Tuesday, March 8, 2022
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 :
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.
Sunday, March 6, 2022
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.
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.
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.
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.”