Now Kosovo and Bosnia want to join NATO

[mayfly13]

I don't understand the this Go Green policy.

Small farmers in France and Australia are being bankrupted & los3ing chunks of their land to the State or bigger corporations cause they aren't allowed to develop their land
we're going green in all sorts of other ways

when the largest pollutors of the Planet --China, India and a couple Western/UAE mamnouth-- corporations
are continuing like before.

 

[Champakian]

It's a religion, back to nature.

It is very similar to the same type of movement in Germany
that helped sweep Hitler into power by tapping into a type of Nationalism.

These are True Believers (Eric Hopper) who have adopted a cause larger than themselves
in order to matter, to be noble, heroic even, foot soldiers in a generational struggle over their own humanity.

As Walt Kelly put it in his comic strip (politics and satire) Pogo some years ago,
"We have met the enemy and he is us."

 

[LupusDei]

Bingo, maybe, but I also worry about how far Putin might be willing to go to avoid obvious defeat.

Genocide is the least of it. What do we do if he decides to use a small tactical nuke or two?

More sanctions?

That's the ugly question, isn't it?

One without any good answers possible. The last the world needs is normalization of it as just a real big boom automatic war crime, and so what.

The whole nuclear weapons game being bluff of fear... I think there should be public and abundantly clear announcements that if if nuclear weapons are used in any capacity those who gave the orders will be killed. Personally. As immediately as possible and as violently as it takes, with complete disregard for any collateral damage. Delivered without a sliver of doubt about feasibility of such strikes, disregarding miles long underground cities under mountains as viable defenses. Exaggerate or make up weapon capabilities if necessary (there's patents of digger nukes and seismic bombs and what not), but better yet just display complete confidence it can be done without explanation.

A milder version of this what is indeed in action, as far I understand... is the tacitly implied fact that not only U.S. intelligence track Mr. Putin's whereabouts but his order of nuclear weapons use would be known in White House even before it cascades down the five levels of command it takes for actual launch, and that treason in that chain is assured.

Beyond that, however impossible it is to read the logic of an idiot or madman (or an old guy experiencing steroid cancer treatment induced manic hatred fits) there's just no good way to employ a nuclear weapon, even tactical in current conflict. On any level. The want is a rape not a murder. Murder without rape therefore admits defeat, the bodies to be mutilated and burned after, not before.

Plus, there's the the trap of their own propaganda, even if there was tactical benefits of nuking, say, Severodonetsk or Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, that would never fly together with the claim they had never hurt a civilian.

The Russian pundits are struggling with this themselves. They desperately want to use nukes, somehow, and there's just no way that makes sense. Their newest suggestion is to nuke Nevada desert. For pure demonstration, just to show that they can. Yes, it's a madhouse.

 

[Champakian]

Our talking heads/analysts/retired military types are now dutifully informing us
that this may drag on for years. Are we going to be sending Ukraine "free"
weapons for a decade to come? I just don't know.
I think most people don't either.

 

[Champakian]

I do know this.
If we try to convince any other nation to give up nuclear weapons,
and I think about the Middle East as I posit this, and assure them of their security,
they will treat us as if we were as mad as Putin...

 

[ll74]

Our talking heads/analysts/retired military types are now dutifully informing us
that this may drag on for years. Are we going to be sending Ukraine "free"
weapons for a decade to come? I just don't know.
I think most people don't either.

It's cheaper than retrieving dead soldiers.

 

[Champakian]

The soldiers and civilians are just being left to rot in the field.

You mean, I don't want a single one of ours to die.

I don't think anyone does. I alluded to that.

I'm sure not calling for involvement, I think we're in too deep now,
so please don't try to ascribe to me what you think all "Right-Wingers" want: war.
__________________________________________
Democrat born. Democrat bred. Libertarian led (by Democrats).

 

[ll74]

The soldiers and civilians are just being left to rot in the field.

You mean, I don't want a single one of ours to die.

I don't think anyone does. I alluded to that.

I'm sure not calling for involvement, I think we're in too deep now,
so please don't try to ascribe to me what you think all "Right-Wingers" want: war.
__________________________________________
Democrat born. Democrat bred. Libertarian led (by Democrats).

I'm not doing that.

 

[mayfly13]

Our talking heads/analysts/retired military types are now dutifully informing us that this may drag on for years. Are we going to be sending Ukraine "free"
weapons for a decade to come? I just don't know.
I think most people don't either.

and I --and others I suppose-- are greatful to them for their honesty.
All the prior bullshit false hope building "the brave brave Ukrainians are winning" "Slava Ukraini"were so frustrating.

I just don't understand why they were willfully bullshitting us.
Out of the hope that it will increase the morale of Ukrainians/decrease that of Russians?
To morally excuse themselves for not doing more?
Or why?

 

[mayfly13]

It's a religion, back to nature.

It is very similar to the same type of movement in Germany
that helped sweep Hitler into power by tapping into a type of Nationalism.

These are True Believers (Eric Hopper) who have adopted a cause larger than themselves
in order to matter, to be noble, heroic even, foot soldiers in a generational struggle over their own humanity.

As Walt Kelly put it in his comic strip (politics and satire) Pogo some years ago,
"We have met the enemy and he is us."

yes! I also recall now someone saying that Hitler WAS a naturalist, a greenie.

 

[Champakian]

I was reading some earlier where ethnic Russians don't want Russia to take control
where they live in the Ukraine and Russian soldiers, we know, don't want to be there.

Did you realize that they took significant casualties around Chernobyl because
the surface ground has lost a lot of its toxicity, but when they dug foxholes,
they dug themselves into a hole of lethality...

You probably cannot win a war when your soldiers hate you.
I posted something else yesterday that included the observation
that their chain of command has no middle-man equivalent of
our NCOs, so the officers have to leave and when they die
it's like cutting the head off of a snake; the body continues to wiggle aimlessly...

 

[Champakian]

yes! I also recall now someone saying that Hitler WAS a naturalist, a greenie.

The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America, Leonard Peikoff

An excellent examination of just that (and other facets of now and then).

 

[mayfly13]

btw Russian soldiers don't look good, do they?
An army that's anything But cut-throat sexy, the way Putin envisioned it.

I hate to admit it, during moments of break from the horror I occasionally laughed at their blunders. Dugging trenches in Chernibyl soil, being caught on hidden camera selling small-town crook shit from Ukraine.

 

[Champakian]

The Russian soldier of now is about as sophisticated as his counterpart in the Crimean War.

 

[LupusDei]

There's a Finnish joke:

"Ah, what [else] you would expect from green leftist woman [as a premier minister]."

Context: among her first decisions was to increase military budget by $1B and buy 64 (!) F35 fighter jets. Now she's leading a push to join NATO.

Well... it's almost as of no surprise then that another green leftist woman minister, Baerbock also comes out as a war hawk -- in stark internal opposition to her chancellor Scholz agitating for unlimited arms deliveries to Ukraine and similar.

 

[pecksniff]

BUT for me, Western politicians DID abandon Ukraine.
Starting mid-last year when their Intels and analysts (brilliant bodies btw) started telling them unequivocally that Russia Will attack.
And yes, I agree with Keith, ill87 LupusDei that they can't do no-fly zone so they're sending good armament instead blah blah blah
But I feel that they COULD have done something more productive

Like what?

 

[pecksniff]

Sweden was, and partly still are under delusion they have no immediate threats. They're been waking up recently and scrambling to rearm.

Probably they remember that they managed to remain neutral and safe during WWII.

 

[pecksniff]

I'm hugely disgusted by the Western political class, actually.
And becoming more nationalistic and proud to be from EE,

All this "Slava Ukrainii we are kind and care" that Western politicians are doing, is such typical Anglo hollow self-serving image management.
You don't see EE's doing disingenuous PC. We tell it as it is.

Poland recently elected Jesus Christ its King. This does not make EE easy to take seriously.

 

[mayfly13]

Probably they remember that they managed to remain neutral and safe during WWII

Well, indeed.

Finland never had illusion and had enjoyed being NATO without being NATO for quite a while, but it's becoming obvious the risks of such ambivalence are growing. It's almost a done deal, the question is rather when not if now.

Sweden was, and partly still are under delusion they have no immediate threats. They're been waking up recently and scrambling to rearm.

Finland and Sweden (Finland in particular) are interesting, eh?
I only knew about Sweden's neutrality from movies.

But wasn't Finland more genuine in saying that neutrality was for self-preservation?
Than Sweden, which has and had all these skeevy foreign olygarchs hidden accounts both around ww2 and present.

You look on the map, and you see Finland a more continental country just a tad North of Baltic countries and similarly bordering on Russia.
Whereas Sweden seems to be more in the Norway-Denmark pool genetic-cultural dna pool.

 

[Sean Renaud]

The soldiers and civilians are just being left to rot in the field.

You mean, I don't want a single one of ours to die.

I don't think anyone does. I alluded to that.

I'm sure not calling for involvement, I think we're in too deep now,
so please don't try to ascribe to me what you think all "Right-Wingers" want: war.
__________________________________________
Democrat born. Democrat bred. Libertarian led (by Democrats).

Nobody wants our soldiers dead but lets be real. They volunteered. Its kinda their own fault at this point. Besides its not like we as a country give a damn, we pretend to, but we don't.

If we send personnel you just have to accept that a certain amount of them are gonna die and just not worry about it.

Rightwingers do collectively want war.

 

[mayfly13]

Btw LupusDei.
Your foreign minister is so cool. and young!

He was chillingly convincing, tho, in explaining how you guys view Russia.
That you foresaw Russia's plans of INVADING THE REST OF EUROPE, NOT JUST UKRAINE, years ago when Russia started military exercises close to your borders.

Baltic countries, Poland's and Ukraine all saw Russia as their nemesis, all worried about Russia trying it's shtick again
but I was surprised to find that Baltic countries' discourse was the most firm of all. And when Russia was amassing it's troups at Ukraine's borders, your laypeople and politicians unanimously saw what's coming, whereas even Ukrainians were 80-20.


On the other hand, I feel that you guys risk being too radical at times.
Aka let the Ukraine fighting go on, notwitstanding civilian deaths, as hopefully that might be our only chance of squashing the viper's head.

 

[Sean Renaud]

It's a religion, back to nature.

It is very similar to the same type of movement in Germany
that helped sweep Hitler into power by tapping into a type of Nationalism.

These are True Believers (Eric Hopper) who have adopted a cause larger than themselves
in order to matter, to be noble, heroic even, foot soldiers in a generational struggle over their own humanity.

As Walt Kelly put it in his comic strip (politics and satire) Pogo some years ago,
"We have met the enemy and he is us."

You don't know the difference between religion and science do you? there is no back to nature movement worthy of talking about and most of those guys are conservatives anyway. The guys who think if the government ever got out of hand they would be fighting from the forests and mountains for as long as it took.

It's absolutely nothing like Hitler's rise to power. At the end of the day like way, way too many problems in the world you can blame that crap on Christianity.

Some of us like being able to breathe, fish, not get cancer. Be energy independent or as close an animal as exists.

 

[pecksniff]

yes! I also recall now someone saying that Hitler WAS a naturalist, a greenie.

Hitler was a vegetarian and a teetotaler and a nonsmoker and asexual. Does that make those things fascist?

 

[pecksniff]

So, is Kosovo going to get to join NATO? That would amount to all other NATO members recognizing its independence, which means trouble with the Serbs one way or another, since they still claim the province. OTOH, everybody remembers it was not so long ago that the Albanian Kosovars were threatened with ethnic cleansing by the Serbs, in a setting where ethnic cleansing was already happening and everybody knew what it was -- and it was only NATO intervention that saved their lives and homes and freedom.

 

[mayfly13]

Hitler was a vegetarian and a teetotaler and a nonsmoker and asexual. Does that make those things fascist?

lol good one.

I had in mind the extreme, how radical climate change activists see us humanity as this vermin which destroyed the planet.
And how I was seeing shades of Hitler's young army in Greta Thunberg,
when she was contorting her face in pain laced with hate