Happy angel birthday to Abraham Lincoln. I am so old that I remember when his birthday was a national holiday.
Actually, a decade younger, and I remember those days too.
Lot of beautiful women and a lot of talented people.
Feb 12th is when my father was inducted in Army. Just 65 days or so after Pearl Harbor sneak attack. Could America mobilize that quickly today?
Ohhh, my knees!
Thanks. I always like to watch the Russian dancers. Noticed that the Women had boots on and “slapped” the heels but the Men had more of a soft shoe.
Thank you for reminding me that it was Lincoln’s birthday. I don’t pay much attention to dates anymore but we should.
Yes Richard, my knees hurt too watching them. With one knee being artificial and the other headed that way, I was very envious.
Just another open-thread comment about something I read.
Two days ago, Dmitri Alperovitch wrote a detailed explanation of his opinion that Putin’s threat to invade Ukraine isn’t a bluff (https://tinyurl.com/33dc6ja2). Alperovitch said that he expected the invasion to start in 10-12 days. I have no idea what’s going on inside Putin’s head, but I have to admit that Alperovitch sounds convincing. If he’s right, we’ll soon see how NATO forces respond, how Russian forces respond to that, and so on.
Needless to say, a war with Russia makes me very uncomfortable. As a schoolboy, reading about the causes of World War I, I learned about the dangers of entangled alliances. Of course, I’m not predicting WWIII will start in Ukraine, but I do think that US foreign policy analysts need to reduce our various alliance commitments. There’s a long way between our current position and neo-isolationism, and now would be a good time to start moving towards a more rational policy that clearly expresses American interests. In this particular case, I think that the US should guarantee no NATO involvement in Ukraine, in return for a guarantee of no Russian invasion.
P.S. Yesterday, at his blog “Marginal Revolution,” Tyler Cowen linked to Alperovitch’s brief essay. I’d never heard of him. He describes himself as the chairman of “Silverado Policy Accelerator,” which is supposed to be a think tank with a venture capital approach. Sounds awful, but I’m just a magpie.
When my mom was in labor, the nurses tried to give her some medication to slow the labor so they wouldn’t have to call in the doctor. Nope, didn’t happen since mom didn’t want any unnecessary drugs and she didn’t want me on Friday the 13th. So, I was born on Thursday, February 12th. I think I heard that story every year!
As a kid, if I didn’t get a birthday card from my grandmother on Lincoln’s birthday, I didn’t worry since I would get one on Washington’s birthday on the 22nd. That also became a family story….
Also born on 2/2/1809 was Charles Darwin. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was born on 2/12/65. It’s interesting to check to see who else was born on your birthday..
And, I miss not having my birthday as a national holiday!
” I think that the US should guarantee no NATO involvement in Ukraine, in return for a guarantee of no Russian invasion.”
Tulsi Gabbard said on Tucker last night that the whole crisis would go away if Biden would just tell Putin there would be no admission of Ukraine into NATO.
Of course with the sleazy history of Hunter and Joe vis-a-vis Ukraine, Joe probably wants the invasion to cover his own culpability.
but I do think that US foreign policy analysts need to reduce our various alliance commitments.
SEATO (dissolved, 1977); Baghdad Pact / CENTO (dissolved 1979); mutual security treaty with Taiwan (abrogated 1979). Census of American troops posted abroad < 200,000, as low as it has been since 1940.
Meanwhile, China is threatening Taiwan and Russia is threatening the Ukraine. Russia is also issuing demands to the NATO powers that they expel every member of NATO admitted between 1997 and 2004. This is perfectly gratuitous on the part of both parties, I should note. Neither Taiwan nor the Ukraine as is has been causing trouble for Russia, China, or anyone else. Russia has been harassing the Ukraine for the last eight years, in the course of that wrecking the electoral base of the Russophile political parties in the Ukraine; its latest round of diplomatic moves have induced Sweden and Finland to consider joining NATO because Russia has proved itself less than benign. Russia has been a bull in a China shop, so, of course, you have paleotrash / Sailerite types contending this is all the fault of Victoria Nuland.
The left, in other words, is going for the jugular with redistricting; the Republicans, on the other hand, are with rare exception playing tiddlywinks.
OK, it’s Breitbart red meat. But one can win 4 or 5 battles and still lose the war by losing the most important battle.
My unresearched impression of various news items is that when the courts step into this fray, they always side with the Dems. Big surprise.
Tulsi Gabbard said on Tucker last night that the whole crisis would go away if Biden would just tell Putin there would be no admission of Ukraine into NATO.
Did it occur to you that Tulsi might not be better informed than Joe Blow loitering on Ala Moana Boulevard?
I used to follow the Russian blogger Anatoly Karlin (until he banned me). Interesting to view of the mindset of Russian nationalists participating in English-language discussion fora. (Which Sailerite / palaeotrash types then recycle in fora like this). The essential view of these Russian nationalists and their American bully’s-little-pal’s is that the Ukraine is ‘fake and gay’ and that the eastern Ukraine is Russian while the western Ukraine consists of degenerate Poles. They also fancy that Ukrainians are congenitally stupid and have to be ruled from Moscow because they cannot accomplish anything on their own. So, with all the tasks Russia might have as a collectivity, their priority is that Russia conquer the eastern Ukraine (some want the whole enchilada). That the Ukraine has no political parties advocating re-integration with Russia and that social survey research indicates that perhaps 4% of the resident population favors re-integration interests them not at all. The share of the Ukrainian public which favors a Russophile orientation in foreign relations has declined from north of 40% to perhaps 16% in the last ten years. These characters and their bully’s-little-pals wave this away, contending the survey respondents are intimidated, or that the elections are all stage-managed by Victoria Nuland and her minions, or that if you just stomp on everyone and give them better pensions, they’ll fall into line.
To what degree the Russian public adheres to any of this rubbish I couldn’t begin to guess. We should be alive to the possibility that it’s influencing the decision-making class. Steve Sailer wants to pretend this is all security-conscious reason-of-state moves because you know, Riga is so and so many miles from St. Petersburg.
OK, it’s Breitbart red meat. But one can win 4 or 5 battles and still lose the war by losing the most important battle.
Has Karl Rove been of consequence anywhere anytime in the last 16 years?
Another piece of evidence that higher education is a collecting pool of sectaries. We might just quit subsidizing it and strip them of their social function of sorting the labor market. Republican state legislators will do nothing, of course.
Richard Aubrey…KNEES was my first thought too watching the men backward squatting kangaroo hop into the circle. Have mercy!
An old college friend majored in Dance, and was quite devoted to it, but her dreams were scuppered by her generous poitrine and derrière. Her husband didn’t mind.
Russia really has nothing at all to lose if he invades Ukraine. NATO , already a joke before Biden, is more of a joke now.
NATO will do nothing of substance.
The Germans pretty much have said they will not do anything to assist NATO and the Germans have allowed themselves (intentionally of course) to become dependent upon Russian natural gas.
Germany wishes to move to solar/wind and cease using natural gas, unless of course, they can obtain the natural gas from Russia. That they have no problems with because they then do not have to buy it from the USA.
Note that Olaf Schultz is a long time socialist which has to inform his views of the USA and Russia (i.e.; the Germans simply resent the USA; always have, always will).
After Putin’s invasion of the Crimea – during Obama’s administration – Putin learned that combining an Obama / Biden with a joke of a NATO , gives him a free pass to do whatever he wishes.
And he will.
Putin will not stop there; he can take Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia within one week
and once that’s done, he has resurrected the former Western part of the USSR. Finland’s border with Russia is all Russia needs to force Finland to bend to their demands; no invasion needed.
Sweden, as usual, will once again rebuild their very potent defense force, if they have not yet done so. The Swedes survived Stalin and Hitler; they know how to take care of themselves.
China’s economy,, unlike Russia’s, survives on exports. Sanctions would really hurt China if they decided to take Taiwan AND if, and only if, the “west ” imposed severe economic sanctions on China.Whether or not the “west” would do so, is another story.
Russia’s export $$$ are about 50% dependent upon oil/gas; they don’t produce much of anything that other nations want . Now that they W.Europe dependent upon their energy supply, economic sanctions against Russia won’t be too much of a bother, esp. if they have captured new lands and their productive capacity.
Europe, less the UK, regardless of what Russia does, will just accept the new paradigm and get on with life as usual post Russian hegemony of Ukraine, the Baltics and Finland, Recall that during the Yugoslavia civil war / break up, it was the USA that had to “encourage” NATO / the “west” to get off it’s ass and do something.
Why the USA is in NATO absolutely baffles me. The “sophisticated” Europeans , who never pass up the opportunity to turn their nose up at the mention of America , cannot seem to move away from their past – one war after another for the past 500 years (1000 years?)
The USA should look at Brazil, Costa Rica, etc., – nations that never get involved in the affairs of other nations, and emulate the foreign policies of those nations.
The only “real” friends the USA has, more or less, are the other english speaking nations; the UK, Australia, NZ (maybe), Canada . I guess one can toss into this pan Japan (for now, because of China’s threat to Japan) S.Korea, Poland.
Regardless, these “friends” understand that with Bidet and his ilk running the show, the USA is a totally unreliable, untrustworthy partner, that will abandon them at the first signs of any difficulty.
Just ask the Ukrainians.
Putin has big ambitions. He wants to rebuild the Russian Empire. He’s pretty convinced that Biden will huff and puff, but not do anything drastic.
He is, however, violating the terms of the Budapest Memorandum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
“The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.”
“In 2009, Russia and the United States released a joint statement that the memorandum’s security assurances would still be respected after the expiration of the START Treaty.[6]”
So, Putin is exposed as violating the Budapest Memorandum. And the U.S. and UK, who pledged to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty, are exposed as paper tigers if they don’t s stand up to Putin. I suppose Putin would say he never would have agreed to the Budapest Memorandum, so he doesn’t recognize it. Such a thug.
The memorandum calls for the UN to get involved. They did when Putin annexed Crimea. They condemned it. 🙂 No one wants to go to war with a nuclear power and Putin knows it.
I’m amazed no one has been talking about the Budapest Memorandum. I guess it’s just another piece of paper that thugs like Putin can ignore and our State Department ignores as well.
All that said, IMO, if Putin invades and occupies the country, he can expect endless guerilla warfare ala the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He will have to spend blood and treasure the Russians can ill afford. Does he recognize that? Maybe.
Sovereign nations should be free to join whatever defensive alliances they choose. That’s why it makes sense to oppose the idea of Ukraine never joining NATO. On the other hand, Putin won’t live forever. And a memorandum stating that Ukraine will not join NATO in the foreseeable future might defuse the situation for now. Another piece of paper, but if it forestalls the killing, why not give it a try?
Had Obama hit Putin and his oligarch buddies with crushing sanctions after the annexation of Crimea, it’s likely none of this would be going down. That Obama rolled over on that exercise, gives Putin the idea that Joe will roll over too. But who knows?
This seems like it should be a pretty big deal. Spying on the president.
Hmm…the Russian says, “Night on Bald Mountain,” but while it sounds similar to my memory of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountaiin,” it doesn’t match closely.
Wiki quotes:
____________________________
I need hardly remind the reader that the orchestral piece universally known as ‘Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain’ is an orchestral composition by Rimsky-Korsakov based on the later version of the Bare Mountain music which Mussorgsky prepared for Sorochintsy Fair.
—Gerald Abraham, musicologist and an authority on Mussorgsky, 1945
____________________________
Interesting. Lovely dance in any event.
Putin has big ambitions. He wants to rebuild the Russian Empire
You mean reconquer and area which has a population which equals that of Russia and a productive capacity that might equal about half of Russia’s? An area where the share of the population which is Great Russian is in the low single digits? An area populated stem-to-stern with people who’ve acquired the idea that sovereignty is their birthright? Sounds like a plan.
Russia really has nothing at all to lose if he invades Ukraine.
The troops and their families might beg to differ, as well as the families taxed to finance this escapade, as well as business interests who benefit from commodious living.
Art Deco: “Sounds like a plan.”
I didn’t say it was a great idea. Putin is not necessarily rational when it comes to his ambitions. His sense of the history of the Russian Empire and the breakup of the USSR as a cataclysmic disaster is not that of a rational observer.
He’s not necessarily irrational, either. He has a considerable history of satisfactory decision-making.
JohnTyler, you said:
Russia’s export $$$ are about 50% dependent upon oil/gas; they don’t produce much of anything that other nations want
I would point out nickel as one counterexample (thinking here of Norilsk).
There’s a fascinating website I discovered this morning which has had me tickled all day, something calling itself the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Among its features is a set of nifty visualizations of import-export data for a bunch of the higher-end countries. The one for Russia indicates, for example, that of the $4B USD total exports of raw nickel exported from Russia in 2019, a little over half went elsewhere in Europe, and of that portion, a bare majority went to the Netherlands.
(I also learned that in that same year, a grand total of $2 (!) worth of blankets were exported by Czech concerns to each of Mauritius and South Africa. I figured it was probably one internet customer in each of those places looking for blankets of a very particular pattern for twin children or something. The granularity of the data sets is awe-inspiring for nerds. 🙂 )
Art Deco: “He has a considerable history of satisfactory decision-making.”
Yep. Especially when it comes to enriching himself. A KGB agent rags to riches story. Meantime the average Russian’s life has not improved much in the last twenty years. And why? Because, although Russia is potentially a wealthy country rich with natural resources and educated people, it’s ruled by greedy oligarchs and thugs who care nothing about improving the average Russian’s life. Putin isn’t woke. That’s in his favor. But he is a billionaire who mourns the demise of the USSR. That seems to be his obsession.
Last night I watched “Ford v Ferrari” (2019). It was a satsifying old-school Hollywood movie about a compelling conflict (the Ford team trying to beat the Ferrari team at Le Mans in the sixties) with thrilling cinematography and real character arcs.
Red-blooded American men putting it on the line, taking it to the next level and hang the bureaucrats and political players.
The Right Stuff Goes to Le Mans.
huxley,
The Lovely Mrs. Firefly and I saw “Ford v Ferrari” in theaters. We both enjoyed it. You forgot to mention the great portrayal of Ken Miles’ wife, Mollie. She had the right stuff also. The very image of the “behind every great man” adage.
The film caused me to do some research, to see how closely it matched reality. Most of it was accurate, including some parts I assumed were dramatized, or sensationalized, but the race ending was reconfigured.
*** spolier alert in next comment ***
huxley,
Well, I’ve been doing a bit more research and I’m not finding the difference I thought I remembered reading about after I saw the film, but I’m not sure I’m remembering the film ending properly. I don’t think Ken Miles was particularly upset about the way things ended in real life and was onboard with the plan, but don’t quote me on any of this. It’s been a while since I saw the film and researched it.
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Happy angel birthday to Abraham Lincoln. I am so old that I remember when his birthday was a national holiday.
Actually, a decade younger, and I remember those days too.
Lot of beautiful women and a lot of talented people.
Feb 12th is when my father was inducted in Army. Just 65 days or so after Pearl Harbor sneak attack. Could America mobilize that quickly today?
Ohhh, my knees!
Thanks. I always like to watch the Russian dancers. Noticed that the Women had boots on and “slapped” the heels but the Men had more of a soft shoe.
Thank you for reminding me that it was Lincoln’s birthday. I don’t pay much attention to dates anymore but we should.
Yes Richard, my knees hurt too watching them. With one knee being artificial and the other headed that way, I was very envious.
Just another open-thread comment about something I read.
Two days ago, Dmitri Alperovitch wrote a detailed explanation of his opinion that Putin’s threat to invade Ukraine isn’t a bluff (https://tinyurl.com/33dc6ja2). Alperovitch said that he expected the invasion to start in 10-12 days. I have no idea what’s going on inside Putin’s head, but I have to admit that Alperovitch sounds convincing. If he’s right, we’ll soon see how NATO forces respond, how Russian forces respond to that, and so on.
Needless to say, a war with Russia makes me very uncomfortable. As a schoolboy, reading about the causes of World War I, I learned about the dangers of entangled alliances. Of course, I’m not predicting WWIII will start in Ukraine, but I do think that US foreign policy analysts need to reduce our various alliance commitments. There’s a long way between our current position and neo-isolationism, and now would be a good time to start moving towards a more rational policy that clearly expresses American interests. In this particular case, I think that the US should guarantee no NATO involvement in Ukraine, in return for a guarantee of no Russian invasion.
P.S. Yesterday, at his blog “Marginal Revolution,” Tyler Cowen linked to Alperovitch’s brief essay. I’d never heard of him. He describes himself as the chairman of “Silverado Policy Accelerator,” which is supposed to be a think tank with a venture capital approach. Sounds awful, but I’m just a magpie.
When my mom was in labor, the nurses tried to give her some medication to slow the labor so they wouldn’t have to call in the doctor. Nope, didn’t happen since mom didn’t want any unnecessary drugs and she didn’t want me on Friday the 13th. So, I was born on Thursday, February 12th. I think I heard that story every year!
As a kid, if I didn’t get a birthday card from my grandmother on Lincoln’s birthday, I didn’t worry since I would get one on Washington’s birthday on the 22nd. That also became a family story….
Also born on 2/2/1809 was Charles Darwin. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was born on 2/12/65. It’s interesting to check to see who else was born on your birthday..
And, I miss not having my birthday as a national holiday!
” I think that the US should guarantee no NATO involvement in Ukraine, in return for a guarantee of no Russian invasion.”
Tulsi Gabbard said on Tucker last night that the whole crisis would go away if Biden would just tell Putin there would be no admission of Ukraine into NATO.
Of course with the sleazy history of Hunter and Joe vis-a-vis Ukraine, Joe probably wants the invasion to cover his own culpability.
but I do think that US foreign policy analysts need to reduce our various alliance commitments.
SEATO (dissolved, 1977); Baghdad Pact / CENTO (dissolved 1979); mutual security treaty with Taiwan (abrogated 1979). Census of American troops posted abroad < 200,000, as low as it has been since 1940.
Meanwhile, China is threatening Taiwan and Russia is threatening the Ukraine. Russia is also issuing demands to the NATO powers that they expel every member of NATO admitted between 1997 and 2004. This is perfectly gratuitous on the part of both parties, I should note. Neither Taiwan nor the Ukraine as is has been causing trouble for Russia, China, or anyone else. Russia has been harassing the Ukraine for the last eight years, in the course of that wrecking the electoral base of the Russophile political parties in the Ukraine; its latest round of diplomatic moves have induced Sweden and Finland to consider joining NATO because Russia has proved itself less than benign. Russia has been a bull in a China shop, so, of course, you have paleotrash / Sailerite types contending this is all the fault of Victoria Nuland.
Exclusive — Karl Rove Under Fire for Redistricting Failures: He’s ‘Costing Republicans All Over the Country’
The left, in other words, is going for the jugular with redistricting; the Republicans, on the other hand, are with rare exception playing tiddlywinks.
OK, it’s Breitbart red meat. But one can win 4 or 5 battles and still lose the war by losing the most important battle.
My unresearched impression of various news items is that when the courts step into this fray, they always side with the Dems. Big surprise.
Tulsi Gabbard said on Tucker last night that the whole crisis would go away if Biden would just tell Putin there would be no admission of Ukraine into NATO.
Did it occur to you that Tulsi might not be better informed than Joe Blow loitering on Ala Moana Boulevard?
I used to follow the Russian blogger Anatoly Karlin (until he banned me). Interesting to view of the mindset of Russian nationalists participating in English-language discussion fora. (Which Sailerite / palaeotrash types then recycle in fora like this). The essential view of these Russian nationalists and their American bully’s-little-pal’s is that the Ukraine is ‘fake and gay’ and that the eastern Ukraine is Russian while the western Ukraine consists of degenerate Poles. They also fancy that Ukrainians are congenitally stupid and have to be ruled from Moscow because they cannot accomplish anything on their own. So, with all the tasks Russia might have as a collectivity, their priority is that Russia conquer the eastern Ukraine (some want the whole enchilada). That the Ukraine has no political parties advocating re-integration with Russia and that social survey research indicates that perhaps 4% of the resident population favors re-integration interests them not at all. The share of the Ukrainian public which favors a Russophile orientation in foreign relations has declined from north of 40% to perhaps 16% in the last ten years. These characters and their bully’s-little-pals wave this away, contending the survey respondents are intimidated, or that the elections are all stage-managed by Victoria Nuland and her minions, or that if you just stomp on everyone and give them better pensions, they’ll fall into line.
To what degree the Russian public adheres to any of this rubbish I couldn’t begin to guess. We should be alive to the possibility that it’s influencing the decision-making class. Steve Sailer wants to pretend this is all security-conscious reason-of-state moves because you know, Riga is so and so many miles from St. Petersburg.
OK, it’s Breitbart red meat. But one can win 4 or 5 battles and still lose the war by losing the most important battle.
Has Karl Rove been of consequence anywhere anytime in the last 16 years?
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=18942
Another piece of evidence that higher education is a collecting pool of sectaries. We might just quit subsidizing it and strip them of their social function of sorting the labor market. Republican state legislators will do nothing, of course.
Richard Aubrey…KNEES was my first thought too watching the men backward squatting kangaroo hop into the circle. Have mercy!
An old college friend majored in Dance, and was quite devoted to it, but her dreams were scuppered by her generous poitrine and derrière. Her husband didn’t mind.
Russia really has nothing at all to lose if he invades Ukraine. NATO , already a joke before Biden, is more of a joke now.
NATO will do nothing of substance.
The Germans pretty much have said they will not do anything to assist NATO and the Germans have allowed themselves (intentionally of course) to become dependent upon Russian natural gas.
Germany wishes to move to solar/wind and cease using natural gas, unless of course, they can obtain the natural gas from Russia. That they have no problems with because they then do not have to buy it from the USA.
Note that Olaf Schultz is a long time socialist which has to inform his views of the USA and Russia (i.e.; the Germans simply resent the USA; always have, always will).
After Putin’s invasion of the Crimea – during Obama’s administration – Putin learned that combining an Obama / Biden with a joke of a NATO , gives him a free pass to do whatever he wishes.
And he will.
Putin will not stop there; he can take Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia within one week
and once that’s done, he has resurrected the former Western part of the USSR. Finland’s border with Russia is all Russia needs to force Finland to bend to their demands; no invasion needed.
Sweden, as usual, will once again rebuild their very potent defense force, if they have not yet done so. The Swedes survived Stalin and Hitler; they know how to take care of themselves.
China’s economy,, unlike Russia’s, survives on exports. Sanctions would really hurt China if they decided to take Taiwan AND if, and only if, the “west ” imposed severe economic sanctions on China.Whether or not the “west” would do so, is another story.
Russia’s export $$$ are about 50% dependent upon oil/gas; they don’t produce much of anything that other nations want . Now that they W.Europe dependent upon their energy supply, economic sanctions against Russia won’t be too much of a bother, esp. if they have captured new lands and their productive capacity.
Europe, less the UK, regardless of what Russia does, will just accept the new paradigm and get on with life as usual post Russian hegemony of Ukraine, the Baltics and Finland, Recall that during the Yugoslavia civil war / break up, it was the USA that had to “encourage” NATO / the “west” to get off it’s ass and do something.
Why the USA is in NATO absolutely baffles me. The “sophisticated” Europeans , who never pass up the opportunity to turn their nose up at the mention of America , cannot seem to move away from their past – one war after another for the past 500 years (1000 years?)
The USA should look at Brazil, Costa Rica, etc., – nations that never get involved in the affairs of other nations, and emulate the foreign policies of those nations.
The only “real” friends the USA has, more or less, are the other english speaking nations; the UK, Australia, NZ (maybe), Canada . I guess one can toss into this pan Japan (for now, because of China’s threat to Japan) S.Korea, Poland.
Regardless, these “friends” understand that with Bidet and his ilk running the show, the USA is a totally unreliable, untrustworthy partner, that will abandon them at the first signs of any difficulty.
Just ask the Ukrainians.
Putin has big ambitions. He wants to rebuild the Russian Empire. He’s pretty convinced that Biden will huff and puff, but not do anything drastic.
He is, however, violating the terms of the Budapest Memorandum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
“The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.”
“In 2009, Russia and the United States released a joint statement that the memorandum’s security assurances would still be respected after the expiration of the START Treaty.[6]”
So, Putin is exposed as violating the Budapest Memorandum. And the U.S. and UK, who pledged to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty, are exposed as paper tigers if they don’t s stand up to Putin. I suppose Putin would say he never would have agreed to the Budapest Memorandum, so he doesn’t recognize it. Such a thug.
The memorandum calls for the UN to get involved. They did when Putin annexed Crimea. They condemned it. 🙂 No one wants to go to war with a nuclear power and Putin knows it.
I’m amazed no one has been talking about the Budapest Memorandum. I guess it’s just another piece of paper that thugs like Putin can ignore and our State Department ignores as well.
All that said, IMO, if Putin invades and occupies the country, he can expect endless guerilla warfare ala the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He will have to spend blood and treasure the Russians can ill afford. Does he recognize that? Maybe.
Sovereign nations should be free to join whatever defensive alliances they choose. That’s why it makes sense to oppose the idea of Ukraine never joining NATO. On the other hand, Putin won’t live forever. And a memorandum stating that Ukraine will not join NATO in the foreseeable future might defuse the situation for now. Another piece of paper, but if it forestalls the killing, why not give it a try?
Had Obama hit Putin and his oligarch buddies with crushing sanctions after the annexation of Crimea, it’s likely none of this would be going down. That Obama rolled over on that exercise, gives Putin the idea that Joe will roll over too. But who knows?
This seems like it should be a pretty big deal. Spying on the president.
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1492505122508836865
Hmm…the Russian says, “Night on Bald Mountain,” but while it sounds similar to my memory of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountaiin,” it doesn’t match closely.
Wiki quotes:
____________________________
I need hardly remind the reader that the orchestral piece universally known as ‘Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain’ is an orchestral composition by Rimsky-Korsakov based on the later version of the Bare Mountain music which Mussorgsky prepared for Sorochintsy Fair.
—Gerald Abraham, musicologist and an authority on Mussorgsky, 1945
____________________________
Interesting. Lovely dance in any event.
Putin has big ambitions. He wants to rebuild the Russian Empire
You mean reconquer and area which has a population which equals that of Russia and a productive capacity that might equal about half of Russia’s? An area where the share of the population which is Great Russian is in the low single digits? An area populated stem-to-stern with people who’ve acquired the idea that sovereignty is their birthright? Sounds like a plan.
Russia really has nothing at all to lose if he invades Ukraine.
The troops and their families might beg to differ, as well as the families taxed to finance this escapade, as well as business interests who benefit from commodious living.
Art Deco: “Sounds like a plan.”
I didn’t say it was a great idea. Putin is not necessarily rational when it comes to his ambitions. His sense of the history of the Russian Empire and the breakup of the USSR as a cataclysmic disaster is not that of a rational observer.
An article making the case for calling the country “Ukraine”, rather than “the Ukraine”:
http://www.infoukes.com/faq/the_ukraine/
Putin is not necessarily rational
He’s not necessarily irrational, either. He has a considerable history of satisfactory decision-making.
JohnTyler, you said:
Russia’s export $$$ are about 50% dependent upon oil/gas; they don’t produce much of anything that other nations want
I would point out nickel as one counterexample (thinking here of Norilsk).
There’s a fascinating website I discovered this morning which has had me tickled all day, something calling itself the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Among its features is a set of nifty visualizations of import-export data for a bunch of the higher-end countries. The one for Russia indicates, for example, that of the $4B USD total exports of raw nickel exported from Russia in 2019, a little over half went elsewhere in Europe, and of that portion, a bare majority went to the Netherlands.
(I also learned that in that same year, a grand total of $2 (!) worth of blankets were exported by Czech concerns to each of Mauritius and South Africa. I figured it was probably one internet customer in each of those places looking for blankets of a very particular pattern for twin children or something. The granularity of the data sets is awe-inspiring for nerds. 🙂 )
Art Deco: “He has a considerable history of satisfactory decision-making.”
Yep. Especially when it comes to enriching himself. A KGB agent rags to riches story. Meantime the average Russian’s life has not improved much in the last twenty years. And why? Because, although Russia is potentially a wealthy country rich with natural resources and educated people, it’s ruled by greedy oligarchs and thugs who care nothing about improving the average Russian’s life. Putin isn’t woke. That’s in his favor. But he is a billionaire who mourns the demise of the USSR. That seems to be his obsession.
Last night I watched “Ford v Ferrari” (2019). It was a satsifying old-school Hollywood movie about a compelling conflict (the Ford team trying to beat the Ferrari team at Le Mans in the sixties) with thrilling cinematography and real character arcs.
Red-blooded American men putting it on the line, taking it to the next level and hang the bureaucrats and political players.
The Right Stuff Goes to Le Mans.
huxley,
The Lovely Mrs. Firefly and I saw “Ford v Ferrari” in theaters. We both enjoyed it. You forgot to mention the great portrayal of Ken Miles’ wife, Mollie. She had the right stuff also. The very image of the “behind every great man” adage.
The film caused me to do some research, to see how closely it matched reality. Most of it was accurate, including some parts I assumed were dramatized, or sensationalized, but the race ending was reconfigured.
*** spolier alert in next comment ***
huxley,
Well, I’ve been doing a bit more research and I’m not finding the difference I thought I remembered reading about after I saw the film, but I’m not sure I’m remembering the film ending properly. I don’t think Ken Miles was particularly upset about the way things ended in real life and was onboard with the plan, but don’t quote me on any of this. It’s been a while since I saw the film and researched it.