Ah, Europe. I really love Europe. But it’s a continent of assholes. If there is a way to fuck up the world, Europe has found every crack and sliver there is to do it.
The brave new world seems very much like the old, except with the false bravado and fake reality of social media.
Theres a big thing playing out in real life called “Why the Ukraine is Putins Fault”.
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We can all agree that this is a horrendous tragedy and that Russia is the perpetrator. That goes without saying. I’m not doing whataboutism, I’m making no excuse for any preemptive war. I’m simply asking why the Ukraine leadership thought they could successfully integrate with the west.
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China did more today, they expressly blamed NATO…
No argument here.
Yes, and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs quoted him as their “explanation” for the war. He’s an useful idiot at best, with a track record of naive, failed predictions and no understanding of either Russia or Ukraine. Literally every person on the street of any Eastern European capital is more realist about Russia.
You’re denying people their agency in a democracy. Ukrainian people simply didn’t want to be a part of a Russian kleptocratic sphere - they saw that the Poles were 4x better off after leaving the Russian yoke.
The Germans among others were shameful, but there was some really atrocious messaging from the WH in the lead up - evacuating the entire embassy from Kyiv (US is a non-belligerent, fearing another state actor), telegraphing “imminent collapse of Kyiv” and so forth. Their messages of impotence were almost designed to entice Putin to invade.
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With the second biggest gas processing system in the world, and some beautiful real estate on the Black Sea, they really do have a lot to offer.
I dont know why the rest of europe is such a bunch of cunts.
The cynical part of me says that the more developed western countries like having a buffer of people and land that they consider expendable between them and a psychopathic communist dictator.
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This article is from 2006, so 16 years ago. The Poles were acutely aware that this was laying groundwork for offensive action against other European countries, while the Germans and the French were dismissing them as “russophobic” and “hysterical”. Mind you, Ukraine was then under Russian orbit so another country would be on the table.
I’m not denying any country it’s agency. I agree every country and every person in this world should have the right to self determination. Not arguing any of that, simply asking about strategy. I’ll read up more about that lecturer, but his points sounded convincing to me. He did predict Ukraine would get wrecked, so he was right about that much.
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Or Washington doesn’t want Europe to have too tight economic relationship with Russia, and fed the flames of conflict any way it could…
I am so sick of meaningless platitudes. Wars are fought and won, but it’s the regular folk that suffer the most. The people egging it on don’t fight it and don’t have to see it, they get to hide from it and cozy up to the victors claiming they were on their side the whole time. In Afghanistan, the taliban won.
This war is a powder keg waiting to blow. The people in high places think they can control it and they cannot. And it has a potential and a probability to get out of hand real quick.
And the economic devastation won’t be felt just by the russian people.
Our government has happily offered us up as tribute and we are a hair’s breath away from losing the petro-dollar and losing the status of the world’s reserve currency. And if that happens, the trillions of dollars printed in the last year won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.
The implications beyond hot, kinetic conflict can be just as devastating. The economic ramifications of losing the petro-dollar and reserve currency status has the potential to turn our lights out literally and figuratively. And we have nobody taking the situation seriously it’s all bluster and bad-assery. We are negotiating with the likes of Venezuela and Iran for energy as if it’s a good idea. And the US’s response? We send Kamala. The Vice President, in charge of keeping the world and the U.S. safe from real danger. The same person who explained the war thusly, verbatim:
“So, Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong, and it goes against everything that we stand for.”
That scares the hell out of me. We are silly people about to get the outcomes silly people often get.
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“Wow. I am so shocked.” I say sarcastically. That must make Lebron feel a little uneasy… Oh wait.
I think this short video perfectly encapsulates the grim acceptance these people are faced with. There’s nothing emotional here. Russian won’t stop unless they’re stopped. If they succeed, the best Ukrainians can expect is to end up as part of a criminal fiefdom of a Chechen drug lord where murder and rape come in endless succession, as happened in the breakaway “republics”. So why not go out fighting?
For a country that fetishizes guns and “freedom” I’m rather mystified by the occasional lack of understanding of these facts by some Americans.
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Does Europe want that tight of an economic relationship with Russia?
Or was it just Merkel unilaterally letting Putin run his pipeline all up in Germanys shit, against the will or desires of the rest of Europe!
clutches pearls, dives for the fainting couch
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Granted. But the west has a job to do here and they are making it worse by all accounts and this is a situation that cannot tolerate any fuck ups. And we’re giving a master class and how to make a bad situation worse. If it were just a Ukrainian problem, that would be bad enough. Prudent people would be working on de-escalation because they realize the massive stakes. But we have clowns and morons happy to have another crisis to exploit to ram their soon to be short lived agenda’s down our throats while we are distracted.
And Putin deserves credit for one thing. He cured covid.
We should have just let Germany take over Europe in the 40s. Who cares if they didn’t want to be Nazis. Look what happened. Their people died and their cities were destroyed. Better for all those 96-year-olds who weren’t going to have to be Nazis for very long to just go along with Hitler.
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Those on the Western end of the continent did, figuring that there’s enough cannon fodder between them and the occasionally psychotic bear in the East. Russian oligarchs poured billions into European economies, from expensive apartments in London to villas in the south of France, not to mention lucrative “consulting” gigs and cushy make believe jobs for Western European politicians after their term in office ended. All Russian megayachts were built in German and Italian shipyards.
Those that knew in the East were screaming into the void.
A fucking KGB officer, son of a KGB officer bought himself a lordship two years ago. Because why the fuck not.
Yeah, there are billions of euros, er, reasons for the inaction we’ve seen thusfar.
Rips about purse swinging, nail chipping, and verbal queefs aside, the European elite really are a bunch of greedy, licentious, arrogant shitbags that luxuriate in the spilling of other peoples blood.
I really wouldn’t mind seeing some of theirs get spilled too, but the pragmatist in me says that will just never happen.
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Kozyrev knows what he’s talking about
“One thing among many I admire about the American character is your ability to look into what you did and to be very, very critical of your mistakes,” Kozyrev says, in what I’m right to assume is a slightly philosophical preliminary to an incoming polemic. “Like when Congress unanimously passed a ban on any kind of lynching. It’s a little late, but it’s important because it’s a form of national repentance. That’s what Russia doesn’t do. Russia doesn’t repent. It hasn’t really for Stalinism or for cutting a deal with Hitler. Instead, it blames Ukraine for Nazism, which is ridiculous.”
As to the pundits and policy mandarins who think the West sleepwalked into this crisis, which now threatens to bleed out beyond the borders of Russia and Belarus and Ukraine, Kozyrev thinks that’s simply nonsense. “Unfortunately, there are many wishful thinkers especially in academia here and intellectuals who have ties to Russia. They go to Valdai [a Russian think tank forum]. They consume caviar and vodka and are treated like kings by those who exist solely to manipulate them. This argument about NATO is just propaganda fed to Americans who then regurgitate it in their opinion and journal essays. The only real analysts who come here from Russia are dissidents. The rest are front people, just like in the Soviet Union, and they manufacture Western champions of the Putin regime, chumps and useful idiots.”
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I can’t believe that Putin actually blew that one about NATO agression past so many people.
I know that the general public are a bunch of functionally illiterate dildos fed a constant stream of titilating horse shit, but THAT!?!
Fuck…
Its a master class in international crybullying.
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