Tag: Russia

H/T to the Conservative Treehouse for Primer on Ukraine Politics

photog Current Events , , , , , ,

Sundance at the conservative Treehouse has many great links.  I never thought I’d be linking to a documentary made by Oliver Stone, the grandfather of the conspiracy theorists but I found this long (90 minutes) video very informative. Now without a doubt we are getting the Russian take on what happened in Ukraine but it looks like it describes pretty closely what happened in a “color revolution” staged by the CIA and the State Department.

And of course, the neocons and Joe Biden make their appearances.  I think Vladimir Putin is now my favorite evil dictator.  Maybe I looked into his eyes and saw his soul (or something).

Polish Jets and Blinken Blinks

photog Current Events , , , ,

Hat tip to the Conservative Treehouse for following this story.

The Americans kept pushing for the Poles to let Ukrainians fly Polish jets from their bases into the Ukraine.  But the Poles aren’t crazy.  So they tossed it back to the Americans saying they’d give the old MIG jets to the Americans but they’d have to host them in Germany

Then the Americans realized the Poles had called their bluff and folded.

The people running our government are buffoons, scoundrels, madmen and cowards all at the same time.  It looks like they want a real shooting war but they’re too cowardly to start it themselves. It’s the old let’s you and he fight.  The Poles had the good sense to bow out of that arrangement and now they can see how brave and honest the Americans have shown themselves.

Biden, Harris and Blinken.  Cowards, fools and criminals.

Russian Banks Moving to Chinese Credit Card System

photog Current Events ,

I guess this was inevitable.  Russian banks have been suspended from using Visa and MasterCard.  So they’ve switched over to the Chinese UnionPay card system.  The world is changing.  It’s bigger than it used to be.  The Americans did this to themselves when they made China into an industrial powerhouse.  Now the West’s economic power is reduced.  We’ll have to see how all this plays out in the coming months and years.

Maybe having a multipolar world will be better for the prospects of freedom in the United States.  The world is changing.

Reality Dawns on Zelensky

photog Current Events , ,

President Zelensky of the Ukraine confronts reality.  He explains to reporters, “I don’t want to talk to Putin but I think I have to talk to Putin because there are no other ways to stop this war.”

It’s funny how all the West is disappointed that Zelensky isn’t thrilled about the idea of fighting to the last Ukrainian.  For the reporters and neocon pundits it’s a video game.  To Zelensky it’s probably starting to get very scary.  If he forces Putin to kill thousands of people I think Zelensky realizes things won’t end up well for himself.  Let’s hope for his people’s sake he sees the light really soon.

Now That Russia Has Taken Ukraine Are the Baltics Next?

photog Current Events , ,

The other day I speculated what our response would be if Russia invaded the Baltic States.  Now that the Ukraine has been occupied and nothing has been done by the West other than some pro-forma sanctions it occurs to me that there really isn’t anything keeping them out of the Baltics.  Not a thing.  Of course, that invites the question, what’s keeping them out of Poland or Germany or France.  Militarily, it’s the same answer.  In each case we only have the threat of nuclear war as a deterrence against Russian military attack and occupation.  By allowing our armed forces to become an LGBTQ poster child instead of a fighting machine we’ve put all our eggs in the nuclear war basket.  And Russia will continue to test us to see where the tipping point is.  Ukraine?  Moldova?  Estonia?  Latvia?  Lithuania?

And once China sees this happening we can forget about Taiwan.  And how about Korea?  Right about now I’m guessing Japan is starting to get a little nervous.  All these dominoes were set in motion when the Left’s world view was adopted by Americans.  When you demonize America and its history and deny the difference between a man and a woman you throw away the basis for the deterrence of an army or even a nuclear stockpile.  Would a woman like Kamala Harris or a feminist man like Joe Biden send troops against the Russians or launch nuclear weapons?  I’m guessing the Russians have decided the answer is no.

Lots of bad things are no longer unthinkable.  Luckily for us the Russians want to sell Europe gas and China wants to sell us everything.  So, they’ll be satisfied to just take the stuff they want.  They don’t have to force us into a fight for our lives.  It’s sort of like the smash and grab attacks on expensive stores.  If the sales staff stays out of the way and lets the thieves take what they want they won’t get hurt.  And what else can you do when you’ve told the police they’re evil.  You’ve thrown away your shield and have to submit to the thieves.

It’s not a happy situation we find ourselves in.  But at least it lays bare the reality of a feminized West.  Without men in charge of the military and foreign policy, non-feminized countries will be free to exert military force as they see fit.  Our safety culture will direct us to take the less dangerous option of hectoring the enemy like a global Karen telling Moscow or Beijing to stop what they’re doing or we’ll tell the UN on them.

But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe Dementia Joe will stand up on his two feet and take Vladimir Putin behind the barn and lay the smackdown on him.  Maybe he’ll send our tranny brigade against the Russian army.  Size fifteen stiletto heels marching in unison to victory.  The good and bad news is that Biden is responsible and he’ll have to figure this out.  The good news is he’ll take the blame.  The bad news is we’ll have to suffer the consequences.

“O brave new world, that has such people in it!”

Compare and Contrast

photog Current Events , , ,

I listened to Putin’s speech and then I listened to Dementia Joe’s mumblings.  I know I’m prejudiced against Biden but it wasn’t even close.  Putin spoke almost off the cuff.  He related the history of Russia as honestly as it can be put.  He complained about the outrageous tactics that Lenin and Stalin used to create the various “ethnic” states.  The wholesale mixing and matching territories to prevent any threat to the central authority by ethnic groups.  It’s the speech of a pragmatic and confident ruler telling the outside world why he’s making the moves he is and why he feels justified in making them.  He’s not asking permission.  He’s explaining why no one had better get in his way.

Listening to Joe is painful.  Watching him try to read off the teleprompter but still stumble every few minutes is annoying as all hell.  Plus, it’s all bluster.  He’s going to impose sanctions that sound like mostly refusing to loan Russia money.  From what I’ve read Russia isn’t in debt.  We on the other hand are in debt to China for trillions of dollars.  Somehow, I think Russia can underwrite its growth out of the boundless oil and gas revenues it receives.  A real leader would try to find some modus vivendi with Russia.  Theoretically, we should have an easier time dealing with Russia than China.  Also, the realities of Russia’s relationship with Europe would warrant careful consideration of the practical aspects of maintaining mutually beneficial policies.  But not Joe.  He’s probably more worried about how Burisma will be affected by these changes.  After all, if Hunter stops getting paid how can the “big guy” get his twenty percent.

Now let’s talk about morality.  Vladimir Putin is a ruthless autocrat.  He uses whatever tactics get him what he wants.  The cruelty of the tactics that were used against the Chechen rebels were horrific.  The fact that Putin used Chechens to destroy their fellow Chechens in no way excuses the hideousness of the policies.  But it does indicate the intelligence that Putin brought to his actions.  He fought fire with fire.  Putin is someone to be feared and respected because he is competent.

What exactly are the moral advantages that Joe Biden brings to the table?  He is an inveterate liar.  He lies about his personal life.  He lies about his official actions.  He seems to lie without any thought to how transparent the lies are.  He plagiarizes the words of other men.  There is credible testimony that he sexually assaulted a woman on the streets of Washington D.C.  And as for his financial dealings, he’s been peddling his government influence for as long as he’s been in public office.  And when he became Vice President, he became an international influence peddler.  He was able to collect millions of dollars in China and the Ukraine through the help of his bag man; his junkie, pervert son Hunter.  And all of this is documented on a laptop that Hunter idiotically left in a computer repair shop and ended up published in the pages of the New York City tabloid the New York Post.  And finally, just watching video of the man as he interacts with women and children is repulsive.  He sidles up behind women and grabs their shoulder and sniffs their hair.  He’s like Suetonius’s description of the depraved behavior of Tiberius.

Say what you will about Putin’s ruthlessness, at least the things he has championed for his country are essentially wholesome.  He defends Christian religion and Russian culture against such outside influences as LGBTQ organizers and globalist NGO agitators.  Compare this to Biden who has opened the US borders to criminal aliens and defended the murderous rioters, looters and arsonists who ran amok during the 2020 George Floyd insurrection.

Looking at these two men it’s hard not to see an imbalance.  Biden is an empty suit.  He’s just the chair warmer for a ruling elite that controls all the levers of power so the puppet doesn’t have to be very impressive.  Putin is a leader, not a democratic leader, more of a dictator but still a popular leader.  Regardless of the differences in circumstances and world opinion it’s hard not to be impressed by Putin and hard not to be disgusted by Biden.  Just my impressions.

Update

TomD’s comments 

It’s like a horror story, the Dims are failing so badly and obviously at everything that seemingly any rational person on earth would think they need a basic reappraisal of their goals and methodology. But not this group, No Sir!

One of the many horrors of the Biden “Administration” is there is no way out for at least 3 years. Look at the attached “order of succession”. To quote the Lady, “It’s turtles all the way down.”

order of sucession.jpg
order of sucession.jpg

 

Putin, Europe and Biden

photog Current Events , ,

Vladimir Putin looks to be taking a couple of more bites out of the Ukraine.  First, he reclaimed the Crimean Peninsula along with its warm water harbor for his navy.  Then he supported his Russian allies in Eastern Ukraine to give them autonomy.  Now he’s declaring those eastern areas independent.  They’ll have two separate names, Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic, but the reality will be that for all practical purposes they will be part of Russia.  As far as Western Ukraine goes, I assume what Putin will do is declare NATO membership as a flash point that would trigger invasion and occupation of the rest of the Ukraine.

I don’t think anyone in NATO who is being honest with himself is at all surprised with this outcome.  With the United States in disarray and Western Europe a laughing stock militarily I don’t see how Putin would hesitate to use the excuse of NATO encroachment to reclaim hegemony over the Ukraine and Belarus.    Some people are probably wondering about the status of the Baltic States; Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.  These countries have significant Russian ethnic populations and it wouldn’t be shocking to hear these groups might start making noises about being oppressed.  The difference is these countries joined NATO back in 2004.  If the Russians rolled into any of them this would be grounds for NATO military action which theoretically extends all the way up to nuclear war between Russia and the United States.  Now there’s a highly interesting point!  Would the Russians attack the Baltics and would we go to nuclear war if they did?  According to the book, we would.  But would we?  You know, we might.  I think Putin isn’t looking at the Baltics right now.  I think he realizes that occupying the Baltics would be like invading Poland; a step too far.

But he won’t let the Ukraine or Belarus go.  And he doesn’t have to.  The balance of power in Europe is shifting because of the weakness of the West and the improving economic position of Russia because of its oil and gas revenues.  Germany and Eastern Europe need Russian energy supplies.  They’ll develop closer relations with Russia and hope to “civilize” Russia as they hoped to with China.  But I’m not sure it will work that way.

When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 and Russia reached a low ebb, I remember thinking that all of the newly independent states like the Ukraine and Belarus would one day take their place as parts of Europe.  They would be free and prosperous nations and chart their own destinies.  But the reality of these places is an entirely different thing.  The political dysfunction on display is shocking and characterizing these places as gangster states is not an exaggeration.  The Russians have an intimate knowledge of the power centers and major players in these corrupt states and they can manipulate public opinion and bring enormous military and economic pressure to bear on any group that works against their interests.  These states may have been declared independent but they are for the most part puppets of the Russian government.

Knowing this to be true, I think it is naïve to think we can detach these places from Russian hegemony.  We’re not going to send troops into the Ukraine or Belarus.  We’re not going to fight a nuclear war with Russia over these areas that we have no commitment toward.  And the Russians know it.

So, we’ll threaten sanctions.  Maybe we’ll enact sanctions and then the Russians will use that as an excuse to take the rest of the Ukraine.  Then they’ll cut off the natural gas to Germany and Eastern Europe.  Then Europe will end the sanctions.

Now we get to the philosophical stuff.  Back when it was the Soviet Union versus the West there was a very clear distinction morally between the oppressive communist regime that held all of Eastern Europe in virtual slavery and the relative freedom of the West.  Here in the United States, we had our problems but in the 1980’s we were a truly free people who enjoyed our lives and did as we pleased.  But looking at the West today, especially after the COVID lockdowns, BLM riots, 2020 election fraud, CRT school propaganda and all the restriction on free speech and other freedoms by the surveillance state it’s extremely hard to pretend we have any moral superiority over Putin.  If Putin is a thug, then what is Biden?  Is the successor to the KGB any worse than the FBI and the Justice Department as they run gulags for the victims of their January 6th false flag exercise?  In fact, if you look at Putin’s stance on LGBTQ, I have to give him the advantage of being on the side of religion and family and against celebrating depravity and mental disorder.

I think Putin will have his way with the Ukraine.  Biden will make a lot of noise and then do not very much.  But it will be his chance to try to distract Americans from the disaster he has created at home.  Somehow, I doubt it will accomplish very much.  The cost of chicken is a little more important than the status of Kiev.

Biden Stands Athwart of Ukraine and Shouts, C’mon Man!

photog Current Events , ,

Dementia Joe wants to take Vladimir Putin behind the barn and give him the Corn Pop treatment.  That’s rich.  I can see Republicans trying to get some mileage scaring old ladies and nancy boys by breathlessly claiming that the Biden administration is risking nuclear oblivion by poking the thermonuclear Russian bear.  But I hope no one else thinks Joe Biden is planning on doing anything beyond zooming with his Euro-weenie play pals and saying mean things about Putin.  I mean, “c’mon man,” what in hell could they do?  Germany and half of Europe depends on Russian natural gas just to survive through each winter.  Now that the moronic Greens have shut down all the nuclear power plants outside of France, they all live huddled around their miserable space heaters hoping that the local gas turbine electric plant near them won’t lower the voltage on their hovels to the point where they freeze to death.  I’ve been hoping that Greta Thunberg will ultimately succumb as a hypothermia victim during a brown out in Norway.

Anyway, after the State Department and their European counterparts have a chance to drink a barrel of wine and eat a bunch of caviar and goose liver they’ll send their recommendations to NATO which will say, “We condemn any interference in the internal affairs of the sovereign state of Ukraine and we demand that LGBTQ people be respected, carbon neutral natural gas continue to be pumped into Germany and Hunter Biden receive 10% of all the spoils  divvied up in the aftermath of this tragic but ultimately acceptable bite out of Ukraine autonomy.”

Then Joe will announce this tough but measured response to Russian aggression in a painfully garbled televised speech which will immediately decrease his stature to about where Saddam Hussein was after they dragged him out of his rat hole.  Although I remember Saddam cut a dashing figure in his tighty whiteys in that shot they had of him in the prison.  I doubt Joe would look as sanitary.

All kidding aside.  No one is prying Ukraine from the Russians today.  Maybe before Putin came to power while they were being slapped around by the Chechens.  Not now.  We’ve just spent twenty years degrading our fighting force in demoralizing wars in the Middle East and we’ve filled our ranks with way too many women and sexual deviants and our generals are politically correct bureaucrats who couldn’t even plan an exit from an occupied country.  Our Commander in Chief is a dementia patient and our civilian population is at the point of a cold civil war.

I think the real question we should be asking is what will the EU do when Poland, and the rest of the Eastern European countries desert them and form an alliance with Russia?  Culturally and morally the Russians seem to be much closer to the hearts and minds of the Magyars, the Poles and the other Eastern Europeans.  These are religious people who are repelled by the decadence and nihilism of western countries like Germany and Belgium.  At least the Russians don’t have an ideological reason for forcing third world refugees into these countries the way the EU does.  And the Poles and the Magyars are both disgusted with the EU’s bullying attempts to force them to embrace homosexuality in their culture and especially in the schools.  It would make perfect sense for these countries to equalize their ties with both the East and the West.

And this same situation goes for China.  We’re going to fight a war over Taiwan?  I could see us giving them missiles and aircraft.  But I think the days of us patrolling the South China Sea are over.  What we should do is tell the Koreans and the Japanese to build a few nukes of their own, join the big boys’ club and deal with China as equals.  Our days as the world’s policeman are over.  We exhausted ourselves during the War on Terror (Thanks for nothing W!) and now we need to worry about our own problems.

So, anyone who is worried about Ukrainian Armageddon, relax.  Jo-Jo the dog faced boy may say a bunch of stupid stuff but his keepers won’t let him play with the nuclear football.  Russia is reassembling its western components, Belarus and Ukraine.  The Eastern satellites are also being reined in as we saw with Kazakhstan.  Honestly, I think I’d prefer Russia to China taking hold of those places in Asia.  Russia at least has a European heritage that I find recognizable.  And who knows?  The way things are going Siberia might be a place to live in the future to escape from American cultural dysfunction and lack of freedom.  Think about that.

Dersu Uzala (1975) – A Movie Review

photog Movie Reviews, Reviews , , , , ,

Akira Kurosawa is probably best known in the West for his films that are set in Japan’s Sengoku period like “Seven Samurai” (1954), Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985).  But one picture of his that I recently watched is set in turn of the century (19th to 20th century) tsarist Russia and is based on the memoir of a Russian explorer, Vladimir Arsenyev, concerning his travels in the Ussuri basin in the Russian Far East. Dersu Uzala was a Nanai hunter.  The Nanai are a tribal people who live in the area.  Dersu guided Arsenyev’s surveying crew from 1902 to 1907.  His knowledge of the climatic and topographic dangers of this wild area several times saved Arsenyev and his men from death.

The story very simply and directly demonstrates the friendship and respect that Arsenyev and Dersu develop and when the elderly Dersu is no longer able to survive as a hunter Arsenyev takes the old Nanai home with him to Khabarovsk.  But although Arsenyev’s wife and son adopt the strange tribesman as family, we see the stifling restrictions of the town wither the old man’s spirit and he declares that he must go back to the forest.  His death and the cause of it completes this story about simplicity and modernity colliding and the humanity that exists on both sides of that intersection.

One of the interesting things about Dersu’s world view is his animism.  He sees “people” in almost everything; the sun, the moon, water, fire, the wind, the forest.  And he feels that the forest spirit watches him and punishes actions that are forbidden such as his killing of a Siberian tiger that threatened the expedition at one point.  And we see his empathy for his fellow man in the practices that he follows.  For instance, Dersu leaves salt, matches and firewood at the shelters that he leaves in the woods for the next stranger who will come along.

The movie was filmed in the Russian Far East.  The Arctic ice flows and limitless taiga forest is an impressive if forbidding back drop for the story.  Mainly it is a story of men on an adventure in the wild.  Although the film is in Russian with subtitles, it’s a pretty good story.  I recommend it.