Bullies and liars. A wonderful park with an open restaurant!
20220415
Everybody hates a bully. Russia has traditionally been just that. Imperial Russia bullied its ethnic minorities. The Soviets bullied both their own people and those of their Eastern European satellites. Theodore Dalrymple said that "In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.
He went on to add “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small." It is the woke religion in the United States. Which people likewise resent, Elon Musk has the twitterati all atwitter as he threatens to restore free speech.
At any rate, everybody cheers when a bully takes it on the chin. The way Russia just did with the sinking of the Moskva – their Black Sea flagship.
Ukraine has been suffering for one and a half months under a rain of guided missiles launched from that boat. They are not sufficiently accurate for pinpoint targeting. While they have taken out military targets, they have also destroyed a number of bigger, easier to hit civilian targets, resulting in large scale civilian casualties.
It appeared that Ukraine was impotent to prevent it. Not so! I read with great pleasure that the Moskva sunk sank this morning after having been hit by two missiles on Thursday.
Of course, Russia lied about it. Lying is in their blood. The fact that this one is so blatant calls into question their other recent lies. They have been claiming that the Azov Battalion rocketed the train station in Kramatorsk, killing 84 civilians trying to flee. That's ridiculous. They have been lying that the atrocities in Bucha were staged or committed by Ukrainians. The more transparent the lies, the easier they are to dismiss. The lie that the Moskva suffered a fire is over the top outrageous. It puts Russia's other lies in a bad light. You can't believe anything they say.
If there were any shame in journalism, it would put Paul Craig Roberts and the other writers at Unz out of business. These supposed conservatives owe the liberals a debt of gratitude for so eroding the standards of journalism that they may still have careers when this is all over.
Some of Russia's lies do contain a grain of truth. I explained to Oksana yesterday that whatever went on with Ukrainian biolabs, it's obvious that Hunter Biden was involved, and president Zelensky is almost obliged to deny their existence. Hunter Biden was making money from the Biolabs. Zelensky either had to support the American lies or risk alienating one of his major benefactors – Joe Biden. In a case like that, you have to lie.
That's not the only lie that is being told here in Ukraine. Money is flooding into the country on account of this war, and weapons as well. Those armaments will of course enrich the military-industrial complex in the United States, which had an interest both in instigating this war, and in seeing it perpetuated. People will get rich off this war, and Zelensky will be obliged to lie about it. That's politics.
I wrote that I have changed my mind about the way this war needs to end. I had started out hoping for a relatively quick armistice, observing that Ukraine could afford to give up a little bit of land. I am now convinced that my wife was right. You cannot dissuade a bully, and no number of concessions would have bought any sort of permanent peace with Russia. They must be decisively defeated.
Therefore, I am forced to be on the side of the bully United States as it arms Ukraine to fight off the bully Russia. I hope that the arms include shore to ship missiles and we sink the entire Russian Black Sea fleet. I hope that they include enough antitank missiles and artillery to wipe out Russian armor. If we don't do it now, I believe Oksana is right that they will be back. This battle must be decisive. I agree with Peter Zeihan's analysis of how the tide has shifted.
The United States has a well-deserved reputation as the bully of Latin America, and much of the rest of the world as well. The United States throws its weight around where it shouldn't. Everywhere in my travels through Latin America the people spoke with fear and disgust about the See-A. The CIA. That's another story for another time. For right now we have to be glad that the bully of the West is helping us pummel the bully of the East, that we in Ukraine may survive. Only, of course, to have the United States bully us some more.
Ukraine is familiar with United States bullying. Joe Biden bullied ex-President Victor Poroshenko to get rid of anti-corruption prosecutor Victor Shokin when he was putting heat on gas company Burisma, which had the protection of Joe Biden's son Hunter. This was absolute bullying by Joe Biden, and it worked. He even bragged about it.
The United States will certainly bully Ukraine with regard to armaments and other things. This is part of the game of international diplomacy. Ukraine was better situated when it was positioned between the bullies, but the one bully has gone overboard and we will now have only the other two to deal with – the United States and China, with understudies such as NATO and the EU. We can hope and pray that they collapse of its own weight before their impact is too great. We do not want our agricultural lands to be stolen or our children to be Disnified.
I took the day off yesterday. My email server was out all morning. I didn't even get the notice that Bob Homans hadn't written anything. The family took an outing to Park Pobeda (Victory Park – full of Soviet era monuments, but we must now call it by its Ukrainian name) to enjoy the wonderful playgrounds.
I write every now and again about the parks here. There are no disgruntled minorities or drug dealers to mess them up. They are full of young apartment-dwelling mothers taking their children out for some fresh air. These moms are not whatsoever apprehensive of strangers. Hearing English is a novelty, and they sometimes will strike up a conversation. The people take pride in the parks and respect the playground equipment. It is extensive and all in wonderful condition. There are few graffiti, and if there is such a thing as mild graffiti, this would be the definition.
On a hunch I walked a couple minutes out of our way to ask if the barbecue restaurant in the park would be open. Yes! It would open at noon. We played for 45 minutes and then enjoyed a lunch of the national favorite dish, the Ukrainian kebab called shashlik, washed down with Pepsi-Cola. It was the first open restaurant we have seen since the war started.
Despite their reduced schedule we had great luck with buses both coming and going. The one to Livoberezhna arrived just as we got into our corner, and from there to the park after just a couple of minutes. Oksana had a moment of concern on our return trip, as the bus that she expected would go due north turned east. I smiled and explained it to her. It had to be the 70 bus, which has to turn right because there is no left turn, but does a U-turn and would bring us even closer to home. That's exactly what happened.
The upshot is that I didn't get anything written yesterday, didn't do any shopping and didn't get on the exercise bicycle.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the news seems to be getting better by the day. Today the strong men are relaxed and up for more accomplishments. The good-looking women are back in the garden, and the kids are talking more hopefully about when life will be normal again.
Unz has been the US branch of the Duginist Strategic Culture Foundation in this matter from the outset - and other US conservative sites - American Thinker, American Greatness, to name a few - are picking that junk up and repeating it and basing opinions on it. They're the same bunch who have had the wool pulled over their eyes by Dugin's Fourth Political Theory - if they'd read his Foundations of Geopolitics, they'd have an entirely different perspective - or at least I'd hope so.
As to the US role in this, I'm pretty close to where you stand - I think the US set Ukraine up to take a fall, the approach seems to have been "take the money and run" and then cry crocodile tears when Zelensky got removed and the Russians took over after the expected three-day blitzkrieg and fall of the Ky'iv government. Unfortunately for that narrative, Ukraine fought back hard and fought back successfully, and continues to fight back. If that hadn't been the case, I think we'd be looking at a broader war in Europe, starting with the Baltic states, then going down into Poland, then the rest of the old Warsaw Pact, perhaps Austria as well. Now, that appears to be impossible, and it's due to the brave resistance and success of the Ukrainian people. And I think Russia will have to be driven out of Crimea, although after the sinking of the Moskva, that base at Sevastopol may not be such an asset after all - it's definitely in range, and other warships coming out of there - or even at anchor - could meet the same fate - and if I were in charge of a few more cruise missiles, I'd take as many shots as I could which I thought would have a good chance of success at showing that Sevastopol was by no means some sort of "protected anchorage". In any case, any sort of Russian garrison on Crimea would be a threat, and should be eliminated.
As for the organized crime syndicate also known as the Democratic Party - and its weak-kneed semi-opposition (and too often, partner in crime) known as the Republican Party - and the criminal elements in the US National Security State, it's almost worse here than in Ukraine, although we don't quite have oligarchs with private armies - that latter part is played by the CIA and has been from the outset in 1947 (and before that: https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html) But these are people that will have to be dealt with in order to restore freedom, in every place where oligarchies and national security states exist - and the one cannot exist without the other. And it's British mercantilism we fought in the Revolutionary War, along with the Crown and its armies. The oligarchs of whatever sort and the national security states are their modern day counterparts, they seek the same goals - personal enrichment through the enslavement of people and the robbery of the fruits of their labor - and accomplish this by unjust and oppressive laws and enforcement by whatever means of the same, whether this be by physical force, psychological manipulation, or both.
Just had a look at the UNZ review.
Apparently, Ukraine is utterly defeated with almost 100% of its armour and helicopters destroyed. Apparently, Ukrainian soldiers are 'Gay Satanic Terrorists'.
Apparently, Ukrainians 'are fighting for the single most Jewish government in the world outside of Israel, which is teaching gay sex and trannyism to their children in kindergarten.'
But not to worry, 'Russia is going to help them get back on their feet. Russia has already committed to that. '
Serious question, have the writers at UNZ actually suffered some sort of mental or emotional breakdown? I'm not being snide, their writing is so divergent from reality that I think this is a matter of psychological concern.