Posted on 09/23/2022 3:16:08 AM PDT by Its All Over Except ...
So when is Russia going to hold a vote on self-determination in Chechnya?
The election gambit is a transparent ploy to present a false reality.
When the Russian military flees, the false election is meaningless
Putin’s long range plan is shown to be a joke as he is defeated in Ukraine and especially at home
That’s Nuland??? Didn’t even recognize her from that picture...
>>In the post-Cold War era, the genie of self-determination was first let out of the bottle by the West during the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia.
While this is true, the principle of national self-determination was given force by President Wilson in the aftermath of World War I.
Prior to WW I, most of the world was governed by several multi-ethnic, multi-national empires, principally the British, French, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, Japanese, and Chinese Empires. Even France itself, which by that time was perceived as homogeneous, was an amalgam of ethnic groups from Savoy to Brittany.
It was the post WW I dismemberment of Austro-Hungary that introduced the concept that different ethnic groups belonged in different nations, and that policy was promoted most by Woodrow Wilson. The dismemberment of Yugoslavia was only a second act to carve up a rump that had not be adequately butchered earlier.
National self-determination was not enthusiastically supported by the leaders of the multi-ethnic empires. Allegedly Georges Clemenceau said: “What! Must every little language have its own country?”
But their interest in dismembering their foes overcame their fear that their own empires would also suffer the same fate.
By far the best Ukraine war article I’ve read all week:
“Brainwashed for War With Russia”
by Ray McGovern Posted on September 22, 2022
https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/09/21/brainwashed-for-war-with-russia/
Thanks to Establishment media, the sorcerer apprentices advising President Joe Biden – I refer to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jacob Sullivan, and China specialist Kurt Campbell – will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China. And, shockingly, under false pretenses.
Most Americans are oblivious to the reality that Western media are owned and operated by the same corporations that make massive profits by helping to stoke small wars and then peddling the necessary weapons. Corporate leaders, and Ivy-mantled elites, educated to believe in U.S. “exceptionalism,” find the lucre and the luster too lucrative to be able to think straight. They deceive themselves into thinking that (a) the US cannot lose a war; (b) escalation can be calibrated and wider war can be limited to Europe; and (c) China can be expected to just sit on the sidelines. The attitude, consciously or unconsciously, “Not to worry. And, in any case, the lucre and luster are worth the risk.”
The media also know they can always trot out died-in-the-wool Russophobes to “explain,” for example, why the Russians are “almost genetically driven” to do evil (James Clapper, former National Intelligence Director and now hired savant on CNN); or Fiona Hill (former National Intelligence Officer for Russia), who insists “Putin wants to evict the United States from Europe … As he might put it: “Goodbye, America. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Absent a miraculous appearance of clearer heads with a less benighted attitude toward the core interests of Russia in Ukraine, and China in Taiwan, historians who survive to record the war now on our doorstep will describe it as the result of hubris and stupidity run amok. Objective historians may even note that one of their colleagues – Professor John Mearsheimer – got it right from the start, when he explained in the autumn 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault.”
Historian Barbara Tuchman addressed the kind of situation the world faces in Ukraine in her book “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.” (Had she lived, she surely would have updated it to take Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine into account). Tuchman wrote:
“Wooden-headedness…plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”
more at link
https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/09/21/brainwashed-for-war-with-russia/
Ask the author, M.K. Bhadrakumar when is India going to hold a referendum in Kashmir? Hypocrite
That’s Victoria Nuland. She’s been actually or virtually running the Eastern Europe/Russia desk for the State Dept AND for George Soros (at the same time) for over 20 years.
Her evil fingers were in Biden’s corrupt Ukraine deals, the Maidan Coup, the Russiagate Hoax, and pushing Ukraine into NATO as a trigger for war with Russia.
“When is India going to hold a referendum in Kashmir?”
How about that beautiful, holy, wonderful, perfect referendum (backed by NATO troops, tanks and bombers) that carved Kosovo out of Serbia?
Never doubted that they can “find” manpower, that is the easy part. How effective they will be is another matter. Why they need the manpower if they are winning and killing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and the idea of in the middle of a conflict they have these “referendums”. Would you have accepted referendums from all occupied lands under hitler? The whole idea of Russian dominated areas in other countries is also ridiculous. Of course there is the soviets starved to death millions of Ukrainians and replaced native populations with Russians in Ukraine as well as other soviet block countries like Lithuania. Should we have referendums in Texas New Mexico and kalifornia to see if they join Mexico? As Stalin said roughly it doesn’t matter how people vote but who counts the votes true then true now esp here in US. I think even you can see this as a political stunt
Better trained than the cannon-fodder Ukraine has deemed necessary to throw at the Russians and Donbass militia, etc.
Russia’s total military reserve, people who have previously gone through military training, is 25 million.
US have that?
EU?
NATO?
Hello.
The Russian military has been offering massive bonuses and pay for “contract” soldiers for service in Ukraine, with apparently few takers. If that had been working they would have stuck with it and they wouldnt have had to do this.
But it hasn’t.
Note how the actual Russian formations identified in Ukraine have failed to hold against what should be weaker Ukrainian units. In the Kharkiv-Izyum front 12-15 Ukrainian brigades, or rather a spearhead of just three brigades, 80, 92 and one other, broke through what should have been the 1st Guards Army.
Forgive me, but slapping out claims and assertion which I am not easily buying into, should invariably come with sources such as those ‘massive bonuses’ offered. And there are videos of lines forming outside military recruitment offices in Russia. So yeah....
Western leaders are confused that the leaders of Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics appealed to Putin and were hence independent status just days before the invasion. I’m still hopeful but it may take Russia on a full blown war footing to knock sense into them.
Russia has been “training” @ 700,000 a year, only part of which are Army. So you have x number of classes for x years. However these are not called up for refresher training.
In the meantime Ukraine had @900,000 reservists plus 8 months to sort out training for reservists, militia, and new recruits, plus source equipment for the lot.
In theory Russia could swamp Ukraine with masses of men, eventually (time is a big problem), but at a huge cost.
Russia’s total military reserve, people who have previously gone through military training, is 25 million.
US have that?
EU?
NATO?
Hello.
Russian ‘training’ is a joke.
Putin is following the script from his hero, Stalin. Stalin conducted sham referenda in places occupied by the Soviets during and after WWII to justify their annexation. Stalin’s contempt for free and fair elections is legendary. Stalin’s famous quote on the issue was, “Я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать; но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это кто и как будет считать голоса.” That translates to: “ “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”
You left off the fact that Russia lacks the roads and transport to move supplies to where they are needed by the troops.
While Putin has Un mobilized troops and stocks of ancient arms, he has no logistical capabilities to move them in the time required.
Sources for the lack of?
Hello?!
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