World War Three

[Octopus Garden]

So first off, I want to make it clear that if a proper investigation were to ever take place, and find that an order to blow this dam came from Putin, I immediately join the camp that says hang 'em, and hang 'em high for the whole world to see.

That being said, so far anyway it doesn't make any more sense to me that this indeed the case, than it did when Assad supposedly gassed his own people as the eyes of the West were about to move on to other things, when Ghadaffi was supposedly about to slaughter a half million of his own people - or much more recently, when Russia supposedly blew up its own pipeline as a demonstration to the world of what they're capable of doing, while losing all the leverage they had over Germany by doing so.

The Russians didn't need to do this to slow down this upcoming Ukrainian offensive, nor did they need floodwaters as cover for a mass retreat. Unless... unless Putin got that strange bug himself where he's compelled to do the one thing, the one thing that would make even his strongest allies turn away in horror.

OTOH, I've watched the West and the Ukrainian leadership slip deeper and deeper into desperation and delusion, and by this point, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if someone's special forces decided to blow that bad boy as cover for an offensive that not only was already floundering, but that only ever had slim to none chances of success in the first place. This offensive was for the West to continue on with the deep pockets, not as an actual war strategy.

No offensive even as just a show of it? Those deep pockets dry up and the chickens finally come home to roost.

A failed offensive that was vastly obscured by a blown dam? That should be good enough for the donors to keep digging deep on demand, just wait for that fall offensive!

Speaking of delusional, this stupefied version of "Baghdad Bob" is just throwing all kinds of shit at the wall, hoping that something may stick. Is this the best they can do any more? Really? Seriously?...

The rest of the world is watching closely, and they mostly have IQ's above 60...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIrzxoeSGHM

Very interesting video, Fred! I just watched it. Very like the one I watched the other day. Each side will claim they are winning or about to win. It strikes me that blowing up the dam created an inflection point, where Ukraine is now on the back foot. Will see. It's a really stupid war.

[Aragorn]

I know the former elected guy was ousted, but was Zelensky actually installed, without an election? Not that it matters, it's just a technicality in an atmosphere of interference and manipulation by the radical fascist right wing.

He was instated by the different parties involved in and/or remaining after the coup as a consensus head-of-state, but he was never officially elected by the people of Ukraine.

[Fred Steeves]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIrzxoeSGHM

I watched 2 almost equally convincing videos yesterday, one explaining why Russia would never do it, so likely Ukraine's doing, and another explaining why Russia would definitely do it and the reasons why.

This Ukrainian official was convincing?

Sounds like the same old CIA talking points to me, just with more and more hysteria added as time goes by with desperation starting to set in, and regular people starting to see it.

Kind of like the whole ridiculous WMD thing of 20 years ago, where if you had second thoughts about an invasion you were a Saddam apologist, and weapons inspector Scott Ritter was a laughing stock. Remember that? The spell only lasts for so long in the face of reality, there's a shelf life, and the expiration date for this one is rapidly approaching as well.

Have you seen the Russian military looking to run to break ranks and run to the hills, with flooded terrain to cover their hasty retreat? Do signs thus far indicate things are looking so bad for them, that their only option is to shoot themselves in the foot in order to just have a chance against this unstoppable Ukrainian juggernaut?

[Octopus Garden]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIrzxoeSGHM





This Ukrainian official was convincing?

Sounds like the same old CIA talking points to me, just with more and more hysteria added as time goes by with desperation starting to set in, and regular people starting to see it.

Kind of like the whole ridiculous WMD thing of 20 years ago, where if you had second thoughts about an invasion you were a Saddam apologist, and weapons inspector Scott Ritter was a laughing stock. Remember that? The spell only lasts for so long in the face of reality, there's a shelf life, and the expiration date for this one is rapidly approaching as well.

Have you seen the Russian military looking to run to break ranks and run to the hills, with flooded terrain to cover their hasty retreat? Do signs thus far indicate things are looking so bad for them, that their only option is to shoot themselves in the foot in order to just have a chance against this unstoppable Ukrainian juggernaut?

Yes, I think the Ukraine dude is convincing (except for his repetitious insistence that Russians are desperate and on the verge of defeat) like I thought the pro-Russian dude was convincing. Both sides are pretty convincing, imo. Who stands to gain the most with the collapse of the dam? It's as clear as mud to me. Do I think it's beyond Russia to blow up a dam to further their goals, regardless of cost to them in local infrastructure? Probably. Why wouldn't they? I could say the same about Ukraine.

Zelensky is colluding with the US. For Zelensky it's about national pride and he wants protection from Russia, plus other goodies. For US it's a proxy battle to maintain global dominance in a strategically vital zone. The blowing up of the dam is a consequence of a war atmosphere, regardless of original causes of the war.

Truth is the first casualty of war.

[Lord Sidious]

run to the hills

Excellent choice nugg

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86URGgqONvA

[Catsquotl]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO0CsCU87Ag

[Wind]

No offensive even as just a show of it? Those deep pockets dry up and the chickens finally come home to roost.

In case you haven't noticed, it has started. Although there isn't much to show, yet.

I'm not convinced either way how this war might end or come to a standstill.

[Diabolical Boids]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIrzxoeSGHM





This Ukrainian official was convincing?

Sounds like the same old CIA talking points to me, just with more and more hysteria added as time goes by with desperation starting to set in, and regular people starting to see it.

Kind of like the whole ridiculous WMD thing of 20 years ago, where if you had second thoughts about an invasion you were a Saddam apologist, and weapons inspector Scott Ritter was a laughing stock. Remember that? The spell only lasts for so long in the face of reality, there's a shelf life, and the expiration date for this one is rapidly approaching as well.

Have you seen the Russian military looking to run to break ranks and run to the hills, with flooded terrain to cover their hasty retreat? Do signs thus far indicate things are looking so bad for them, that their only option is to shoot themselves in the foot in order to just have a chance against this unstoppable Ukrainian juggernaut?

Meantime the US is doing what it always does, it never veers an iota from its own playbook, which makes me less convinced (as usual) they are on the side of right or good. Seems a few nations have gotten their fingers singed supporting the US but thus far no nation that has refused to hop on the Nato band wagon has suffered much from supporting Russia.

We gave away our power, and it shows now.

[Fred Steeves]

No offensive even as just a show of it? Those deep pockets dry up and the chickens finally come home to roost.

In case you haven't noticed, it has started. Although there isn't much to show, yet.

Let's put my quote into proper context (in red). It was never meant as a stand alone, that changes the whole sentiment:

OTOH, I've watched the West and the Ukrainian leadership slip deeper and deeper into desperation and delusion, and by this point, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if someone's special forces decided to blow that bad boy as cover for an offensive that not only was already floundering, but that only ever had slim to none chances of success in the first place. This offensive was for the West to continue on with the deep pockets, not as an actual war strategy.

No offensive even as just a show of it? Those deep pockets dry up and the chickens finally come home to roost.

A failed offensive that was vastly obscured by a blown dam? That should be good enough for the donors to keep digging deep on demand, just wait for that fall offensive!

Meantime the US is doing what it always does, it never veers an iota from its own playbook, which makes me less convinced (as usual) they are on the side of right or good. Seems a few nations have gotten their fingers singed supporting the US but thus far no nation that has refused to hop on the Nato band wagon has suffered much from supporting Russia.

We gave away our power, and it shows now.

Looks like this might be the end of the great "Neocon Project", hopefully rid of it once and for all! When those little countries they've been shitting on for so long finally have a chance to peel themselves off the bottom of Uncle Sam's shoe (and that's already happening), and band together under the protection of a couple of super powers, it's game over.

Of course no neocon is as sharp or observant as the head grasshopper here, that's a given as these people are aggressive but lacking any corresponding brain power, but they'll get the memo sooner or later. Contents of the memo still won't change their insatiable lust for power, dominance and conquest, but by then the world will have already moved on without them anyway.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLbWnJGlyMU

[modwiz]

Less than a day old, Jeffrey Sachs gives a rich backstory to the first time we almost entered WWlll during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The video gets around to JFK and the sanity he brought to the world for his short tenure as president of the USA.

Well worth the listen, and your time, and it might help us to comprehend the circumstances we find ourselves in today.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQr3BrHhxj8

[Wind]

[Wind]

What lies behind Russia’s acts of extreme violence? Freudian analysis offers an answer

"The blowing up of a Ukrainian dam echoes a traditional cycle of destruction and self-destruction marking the country’s history

Beneath the veneer of Russian military “tactics”, you see the stupid leer of destruction for the sake of it. The Kremlin can’t create, so all that is left is to destroy. Not in some pseudo-glorious self-immolation, the people behind atrocities are petty cowards, but more like a loser smearing their faeces over life. In Russia’s wars the very senselessness seems to be the sense.

After the casual mass executions at Bucha; after the bombing of maternity wards in Mariupol; after the laying to waste of whole cities in Donbas; after the children’s torture chambers, the missiles aimed at freezing civilians to death in the dead of winter, we now have the apocalyptic sight of the waters of the vast Dnipro, a river that when you are on it can feel as wide as a sea, bursting through the destroyed dam at Kakhovka. The reservoir held as much water as the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Its destruction has already submerged settlements where more than 40,000 people live. It has already wiped out animal sanctuaries and nature reserves. It will decimate agriculture in the bread basket of Ukraine that feeds so much of the world, most notably in the Middle East and Africa. To Russian genocide add ecocide.

The dam has been controlled by Russia for more than a year. The Ukrainian government has been warning that Russia had plans to blast it since October.

Seismologists in Norway have confirmed that massive blasts, the type associated with explosives rather than an accidental breach, came from the reservoir the night of its destruction. Some – including the American pro-Putin media personality Tucker Carlson – argue Russia couldn’t be behind the devastation, given the damage has spread to Russian-controlled territories, potentially restricting water supply to Crimea. But if “Russia wouldn’t damage its own people” is your argument then it’s one that doesn’t hold, pardon the tactless pun, much water. One of the least accurate quotes about Russia is Winston Churchill’s line about it being “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” This makes it sound as if Russia is driven by some theory of rational choice – when century after century the opposite appears to be the case.

Few have captured the Russian cycle of self-destruction and the destruction of others as well as the Ukrainian literary critic Tetyana Ogarkova. In her rewording of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Russian classic novel Crime and Punishment, a novel about a murderer who kills simply because he can, Ogarkova calls Russia a culture where you have “crime without punishment, and punishment without crime”.

The powerful murder with impunity; the victims are punished for no reason. When not bringing humanitarian aid to the front lines, Ogarkova presents a podcast together with her husband, the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko. It’s remarkable for showing two people thinking calmly while under daily bombardment. It reminds me of German-Jewish philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, who kept writing lucidly even as they fled the Nazis. As they try to make sense of the evil bearing down on their country, Ogarkova and Yermolenko note the difference between Hitler and Stalin: while Nazis had some rules about who they punished (non-Aryans; communists) in Stalin’s terror anyone could be a victim at any moment. Random violence runs through Russian history.

Reacting to how Vladimir Putin’s Russia is constantly changing its reasons for invading Ukraine – from “denazification” to “reclaiming historic lands” to “Nato expansion” – Ogarkova and Yermolenko decide that the very brutal nature of the invasion is its essence: the war crimes are the point. Russia claims to be a powerful “pole” in the world to balance the west – but has failed to create a successful political model others would want to join. So it has nothing left to offer except to drag everyone down to its own depths.“How dare you live like this,” went a resentful piece of graffiti by Russian soldiers in Bucha. “What’s the point of the world when there is no place for Russia in it,” complains Putin. After the dam at Kakhovka was destroyed, a General Dobruzhinsky crowed on a popular Russian talkshow: “We should blow up the Kyiv water reservoir too.” “Why?” asked the host. “Just to show them.” But, as Ogarkova and Yermolenko explore, Russians also send their soldiers to die senselessly in the meat grinder of the Donbas, their bodies left uncollected on the battlefield, their relatives not informed of their death so as to avoid paying them. On TV, presenters praise how “no one knows how to die like us”. Meanwhile, villagers on the Russian-occupied side of the river are being abandoned by the authorities. Being “liberated” by Russia means joining its empire of humiliation.

Where does this drive to annihilation come from? In 1912 the Russian-Jewish psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein – who was murdered by the Nazis, while her three brothers were killed in Stalin’s terror -first put forward the idea that people were drawn to death as much as to life. She drew on themes from Russian literature and folklore for her theory of a death drive, but the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, first found her ideas too morbid. After the First World War, he came to agree with her. The desire for death was the desire to let go of responsibility, the burden of individuality, choice, freedom – and sink back into inorganic matter. To just give up. In a culture such as Russia’s, where avoiding facing up to the dark past with all its complex webs of guilt and responsibility is commonplace, such oblivion can be especially seductive.

But Russia is also sending out a similar message to Ukrainians and their allies with these acts of ultra-violent biblical destruction: give in to our immensity, surrender your struggle. And for all Russia’s military defeats and actual socio-economic fragility, this propaganda of the deed can still work.

The reaction in the west to the explosion of the dam has been weirdly muted. Ukrainians are mounting remarkable rescue operations, while Russia continues to shell semi-submerged cities, but they are doing it more or less alone. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has been mystified by the “zero support” from international organisations such as the UN and Red Cross.

Perhaps the relative lack of support comes partly because people feel helpless in the face of something so immense, these Cecil B DeMille-like scenes of giant rivers exploding. It’s the same helplessness some feel when faced with the climate crisis. It’s apposite that the strongest response to Russia’s ecocide came not from governments but the climate activist Greta Thunberg, who clearly laid the blame of what happened on Russia and demanded it be held accountable. But there’s been barely a peep out of western governments or the UN.

Pushing the strange lure of death, oblivion and just giving up is the Russian gambit. How much life do we have left in us?"

[Fred Steeves]

What lies behind Russia’s acts of extreme violence? Freudian analysis offers an answer

"The blowing up of a Ukrainian dam echoes a traditional cycle of destruction and self-destruction marking the country’s history

Beneath the veneer of Russian military “tactics”, you see the stupid leer of destruction for the sake of it. The Kremlin can’t create, so all that is left is to destroy. Not in some pseudo-glorious self-immolation, the people behind atrocities are petty cowards, but more like a loser smearing their faeces over life. In Russia’s wars the very senselessness seems to be the sense.

After the casual mass executions at Bucha; after the bombing of maternity wards in Mariupol; after the laying to waste of whole cities in Donbas; after the children’s torture chambers, the missiles aimed at freezing civilians to death in the dead of winter, we now have the apocalyptic sight of the waters of the vast Dnipro, a river that when you are on it can feel as wide as a sea, bursting through the destroyed dam at Kakhovka.

Good old Guardian and their BBC partners, they never disappoint at their #1 task. I'm just surprised they neglected to add in the idiot Rooskies blowing up their own pipeline, and performing child sacrifices to Satan, everyone knows these are hard cold facts as well.

Seriously though. One day this fever is going to break, and the current era of seething hatred for all things Putin/Russia brought on courtesy of Western Intel and their partners in the media will be studied to see where things went off the rails, just as we shake our heads at what caused the West to succumb to similar episodes of madness on so many other occasions over time.

Putin - Jinping - Assad - Jong Un - Maduro - Chavez - Ghadaffy - Hussein - Noriega - Castro

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvGmOZ5T6_Y

[Octopus Garden]

What lies behind Russia’s acts of extreme violence? Freudian analysis offers an answer

"The blowing up of a Ukrainian dam echoes a traditional cycle of destruction and self-destruction marking the country’s history

Beneath the veneer of Russian military “tactics”, you see the stupid leer of destruction for the sake of it. The Kremlin can’t create, so all that is left is to destroy. Not in some pseudo-glorious self-immolation, the people behind atrocities are petty cowards, but more like a loser smearing their faeces over life. In Russia’s wars the very senselessness seems to be the sense.

After the casual mass executions at Bucha; after the bombing of maternity wards in Mariupol; after the laying to waste of whole cities in Donbas; after the children’s torture chambers, the missiles aimed at freezing civilians to death in the dead of winter, we now have the apocalyptic sight of the waters of the vast Dnipro, a river that when you are on it can feel as wide as a sea, bursting through the destroyed dam at Kakhovka. The reservoir held as much water as the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Its destruction has already submerged settlements where more than 40,000 people live. It has already wiped out animal sanctuaries and nature reserves. It will decimate agriculture in the bread basket of Ukraine that feeds so much of the world, most notably in the Middle East and Africa. To Russian genocide add ecocide.

The dam has been controlled by Russia for more than a year. The Ukrainian government has been warning that Russia had plans to blast it since October.

Seismologists in Norway have confirmed that massive blasts, the type associated with explosives rather than an accidental breach, came from the reservoir the night of its destruction. Some – including the American pro-Putin media personality Tucker Carlson – argue Russia couldn’t be behind the devastation, given the damage has spread to Russian-controlled territories, potentially restricting water supply to Crimea. But if “Russia wouldn’t damage its own people” is your argument then it’s one that doesn’t hold, pardon the tactless pun, much water. One of the least accurate quotes about Russia is Winston Churchill’s line about it being “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” This makes it sound as if Russia is driven by some theory of rational choice – when century after century the opposite appears to be the case.

Few have captured the Russian cycle of self-destruction and the destruction of others as well as the Ukrainian literary critic Tetyana Ogarkova. In her rewording of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Russian classic novel Crime and Punishment, a novel about a murderer who kills simply because he can, Ogarkova calls Russia a culture where you have “crime without punishment, and punishment without crime”.

The powerful murder with impunity; the victims are punished for no reason. When not bringing humanitarian aid to the front lines, Ogarkova presents a podcast together with her husband, the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko. It’s remarkable for showing two people thinking calmly while under daily bombardment. It reminds me of German-Jewish philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, who kept writing lucidly even as they fled the Nazis. As they try to make sense of the evil bearing down on their country, Ogarkova and Yermolenko note the difference between Hitler and Stalin: while Nazis had some rules about who they punished (non-Aryans; communists) in Stalin’s terror anyone could be a victim at any moment. Random violence runs through Russian history.

Reacting to how Vladimir Putin’s Russia is constantly changing its reasons for invading Ukraine – from “denazification” to “reclaiming historic lands” to “Nato expansion” – Ogarkova and Yermolenko decide that the very brutal nature of the invasion is its essence: the war crimes are the point. Russia claims to be a powerful “pole” in the world to balance the west – but has failed to create a successful political model others would want to join. So it has nothing left to offer except to drag everyone down to its own depths.“How dare you live like this,” went a resentful piece of graffiti by Russian soldiers in Bucha. “What’s the point of the world when there is no place for Russia in it,” complains Putin. After the dam at Kakhovka was destroyed, a General Dobruzhinsky crowed on a popular Russian talkshow: “We should blow up the Kyiv water reservoir too.” “Why?” asked the host. “Just to show them.” But, as Ogarkova and Yermolenko explore, Russians also send their soldiers to die senselessly in the meat grinder of the Donbas, their bodies left uncollected on the battlefield, their relatives not informed of their death so as to avoid paying them. On TV, presenters praise how “no one knows how to die like us”. Meanwhile, villagers on the Russian-occupied side of the river are being abandoned by the authorities. Being “liberated” by Russia means joining its empire of humiliation.

Where does this drive to annihilation come from? In 1912 the Russian-Jewish psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein – who was murdered by the Nazis, while her three brothers were killed in Stalin’s terror -first put forward the idea that people were drawn to death as much as to life. She drew on themes from Russian literature and folklore for her theory of a death drive, but the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, first found her ideas too morbid. After the First World War, he came to agree with her. The desire for death was the desire to let go of responsibility, the burden of individuality, choice, freedom – and sink back into inorganic matter. To just give up. In a culture such as Russia’s, where avoiding facing up to the dark past with all its complex webs of guilt and responsibility is commonplace, such oblivion can be especially seductive.

But Russia is also sending out a similar message to Ukrainians and their allies with these acts of ultra-violent biblical destruction: give in to our immensity, surrender your struggle. And for all Russia’s military defeats and actual socio-economic fragility, this propaganda of the deed can still work.

The reaction in the west to the explosion of the dam has been weirdly muted. Ukrainians are mounting remarkable rescue operations, while Russia continues to shell semi-submerged cities, but they are doing it more or less alone. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has been mystified by the “zero support” from international organisations such as the UN and Red Cross.

Perhaps the relative lack of support comes partly because people feel helpless in the face of something so immense, these Cecil B DeMille-like scenes of giant rivers exploding. It’s the same helplessness some feel when faced with the climate crisis. It’s apposite that the strongest response to Russia’s ecocide came not from governments but the climate activist Greta Thunberg, who clearly laid the blame of what happened on Russia and demanded it be held accountable. But there’s been barely a peep out of western governments or the UN.

Pushing the strange lure of death, oblivion and just giving up is the Russian gambit. How much life do we have left in us?"

Madness, cruelty and sadism just for the fun of it? I read the Guardian for some of its content but not about the war. No way. Essays can be very compelling, particularly if they are written in a way that is both seemingly sincere (or actually sincere) But if the underlying premise is wrong and the writer has an ulterior motive in the writing of it, it doesn't matter, its not worth reading. This is far too unbalanced, and too geared to draw on emotion rather than objective analysis of the situation.

When I hear echos of the same kind of atrocity propaganda that smeared Jews prior and during WW2, I mentally delete.

"The Kremlin can't create, so all that's left is to destroy," is a strange claim. In what sense can they not create? That's a new one on me!

[Fred Steeves]

This kind of propaganda is incredibly dangerous, volatile, and most of all irresponsible. Get the people whipped up into a frenzy with your faithful partners in media in order to help serve your neocon foreign policy objectives, dial it up in the 9+ range and just let 'er rip, no worries or concerns of how to possibly reel it back in one day if need be.

What happens if by summer's end the "Orcs" are at the gates of Kiev? Or the border of Poland? How to explain that, how to reel it back in, when "The Narrative" the whole time has been Ukraine is winning, and the Russians are no more competent than Barney Fife shitting himself?

That's where the rubber really meets the road, when one nuclear power or the other faces imminent defeat. The people have been well trained that Western Europe gets overrun next, and then the whole world...

We can't let this happen, something must be done, stop this mad man. Nuke 'em if you have to!

(Grimace) Nothing like invoking the god of war for deliverance from a problem that he started in the first place.

Problem - Reaction - Solution