Russia's War Against Ukraine

[Groggy]

Seymore Hersh has made a number of very controversial claims of late. I don't know if  he's gone 'round the bend at his age but his journalistic credentials are unsurpassed going back to Vietnam and the My Lai Massacre. If he has a political agenda I don't know, he was always considered to be considerably Left Wing in his views. I don't think anything he reports as fact can be simply blown-off as untrue.

It seems that in the last 10 years he's been saying some things that would make you question his accuracy. Such as "I don't necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11." and "the story of novichok poisoning has not held up very well. He [Sergei Skripal] was most likely talking to British intelligence services about Russian organised crime."

[JasonPratt]

The one thing I've seen from him so far about the pipeline explosion being caused by the US, sounded like speculative alt-historical fiction. No evidence, no sources.

But I've allowed that he might only have been summarizing, so I've got a couple other things to watch on the topic later; just haven't gotten around to it.

Naturally, being lazy, I'm also hoping some Grogs will comment in detail. 

[Groggy]

The one thing I've seen from him so far about the pipeline explosion being caused by the US, sounded like speculative alt-historical fiction. No evidence, no sources.

But I've allowed that he might only have been summarizing, so I've got a couple other things to watch on the topic later; just haven't gotten around to it.

Naturally, being lazy, I'm also hoping some Grogs will comment in detail. 

Hersh's article about the Nord Stream pipeline had a number of objections raised, some of which are very specific and bring up issues of basic fact checking (eg the bit about Jens Stoltenberg being a U.S. intelligence asset at a time when he would have been a child) as well as more technical issues like lack of supporting data and a minesweeper he later mentioned as supposedly being involved with the operation that was in fact decommissioned and being scrapped at the time. Not to mention other times when Hersh's credibility has come into question.(eg on Syria)

Related to that, among the people touting his article were attendees of the "rage against the war machine" rally in DC this past weekend, which brought together a number of far-right figures (eg Ron Paul and Tucker Carlson, who promoted it on his show) with more problematic people from the fringe-left like Max Blumenthal and Jill Stein for what was basically a pro-Russia rally disguised as an anti-war rally.

[Crossroads]

so.....  one year on.

happy anniversary 

 

One of the first videos that I remember. Incredible courage.

https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1629083331999547393

[MengJiao]

Kind of like the 1917 German strategy on the Western Front; somewhere in hell Erich Ludendorff must appreciate the irony.

"Wo ist zu Wunderfraulein jetz?!"

(I was staggered to see Ludendorff stabbed to death by Gal Gadot. That would be like Mel Gibson assassinating King George III at the end of The Patriot! Highly entertaining but what the actual what...)

Mel's not an Amazon in most movies is he?

And what about Ludendorff's 1918 strategy (as in smash the allies before the American show up in force)?

Lots of questions; too few Amazons.

[GDS_Starfury]

welcome to Ukraine!

[Skoop]

The one thing I've seen from him so far about the pipeline explosion being caused by the US, sounded like speculative alt-historical fiction. No evidence, no sources.

But I've allowed that he might only have been summarizing, so I've got a couple other things to watch on the topic later; just haven't gotten around to it.

Naturally, being lazy, I'm also hoping some Grogs will comment in detail. 

Hersh's article about the Nord Stream pipeline had a number of objections raised, some of which are very specific and bring up issues of basic fact checking (eg the bit about Jens Stoltenberg being a U.S. intelligence asset at a time when he would have been a child) as well as more technical issues like lack of supporting data and a minesweeper he later mentioned as supposedly being involved with the operation that was in fact decommissioned and being scrapped at the time. Not to mention other times when Hersh's credibility has come into question.(eg on Syria)

Related to that, among the people touting his article were attendees of the "rage against the war machine" rally in DC this past weekend, which brought together a number of far-right figures (eg Ron Paul and Tucker Carlson, who promoted it on his show) with more problematic people from the fringe-left like Max Blumenthal and Jill Stein for what was basically a pro-Russia rally disguised as an anti-war rally.

How can there be an anti-war rally when we're not at war ?  I mean that sarcastically.  If Biden had taken the Barak appeasement approach of 2014, and russian tanks where parked in Kiev, would Tucker be beating the war drum and saying Biden is too soft on the Russians and should have done something ?  You'd think the far right would be taking the hawk approach if they want to stick it to Biden and be clamoring for F16s with JSOWs to Ukraine like ASAP.   I guess the far right forgot Reagan and Peace through Strength.

[GDS_Starfury]

one year ago.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1629216186285146112

[JasonPratt]

Gonna be a lot of one-year-ago recalls for a while, and well-deserved, too.

[MengJiao]

The one thing I've seen from him so far about the pipeline explosion being caused by the US, sounded like speculative alt-historical fiction. No evidence, no sources.

But I've allowed that he might only have been summarizing, so I've got a couple other things to watch on the topic later; just haven't gotten around to it.

Naturally, being lazy, I'm also hoping some Grogs will comment in detail. 

Hersh's article about the Nord Stream pipeline had a number of objections raised, some of which are very specific and bring up issues of basic fact checking (eg the bit about Jens Stoltenberg being a U.S. intelligence asset at a time when he would have been a child) as well as more technical issues like lack of supporting data and a minesweeper he later mentioned as supposedly being involved with the operation that was in fact decommissioned and being scrapped at the time. Not to mention other times when Hersh's credibility has come into question.(eg on Syria)

Related to that, among the people touting his article were attendees of the "rage against the war machine" rally in DC this past weekend, which brought together a number of far-right figures (eg Ron Paul and Tucker Carlson, who promoted it on his show) with more problematic people from the fringe-left like Max Blumenthal and Jill Stein for what was basically a pro-Russia rally disguised as an anti-war rally.

How can there be an anti-war rally when we're not at war ?  I mean that sarcastically.  If Biden had taken the Barak appeasement approach of 2014, and russian tanks where parked in Kiev, would Tucker be beating the war drum and saying Biden is too soft on the Russians and should have done something ?  You'd think the far right would be taking the hawk approach if they want to stick it to Biden and be clamoring for F16s with JSOWs to Ukraine like ASAP.  I guess the far right forgot Reagan and Peace through Strength.

  I think a lot of things about this war can be somewhat confusing.  For one thing -- the scale -- it's really huge for a small war and somewhat confined for a large war.  Then there's the whole "What was Putin thinking?" problem.  I still find it hard to comprehend at all in any way what he thought was going to happen and now people keep coming up with reasons it sort of made sense BUT weirdly  Putin's project just makes less and less sense.  So now he's going to take Belarus and Moldovia (supposedly, somehow in incomprehensible terms that maybe somehow sort of make sense) and you know just try and stop him, cuz yep, he'll blow up the world to keep things goofy in Transnistria.

  And then there's the collateral context where economically the war is pretty good for India and China and not so good for the West and even worse for Russia.

  And then there's the problem of keeping the war as small as possible (something that China and the US probably could agree on if they worked on it)...this gives the Russians some leverage since they could work on keeping it small and sort of using that aim to keep it going until they can save some of their wrecked prestige.

  We're really into the PR stage of damage control at this point and that is even more confusing since it is a very real if still somewhat small war with all the attendant hopes and horrors of a war of any size.

[FarAway Sooner]

The one thing I've seen from him so far about the pipeline explosion being caused by the US, sounded like speculative alt-historical fiction. No evidence, no sources.

But I've allowed that he might only have been summarizing, so I've got a couple other things to watch on the topic later; just haven't gotten around to it.

Naturally, being lazy, I'm also hoping some Grogs will comment in detail. 

Hersh's article about the Nord Stream pipeline had a number of objections raised, some of which are very specific and bring up issues of basic fact checking (eg the bit about Jens Stoltenberg being a U.S. intelligence asset at a time when he would have been a child) as well as more technical issues like lack of supporting data and a minesweeper he later mentioned as supposedly being involved with the operation that was in fact decommissioned and being scrapped at the time. Not to mention other times when Hersh's credibility has come into question.(eg on Syria)

Related to that, among the people touting his article were attendees of the "rage against the war machine" rally in DC this past weekend, which brought together a number of far-right figures (eg Ron Paul and Tucker Carlson, who promoted it on his show) with more problematic people from the fringe-left like Max Blumenthal and Jill Stein for what was basically a pro-Russia rally disguised as an anti-war rally.

How can there be an anti-war rally when we're not at war ?  I mean that sarcastically.  If Biden had taken the Barak appeasement approach of 2014, and russian tanks where parked in Kiev, would Tucker be beating the war drum and saying Biden is too soft on the Russians and should have done something ?  You'd think the far right would be taking the hawk approach if they want to stick it to Biden and be clamoring for F16s with JSOWs to Ukraine like ASAP.   I guess the far right forgot Reagan and Peace through Strength.

They're just remembering Trump, and Peace through Isolationism.  Man, if only the USA had left NATO like Trump suggested, we wouldn't be saddled with this whole Ukraine problem now...

Sarcasm aside, I'd suggest that any mention of US domestic politics here seems to seriously reduce the quality of discussion of the war.  I don't disagree.  Just throwing out another grenade to suggest that we should stop throwing grenades!   

[GDS_Starfury]

    some very well defended Himars.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1629575251972456448

[GDS_Starfury]

it would also appear that the soviets lost an A-50u awacs on the ground.
most likely another smoking issue. 

[JasonPratt]

   some very well defended Himars.

Those tanks look very happy to be defending H'rs! 

[JasonPratt]

The Business Basics channel can be more than a little click-baity, but leaving that aside they generally do provide good situation analyses. So here's a video today about the current state of the economic war against Putin's regime, and his economic plans for a counterattack (so to speak).