GM

After a nights sleep and now catching up on Zelenskyy's Fox interview. I'm going to focus on the media first.

1. X despite its criticism from many parties, including us here on NOSTR showed full unedited videos from the Whitehouse and Fox news while my own countries media, newspaper websites and legacy TV just showed photos or tiny clips with their own interpretation.

This is the problem we are all aware of. Give me the information, let me understand it directly, let me form my own opinion and then, if you absolutely have to, tell me your opinion. But I'm really not interested in your opinion.

So my views on the situation.

I've talked about the "Both sides being right" scenario many times and I first wrote about it in an article in 2016:

https://mikehardcastle.com/2016/09/08/sometimes-both-sides-are-right/

Russia have never wavered from the line that Ukraine joining NATO is unacceptable.

Europe (and previously the US) wanted Ukraine in NATO for its strategic position.

Ukraine fears its independence and so feels safer under NATO's umbrella.

This has played out with the current conflict and unless we want to escalate this to a world war, has resulted in a stalemate.

Ukraine is the sacrificial pawn, it, through no fault of its own is destined to pay a price.

Zelenskyy has yet to come to terms with this.

He will have to bow to America pressure and Trumps will, but he is not yet ready to do so.

I can understand this. Accepting loss is difficult.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

He needs to stop turning up everywhere in combat gear and put on a suit. He’s a shit actor, at least pretend to be a president. And let everyone see how much he’s profited from the laundered billions eh

Yeh, that was a bit weird.

At that level a suit, even if you don't wear it around your own palace is a sign of respect for your host.

And for representing your country

And have have elections, let his people decide how great he is

without currently nobbling any opposition leaders too

πŸ‘€

I switched to Damus to get the eyes emoji

I'm on Primal and can't find the 100% Emoji

Laughing face will have to do πŸ˜‚

πŸ˜‚ i could but I’ll laugh instead

nothing wrong with wearing merch being a YouTuber

I think that Ukraine will simply pay the price of Musk needing its minerals.

If it is easier done by Trump aligning with Russia and unlawfully dissolving Ukraine then this is how it will happen.

It would look better for the USA if it were wrapped in bullshit of saving Ukraine but it will be done either way.

Musk has invested in making the USA president, now he wants his return on investment.

Books to read for a better understanding:

Scott Horton - Provoked

Glenn Diesen - The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order

Jacques Baud - The Russian Art of War (How the West led Ukraine to defeat)

Yes. This whole situation sucks for the people of Ukraine.... it has for a very long time.

From the perspective of the U.S., my question since the start of this war has been: is maintaining Ukraine's sovereignty vital to our national security? To be honest, I'm not smart enough to know the answer to this binary question. But, I am convinced that our half-assed involvement hasn't done (and almost never does) anyone any good (except for maybe the weapons dealers).

My best friend is Ukranian, he came to the UK when he was 12 years old, but has extended family and many friends in the Odessa region, a place called Chornomorsk.

We all went to his wedding there in 2007 and were going back in 2014 before it all kicked off.

My friend hates Russia and I have to respect how this affects him personally and the affect it is having on his family.

When he is not around, I have very different conversations with his English wife.

I got a fresh perspective when I visited Warsaw for a halving party April last year. We did a vintage bus tour around the city and it was explained how they are surrounded by countries that are opposed to each other. As a result Poland has regularly been the battleground and the victim in the many conflicts that have surrounded it.

Sometimes victims are inevitable.

It's easy to say that sometimes victims are inevitable when it's not your victims

True, but also still true.

Giving Ukraine to Russia wouldn't mean the end of victims because they don't treat conquered people well (as Donetsk and Donbas showed). We'll see what EU countries will come up with

I think we think very differently.

I generally don't like divisive statements like "them or us" or assumptive statements or assumptive conclusions based on biased observations.

I am unwilling, perhaps unable to pick apart your statements to the extent needed to submit a valid supporting or opposing view.

It's okay. We probably wouldn't get to any interesting shared point and we'd spend far too much time to discover that

Agreed

We're too old for that πŸ˜…

I have a Ukrainian friend, and she teaches me Russian, as it's her native language. She lives in Kharkov, the second biggest city after Kiev. I get the impression that most citizens of Kharkov consider themselves Russian, as they are Russian speakers. She never talks of herself as a victim, although I know that the war has made life for her family far more difficult (and that is an understatement). Victims are inevitable, but thinking of yourself as a victim is not inevitable.

Ukraine sadly appears to be getting punished for the color revolution(s) that were fomented within it by the British and American Deep State. Remember Victoria Nuland's "fuck the EU" leaked phone call? Even the Guardian, as left as it is, calling Yanukovych's election free and fair. They had to resort to force to install a regime that would accept IMF terms for access to its resources, rather than the frankly much more fair terms on which Russia had offered a loan. And would being left alone to self govern be better? Sure -- but nobody gets that luxury in the world; everyone deals with the consequences of having resources that are desired by others. Some do it by expending vast resources on building up militaries, and others do it by making concessions to those nations that have done so. The sort of sovereignty some profess to wish for for Ukraine isn't something that exists for anyone except those who don't have anything left to take. With wealth comes a need to defend that wealth.

As for making deals, well...the outcome of the war will perhaps be the best indicator of which one was the wiser option. It seems there was a lot of resentment left over from the Soviet days, particularly from the crowd that uh, sided with Stalin's greatest adversary (and I don't mean Churchill). Russia always had more of a will to defend its position than the Americans and English had to take it, and the rest of Europe is barely a footnote for how diminished they've become anyway. But I'm not sure this is a surprise to those in the halls of western power. Perhaps it was well enough to make Russia commit to an expensive, destabilizing war. Britain has been trying to take down Russia for the last 500 years, and the idea that they'd blink over the deaths of a few million slavs is wishful thinking. To both destabilize Ukraine AND get the other European powers to step up their military spending to form a buffer, and to give up the ambitions Merkel had with trading much more with Russia? Seems like they've largely gotten what they wanted. And America was there to pay for it, as usual.

In Go, if you can make your opponent spend a lot of stones in a small space, while you are able to build up more strong shape in a spread out fashion, that's considered a good trade, as your opponent ends up boxed in, and you end up with a strong position to project power from.That seems to be what has happened in this particular region of the world. Though, geopolitics is a lot more multidimensional and with more players than the relatively simple game of Go. What will be interesting to see is what the longer term ramifications will be to the fact that the sanctions appear to have been an overstep, particularly with regard to the Treasuries and the SWIFT system. Perhaps that's all part of the plan, but if it is, that seems a bit less obvious to me at this point. Looks a lot more like an own goal.

Anyway, I'm grateful that nobody wants me to really weigh in on the overall governance of the world. And I'm grateful that my own country's current administration seems to be finally growing a backbone and refusing to finance Britain's ambitions, at least in this particular matter. Now, if they'd do the same in occupied Palestine, we might be getting somewhere, but I'm not holding my breath on that front. Thankfully, the resolve of the resistance seems to be at least as strong as the Vietnamese had, with better armaments, and likely a more sound ideology and resolve to back it up. It'd be nice to see the bloodshed stop, but given that they're fighting for the hereafter against an army of conscripts fighting for lies they've been sold and promises of stolen land, it does seem evident that at least eventually, they'll emerge victorious. What remains to be seen is how many more resources, and how much worse a position the US ends up getting itself in, to prove it. I'm sure it'll work out for the parasites getting rich off of the war effort though, with their subsidized costs and privatized gains. The only way they stand to lose is to have the money printer torn from them -- and for that, we are here.

Err, I mean, GM.