations with the US, the EU and Russia.  Following the lead of the US in matters of war has been shown over the last twenty years or so to be a perilous strategy.

So the geniuses in the Pentagon and the State Department had already figured this out months ago but continued to spout all the nonsense about the breakout that was about to sweep away the Russians in Crimea.  One thing though, the reality of what will end up happening there should make it easier for the Republican House to put a stop to that $61 billion Biden wants to finish off the few remaining Ukrainian men.

I wonder where in the US Zelensky will end up retiring to?  Hopefully he’ll update his ensemble and stick to comedy but skip the piano playing.

Cure (1997) – A Movie Review

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“Cure” is a Japanese psychological horror film written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, starring Kōji Yakusho as a Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective named Kenichi Takabe investigating a string of murders by different killers that are only linked by the throats of all the victims being slashed with an X shaped incision.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Takabe and his partner the forensic psychologist Sakuma suspect that a powerful hypnotist is implanting the idea of the murders into each of the killers.  They track down a strange man named Mamiya that was present at several of the murder scenes.  He behaves as if he has no memory of his own identity or his history.  Sakuma has Mamiya committed to a hospital for observation.  Mamiya uses his hypnotic powers to learn the details of Takabe’s family problem from a hospital employee.  Takabe’s wife is seriously mentally ill and the stress of living with her is undermining his own mental balance.  Mamiya uses this information to torment Takabe during an interrogation.  Takabe begins imagining his wife committing suicide.  He has her placed in a psychiatric institution to safeguard her.

Next, we see Mamiya implant a murder suggestion in a young female doctor and shortly afterward she murders a man.  Afterward Mamiya even causes Sakuma to commit suicide.  Finally, Mamiya escapes from the hospital and Takabe who is now enraged against his tormentor tracks him down to an abandoned hospital and after being taunted by Mamiya shoots him.  When Mamiya’s last motion is to attempt to implant the murder suggestion in Takabe the policeman empties his pistol into the madman.

After killing Mamiya Takabe finds an old phonograph player in the hospital and listens to a recording that seems to be the source of Mamiya’s knowledge of the deadly hypnotic technique.  In the next scene we see the corpse of Takabe’s wife at the mental hospital with an X cut into her throat.  In the last scene we see Takabe in a restaurant finishing a meal.  As the waitress leaves his table, we see her walk over to a counter and grab a butcher’s knife.

This is a very strange movie.  And of course, since it’s spoken in Japanese that adds another layer of distance for the non-Japanese speaking viewer.  But the movie is quite compelling.  The Mamiya character is extremely unnerving.  Whenever someone attempts to interrogate him about his actions or even his history it always ends up with him turning the interrogation around.  The movie viewer develops a strong revulsion for the character.  He manipulates the interrogators and eventually implants his suggestion.  Because of this antipathy I felt a great sense of satisfaction when Takabe emptied his pistol into the homicidal hypnotist.

I’m not sure how to provide the recommendation for this movie.  My impression of this movie was definitely positive.  I did enjoy it.  But it’s such a strange movie that I’m having a hard time selecting what audience this movie is made for.  I guess we’ll have to start with audiences that enjoy crime dramas.  A somewhat similar type of movie might be “Silence of the Lambs.”  But added to that is the foreign language aspect which might be problematic for many viewers.  I guess I can only qualify this film’s audience with these two factors.  That will have to be my recommendation, as vague as it is.

With Caterwauling Like This Musk Must be Doing Something Right

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When your fired election trust and safety team leader starts bandying about terms like hate speech and misinformation it must mean that the government gatekeepers are squealing like stuck pigs.

And then there’s the sanctimony about what amounts to censoring the news.

“But free speech, the product of X that upholds democracy, is not a technology company or a physical thing. Speech is evolving, complicated, and sticky. It requires tradeoffs, flexibility, and tough decisions. It shouldn’t be dictated by an autocratic CEO with absolutist ideologies.”

“Tradeoffs, flexibility and tough decisions.”  What a pile of crap. She means hurting your enemies and helping your friends.  Another way of saying this is “some animals are more equal than others.”

Elon Musk’s immoral, dangerous, failing experiment in free speech

The Truth Leaks Out of Kiev

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Up until this summer the audience in the West heard from their leaders and the media that

  • Ukraine was inflicting enormous casualties on Russia while suffering very light losses to their own troops.
  • Russia’s population was dead set against the war and only prisoners were fighting on the Russian side.
  • The Russian troops and officers were incompetent and had rock bottom morale.
  • That with the provision of advanced western weapons and training Ukraine would sweep away the Russians and recapture all of the Eastern provinces including Crimea.

During the summer and into the fall word started getting out that the Ukrainian counter-offensive, bolstered by Western tanks and other armored vehicles was suffering tens of thousands of casualties and wasn’t able to punch through the defensive lines that the Russians had prepared in Zaporizhzhia to protect Crimea from assault.  Now with the onset of winter many in America and Europe are starting to question whether the tens of billions of dollars in weapons and aid have accomplished anything more than facilitating a slaughter of Ukrainians and Russians without accomplishing anything worthwhile.

Finally, word is now leaking out of Ukraine that the leaders surrounding President Zelensky no longer share his almost religious belief that Ukraine can win the war they are engaged in.  And the news first broke in the periodical that had declared Zelensky “Man of the Year” in 2022, Time.

In an interview with Ukrainian leaders many parts of the real story come out.

“But his (Zelensky’s) convictions haven’t changed. Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace. On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

…

When I raised these claims with a senior military officer, he said that some commanders have little choice in second-guessing orders from the top. At one point in early October, he said, the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”

…

In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”

Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.””

And this is a Biden Administration cheerleader saying this.  If you read other sources they’re even more dire.

“Alone among his team, Zelensky seems not to understand how circumstances have changed. Shuster and TIME try their best to portray him as the last stalwart of the Ukrainian cause, but the fact that his own inner circle is the source of the torrent of revelations and complaints suggests that his immovability owes not to Churchillian resolve but rather to an impervious bunker mentality.”

What seems to be the case is the neo-cons have decided that bleeding Russia by genociding the Ukraine is a sensible policy.  Even people who despise Vladimir Putin and desire the United States to dominate in Eastern European politics should have enough basic humanity to recoil from what’s going on in Eastern Ukraine.  It’s just an update of 1914.  Meatgrinders in Bakhmut and Avdiivka are just senseless wars of attrition that kill and maim tens of thousands of men while yielding up only bombed out moonscapes to the victor.

Russia is bleeding but Ukraine is bleeding out.  Hopefully House Speaker Mike Johnson will have the good sense to put an end to this nightmarish quagmire of death.  If we stop sending them billions of dollars in “aid” the only ones who will lose will be the oligarchs that won’t be able to steal their chunk of the loot.  The rest of the Ukrainians can go back home and pick up what’s left of their lives and their future.