George Soros gave Ivanka's husband's business a $250 million credit line in 2015 per WSJ. Soros is also an investor in Jared's business.

Monday, February 28, 2022

Even Communism was better for Ukraine than fatal mistake of becoming a US colony. From 1991-2020 Ukraine lost 10 million in population. IMF predicts Ukraine will lose a million more by 2026

Even Communism was better for Ukraine than being a US colony. Two charts below: Both show sharp drop in Ukraine population as soon as Soviet Union ended in 1991. First chart, 10 million lost 1991-2020. Second chart follows, 1991-2018, 7 million drop.

Ukraine population 1950-2020: 52 million in 1991 when Soviet Union ended. 42 million in 2020 after 20 years as a US colony. Orange Revolution, Maidan noted on chart during drop off. That’s the US specialty: worse hell than you ever imagined.

As of 2020, Ukraine population is, 41,902, per Ukraine government statistics. (Crimea population isn’t included. Crimea didn’t wish to become a US colony–the best decision they ever made). US finalized its acquisition of Ukraine as a colony in 2014 when the US violently overthrew Ukraine’s elected government.

Source: “RwendlandOwn work by uploader, data from State Statistics Committee of Ukraine (from 1990) and Demoscope (“Total resident population” column matching State Statistics Committee data, from 1950) Population of Ukraine from 1950. Note data is for 1st January of each year.” Wikipedia

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Chart below is from World Bank: 1991-2018 Ukraine population dropped by over 7 million. As chart above, Ukraine population plunged as soon as Soviet Union ended in 1991. Chart above shows 10 million drop through 2020, includes two more years than World Bank chart.

1991-2018 Ukraine population dropped 7 million per World Bank:

World Bank chart, population:

1960: 42,664,652

1991: 52,000,470

1993, 52.179,210 (peak)

2014, 45,271,947 (year of US regime change)

2018, 44,622,516

2014-2018: 629,428 fled after being “saved” by the US

Result: 1991-2018 Ukraine population dropped by over 7 millionper World Bank.

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Added: Per IMF–Ukraine became poorest country in Europe in 2018, 4 years after being given “liberal democracy” by the US:

Accordingly, Ukraine also became the Mexico of Europe. So much of Ukraine’s population has to leave the country to find work, leaving loved ones behind, that Ukraine in 2018 became #1 in Europe and Central Asia for remittances sent home at $14 billion, per World Bank....

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Reminder: 

“Henry Kissinger once famously quipped: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friends is fatal.” 

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Added: Worse, IMF says Ukraine will lose another 1 million in population by 2026:

4/7/21, IMF gives disappointing outlook for Ukraine’s population decline, newsfront.info

“The International Monetary Fund has given a forecast of the population of Ukraine until 2026, according to which the population will decrease by almost one million people.

This is stated in an April [2021] review of the IMF World Economic Outlook.

According to IMF estimates, Ukraine’s population by the end of 2020 will reach 41.483m people, which is less than official figures provided by the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine.

[IMF: Ukraine “Country Population: 41.483 million“]

The IMF forecasts that Ukraine’s population will gradually decrease.”

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Added: A deindustrialized Ukraine swap meet

4/25/2018, Ukraine is being deindustrialized according to Baltic scenario: opinion,” Eurasia Daily, Denis Gayevsky

 

 

[Image] A swap meet in Kiev. Photo: inosmi.ru"

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Ukraine is a “U.S.-controlled aboriginal regime.”

1/17/2017, “Farewell tour of “old Joe”: Biden’s last visit to Ukraine,” EurAsia Daily, Denis Gayevsky, Kiev

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Added: All predictable:



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Sunday, February 27, 2022

Russia isn’t at war with Ukraine, rather seeks to avoid Yugoslavia’s fate, being bombed to death by NATO in 1999-Bhadrakumar…(All the best to Russian Federation, world’s only hope to end US-UK “rules based world order”)

In 1960s Pentagon desperately wanted nuclear war with Soviet Union, hated JFK because he favored peaceful relations with Soviets.

2/27/22, “Disarming Ukraine–Day 4," Moon of Alabama

In war, truth is the first casualty.

Gilbert Doctorow:

The Russian Way of War, [2/26/22]

Yesterday anyone watching Euronews on one screen and Russian state television on another would have been perplexed by the totally contradictory coverage of both with respect to the fate of the armed detachment of Ukrainian border guards on one island in the southeast of Ukraine. Euronews carried the address of President Zelensky awarding posthumous designation as Heroes of Ukraine to the entire detachment, which reportedly resisted the attacking Russian forces and were slaughtered. Meanwhile Russian news showed those same border guards seated at tables and signing sworn statements that they voluntarily lay down their arms and awaited repatriation to their homes and families.”

Earlier today I took this screenshot from the New York Times website.

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Reading the collection of items under the above New York Times headline I fail to find any news of a bombardment of Kiev or of Russian military involvement in street fighting within the city.

The only item in there that is relevant with regards to Kiev is a Russian missile strike on the fuel depot of a military airport on the southern periphery of the city. The large fire and smoke could be seen from Kiev.

As Russia does not announce the progress of its campaign the ‘western’ news is projecting that it is losing the war. I see no evidence that this is the case and believe that it is far from reality. The lack of reliable reporting just makes it impossible to map out the current frontline.

Here are three more pieces I can also recommend.  They relate to serious strategic aspects of the war and lack the otherwise overwhelming propaganda slant.

M.K. Bhadrakumar:

India shouldn’t miss world war pointer

“Russia is not at war with Ukraine, but is locked in an existential struggle to avoid the fate of Yugoslavia. Period. [Breakup of Yugoslavia gif]

The US is setting a ‘bear trap’ for Russia using the neo-Nazi forces. It calculates that if the Russian forces get bogged down, the door opens for a NATO intervention175000 NATO troops are positioned already on Russia’s borders with massive firepower and air and naval formations surrounding Russia from all sides.

A NATO intervention will be tantamount to US-Russia war — that is, a [US taxpayer funded] world war with nuclear weapons. On Thursday, Putin explicitly warned Biden to back off. But Biden has since indicated that the NATO will continue to pump weapons into Ukraine.

Patrick Armstrong:

RUSSIA UKRAINE 1

“I’m surprised both of the size of the operation and the type of operation. While I did expect standoff destruction of the nazi units and considered the possibility of standoff destruction of Ukrainian military assets I did not expect to see troops on the ground other than a few Spetsnaz. The operation is much, much more than I expected. Putin & Co surprised me too.

Had I been at home I would have read Putin’s speech earlier and understood sooner. What he is talking about is what the Soviet Union tried to do from 1933 onwards: namely to stop Hitler before he got started. This time Russia is able to do it by itself. In other words, Putin feels that he is making a pre-emptive attack to stop June 1941. This is very serious indeed and indicates that the Russians are going to keep going until they feel that they can safely stop.”

Scott Ritter:

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in Perspective

“Russian President Vladimir Putin had been subjected to a series of sophomoric psychological profiles that trivialized Russian national concerns as little more than the psychotic whim of a troubled individual. The caricatures that emerged of the Russian state and its leadership colored the analysis of Russia’s oft-stated concerns over what it viewed as its legitimate national security.

This blinded the West to the reality of what was transpiring. Because no one took Russia seriously, no one could imagine a large-scale ground war in Europe. So everyone was taken by surprise when such a conflict broke out.”

Posted by b on February 27, 2022 at 12:38 UTC | Permalink

Above, Breakup of Yugoslavia gif

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Extra:

During WWI, most private U.S. radio stations were either shut down or taken over by the government.

 

 

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Saturday, February 26, 2022

Tragic military hawkishness prevents growth of Republican Party and US itself. Focus on Ukraine diverts attention from declining working-class life expectancy-NY Times Guest Essay, Ahmari et al., 2/5/22

The party establishment would far rather talk about Ukraine than about declining working-class life expectancy and the fentanyl crisis. The persistence of donor-backed Republican hawkishness remains an obstacle to national development–of industrial capacity and widely shared solidarity–that would strengthen America’s defenses and ennoble its culture. The monsters that menace us don’t lurk abroad.”

2/5/22, Hawks Are Standing in the Way of a New Republican Party,” NY Times, Guest Essay, Sohrab Ahmari, Patrick Deneen and 

(Mr. Ahmari, Mr. Deneen and Mr. Pappin have written extensively about conservatism and American politics)

A painful contradiction lies at the heart of the American right. Even as conservatives are breaking with some Cold War orthodoxies on domestic policy, Republican politicians remain wedded to that era’s violently expansionist [US taxpayer funded] foreign policy. They oppose liberal imperialism in the United States —the aggressive push to impose progressive values, often joined to corporate power — while still contriving to spread the same order to the ends of the earth.

It’s a contradictory vision, and for many members of the so-called new right who are pushing for a political realignment of the Republican Party, it presents a major stumbling block. We do not want to see this new vision of conservative American politics

co-opted by hawkish ideologues more interested in posturing abroad than in reform here at home. Conservatives must make a clear break with neo-neoconservative foreign policy and instead emphasize widely

shared material development at home

and cultural nonaggression abroad

as the keys to U.S. security.

The crisis in Ukraine illustrates the problem. Even Republicans sympathetic to the new right haven’t been able to resist the hawkish temptation. Among the loudest voices calling for escalation were Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida, politicians who have otherwise tried to articulate a more populist domestic vision for their party. Senator Rubio resorted to inapt Churchill-Hitler parallels (though he later said he opposes deploying troops to Eastern Europe); Senator Cotton lambasted President Biden for “appeasing Vladimir Putin.”

The Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony has suggested he wants to forge a new, more solidaristic and inwardly focused consensus to replace the old, broken fusion of pro-business libertarians, religious traditionalists and foreign-policy hawks. Yet even at the 2021 national conservatism conference, the hawks were amply represented and pitched the same old belligerence, especially against China.

Today’s nationalist hawks often speak of an [US taxpayer funded] obligation to defend democratic allies dotting the peripheries of revanchist powers like Russia and China. But if they had their way, the real-world effects would be little different from those of their hawkish predecessors: protracted and destabilizing conflicts that would distract us from domestic reformnot to mention imperil the lives of overwhelmingly working-class young Americans in uniform.

Even on the new right, then, the goal of securing America by “making the world safe for democracy” refuses to die. It’s important to revisit the intellectual history to understand how it was that the right came to advance what is a liberal cause in the first place.

Since the earliest days of our nation, a division has existed between those who argued that America should be an “exemplary republic” and those who called instead for a “crusader nation.” The exemplarist camp figured that America could best serve liberty and self-government by perfecting domestic republicanism — without going abroad in search of “monsters to destroy,” as John Quincy Adams put it. The crusaders sought to expand liberal democracy abroad, partly because they thought this would make America more secure and partly because they believed it was our destiny to baptize all nations in liberal ideals.

The party of restraint was seen as conservative: cautious about the danger posed by war to republican virtues, respectful of enduring civilizational differences, humble in the face of unpredictable global events, hesitant to commit American blood and treasure to all but the most necessary military causes. By contrast, it was characteristically “liberal” to insist on an American duty to enlarge the liberal empire, whether through soft or hard power, a tradition exemplified by Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy.

More recently, self-described conservatives came to embrace the crusader project, a misguided shift culminating in President George W. Bush’s second Inaugural Address, with its fantasy of eliminating “tyranny” everywhere. What had been previously central to the liberal worldview came to be reframed as modern American “conservatism.”

Many of today’s Republicans thus came of age at a time when hawkishness on behalf of liberal values was understood as conservative. Yet the values lying at the foundation of that worldview and shaping our institutions are antithetical to everything conservatives claim to cherish: a ruthless market ideology that puts short-term shareholder gains and the whims of big finance above the demands of the national community; a virulent cultural libertinism that dissolves bonds of family and tradition.

What conservatives revile as “woke capital” is just this acidic combination of a market-centric economics and liberal cultural arrogance. Yet as conservatives

tub-thump for NATO expansion in Europe and hawkishness elsewhere,

they seem clueless as to what these things entail: the integration of evermore geographic space into the same socioeconomic order they find so oppressive at home.

From the post-Cold War “Washington consensus” (the idea that privatization, deregulation and free trade would lead to broad prosperity) to the post-9/11 regime-change wars, “crusader” foreign policy immiserated ordinary people: Thoughtless NATO expansion bred resentment in a wounded-but-still-strong Russia, setting the stage for recurring crises; economic “shock therapy” applied by disciples of Milton Friedman

empowered predatory oligarchs in post-Soviet lands;

the shattering of Arab states in the name of “freedom” created ungoverned spaces across vast swaths of the Middle East and North Africa,

kindling terrorism and

sending millions of migrants into Europe.

Like soldiers who haven’t realized the old war is over, Republicans must grasp the current state of play: Liberal imperialism ought no longer to be mistaken for a conservative cause. It is time to repurpose older conservative foreign-policy values.

The first pillar of such a foreign policy should be a sound restraint, especially where the United States doesn’t have formal treaty obligations, and a general retrenchment of the Western alliance’s ambitions. Senator Josh Hawley, a lawmaker sympathetic to the new right, showed a better path on Wednesday by calling on President Biden to rule out admitting Ukraine into NATO. Mr. Hawley suggested his move would help Washington shift resources to East Asia. But even there, Americans should beware of mindless China hawkism. Yes, the United States has real differences with Beijing. We must punish industrial espionage. We must defend treaty allies. And we must seek a more balanced trade relationship. But we should also find areas of cooperation, exchange and shared interests, seeking to avoid any future wars and instead communicating with mutual respect for a civilizational equal.

Domestic industrial prowess and energy independence should be the second pillar. Without factories manufacturing all sorts of goods, we won’t be able to shift production to defense — or to P.P.E. and vaccineswhen a real crisis hits. Moreover, as Michael Lind has emphasized, the industrial-military blocs of the future — spheres of influence led by America, Europe, China and India — will be only as strong as their regional supply chains and their internal stability allow.

Many G.O.P. leaders couldn’t be happier if the impulses toward Republican realignment were limited to mere jingoism. That, after all, has sated the Republican base while keeping economic policy firmly neoliberal.

The party establishment would far rather talk about Ukraine

than about declining working-class life expectancy

and the fentanyl crisis.

The persistence of donor-backed Republican hawkishness remains an obstacle to national development — of industrial capacity and widely shared solidaritythat would strengthen America’s defenses and ennoble its culture.

The monsters that menace us don’t lurk abroad.”

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“Sohrab Ahmari is a contributing editor of The American Conservative and a visiting fellow at Franciscan University. Patrick Deneen, a former speechwriter and special assistant to the director of the U.S. Information Agency, is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. Gladden Pappin is an associate professor of politics at the University of Dallas and a visiting fellow at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest.”


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Russian Federation and US taxpayers have same enemy: the entire US political class which treats us both as subhuman. Post WWII “order” meant bondage of US taxpayers. Thus I wish Russian Federation all the best

“Up until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine…there was something called the ‘rules-based order’ promoted mainly by the US but also supported directly by the European Union and the [UK monarchy and countries of the British] Commonwealth….“It beggared belief listening to the nauseating virtue signaling of US ‘diplomats’ who refused to engage Russia’s concerns in even a half-serious manner. Subhumans are not allowed to talk or even be a part of the conversation. And in the world of diplomacy as practiced by the collective West, the Russians are definitely subhuman.”US taxpayers are also subhuman to the entire US political class, so I very much identify with Russia’s experience and wish them all the best in whatever they choose to do….“Putin’s attack on Ukraine has shattered the West’s certainties [ie, the certainty that the 75 year bondage of US taxpayers to keeping “European order” would be permanent].2/24/22, “Address by the President of the Russian Federation – February 24, 2022,” the saker, “President of Russia Vladimir Putin”

2/25/22, Putin Ushers in the New Geopolitical Game Board,Tom Luongo

Up until February 23rd, 2022, the powerful countries of the world played a very rarified game….

Up until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and yes, it is an invasion, justifiable or otherwise) there was something called the ‘rules-based order’ promoted mainly by the US but also supported directly by the European Union and the [UK monarchy and countries of the British] Commonwealth.

[NATO’s British roots: “There are demonstrably now, just as there have been since 1776, TWO opposing dynamics operating within America, where only one is in alignment of the ideals of the Constitution and Declaration of independence while the other is entirely in alignment with the ideals of the British Empire and hereditary institutions from which it supposedly broke away. One America has been defended by great leaders who are too often identified by their untimely deaths while in office, who consistently advanced anti-colonial visions for a world of sovereign nations, win-win cooperation, and the extension of constitutional rights to all classes and races both within America and abroad. The other America has sought only to enmesh itself with the British Empire’s global regime of finance, exploitation, population control and never-ending wars.“…6/28/2020, “The Age of Chatham House and the British Roots of NATO,” Matthew Ehret]

(continuing): The rules of the ‘rules-based order’ were simple.

We make the rules, you follow them.

We reserve the right to change the rules whenever we want to suit our purpose.

It was the geopolitical equivalent…of ‘anarcho-tyranny,’ which boils down to, “rules for thee, but not for me.”

[12/17/2016, UK Conservative MP Dominic Grieve said, After the heady days of post-Cold War and the belief that we were moving the Russians into a rules-based international system, we seem to be going very rapidly in the opposite direction.”...12/17/2016, Mention in UK Telegraph chatty article about Russiagate names, “Cambridge spy seminars hit by whispers of Russian links as three intelligence experts resign,” by Lydia Willgress, Luke Heighton]

(continuing): “We’ve heard the Russian diplomats [and US taxpayers] complain about this for years. Why have these rules if they are not ever enforced?…

We have these rules because only others’ hypocrisy counts. Subhumans are not allowed to talk or even be a part of the conversation.

And in the world of diplomacy as practiced by the collective West, the Russians are definitely subhuman, just like the unvaxxed, anyone to the immediate right of Karl Marx and who isn’t a furry.

All that changed when Russian tanks crossed the border, stand off missiles hit anti-aircraft and artillery batteries, and marines came onshore in Ukraine.

For months we’ve been treated to the dumbest and most infuriating facsimile of diplomacy I’ve ever witnessed. It beggared belief listening to the nauseating virtue signaling of US ‘diplomats’ who refused to engage Russia’s concerns in even a half-serious manner while blaming them for every issue on the planet….

It was clear that Putin and his staff would be given this ultimate option, invade Ukraine and face global opprobrium or kneel before Zod.

Their miscalculation was in thinking that Russia actually cares one whit about that global opprobrium at this point. By their actions in Ukraine this week, it is clear they do not.

They weren’t afraid of NATO’s posturing, Biden’s threats of sanctions or of Liz Truss’s difficulties with basic geography. The longer this standoff over Ukraine went on the more it was clear that most of the people in positions of power and their support staff have less than zero understanding of the parameters of their jobs.

Because of this their constant invocation of the ‘rules-based order’ rang more and more hollow since they were simply acting like a precocious six-year oldboy playing with his stuffed tiger.

Pronouncements of consequences and ‘sanctions from hell’ and threats of holding our breath until we pass out were rightly ignored by Putin and his staff.

For decades NATO enjoyed the luxury, thanks to [unlimited US tax dollars] US military primacy, of

making up the rules and forcing everyone else to react to them.

It goes back to the statement, most likely made by then Vice-President Dick Cheney, on the ‘reality-based community,’

That’s not the way the world really works anymore … We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’
What’s been clear to me is that those placed in positions of power by Klaus Schwab and the rest of The Davos Crowd they still think we live in this type of world. That no matter what the people want or other countries need,

they will dictate the time, place and parameters

for any and all confrontations.

However, the longer this went on the more it was clear that Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, were inching towards that moment where they would change the rules. I wrote back in March 2018 that Putin’s State of the Union address where he unveiled new weapon systems was a major turning point.

For the next four years we have seen a steady escalation of neoconservative insanity in a vain attempt to push US missile systems closer to Moscow, contra to all signed international agreements, UN resolutions about resolving the breakaway republics of Ukraine

and, frankly, common decency.

After a 2021 where things in Ukraine kept getting hotter and hotter, Putin and Lavrov, having backed Biden down over the summer with June 16th’s summit, knew the time had come to change the rules of the game.

If they didn’t Russia would cease to be.

The old game entered its spiral towards conclusion when Russia sent and published publicly its draft proposals for a new security architecture concerning Russia and NATO’s relationship in Eastern Europe.

Russia acted, setting the operational tempo from that moment forward. It forced the US and Europe to react to them as they created

a new reality, set new rules.

The US was now the rule-taker rather than the rule-maker.You knew this because it prompted multiple rounds of scurrying to Moscow by officials from all over the West trying to talk the Russians off their new game.

To zero avail.

As The Saker pointed out in his initial thoughts on Russia’s recognition of the breakaway republics of the Donbass, this operation in Ukraine was a long time in the planning. This was not an action that was taken lightly.

“Again, I will repeat here what I wrote above: this recognition should NOT, repeat, NOT, be seen in isolation. It is just ONE PHASE in a PROCESS which began at least a year ago, or more, and there is much more to come.”

Truer words and all that.

For months I’ve been telling you that Nordstream 2 would eventually be turned on and that Russia would not be kicked out of the SWIFT telecommunications network regardless of what happened.

The former is still on the table, as Germany was the most vocal about not doing the latter.

Even I missed that Russia was planning to change the game this radically, thinking there was always a Davos-approved solution which didn’t involve extensive use of the Russian military, but still ended with the US looking foolish.

In retrospect, it was obvious we were always headed to this end-game because Russia saw the opportunity to change the rules.

Less than a day after Russia wiped out both Ukraine’s military power and political architecture, President Sundowner confirmed that all the West’s threats were as empty as the heads of the Millennials running the propaganda desk at the State Dept.

After months of threatening Russia with expulsion from the SWIFT financial messaging system, Europe complained and someone finally showed some sense.

Cutting Russia out of SWIFT would mean the end of the EU as anyone has known it or wishes it could be in the future. It would mean the end of the petrodollar system.

Russia is too systemically important to the global commodity trade that goes far beyond energy. It supplies not only the marginal barrel of oil and BTU of natural gas, but pound of nickel, palladium, titanium, enriched uranium and tungsten. It’s a major supplier of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, potash, and urea.

Do this and Europe not only freezes to death with their three days of gas reserves but starves once the global food supply is disrupted. Do this and Biden enters the mid-terms with $8/gallon gas, and 20% real inflation.

The Fed raising rates will be the least of anyone’s worries.

Russia held all the cards in the negotiations over Ukraine and we [the US] recklessly pursued a policy of insults and amateurish propaganda, refusing to believe Russia wouldn’t make her final stand.

By putting boots on the ground, planes in the air and missiles up the ass of every Ukrainian military installation across the country, Russia turned the ‘might makes right’ argument of the US and Europe on its head.

The game has changed because the rules have changed. It’s no longer a game of rhetorical chicken and virtue signaling.

Realpolitik doesn’t matter a bit when missiles are in the air. This is the point that was lost on so many in the professional commentariat for the past few months. They’ve never contemplated the idea that someone could do this, no less did it.

They are now confused and angry, working through their ‘cope’ in public. If it wasn’t so pathetic it would almost be hilarious.

For nearly a decade the West poured billions [of US tax dollars] into Ukraine to arm it and prepare it for this week. Those billions were essentially wiped out in a matter of hours. It took a day to expose all of NATO’s posturing as nothing but that, posturing.

We now have to come to terms with this new game. It’s a game where the rules will be far more equitable because the unthinkable alternatives are no longer theoretical, they are real.

It’s real because the threats to Russia posed by NATO’s designs on Ukraine were always real no matter what was said.

So Biden and Davos got the war in Ukraine they’ve been begging Russia for. The problem for them now is Russia isn’t playing their game anymore and they are wholly unprepared for the next one.”

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Added: Yes!!! Exactly the point. 75 years of "order" provided by US taxpayers must end:The entire post-World War II order across Europe“…It threatens our entire post-war order.”

Germany on Saturday reversed a historic policy of never sending weapons to conflict zones, saying the Russian invasion of Ukraine was an epochal moment that imperiled the entire post-World War II order across Europe.”

2/26/22, Germany to send Ukraine weapons in historic shift on military aid,” Politico

“Germany on Saturday reversed a historic policy of never sending weapons to conflict zones, saying the Russian invasion of Ukraine was an epochal moment that imperiled the entire post-World War II order across Europe.

The decision was an abrupt change in course, coming after Berlin clung to its initial position for weeks despite the rising Russian [so-called] menace and pressure from EU and NATO allies. On Saturday, Berlin finally bowed to that pressure, and to the reality that Russia is encircling Ukrainian cities and threatening to topple the government in Kyiv.

From its own stockpile, the German government will send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft defense systems to Ukraine. The government has also authorized the Netherlands to send Ukraine 400 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and told Estonia it ship over send nine howitzers.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a turning point,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a statement.

It threatens our entire post-war order.

In this situation, it is our duty to do our utmost to support Ukraine in defending itself against Vladimir Putin’s invading army. Germany stands closely by Ukraine’s side.”

A government spokesperson said the weapons will be delivered “as soon as possible.””…

 

 

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I'm the daughter of a World War II Air Force pilot and outdoorsman who settled in New Jersey.