Tuesday, March 8, 2022

An overlooked reason why Japan remains an important ally of The West

 

Japan's plutonium stockpile climbs to 46.1 tons in 2020, first rise in 3 years 

The UK's Boris Johnson turns on a dime

Remember when the British were famous for the phrase, "steady on"?

Or "steady as she goes"?

Yeah, me neither.

 


Remember when Pat Buchanan wanted to pull all US troops out of Europe, basically out of everywhere but Guam?

 Latvia yesterday:

In a press conference Monday, Rinkevics said that public opinion and policymakers’ decision-making had shifted with regards to military deployments, noting that now “we need a permanent stationing of NATO troops, including U.S. troops, on our soil” — something he had called for before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On the day Russia invaded Ukraine (Feb. 24), Biden ordered the deployment of an additional 7,000 U.S. troops to Europe, and moved forces already in Europe to NATO’s eastern flank, including to Latvia. ...

Even though the Baltic states have been a part of NATO and the EU since 2004, with all three using the euro as their currency, their geographic location makes them vulnerable. Like Ukraine, they all share a border with Russia. Latvia and Lithuania also share a border with Russia’s ally Belarus, which is widely believed to be supporting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

More.

Buchanan with Hannity and Colmes, November 26, 2007, Putin's seventh year in office:

COLMES: You want — yes, you want us to get out of Russia, too. You want us to pull the troops back, get the troops out of all — wherever we have United States troops.

BUCHANAN: Look, the Russians got up and walked out of Eastern Europe. They moved their army behind the Urals. They let Eastern Europe go free. They let 15 nations break up. What did we move NATO into their face for?

More.

10,258 US COVID-19 deaths in the first 7 days of March

 1,465 per day.

Normal per day for influenza: 98.

The UK and The Netherlands join Germany in crying uncle over Russian energy embargo to stop Ukraine war

CNBC here:

Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. have appeared to back away from a coordinated Western embargo on Russian energy exports, however. ...

Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the invasion have so far been carefully constructed to avoid directly hitting the country’s energy exports, although there are already signs the measures are inadvertently prompting banks and traders to shun Russian crude. ...

“You can’t simply close down use of oil and gas overnight, even from Russia. That’s obviously not something that every country around the world can do,” Johnson said. ...

Monday, March 7, 2022

Rod Dreher is so desperate for anti-war kinship he's retweeting a Democratic Socialist of America now

Last time I checked the Ukrainians haven't targeted any high rise apartment buildings in Moscow for missile attacks like the Russians have in Ukraine.

 


Like its beer, Germany is the cause of, and the solution to, all of Europe's problems


The Bundeskanzler, quoted here :

"That is why it is a conscious decision on our part to continue the activities of business enterprises in the area of energy supply with Russia," Scholz added.


During the campaign for president in 2019, Joe Biden was pretty clear about punishing the Saudis over Khashoggi, now he plans a trip to beg them for oil

 


Rush Limbaugh's hero Angelo Codevilla was quite mistaken about Russia's ambitions in Ukraine

In "What is Russia to Us?" here Codevilla vainly imagined Russia to be self-limited by the sobering lessons it has learned from its history: 

Today, [John Quincy Adams] would be confident that Russia realizes it cannot control Ukraine except for its Russian part, or the Baltics, never mind the states of Eastern Europe. ...

Adams would not hide the fact that U.S. policy, implemented by ordinary diplomacy, is to foster the Baltic States’, and especially Ukraine’s, independence. But he would know and sincerely convey to Russia that their independence depends on themselves, and that he regards it as counterproductive to try making them into American pawns or even to give the impression that they may be. He would trust in a Ukraine that had stopped longing for the borders that Stalin had fixed for it in 1927 and Khrushchev augmented in 1954, in a Ukraine retrenching into its Western identity (as, for example, by asserting its Orthodox church’s independence from Russia’s), and that is standing firmly on its own feet. He would trust in Russia’s actual acceptance of its inability ever again to control this Ukraine. This would be Adams’s Ukraine policy.


 

Saturday, March 5, 2022

Cyprus has denied five Russian navy ships the right to moor and refuel there, so Cyprus' participation in EU sanctions has real teeth

 https://in-cyprus.philenews.com/cyprus-forbids-mooring-of-five-russian-navy-ships-this-week-due-to-ukraine-war/ :

Even though Russia has signed an agreement with Cyprus to give its navy ships access to the Mediterranean country’s ports Nicosia this week forbade five of them from mooring because of the Ukrainian invasion. ... the agreement on the provision of facilities and a mooring permit is suspended.



 

Cancel culture envy on the anti-war right inspires dreams of making an enemies list of people to rub out "when things calm down, God willing"

We are all the same people.

 


The biggest cuck of the moment is Rod Dreher of The American Conservative, prophet of coming soft totalitarianism to The West

Rod Dreher retweets a whiny guy with kids who thinks boomers are dogshit, a Canadian who is intimidated by a Russian circus act training with a bear, and a Russian propaganda map of Ukraine showing "the advance of our troops".

All in the last 24 hours.

He's in Spain and Hungary enjoying the cafe life for Lent.

 







The weak tea of libertarianism means you don't come right out and say the US has no moral obligation to Ukraine, you just retweet it

 


Friday, March 4, 2022

Like it or not, the US owes Ukraine under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, unless of course it wants to be a traitor to Ukraine just like Russia

 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances

As usual Americans are mentally ill, wanting mutually exclusive things

74% want a no fly zone!

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-americans-broadly-support-ukraine-no-fly-zone-russia-oil-ban-poll-2022-03-04/

But fewer than half want the broader war that implies.

 

Not a serious country.
 

 

Remember when The White House was patting itself on the back for evacuating 120k from Afghanistan in 17 days?

 It's always better to rely on yourself. The government will screw up a 2-car funeral.




Half of the country doesn't seem to get it that a wider war in Europe would oblige us to participate under NATO

 Q:

"If a wider war breaks out in Europe, should the U.S. military be involved?" 

A:


 

 

The accent is on the BS

 


Thursday, March 3, 2022

Mayor Beetlejuice says “My d--- is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d--- in Chicago”

 Here:

“You make some kind of secret agreement with Italians. ... You are out there stroking your d---- over the Columbus statue, I am trying to keep Chicago police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot,” Lightfoot said, according to the complaint. “My d--- is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d--- in Chicago.”

Always thought there was something a little odd about Chicago's Mayor Lori Lightfoot.