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Editor's Note: This snippet was sent to me by our Polish correspondent, Paweł Kasperek. His thoughts and opinions on the matter do not necessarily match my own. I'll have some thoughts (read rant) after the following clips.
Ewok Report episode ? and a half.
A small update to latest Ewok report, just enhancing on some topics I mentioned too briefly for my own taste.
Poland shopping spree in depth and detail: what, where, why, and how ...
Russian military rebelling prospects:
Some analogies to WW1 are in place, but it definitely lacks the crucial component, an organized and able opposition inside Russia itself ...
EDITOR: To say that the situation in Ukraine is complex might be an understatement. But nearly every event in history where one group has used military force against another has been complex. Anything to do with Russia and the pieces of its former empire is even more complex. At least by my reckoning.
An interesting (and seems to me very pro-Ukrainian) Wikipedia article which summarizes what led us to this point in time is here. If you want a Russian point of view, head to rt.com, if you can stomach outright propaganda that is.
Ukrainian propaganda is more palatable, at least the instances I follow (see Operator Starsky on YouTube and this report.) Russian propaganda has never really been for external consumption, it's meant solely for the Russian people. A captive audience in many ways.
The latest I'm hearing vis-à-vis Ukraine is that the Russians wish to de-Nazify Ukraine. While there have been incidents of Ukrainians wearing WWII Nazi symbols (if you know where to look you can buy them yourself online) it's not unusual. (Look up our own Marines posing with an "SS Flag" in Afghanistan.) This article addresses that Nazi aspect. (Hey, it's a thing right, claim the other side are Nazis!)
Let's face it, Russians are suspicious of the outside world (get invaded numerous times over the centuries and you might sympathize). Pushing NATO closer and closer to the Russian border may have triggered this reaction on Putin's part. Then again, the plebiscites and the pro-Russian sentiment in Donbas and Luhansk remind me of the Hitlerian agitation over the Sudetenland in 1938.
Sometimes people just start reacting and things gain a life and momentum of their own. I'm sure Putin's generals told him what he wanted to hear, they probably believed themselves what they were telling him. "Invade Ukraine? No problem, we'll be in Kiev in a couple of days, a week at the outside."
Do you think our current crop of generals don't tell our current crop of politicians the same thing? What the politicos want to hear is almost never synonymous with the truth. And those politicians are usually too ignorant to know better.
Miscommunications, lies, half-truths, and outright bullshit, none of these things are a sound basis for international relations.
Too bad that it's all most politicians know.
/rant
just my two cents (OK! maybe a penny)
ReplyDelete"Ukrainian propaganda is more palatable..."
I think your statement is 100% true for 95% of the American public primarily because the Ukrainian propaganda is developed and refined here; so much so that I'm expecting Mickey Mouse and Clark Gable to come waltzing out of the wings at any moment.
I'll give you a nickel for that as you are absolutely right. After all, we need to squander our "extra" gear to protect Hunter's investments, right? So yeah, most of the agitprop for Ukraine is probably homegrown.
DeleteIt would be nice to just get the news but I suspect those days are gone.
DeleteSeems that way.
DeleteRob, there has never been a time of "just getting the news." It's always been spun, distorted, and biased. Best known is Yellow Journalism, but dig up some articles from the War of 1861. There was a short time after WWII when it wasn't as blatant, but it's always there.
DeleteBut certainly not to the extent it is now. The so-called 24 hour news cycle requires content, even if it is propaganda and lies at times.
DeleteThanks for the links Pawel, something to watch while the four to seven inches accumulate today. And Sarge, I don't have much faith in our current crop of generals/admirals.
ReplyDeleteI have zero faith in the current crop of flags.
DeleteI am sorry we’re involved at any level in these operations which do nothing except line the pockets of corrupt politicians and the military industrial complex. I guess you could say I’m an isolationist as long as we have homeless vets and no borders. I always want to know how these expenditures benefit the American taxpayer. I am so naïve in my old age.
ReplyDeleteNah Sir, you're old school. You actually think while most of the sheep just go along with the herd.
DeletePawel, as always thank you. It is invaluable to get insight at the "local level".
ReplyDeleteSadly, I have almost as little faith in our own media and leadership as I do in any other.
One of the risks of any open dictatorship is that the "the boss" only really wants to hear what they want to hear, and underlings eager to advance only ever give "good news". True of history throughout time.
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Delete👍🏻
DeleteYup.
DeleteBen MacIntyre’s excellent book “The Spy and the Traitor”, published in 2018, I learned that in 1981 the then Chairman of the KGB Yuri Andropov (later to become Russian President) was convinced the West was planning a nuclear ‘first strike’. Some of the circumstantial evidence that added to his paranoia was his belief that the British blood transfusion service was a ‘blood bank’ where it could be bought and sold and any increase in this ‘trade’ was a clear indication that we were increasing blood stocks for war. The fact that blood donation in the UK is purely an altruistic and voluntary act was never explained to him, but as MacIntyre candidly pointed out, ‘…in a craven and hierarchical organisation, the only thing more dangerous than revealing your own ignorance is to draw attention to the stupidity of the boss’. One of Andropov’s ‘team paranoia’ underlings was a middle ranking KGB officer by the name of Vladimir Putin.
ReplyDelete(From
Hogdayafternoon)
I think it's safe to say that nothing good ever came out of the KGB (nor any of it's predecessors).
DeleteOne more reason to watch Andor. ISB (Imperial Security Bureau) scenes are perfect show how such organisations operate wnd why they fail. When you have spent years manipulating people, you just cant comprehend grassroot rebellion can take place spontaneously, with authenthic leaders, and you fail miserably trying to fight what you see as foreign ops...
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DeleteRandom related tidbits.
ReplyDeleteHistory is still important. The Russkies remember, even if we have forgotten, that American (and Brit, French, and assorted other) troops were fighting against the Bolsheviks on Russian soil in the Murmansk/Archangel "Northern Russia" expedition in 1918-1919, and in the "Siberian Expedition" 1918-1922 which extended from Vladivostok hundreds of miles westward along the Trans Siberian Railroad [not Orchestra].
The Germans (and Central Power allies) forced the Russians into humiliating terms with an independent armistice and the Treaty of Brest Litovsk in February 1918. Basically, it forced Russia into recognizing the independence of Ukraine, Georgia and Finland; gave up Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to Germany and Austria-Hungary; and ceded Kars, Ardahan and Batum to Turkey. So, yeah, the Russkies think of those places as rightfully belonging to the Russian Empire. Throw in post 11/11/1918 fighting in Ukraine against the Bolsheviks, and the WW2 three way brawl with assorted Ukrainians fighting (simultaneously or separately) with or against Germany and/or Russia and there are a lot of old unsettled scores and animosity lurking about.
Now, we cannot ignore that fact that while we are emptying our bunkers of (most? nearly all?) of our war reserve stocks of conventional munitions, and many of our weapons systems (HIMARS/ M777 howitzers, Stingers, etc, etc) we are doing little to replenish that inventory. Someone reported that the conventional artillery shell consumption is at WW1 levels, and UKR is using more shells in a day than we fired in a month in AFG. And, the Russians are making the rubble bounce with multiple times that. Over 50,000 rounds PER DAY, IIRC, and they too are running low. They also reported that we are buying 155mm shells at something like !,500 a month to refill our bunkers. Do the math.
Meanwhile, the Mullahs are wary of their intimidated subjects, Kim (and sister/daughter) control their impoverished neighbors while building nukes and missiles, and Chinese masses are restless, while Xi covets Taiwan, and may not let a good crisis go to waste where he could shift internal unrest into nationalistic pride by recovering that pesky breakaway province. All these folks are keeping an eye on the Great Satan, our leadership, and our military assets.
All the while, the insane clown posse running our country bumbles about making everything they touch worse, with their ineptitude, dotage, and fixation on environmental nonsense hidden by a news media which is less reliable than Pravda.
Hey, I like the UKR folks, and they are kinda sorta our friends, but they are NOT a vital U.S. national interest. We need to remember we are $31 Trillion in debt, and cannot afford to just shovel cash into their hands (where endemic corruption will magically make a lot of it vanish). We need to get our own spending in order, and pay off our debt before we can be so generous.
Interesting times.
Merry Christmas, all y'all.
John Blackshoe
Spot on, JB. We are on the precipice of things going completely to shite in just minutes. Yet our populace is more interested in free stuff.
DeletePanem et circenses that's where we're at.
May you live in the interesting times. - Ancient Chinese curse...
DeleteSpeaking of China, here is another regime that suddenly faces rebellion.
After Iran lately.
I dont know what will follow, but neither vision of revolution and possibly civil war in China, nor brutal crackdown and resulting predictable hardening relations with the West, and possibly trying to invade Taiwan to keep population distracted are on my Christmas wishlist this year...
Nor mine.
DeleteThe full curse is apparently, " May you live in interesting times, and come to the attention of the Authorities ".
DeleteIt being a Chinese curse is, perhaps, apocryphal. So I've read whle trying to trace the origin.
DeleteThat Wiki article is very intersesting. Good timeline showing continued Russian aggression and the parallels to the Sudetenland are very interesting. Toss in an actual religious schism between the Russian Orthodox Church and the newly formed Ukrainian Orthodox Church and all the sparks are flying towards the tinder and bonfire. Tensions existing since before WWII and a cycle of aggression by Soviet/Russian leaders has helped absolutely nothing.
ReplyDeleteAre there corrupt Ukrainian officials? Yep. And corrupt Donbass officials, Russian officials, corrupt EU officials, corrupt NATO officials, corrupt UN officials and corrupt American officials.
Still doesn't excuse Russian paranoia and dynastic wishes.
Thanks, Pawel, for the synopsis and all the links. Hope you and your fellow Poles don't have to use all the equipment you all are buying and building.
The West left the Poles in the lurch in 1939. They remember that.
DeleteNations tend to have long memory. We remember not only 1939, but, 1772-95 partitions as well.
DeleteLessons? Woe to militarily weak.
Yup.
DeleteThe West left all of eastern Europe in the lurch in and after 1939.
DeletePoland needs to stay strong. Hope they do so. They've saved civilization more than once.
But do we remember our Polish allies who fought with us during the American Revolution? Casmir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kosciuszko? Great article on the latter here:
Deletehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/polish-patriot-who-helped-americans-beat-british-180962430/
Of course, history creates strange bedfellows. John Paul Jones, hero of the Continental Navy, left unemployed at the end of the war went to work for Tsarina Catherine as a Rear Admiral in her navy. Coincidentally, his most notable action in that role was repulsing Turks from the mouth of the Dnieper River area. (Very close to Kherson, scene of Russian fighting in Ukraine today.) Palace and service intrigues saw him returned to St. Petersburg pending new orders which were delayed. In 1789 he was accused of raping a 10 year old and pushed into exile, ending up in Warsaw in a friendship with Kosciuszko.
John Blackshoe
That reminds me, its interesting how survival strategies of all those states fared:
DeletePoland chose to fight Germany and got Sovietized.
Czechoslovakia chose to capitualate and got Sovietized.
Romania and Hungary , sided with Axis and ended up under Soviet boot.
Yugoslavia, sided with Brits, ended up native communist and neutral (kinda).
Greece sided with Brits and landed in NATO, but after bloody civil war. They were lucky Brits were closer toi Athens than Soviets, I guess?
Finland chose to fight Soviets and later kinda semi-joined axis, then switched sides , managed to emerge neutral after some territory loss... Note that Romania and Hungary tried switching sides too, but it didnt work out for them much.
Terrain favored the Yugoslavs in their fight against the Germans and their resistance to being Sovietized. Everything in Eastern Europe (with the exception of Yugoslavia) wound up under the Soviet boot, as did the eastern half of Germany.
DeleteI wonder how much of the money spent has found it's way to Democrat bank accounts in the Bahamas, and other places with cooperative banking systems?
ReplyDelete30-50% at a guess. At least 10% for the Big Guy and the rest for everyone else.
DeleteOur country has fallen so far from WW2. I am almost ashamed to claim to be one. Somewhere between the 16th and 17th Amendments we lost our way. In the sixties I was DJ who sometimes covered for radio news broadcasters. I interviewed several people and wrote stories describing what appeared to be happening. Then came the Xerox machine. In the seventies reporters rewrote press releases. There was no news, only echoes of pre-written approved stories. Things have gone downhill ever since.
ReplyDeleteSad, but true.
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