Someone on the blog brought up Vietnam and how we lost that war.
I would argue the Vietnam war was not lost. But neither was it won. It was abandoned. As bad as our exit was from Afghanistan, our exit from Vietnam was exponentially worse. We bombed the crap out of Cambodia, decimating their rice paddies, all to save face as we hastily made our exit.
But there is a lesson to be learned from Vietnam and it is this: Our exit marked the end of that war and it went the way it was going to go from the beginning.
The same is true of Ukraine. Our exit will mark the end of their war and it will go the way it was going to go from the beginning. Proximity trumps might, because at the end of the day, “the mighty” get tired and go home. Two countries that butt up against each other have to settle their own differences to move forward. It’s just the way things are.
To those who hate war and want it to stop: Stop F-E-E-D-I-N-G it. Use your voice. Stop our government from financing outside conflicts.
Ukraine was never going to be won (which I have said many, many times) and they are far better off under the protection of a democratic, federative, law-based state with a republican form of government, than the Nazi regime under Zelensky. In Russia, diversity of ideologies and religions is sanctioned.
So lets look at what has our extended involvement in Ukraine has brought them:
– A decided victory? No.
– A better life? No.
– The removal of Russia? No, and as long as they allow the presence of the West, NATO, the Pentagon, and other hostile entities, Russia has no choice but to remain.
– Have we preserved their democracy? No. They never really had one. They certainly don’t under the Cocaine Kid of Kiev. In Ukraine today there is no freedom of the press or religion. Political opponents are put in jail and most political parties are outlawed.
This last one about democracy is the most laughable part of the equation. Ukraine was well on their way to total occupation BEFORE THE WAR. Not by Russia. But by the West and the Nazi, currently under Zelensky (and before that Poroshenko), whom Bartholomew helped so the government would bar the Ukrainian people from worshipping in the canonical Church and force them to turn to the Nazi-run OCU instead.
Russia didn’t do this. It’s the people whom we are backing in Ukraine who are doing this and their allies.
Not only are we backing Ukraine’s true oppressors, who are very evil people, we are prolonging the suffering in Ukraine. (If that doesn’t weigh heavily on your hearts, it should.)
And as far as democracy is concerned, how can we protect Ukraine’s voice when we can’t even protect our own. Our leaders are corrupt. Our elections were stolen. Our watchdog groups, like the CDC and FDA, tried to poison us and we’re fighting a war for the Nazi!
Voicing our thoughts out loud can get us arrested. Being friends with people in Russia could land us in jail.
We’re not helping Ukraine. We’re burying them in our own muck, as we are overrun by the very same, evil people. We are the worst thing that ever happened to Ukraine and they to us. When you think about it, we may have even brought extinction upon them as this extended war has cost them most of their men.
The best thing we can possibly do for Ukraine is to get out. Stop the fighting, which is what Trump said in that CNN town hall meeting. They can’t fight that war without our money so let’s not give it to them.
On the world front, things are changing. Mostly due to agreements made through BRICS, which has formed a powerful geopolitical coalition. One of the understandings is that regions will be allowed to take back their ancestral lands.
The Ukrainians and Belarusians belong to Russia because they are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov were bound together by one language (which is now referred to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, still largely determines their affinity today. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
China and Taiwan have ancestral ties.
Those with ancestral ties in the Arab world are forming their own bloc with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Algeria and Iran in the Middle East (all have applied to BRICS). This will mitigate many of the issues they’ve had over past several decades. Many people have called for an Arab State.
Interestingly, Turkey has also shown interest in BRICS although it’s currently part of NATO.
It is my hope Canada and North America will form a bloc as we’re more Northern European in ancestry. I suspect the Australians will join us, as well. Then Mexico, Central America and South America (with Brazil) will hopefully do the same.
Finally all of Europe and the Scandinavian countries will coalesce into their own group. South Africa and India are already part of BRICS and many other countries are showing an interest in joining as well.
The goal of BRICS is economic, monetary and military cooperation which is not mutually exclusive. It appears as if we’re going to be ushering in a multi-polar world, with a leader over each.
Nations who use military force to exert their will over other countries will become a thing of the past. Even in yesterday’s world, military might was to be for show with the intent to stave off war. It was not to be used in war unless it was the only available option. – The United States does not need to be in Ukraine.
The current BRICS five (not including the countries that want to join) contribute 31.5% of global GDP, while the G7 share has fallen to 30%. This may mean BRICS is our ticket out of this mess, assuming we elect leaders who are not married to our involvement in outside wars. I sincerely hope so going forward, as I would like to leave my daughter a planet and a country that are relatively intact. Mostly I’d like to leave her hope. No one can live without hope and we could do with a little more of it right about now.
Richard Dearlove | Active Measures: A Second Coming | NatCon UK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wdT96FwWeA
[Video – 20:17]
Sir Richard Dearlove: “The sheer brutality of Putin’s regime leads me
towards the conclusion that Russia’s political DNA is so corrupted
that only another revolutionary change might rebalance it…”
[from 03:22 – 03:37]
Sir Richard Dearlove (former head of MI6) has form in these matters.
Here is his recorded opinion in the run-up to Iraq War II:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo
‘ C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. … ‘
WB Yeats: Second Coming
“… And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
I will continue to do my part to help the next generation survive. “Stay peaceful,” said Leo Hohmann, investigative reporter. “The answer does not lie in violence. It lies in civil disobedience. Resist evil. Never submit. Never comply with any unconstitutional or unbiblical law, rule, or edict.”
And that’s what I do 24/7. I read and learn as much as I can from people who feel the same way as me. I pass on what I learn all day seven days a week to neighbors, friends, and people I meet. I never stop. There is little time left. The Lord leads me. He is my map.
Leo Hohmann stated, “And so Americans go on living their lives as if nothing is out of the ordinary. There’s a war going on “over there.” Who cares? There’s almost continuously been a war “over there” since we allowed our government in Washington to be taken over by the neocons, a takeover that likely took place with the assassination by the CIA of President Kennedy in 1963.”
I care. I am so sorry I did not realize sooner that the elite billionaires never gave a damn about any of us. This is my sin. So, I keep trying to wake people up. All hell is about to break loose. Blessed are the children…
My sentiments exactly, Jane, but it hurts when some of the people closest to you shut you out because they think you’re a kook or something.
It does. But like Jane, we forge ahead and tell the truth as we know it.
Amen!
May God give us the strength to do right.
This Memorial Day weekend may God rest the souls of our 58,000 men who were struck down in the jungles of Vietnam. They were mostly draftees from families of lesser means, who didn’t qualify for the exemptions given to those who were married or enrolled in college. Despite that, they were cursed when they returned stateside to a nation deeply divided over the conflict.
And for what purpose were our boys deployed half way round the globe? They were sent to fight a war whose cause was created out of thin air by Lyndon Baines Johnson and Robert McNamara. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a fabrication based on a purported attack by the North Vietnamese on a U.S. Navy warship – an attack that never happened. General Westmoreland took command and requested more and more troops to stem the communist tide from Hanoi and prop up a corrupt “democratic” regime in Saigon.
We seldom ask to know how many of the enemy died or how many civilians became casualties of the war through no fault of their own. The Vietnamese government estimates that a total of two million combatants on both sides lost their lives, and another 1.4 million civilians died over the entire twenty years of the war from 1955, when the French were retreating from Indochina, to 1975, when we beat a hurried escape to our warships offshore.
We Christians would do well to remember that many of the South Vietnamese were devout Roman Catholics. What atrocities these faithful had to pay to some degree for their faith we may never know.
Thanks for adding this, Father.
It was a horrible war and we were so stupid back then. People went to Vietnam and because of the climate, they didn’t advertise it.
There was a tall boy named Scott Spenser who sat behind me in Algebra. This was probably in 1966. He was a few years older than me. –A year or so later, around Easter, the principal had me sent to his office. There was someone who had come all the way from Vietnam with something he wanted to give me. Standing there was Scott in a uniform. I barely recognized him. He was not the gangly kid who left. The war had changed him. He was grown man. He didn’t say a word. He just handed me this yellow Faberge egg made out of some type of confection and left. It was very large and I remember having to hold it in both my hands. It was quite beautiful. I had never seen anything like it. I remember wondering if he had carried it all the way from Vietnam. It also hit me like a ton of bricks that I hadn’t even realized he was gone.
I later heard from others I knew who went to Vietnam and didn’t tell anyone. A kid I grew up with who lived across the street went to Vietnam and I didn’t find out about it until a few years ago. Imagine being so far away from home in a war and no one knows you’re there because you’re too embarrassed to tell anyone. This country really blew it with that war. We shouldn’t have been there BUT we shouldn’t have turned our backs on those who were. Their morale must have been in the toilet.
As far as I know, Scott never returned home and though I’ve looked, I never found his name on any list connected with Vietnam. It’s entirely possible I’m not remembering his name correctly and it bothers me to this day.
Well said, Gail. Your story puts a human face on my statistics. It sounds like Scott Spencer had a crush on you. Maybe you can find his picture in an old school yearbook.
In any event, we have to rest in the assurance that he and your neighbor are like the sparrow that doesn’t fall to the ground without God’s knowing. More precious are the Vietnam veterans to Him for the disgraceful treatment that so many received from an ungrateful nation when they came home.
What a contrast that was to the gratitude that our servicemen and -women got after the attacks of 9/11. It’s a national shame that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and the other new-cons in power took advantage of that atrocity on our cities to start a second war against Iraq – that one, like Vietnam – justified by dubious charges. God have mercy on our belligerent nation and its bloodthirsty leaders!
P.S. I’m not an Orthodox clergyman, so I don’t deserve to be called “Father”. Thanks for the compliment just the same.
I remember with Iraq wondering where all the protesters were. I literally drove around looking for them only to reassure myself that somebody, other than myself, realized what we were doing. Nada. Nowhere. And all that shock and awe nonsense with the promise we’d be in and out. I knew we wouldn’t. Vietnam lasted from 1955 to 1975! Twenty years. It took a whole nation of people, first us kids, and then our parents, who were horrified to see the footage on TV during the 6:00 news. It’s HARD to get out of a war once you’re there. Very hard.
The whole timeline from start to finish as far as the Vietnamese were concerned spanned those twenty years after the retreat of the French colonists. However, U. S. involvement began in earnest after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of August 1964 and the initial ground battle of Ia Drang in November 1965. (See Mel Gibson’s We Were Soldiers for a dramatization.)
Basically we were there for the second half of their war, did a lot of damage and got the hell out. The North Vietnamese regulars and the Vietcong were a formidable enemy. As “Mr. Do-It-By-The-Numbers” Bob McNamara learned later in life, although we were ostensibly struggling to keep another domino from falling to the communists, the enemy were fighting us to control and preserve their own country.
Richard Nixon promised not to let South Vietnam down even after our troops withdrew, but the post-Watergate congress refused to appropriate the funds necessary to support the local efforts to keep the communist horde at bay, so the whole country just collapsed. Gerald Ford was mortified in ’75. The aftermath wasn’t pretty for the South Vietnamese remaining in country who had been sympathetic to the American war effort.
(If I’ve gotten anything wrong in my comments here, those who know history better than I are welcome to make corrections.)
This is so true. We were told it was a fight against the spread of Communism (and in their usual myopia our leaders probably believed that was true), but in the minds of “the enemy” it was a struggle for independence from Western colonialism. For “the enemy” Communism was merely a means toward independence.
The consequences of American myopia and utter selfishness have been staggering and continue unabated to this day. LORD HAVE MERCY!
The antiwar movement was cleverly —very cleverly–neutralized by the Establishment. They took a measure of what they were up against and, realizing that W 43 was hugely unpopular (say around 2005), looked about and sought an antidote.
They found one in Obama; a good-looking, charismatic, biracial liberal who spoke against the Iraq War.
They were so successful that they used him to take Bush’s two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and added five more (Yemen, Libya, Syria, etc). And nobody on the Left said “Boo!”
There were many reasons for the failure of the US to stave off communism in Vietnam, but a big contributor was public opinion. This was molded by the American new left, which was in cohoots with the international left forces that were involved in aiding the VCs. Abbie Hoffman, SDS and their radical Weather Underground arm, the Black Panthers, and the show biz world were all a part of that club. They didn’t want that war, so they did everything they could to kill it.
Fast forward to 1999, the same voices that were marching with John Lennon and company protesting Vietnam were applauding the NATO bombing of Kosovo, all for humanitarian reasons of course (Slobodan Milosevic was equated to a Balkan Hitler). Only a few honest souls like Country Joe McDonald were calling for peace, along with some of the then still living remnants of the old left that never got on board the Clintonian Democratic train. It’s a great lesson in how double standards work.
This is one reason I like RFK Jr: he reminds me of some of the old lefties of those days that refused to hop on the neocon train.
Ukraine as an independent state has been a disaster, beginning with Simeon Petlyura and ending with Zelensky. There is just no way to create a cohesive identity between a person who was born and raised in Lvov and one who was born and raised in Donetsk UNLESS you take a look at the overall bigger picture and include Russia. Then it starts to make sense – only that thought is entirely taboo for western Ukrainian statesmen, as well as the euroatlantic globalists who just like the Germans before were hell bent on creating a separate Ukrainian identity that is rooted in Russophobia.
For Russians Ukraine is sacred territory. The post 1991 Ukrainian state was a tolerated mistake, but as it almost immediately devolved into a failed state the globalists stepped in and the situation became too precarious. Many Russians argue that they’ve waited TOO long: the time to have acted was way earlier, as early as 2004 during the so called orange revolution. And many believe that Yeltsin dropped the ball with Crimea in the 90’s. In other words the Russians were too much the gentlemen in this scenario, the total opposite of how they are being portrayed today.
It is actually possible that had there been a proper Ukrainian federalization referendum permitted in 2014 as proposed, there would be no war today. But the revolutionary government wouldn’t even consider it, and it made it very clear that there could be no talk of federalization on any level at a time when many in South-Eastern Ukraine were waving Russian flags. As one pro-Yatsenyuk Ukrainian told me: “Only mature democracies should be permitted to hold referenda”. Well, the Crimean people didn’t wait for that, and thank God.
Hindsight is 20/20, but the reality is that Russians will do everything possible to prevent losing that war. The west simply can’t do the same. Even with all the technology available, you can’t replace infantry. Infantry wins wars, and Ukrainians have very little of it left.
“For Russians Ukraine is sacred territory.”
100% true.
Infantry wins wars in an invasion, but if that infantry retreats, then they’ve lost the war. I suspect Russia will be engaged on another front, and then fighting against Ukraine will no longer be a priority. That’s a possible scenario for how Ukraine will win.
Ukraine has long needed to be de-Sovietized. Since there was never any anti-Soviet criminal trials in Ukraine (or Russia for that matter), perhaps this war will at least purge Ukraine. Ideally, it will purge Russia also.
The current ideology of “Russkiy Mir” is really a post-WWII Soviet ideology. It was developed by a compromised Russian Orthodox Church after World War II, and promoted by the ROC with the backing of Joseph Stalin. You can see the beginnings of it with Stalin’s false “Council of Lvov” in 1946 that “ended Uniatism” in Ukraine, and also with the involvement of the ROC as a founding member of the World Council of Churches in 1948. The Moscow Pan-Orthodox Council of 1948 even attempted to usurp the place the Ecumenical Patriarchate by calling all Orthodox churches to recognize the post-WWII primacy of the Moscow Patriarchate under Joseph Stalin. Indeed, all the bishops of the ROC were connected to this Soviet ideology as KGB agents. That’s where Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill get it from.
My prediction: If the next person we put in office is just about anyone but Biden, (Trump, Kennedy) will leave NATO and join BRICS. No one is going to stop Russia from taking back their ancestral lands, regardless. It will mean many fewer deaths if we get out of their way. The biolabs would be out of there which would benefit the world. The money laundering would stop. The trafficking would stop. Ukraine will be able to go back to Church. Russia will help them rebuild.
The only people that should be shaking in their boots now is Zelensky’s brutal regime, the Nazi, the schismatic OCU, the satanists and very soon NATO. Bartholomew is going to make all kinds of noise to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but because he’s cut himself off from all the bishops, no one will hear him.
Joseph I can’t exactly agree with you.
The whole concept of the Russian World (Russkiy Mir) extends deep into Russian history. For example general Denikin, the white general who fought the Bolsheviks, said that we are fighting for a “unified, undivided Russia”. That IS the Russkiy Mir ideology.
The fact that Stalin selectively borrowed from nationalist ideology when it suited him is a different matter altogether. Let’s not forget that when Stalin was commissar of the nationalities he played a key role in promoting a separate Ukrainian identity and played on the Russophobic element there and in other republics. For example the republic of Kazakhstan whose borders he created included a huge swath of ethnically Russian territory. Of course it was understood these republics were staying within the confines of the USSR, yet the USSR never positioned itself as an ethnically Russian state.
During the second world war Stalin needed to switch gears from the highly internationalist orientation simply because it suited geopolitical concerns. The Nazis resumed the Austro-Hungarian divide-and-conquer strategy in western Ukraine, and any allegiance to the Vatican was obviously a no-go. Hence Stalin promoted Russo-Ukrainian ties, it was necessary to have a united bulwark against the west. Same concerns the attempt at an all-Orthodox council in 1947. When the latter failed to yield fruit he had once again begun persecutions against the church (albeit on a more moderate scale), until he bought the farm in 1953, right on the verge of yet another massive purge.
What concerns de-Sovietization, I’m a very strong proponent of that as long as it is not mixed together with Russophobia. We can revisit the example of the Third Reich: they were very anti-Soviet for sure, so much so that enough Soviet citizens were ready to collaborate and fight Stalin. However when it became clear that the Nazis were also targeting Russians and others at the same time, the situation radically changed.
In this regard the Ukrainians and their western sponsors have been the biggest help to the Russian left that seeks to keep the Soviet identity as part of Russia, just as Hitler’s policies ended up not only keeping Stalin in power but increasing his international grasp.
GeorgeS, the Russian white army that fought in Ukraine for a “unified, undivided Russia” soon fell to the Bolsheviks. It turns out the Bolsheviks were fighting for the same thing: a unified, undivided Russia. It’s just that the Bolshevik victory made Ukraine part of the Soviet Russian Empire.
It’s quite likely that the white army’s defeat was due to their rejection of Ukraine as an independent state. They refused to ally themselves with the Ukrainian army that was fighting for independence. This was tragic stubbornness on the part of the white army, because an independent Ukraine is really just a natural ally for Russia, and especially against a common enemy such as the Bolsheviks. Fighting for an independent Ukraine back then would have been a good compromise for the white army, and perhaps it would have gained greater support from other countries too.
Sure, the idea of a unified Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (centered in Moscow, of course) goes farther back than the Bolshevik Revolution. However, the current idea of “Russian World” goes even beyond such geo-political boundaries. Vladimir Putin describes it in metaphysical terms of values, traditions, and ideals, having recently made it official Russian policy to “protect, safeguard and advance the traditions and ideals of the Russian World”. Perhaps this is similar to a U.S. foreign policy that has often sought to protect, safeguard, and advance the stated American ideals of “freedom and democracy”.
One thing that is clear, though, is that no matter where the “Russian World” exists, whether it be Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe, North or South America, the center is still always Moscow. It’s like how the understood center for the global defense of “freedom and democracy” has been Washington D.C. It’s also similar to how Roman Catholicism is always centered around the Vatican.
Indeed, it is the global reach of the Russian World that has been its newer development, and the current global reach of the Russian Orthodox Church seems to be key. Largely, this has developed haphazardly as a result of an anti-Soviet diaspora out of Russia that initially broke ties with Moscow. Yet when Joseph Stalin restored the Moscow Patriarchate during World War II, he purposefully did so with the intentions of creating this global reach. Hence the involvement of the ROC as a founding member of the World Council of Churches in 1948, and the calling of a Pan-Orthodox Council in Moscow that same year.
The spread of the ROC, initially through the diaspora, but now with aggressive missionary work, is what primarily encapsulates the metaphysical values, traditions, and ideals of the “Russian World”. While this may seem all well and good, it unfortunately makes Orthodox churches outside of Russia into targets, conceivably being the object of the Russian military’s protection and rationale for aggression.
Actually, I’m not going to take serious issue with you on this, although I would put a different spin on the facts.
It is true the White Army was opposed to Ukrainian independence and that Lenin fooled the Ukrainians, to some extent, that they would have an independent state. However, bear in mind that the Bolsheviks defeated the Provisional Government, not a Tsarist government. Nicholas II abdicated early in 1917 to avoid a civil war which nonetheless developed. That was his great mistake. He should have landed on the Bolsheviks like a ton of bricks.
As far as Русский Мир is concerned, it is not an ideology but rather a way of referring to the current resurrection of the Russian state and people after communism. It is less imperialistic than prior Russian policy under the tsars and so all condemnation of it as “heretical” and “phyletist” is nonsense. One could say that it is the Russian equivalent of Hellenism. This is appropriate in light of the current population and land area of the Russian state as well as the revival of traditional Russian Orthodox culture and the tolerance, of sorts, that Russia has historically extended to other faiths of longstanding relevance in the territory of the RF. It is not a religious concept but a political and cultural one and is largely a vehicle for Russian soft power.
I have no criticism of it at all and I would be surprised if the Russians did not come up with something like this as an umbrella concept for Russian interaction with the world. It is, actually, a sign of returning self-respect following the communist nightmare. It is, in a concept, similar to the “Slavic Orthodox Civilization” described by Samuel Huntington.
Sure, the Volos Declaration seems like it’s overreaching to label “Russian World” as a heresy. Their statement is too opaque, contradictory and hard to follow. It really seems they just wanted to condemn the Russian invasion and Patriarch Kirill’s support of it.
However, the “Russian World” does represent an ideology though, at least in the way that Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill describe it. We might say that it’s basically an idea that promotes Russian civilization abroad. That’s an idea that I personally support as long as it’s not coercive. However, for someone like Vladimir Putin, the “Russian World” is also a useful idea that serves a coercive military agenda. As such, it’s now becomes an idea that threatens other nations by aiming to forcibly restore the former boundaries of the Soviet Empire.
The “Russian World” then becomes a conflicting nationalism and posing a problem for all the churches outside of Russia that are connected to the Patriarch of Russia. If there actually is any heresy here, I suspect that it has to do with jurisdictionalism and the acceptable boundaries of a local Orthodox church. There are churches all over the world, on every continent, that are under Patriarch Kirill. While the ROC seemingly condemns papacy, it’s become difficult not to see the ROC as anything but.
Russkiy Mir is no different in essence than Hellenismos. It’s a civilization concept, not a political one.
Freedom and Democracy are thrown around as civilization concepts also, but when backed by the U.S. military they become political concepts that drive foreign policy and oftentimes are rationale for war. War is weapons plus ideas. Hellenismos could be a political concept also if it was, let’s say, the rationale for a Greek invasion of Turkiye. Perhaps Hellenismos even was a political concept when Greece gained independence from the Ottomans.
Hellenism was viewed from ancient times as a civilization as there was never a polity known as Hellas (Greece) until 1830.
(Fun fact: the first King of Greece was a German named Otto.)
I must say it entertaining to see a true Eastern papist criticize the ROC . . . for papism. “Pot calling kettle, over!”
Oh, it’s a war. We have people from both sides evidently on Monomakhos. To me, the decent people are aligning to fight against the Western Liberal LGBT Borg by means of their respective traditional nationalisms. These are not political ideologies in the modern sense but deeper blood and soil mindsets. Western Liberalism is the last of the modern political ideologies (although remnants of libertarianism and communism remain in the West and, of course, fascism remains in the Ukraine).
The line between Liberalism and Traditionalism is pretty clear although a bit blurry if you try to categorize particular characters within the United States across which the line runs. The Establishment Uniparty is on the side of Western Liberalism, MAGA is more leaning toward traditional nationalism. Worldwide, the Anglophone world and the EU are largely Western Liberal as are Japan and South Korea. The rest of the world leans the other way. It is the new Cold War and this time the West constitutes the “baddies”, for the most part.
And a real war it is. If you don’t think so, ask Steve Bannon, Gonzalo Lira or any of the political prisoners persecuted pursuant to J6 or otherwise. The one lacking thing is full mobilization in the West, essentially because it is politically unpalatable. But the propaganda war of lies and repression are there in full display for all to see.
The initial leader of the Greek revolt against the Ottomans, Alexandros Ypsilantis, made the famous declaration in 1821, “Fight for Faith and Country”, calling for Greek Independence. In it, he makes numerous references to Hellenic culture. Here’s a snippet:
“Let us then once again, O brave and magnanimous Hellenes, invite liberty to the classical land of Greece! Let us hold a battle between Marathon and Thermopylae! Let us fight on the tombs of our fathers, who, in order to keep us free, fought and died there! The blood of the tyrants is acceptable to the shades of Epameinondas the Theban and Thrasybulus the Athenian, who routed the thirty tyrants; to the shades of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who crushed the yoke of Peisistratus; to that of Timoleon, who restored liberty in Corinth and Syracuse; and all the more so to those of Miltiades and Themistocles, of Leonidas and his three hundred men, who cut down innumerable times the countless armies of the barbarian Persians, whose most barbarous and cowardly descendants we stand poised today with very little effort to annihilate completely. To arms, then, friends, the Motherland calls us!”
https://greekherald.com.au/culture/history/fight-faith-country-revolutionary-declaration-alexandros-ypsilantis/
Interestingly, this same Alexandros Ypsilantis would be anathematized for this declaration by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory V. Of course it was the Turkish sultan who wanted that declaration condemned since it was a call to war. Perhaps the reason for the Patriarch’s anathema, though, had more to do with protecting the Orthodox Christians who lived in Istanbul.
After the Greek war of independence began, Patriarch Gregory V was serving fully vested in Church on Pascha morning, and the sultan’s men dragged him out of church, lynched him, and hung his corpse on the gate at the entrance to the Phanar. The Hieromartyr Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople had even forseen in a premonition that this would happen to him, but he did not try to flee. His martyrdom probably bore the brunt of the sultan’s anger and saved many lives of Orthodox Christians in Istanbul that day.
https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2023/04/10/100434-hieromartyr-patriarch-gregory-v-of-constantinople
Let it not be forgotten that the US Democratic Party pulled the financial plug on South Vietnam which resulted in subsequent mass murder. The lessons of Vietnam are more complicated than we often suppose.
Russia will decide what becomes of the Ukraine, regardless of what we do. It is tragic that demilitarization means the eradication of large numbers of fighting age males, but that is the price one pays for harboring an anti-Russian coup d’etat right on Russia’s border. And perhaps the whole thing will be a lesson to other former Soviet countries not to follow the Pied Piper of the Potomac.
We will not have a better world in the West until the Uniparty is a memory.
Historical analogies can be tricky. When trying to hammer the square peg of Vietnam into the round hole of Ukraine, I’d argue that America/the West isn’t playing the role of America in Vietnam, but the Soviet Union. Although with much less hands on involvement than the Soviets.
Which makes Russia the Americans, although even that is a bit strained as instead of a war to prop up a corrupt, albeit anti-Communist government, it’s a war of genocidal imperial conquest.
The Ukrainian people have made it clear they do not wish to be Russians and do not want to live under the Kremlin’s heel. Personally, as long as they are willing to fight, I’m happy to help support them in reclaiming their country. From my perspective, those on the ‘other side of the aisle’, from the safety of their homes, seem willing to consign endless Russian sons, husbands, and fathers to an early grave for Moscow’s vainglory ambitions.
Is this video propaganda? Sure. Does it also reflect the spirit of the Ukrainian people? Also yes.
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1662399743514005505
Nate, your analogies fall flat.
First, Russia is not communist, second it’s not bent on a war of “conquest”. Third, the “Ukrainian” people you speak of are not monolithic. You elide over the fact that the Kiev regime has been fighting a war of genocide against fellow Ukrainians for almost 10 years now. Those Ukrainians happen to live in the Crimea and the Donbass. They, like 50% of all Ukrainians in the recent past spoke Russian as their primary language.
Simply put, the differences between Ukrainian and Russian is as genetically, religiously and culturally distinct as are the differences between Sicilians and Italians.
For instance, one of the Ukraine’s major field generals is a “Russian” born in Russia, as was Arestovich, Zelensky’s propaganda minister. Zelensky himself grew up speaking Russian and had to learn Ukrainian for his entertainment career.
Nowhere did I refer to modern Russia as communist, I don’t see where I would give that impression.
I don’t elide over a fact, I disagree with your fundamental premise. The pre-invasion 2014-2022 war in the Donbas never would have happened if the Kremlin hadn’t initiated it, supported it, and when the separatists couldn’t make progress, further escalated it by introducing Russian military personnel passing as separatists. The culpability for those deaths lie at the doorstep of the Kremlin.
At the end of the day, all this reduces to a reality that it was unacceptable to the Kremlin that the Ukrainian people might prefer closer ties to the EU rather than be a puppet state of Russia. This resulted in the seizure of Crimea, the instigation of insurrection in the Donbas, and ultimately a full invasion of Ukraine. An invasion that was supposed to be quick and easy with extensive kill lists of prominent Ukrainian government, religious and societal figures who were to be quickly liquidated and disposed of in mobile crematoriums in an blitzkrieg attempt to annihilate Ukrainian cultural identity.
Ukraine had other ideas. And Ukrainians who might once have had neutral or even warm feelings towards Russia now feel very differently.
“An invasion that was supposed to be quick and easy with extensive kill lists of prominent Ukrainian government, religious and societal figures who were to be quickly liquidated and disposed of in mobile crematoriums in an blitzkrieg attempt to annihilate Ukrainian cultural identity.”
Where is your evidence for this?
Nate you are indeed committing the sin of speaking for the ‘Ukrainian people’ en masse as the Soviets did for the ‘workers and peasants’ back in the day.
My family from Crimea’s opinion in your world doesn’t count, I guess. Nor the many people I spoke to from Ukraine that support the current military operation. You think it’s easy for people who are currently under the rule of Zelensky to publicly display a pro-Russian position? Think what you might of Putin et all, but your vote in Ukraine doesn’t count for much. I’ve talked to people who’ve worked elections there.
When the cue happened in February of 2014, the revolutionary government had the option of conducting a referendum on a potential federalization of Ukraine. It was dismissed outright by them, and for every understandable reasons: it didn’t fit into the objectives of the euroatlantic order which wanted no less than ALL of Ukraine, territorialy, to become free reign for NATO missiles.
If Mexico signed a collective defense treaty with China, allowing the Chinese to stage their missiles within reach of the US mainland, I assure you the Americans would not take to that calmly – even if it were backed by public plebiscite in Mexico.
You can’t have double standards in geopolitics, it doesn’t work long term. The most you can do is use your position of military dominance to scare off your opponent from doing something about it, but that falls apart the moment they see an opportunity to take the initiative. Such happened in 2014, and in 2022.
As far as the pace of war is concerned, no war ever goes as planned. It took the entirety of NATO 78 days to quash a small country like Yugoslavia, and that’s thanks to a very brutal bombing campaign that cared not for civilian targets in the least. It took Franco 3 years to stop the Spanish communists, and that’s with him getting significant aid from the Germans and Italians (Soviet and Mexican help to the Spanish rohos by contrast was much poorer).
Ukraine has the most powerful industrialized countries pumping it with weapons and trained personnel, plus all the diplomatic and media support that comes with. We’re just one year in and at best they have a stalemate on their hands. Check back in a year or two… let’s see how that great offensive is doing.
Russia will settle the whole business to its satisfaction regardless of how we feel about it. They and the Chinese have made it clear that they have the power at this point. The world has changed.
To your point, they’re moving right on through until they take back their ancestral lands. https://beforeitsnews.com/war-and-conflict/2023/05/explosive-situation-in-serbiakosovo-hungaryrussia-pledge-support-vucic-steps-down-huge-rally-2478380.html
How do you feel about that Minsk Agreement?
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/ukraine-the-war-that-went-wrong
Now that Angela Merkel let the cat out of the bag, not so good.
There is a clash of worldviews at work in this conflict. If I were a German in the early 1940’s, the notion that my country could be “the baddies” would be incomprehensible to me. I would see everything through the twisted prism of German “exceptionalism”. That is the situation with the present Ukraine cheerleading crowd. It is incomprehensible that America could be “on the wrong side of history”. It is ideological. Given certain fundamental beliefs about morality and American exceptionalism, you will naturally only see the facts in the best possible light to Ukraine and America, ignore unpleasant facts, and create necessary “facts” regardless of reality. It’s all attitude and emotion.
Much of it is a latent hostility toward Russia that is a holdover from the Cold War. It is also ahistorical. The notion that liberals are the first moral people in all of history is utterly preposterous, but that is the logical corollary of American Imperialism and the operating thesis of Woke-ism.
Western Liberalism is the last surviving ideology. The question is whether all these ideologies are destined for the ash heap of history, or if this ideology is the last final political development of humanity. The former is much more likely than the latter.
In place of ideologies, what has emerged throughout most of the world is the rebirth of traditional cultures that were suppressed by Western Liberalism, Communism and Fascism. The problem in the West is that we are way behind the curve. We still cling to Western Liberalism in spite of the fact that it is a deathstyle rather than a lifestyle. It does not answer the natural aspirations of humanity in spiritual terms; it does not even encourage reproduction at the replacement rate. Instead, it lauds contraception and abortion, feminism and perversion. It is the epitome of self destruction. But it seems modern and scientific and many cannot conceive of any other mindset or worldview. All other worldviews are seen as archaic and passe and beneath the intellects of modern people.
This is a recipe for a hard rain falling. And the Ukraine War is the current flashpoint in that clash of mindsets.
This is pretty good. It dates the present radicalization of the government to the beginning of the Obama administration.
I think it was a long time coming; however, he may be right that the Left gained decisive control of the government in 2009. But it was always in the hands of liberals, back to FDR. It’s just that these liberals are more radical.
Of course, neither the world nor more than half of America will stand for it indefinitely.
Good article. My grandmother always warned me about the “process of little steps.”
mRNA influenza vaccine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUJ7pnw9F3A
[Video – 15:10]
Dr John Campbell:
“Too many unanswered questions.
Too much upfront money. … “
Covid-19 vaccination can induce multiple sclerosis via cross-reactive
CD4+ T cells recognizing SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and myelin peptides
https://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/global-literature-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/resource/pt/covidwho-2138820?lang=en
Discussion by Dr John Campbell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9S2jooTxkQ
[Video – 16:50]
A bunch of non-compliant COVID info on lewcromwell.
Lew Rockwell?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/
Researchers Hid Data Showing Fluoride Lowers Kids’ IQs, Emails Reveal
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/researchers-hid-data-fluoride-lower-iq/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender&utm_id=20230530
‘ A team of pro-fluoride researchers led by California’s dental director
intentionally omitted data from a study seeking to undermine
the forthcoming National Toxicology Program (NTP) report
linking fluoride exposure to neurodevelopmental damage in children,
according to documents released last week.
The documents — obtained through a California public records search
and posted in a press release by the Fluoride Action Network —
show that the team, led by Dr. Jayanth V. Kumar, a dental surgeon,
conducted a meta-analysis of the scientific literature on fluoride’s neurotoxicity
and found a link between fluoride exposure and lowered IQ
in children at low levels of exposure.
However, they omitted the data and wrote a paper
concluding there was no evidence of a link. … ‘
Another “conspiracy theory” bites the dust. But not in the way the DS wants, is it?
BTW, the theory about fluoridating water being a bad thing goes all the way back to before the days of Dr Strangelove. (Great movie.)
Peter Sellers played three parts in Dr Strangelove:
the RAF Group Captain, the President and the mad Doctor.
He was to have played the B52 bomber pilot as well but,
because he had sprained his ankle, Slim Pickens got the gig.
Sellers was stellar! When I was much younger, I could recite entire swaths of dialogue from that movie. My favorite was when the President called his Soviet counterpart and said “Dmitri, one of our generals went and did a silly thing…”
Much of Sellers’ dialogue was made up on the spot,
particularly that of the President with the Soviet leader
whose side of the conversation is never heard,
except by Sellers in his fantastical imagination…
“Hello Dimitri…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEB-OoUrNuk
[Video – 02:32]
Here is a lesson worth learning…
Cambridge Union | Rafe Heydel-Manko:
Britain Should NOT Pay Reparations for Slavery & Colonialism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr0wMmbVk5Q
[Video – 12:58]
Darn! We could use the money, too!