Things that President Trump won’t do as when meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki:
Demand that Russia withdraw from Ukraine and renounce its illegal claim to Crimea. President Truman did similar, successfully.
Cease backing the murderous Assad regime in Syria and work for a diplomatic outcome that protects the rights and security of all Syrians. President Kennedy successfully took on Khruschev about Laos.
Actually push for stronger human rights across the world, as President Ford did successfully with Russia and many other countries – in Helsinki.
Push Russia to stop supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. The previous U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis had the guts to do so. No sign of the President pushing this now.
Halt provocative military actions on NATO’s periphery and harassment of United States personnel in Moscow. Many U.S. Presidents have done this successfully, none more boldly than Truman throughout the Berlin airlift and its consequences.
Limit nuclear and ballistic arms through binding treaty. President Nixon did sterling work here with Khruschev.
And indeed with Brezhnev.
Gain full cooperation to pressure Kim Jong-Un to denuclearise completely. Since Obama could successfully negotiate with Russia to denuclearise Iran, there must be something useful Trump can do.
… or face actual consequences. Because that is the kind of real agenda that U.S. Presidents have delivered for quite some time, with significant and positive results.
I always enjoy listening to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov give the Russian point of view. He is like the voice of sanity compared to what is going on from the US side.
Thank you ep for that link, a very good watch and yes a breath of common sense and honesty in the morass of crap in which we are drowning.
Advantage …. does whataboutism not work both ways?
[lprent: He is as entitled to put up a viewpoint as you are. Just be careful about what you say about our authors as opposed to what they wrote about. I have a particular viewpoint on that and I’m seldom shy about delivering it. ]
It’s important to note that the Ukraine armed forces are riven with ulta-right wing neo Nazis – supplied with arms from Israel which is acting on behalf of the US
One final point. Putin reminded everyone in his 2018 Victory Day speech that it was Russia that defeated the Nazis (80 percent of German losses were on the Eastern Front) at great cost to itself, and never capitulated or collaborated. This gives it the moral high ground when it comes to talking about preserving freedom around the world.
with a big helping form General Paulus who refused to retreat when he still had time and thus offered the 6th Army to the gods of warfare and his Fuehrer as a sacrifice. Little spineless obedient fuck, like so many of the Germans at the time.
Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus (23 September 1890 – 1 February 1957) was a German general during World War II who commanded the 6th Army. He attained the rank of field marshal two hours before the surrender of German forces in the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 to February 1943). The battle ended in disaster for Nazi Germany when Soviet forces encircled and defeated about 265,000 personnel of the Wehrmacht, their Axis allies and collaborators.
Paulus surrendered in Stalingrad on 31 January 1943,[Note 1] the same day on which he was informed of his promotion to field marshal by Adolf Hitler.
Hitler expected Paulus to commit suicide,[2] repeating to his staff that there was no precedent of a German field marshal ever being captured alive. While in Soviet captivity during the war, Paulus became a vocal critic of the Nazi regime and joined the Soviet-sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany. He moved to East Germany in 1953.”
he should have retreated in 1942 and march back his soldiers, he waited until it was to late and surrended. At the time the war in russia was lost, and anyone and their dog knew it. In fact, someone should have made a point of not invading Russia in Summer and believing their own bullshit to have conquered the country by winters fall.
He was a spineless fuck that could not stand the idea of retreating, loosing his honor and reaping the wrath of his fuehrer and thus he killed his Army.
Every single on of them.
There is an old saying in Europe, it kind of dates back to Napoleon.
You don’t win against General Frost. Winter was/is the Russians biggest asset, combined with the fact that they fought for their ‘Vaterland’, while the Germans were the invaders who were woefully under equipped to fight in Winter.
Please show me where my quote from wikipedia contradicts my assertion.
As for the sixth Army, they were marched to siberia. Those who survived came back in 1955. Even there the spineless fuck was better treated.
Battle of Stalingrad
Main articles: Battle of Stalingrad and Operation Uranus
The Soviet counter-attack at Stalingrad
German front, 19 November
German front, 12 December
German front, 24 December
Soviet advance, 19–28 November
On 28 June 1942, Army Group South began Operation Blau, the German Army’s summer offensive into southern Russia.[6] The goals of the operation were to secure both the oil fields at Baku, Azerbaijan, and the city of Stalingrad on the river Volga to protect the forces advancing into the Caucasus.[7] After two months, the 6th Army reached the outskirts of Stalingrad on 23 August.[8] On the same day, over 1,000 aircraft of the Luftflotte 4 bombed the city, killing many civilians.
Stalingrad was defended by the Soviet 62nd Army under the command of General Vasily Chuikov.[9] Despite German air superiority over Stalingrad, and with more artillery pieces than the Red Army, progress was reduced to no more than several meters a day. Eventually, by mid November, the 62nd Army had been pushed to the banks of the Volga, but the 6th Army was unable to eliminate the remaining Soviet troops.[10]
On 19 November the Stavka launched Operation Uranus, a major offensive by Soviet forces on the flanks of the German army.[11] The first pincer attacked far to the west of the Don, with the second thrust beginning a day later attacking far to the south of Stalingrad.[12] The 6th Army’s flanks were protected by Romanian troops, who were quickly routed, and on 23 November, the pincers met at Kalach-na-Donu, thereby encircling 6th Army.[13] A relief attempt was launched on 12 December, codenamed Operation Winter Storm, but this failed.[14] The army surrendered between 31 January and 2 February 1943.[15] German casualties are 147,200 killed and wounded and over 91,000 captured, the latter including 24 generals and 2,500 officers of lesser rank.[15] Only 5,000 would return to Germany after the war.[1]
I don’t want anyone be mistaken into believing that i support what my country man – my grandfathers, my great uncles, did in Russia and elsewhere. Nothing about it is forgivable. But the fact remains that the ‘obedient’ little fucks that were the Generals and officers of the Sixth Army literally killed their soldiers and could not have done a better job at it then the Russian Army. The russian Army just had to shoot them of and then march them to Siberia.
You don’t invade Russia. You don’t win against General Frost. And you don’t fuck around with the Russian Bear.
But Russia alone did not win he war against Germany. There were the English and their stubbornness to be British and drink tea even in the most dire situation and never surrendered even when their country got bombed night after night. . There were the French resistance. There was General Tito in what became Yuguslavia after the war. There were those ‘workslaves’ that died for sabotaging the ‘war effort’ by essentially building duds. The resistance in Holland, Belgium, Italy and so on and so on.
The Germans lost because they thought they could not loose, they lost because the high ranking officers put misplaced ‘honor’ above country. They lost because to many Germans had absolutely no issue killing the ‘others’ in order to be ‘racially pure’ and ‘be made great again’. The Germans lost because they were blinded by their own hubris. They lost because their idea of ‘greatness’ depending on killing everyone else. And eventually they lost because their largest army, the sixth army soldiers died in ditches, froze to death in Stalingrad by not being equipped for winter warfare and then on the way to the Prisoners of war camps in Siberia
You might wish to watch (on YouTube) Glantz, a West Point military historian on Barbarossa who makes a compelling case that despite great tactical victories, two months into the invasion that strategic victory was beyond German capabilities. Stalingrad and Kursk merely bookmark a war the Russians fought by attrition from the first.
Do you not know that the Soviet Union joined in the invasion (The cause of Britain and France declaring War on Germany) and dismemberment of Poland in 1939?
Do you not know the Soviet Union provided Nazi Germany vital raw material right up until the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941?
Do you not remember the Soviet Union suppressing independent dissent in Eastern Europe from 1945 till 1989?
Sure, I am very aware of the history of the Second World War, and the other sides of this argument. There were contradictions in nearly every theatre of the war. France had a Vichy government, Italians fought against the Nazis as much as for them through the Italian resistance movement, the United States would have been happy to let Germany win the war until Japan attacked it. The Russian soldiers acted appalling in Germany etc.
But I think the Russian perspective IS important at the moment. Russia is being painted as the aggressor by the United States which claims to represent freedom and democracy.
But it is the United States that is acting aggressively. For example, people may not be aware that the US/NATO and the Swedish government are trying to scare the Swedish people into joining NATO with pamphlets going into EVERY household saying that Sweden is in danger of attack – the first time since the middle of WWII.
Putin is reminding everyone that it was Russia that crushed Nazi fascism at the cost of millions of Russian lives, so the United States can not claim moral superiority.
I would love to see Russia become a real democracy but while it is surrounded by aggressive forces that are interfering out of self interest in the political affairs of its closest neighbours, such as the Ukraine whose armed forces include Neo-Nazis, lead by a country that is steadily eroding the rights of its own citizens, there is zero chance of the Russian democratic movement flourishing. All the Russian people have at the moment is a leader who for all his enormous faults at least sticks up for them against the United States.
[lprent: Tell me have you ever read about the occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. There are a lot of Poles who weren’t exactly impartial about that unprovoked aggression by both of those very similar empires. Both at the time were so similar. For instance they were world leaders in concentration camps and mass murder.
Meaningless flame war starters just annoy me. If I get annoyed enough I like to enhance the debate as I target the arsehole who tries to trigger it. ]
Churchill also a concentration camp speciallist from his time in the Boer Wars…
It can be interesting to read books from both sides, not just from the winner.
no one knows what either one of these guys will do as this is a ‘private’ meeting.
Exactly – only two translators will be with them. So no record of what they discuss. Maybe how to “fix” the mid terms?
But “No Collusion” Yeah Right!
Whatever – this can only end badly.
Demand that Russia withdraw from Ukraine and renounce its illegal claim to Crimea.
People have the right to self-determination as guaranteed by the UDHR. The people of Crimea chose to secede from the Ukraine and rejoin Russia.
I see nothing illegal in them choosing to do so.
Actually push for stronger human rights across the world, as President Ford did successfully with Russia and many other countries
That’d be nice but even the US doesn’t really support human rights:
The UDHR has three components, which are of equal status: civil-political, socioeconomic and cultural rights. The US formally accepts the first of the three, though it has often violated its provisions. The US pretty much disregards the third. And to the point here, the US has officially and strongly condemned the second component, socioeconomic rights, including Article 25.
Would be somewhat hypocritical for them to demand stronger human rights from anyone really.
Push Russia to stop supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Representatives from Russia and the Taliban “laughed” at US claims that Moscow has been arming the group, according to Russia’s envoy to Afghanistan.
Zamir Kabulov said on Thursday that in their talks with the Taliban, the group’s representatives said they buy all their weapons illegally from the Afghan government and police, and asked for financial support for that.
In that request, the Russian representatives replied, “Sorry, we have no money”, Kabulov told a press conference in Moscow.
Not according to Russia or the Taliban.
Halt provocative military actions on NATO’s periphery and harassment of United States personnel in Moscow.
Are you claiming that a group of people can just decide to physically separate themselves from a central authority via force of arms at any time of their choosing?
NATO are doing military exercises on the borders of Russia. Russia would have good reason to think that such exercises are a prelude to invasion. It is, after all, what Germany did to them in WWII.
That is very naïve, Gosman. Hitler merely shifted his attention to Russia. Fortunately, he failed there, and, like Napoleon, lost 80% of his military power. If he had succeeded in knocking Russia out of the war in one or two years, Britain would have been toast. If he had knocked Russia out in time, we would not even have won at El Alamein. And whether you like it or not, it was indeed Russia that did the hard yards – not Britain and the USA.
So we come back to why Stalin could not get an agreement with Britain, France and Poland to stand with him against Germany?
Britain and France thought Communism worse than Nazism (Queen’s photo as child is part of that) and Poland refused permission for Russian soldiers to go through Polish territory to fight with France and Britain against Germany. All unworkable. Stalin’s only way out was the Ribbentrop agreement with Hitler, dividing up Poland. It was pretty well forced upon him, partly by the very right-wing Poles themselves. For Stalin, it triggered the war breaking out in the West against Britain and France, instead of in the East against his country. Not one country in the West had a leader with any vision at the time. And Stalin got a little extra time to prepare. Not that he had much vision – he later refused to believe that Hitler was about to launch Barbarossa..
Considering Russia saved the UK in World War 2, you would think they would show more appreciation.
BAHAHAHA
The lend-lease program from the ‘western’ allies to Russia was critical to the Russian’s ability to mobilise.
Approximately one third of all heavy armour in the Russian arsenal during the summer of ’41/’42 summer was of UK origin. By the end of the war, about 30% of Russian aircraft were lend-lease sourced.
More importantly trucks, train locomotives and stock (more than 90% of all rolling stock!), rations, clothing, and munitions were heavily supplemented by lend-lease from ’41 to ’45. Without the program, the Russian army would simply not have been able to move. Let alone fight.
The simple fact is that neither the western, nor eastern, allies could have won on their own. To claim otherwise is utterly nonsensical.
Bollocks. The UK heavy armour was rubbish at that time: lumbering oxen with pea-shooters attached. Even the British tank brigades recognised that they were fighting with inferior equipment. Russia moved its entire Military production east of the Urals, and built its own supply of fast, mobile and powerful war-winning T-34 tanks. Summer of 41-2 was before they achieved full production. The aircraft Britain sent were outmoded Hurricane fighters. The Russians later produced their own, far superior fighters..
The Russians were helped to a small degree by trucks, Jeeps etc during summer of 41-42, but they were still largely in retreat. And don’t forget that after a disastrous convoy to Murmansk, the British stopped delivering.
The Germans had no idea of what the Russians were building. They had no idea that two new, well-equipped armies would cut them off at Stalingrad, then vastly outnumber their Panzers at Kursk.
The trucks and rolling stock helped to a degree, but to pretend that Russia survived only because of the limited supplies delivered from the West is foolish. The Russians did it themselves, and arguably still would have done so without the limited help they got from the West.
And where did this vast supply of lend-lease railway rolling stock come from after the British convoys stopped? I think you will find that the Russians did it largely by themselves.
When Adolf Hitler launched his surprise Blitzkrieg – codenamed Barbarossa – on the Soviet Union in June 1941, bringing Russia into the war against Nazi Germany, Britain no longer stood alone against the fascist threat. Putting aside his lifelong antipathy to Bolshevism, Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill authorised urgent naval convoys of vital war material to Russia. Shipped across some of the most dangerous waters in the world, the Arctic Convoys between 1941 and 1945 delivered tanks, fighter planes, fuel, ammunition, raw materials and food to the Soviet Union’s northern ports.
Churchill’s genuine, if pragmatic, change of heart was announced the very day of the Nazi assault on the Soviet people. In a radio broadcast, Britain’s wartime leader said: “… we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and to the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and Allies in every part of the world to take the same course and pursue it as we shall, faithfully and steadfastly to the end.”
Known as the ‘Russian’ and ‘Polar’ convoys – or by the sailors who risked their lives to bring the supplies to Russia, the ‘Murmansk Run’ – the Arctic Convoys were part of the Lend Lease programme under which the United States supplied France, Great Britain, China, the USSR and other Allied nations with food, oil, and material between 1941 and 1945. The programme started in March 1941 and ended in September 1945. Supplies to the Soviet Union also came overland via the Persian Corridor and to Russia’s Far East by the Pacific Route.
Figures and details true, but even here in the West many see it as one-sided to claim that the Russians could not have won without us.
The more I read about it, the more I suspect that the Western allies helped Russia far less than they could have, and also that the Russian policies would have succeeded without any help from the West at all.
Well, yes and no.
The soviets might have lasted long enough to win without western aid, just as they might have persisted after Moscow got taken because the Siberian divisions were kept in the far east because Stalin never got the word that the Japanese weren’t going to attack.
But the longer the war, the more likely that there’s a collapse similar to ww1.
the more I suspect that the Western allies helped Russia far less than they could have, and also that the Russian policies would have succeeded without any help from the West at all.
If what you think had been the case, and Europe was left to the Soviets, the outcome would have been horrific – you might like to ask Angela Merkel about what it was like to live in Eastern Europe under the soviets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koqeZUqySDA
My wife visited in 1966 driving through East Germany and Poland and Leningrad to Moscow. The depravations and lack of freedoms were extreme. The soviet system was an abject failure.
But of course the D-Day landings and Allied advance on Berlin, the annihilation of German infrastructure and manufacturing by allied bombing, and the cutting of all shipped oil supplies by the RN had nothing to do with it.
Macro, I drove through East Germany myself in 1980, and agree with you. Nowhere did I say that I admire Stalin, or the USSR system. I just get tired of people believing our own one-sided version of the story.
By the way, it is just possible that the Allies did the Normandy landing etc because they suddenly realised what would happen if they did not. The Russians felt it was far too late.
And while allied bombing was devastating to the civilian population, you may be overestimating its effect upon German war production, which peaked in 1944. That is strangely late in the war, is it not? Huge bombing had been done before then, but the Germans adapted. Only in Autumn of that year (less than a year to VE Day) did bombing really start to hurt German supplies.
By that time the Russians had the Germans in full retreat anyway.
Initially allied bombing was directed at towns as a tit for tat reply to the bombing of civilian targets in England. When the allies got smart and then directed their targets to infrastructure (late 1943 – early 1944) the volume of war material began to fall dramatically. https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c17284ec4e3500b23e46556985170a84
Agreed, Macro, but even by that time Russia had Germany on the ropes. If D-Day had not happened, the Red Army would have been on the other side of the English Channel.
Improvement in night-bombing targeting by the RAF helped, but basically the Russians had the upper hand by then. Have you looked at Russia’s production compared to Germany’s? Putin is not wrong about Russia being the main winner over Germany, however little people here may like the Russian style of government, or Putin himself. And however ignorant they remain about how much effort Russia put in to winning WW2.
Russia suffered losses that we can comprehend only by trying to remember the terrible butchery of WW1.
I am not saying that Stalin was an angel, or that Putin is one.
I am saying that Putin is right on this point, and that we have far too many who think that The USA and Britain defeated Hitler. They did not. Russia did.
Russia knows NATO is not going to invade it. But they would be very unhappy if any more former Soviet republics became part of NATO. The Russians would feel they are being bottled up, and not have primacy in their immediate area. Their support of the eastern Ukrainians is all about that, plus the wartime memory of the war in the Donbass, the very threshold of Volgograd. Think the Battle of Stalingrad for the significance of that.
As for the meeting, I reckon Putin will want the west to recognise the reality of Crimea. In return they will give up on east Ukraine, or least only insist on it being a semiautonomous region within Ukraine. That would mean the end of sanctions and a reset of the US Russia relationship. Other stuff like a deal on nuclear weapons could also be done.
DTB so Manafort siding with Putin taking 10’s of millions in Consultancy fees and another $10 million loan from Putins henchman oligarch.
Money laundering etc etc.
Neither side has my support but Trump /Kucshner have received extensive funding from other Putins Russian Mafia linked oligarchs.
Like “Wise” (guy/mafia fixer Manafort)
Trump has proven ties to the US mafia.
Both side’s are equally corrupt.
Fox news and RT(Russian equivalent of Fox).
Under what circumstances does the definition of ‘equally corrupt’ cover both of, say:
1: Robert Mueller’s detailed indictments, and
2: the fever dream nonsense of ‘Benghazi’ or ‘Uranium One’?
Things that President Putin won’t do when meeting U.S. President Donald Trump in Helsinki:
Demand that the U.S. withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq and renounce its illegal blockade of Cuba.
Demand that Trump cease backing the murderous Netanyahu regime in Israel and work for a diplomatic outcome that protects the rights and security of all Palestinians.
Actually push for stronger human rights across the world.
Demand the U.S. stop supporting the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine.
Push the U.S. to stop supporting the outlaw Israeli government in the Occupied Territories, as well as the oppressive and anti-democratic regimes in Brazil, Guatemala and Honduras.
Get the U.S. to halt provocative military actions on North Korea’s periphery and similar provocations in vassal states like Poland.
Gain full cooperation to pressure Binyamin Netanyahu to denuclearise completely.
Force the U.S. to cease its destructive cyberoperations and drone assassinations all over the world, but especially in Yemen and Afghanistan. Obama unfortunately encouraged it.
The perfect riposte to the neocon drivel that this post delivers.
Anyone who has seen Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States would know Truman was a terrible U.S President, captured by the military industrial state.
Advantage’s post is preposterous from beginning to end. Are the administrators of this site going to turn it over to Whaleoil for a guest post now? He couldn’t be any more biased or untruthful than this bloke “Advantage”.
[lprent: If you are looking for a long vacation, then please just ask for one. Otherwise stop whining like a spring chicken. Authors write what they choose to write, that is why we have them here. The authors will argue amongst themselves. Which acts as background. Mike and I tend to just look at the good of the site. If we think that something is getting in the way of the objectives of the site then we will deal with it.
You don’t get any say in that. As you know, this is pretty clearly stated in the policy. Including the fuckup off if you don’t like it consequences of whining about it. ]
Russia is a brutal, undemocratic state. It’s very bad indeed. But compared to the United States and Britain, it is indeed “all goodness and lightness.” That’s a fact that the likes of the person who wrote this fantastic “Trump Meets Putin” article seems unwilling to acknowledge.
Please note that my views on America and Russia are very similar to those of Morrissey, Maui, Brigid, Draco and Esoteric.
My views are hardly out there on this.
The world sees the US and Israel as rogue states.
I just see the US as being lumbered with a self-contradictory and very inflexible constitution that was designed for a different time and a radically different demography.
They haven’t managed to make a useful amendment to it since 1967, 50 years ago. The right to vote shouldn’t been in any reasonable constitution, so voting at age 18 shouldn’t have been in there in 1971. And the 1992 one to prevent the members of congress voting themselves pay rises… Well what can one say…
Effectively the whole society is slowly cracking under the constitutional strain as the institutions struggle to adjust. For instance look at the Economist editorial this week.
Ed – Hardly anyone here is saying that the US, as it is at the moment, is a beacon of democracy. The repugnants are in desperate need of growing a spine and impeaching the radge orange bampot. As Lprent says the constitution is in desperate need of revamp, and the country – like NZ is heavily biased in favour of the conservative rural vote. Overlaying all of this is an economic system which bestows greater freedoms to the wealthy at the expense of the poor. This is much the case in all capitalist economies, to a greater or lesser extent. Nevertheless, the US, up until the advent of Trump had, in many cases, attempted to be a good global citizen, even if, not all of its activities met your approval.
Over the past 540 days, however I grant that the US has become more and more, an unstable and unreliable global citizen – particularly in the sphere of human rights and environmental protections, to say nothing about its friends and alliances. One can only hope that this phase is temporary, and the damage done is not so bad that it cannot be restored.
The fact that many see Russia as a rogue state is more to the point. The blatant interference in other nations politics and elections is but one example.
It is not a blockade of Cuba. It is restricting US trade with them. any country can do that. It is no different to NZ deciding not to allow GMO products in to the country.
We should be kind to Morrissey. He clearly just has a temporal fugue or possibly that he is an illiterate speaker of Spanish unaware of the word embargar from which the English usage of embargo derives or it could simply mean that he is a idiot who prefers to make up his fantasy history.
The US blockade of Cuba started on the 22nd of October 1962 and ended on the 28th of the same month.
There have been an embargoes by the US of various types of trade with Cuba since they were first imposed on the Barista regime in 1958 (preventing arms sales). These were extended by the US after the uncompensated nationalisation of various US owned assets in Cuba in 1962, well before the Cuban missile crisis later that year.
The embargo should have been negotiated away long ago. However crass political motives by grandstanding unfeeling fuckwits on both sides has preferred to maintain the embargo rather than dealing with the harm that it causes.
It doesn’t matter if you look at the daft names of the US domestic acts or stupidity extending the embargo or the name that the Cubans prefer to use, it all just reeks of dickheads waving their stupidity around.
Despite the Spanish-language term bloqueo (blockade), there has been no physical, naval blockade of the country by the United States after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.[4] The United States does not block Cuba’s trade with third parties: other countries are not under the jurisdiction of U.S. domestic laws, such as the Cuban Democracy Act (although, in theory, foreign countries that trade with Cuba could be penalised by the U.S., which has been condemned as an “extraterritorial” measure that contravenes “the sovereign equality of States, non-intervention in their internal affairs and freedom of trade and navigation as paramount to the conduct of international affairs.”[5]). Cuba can, and does, conduct international trade with many third-party countries;[6] Cuba has been a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1995.[7]
Beyond criticisms of human rights in Cuba, the United States holds $6 billion worth of financial claims against the Cuban government.[8] The pro-embargo position is that the U.S. embargo is, in part, an appropriate response to these unaddressed claims.[9] The Latin America Working Group argues that pro-embargo Cuban-American exiles, whose votes are crucial in Florida, have swayed many politicians to also adopt similar views.[10] The Cuban-American views have been opposed by some business leaders who argue that trading freely would be good for Cuba and the United States.[11]
At present, the embargo, which limits American businesses from conducting business with Cuban interests, is still in effect and is the most enduring trade embargo in modern history. Despite the existence of the embargo, the United States is the fifth largest exporter to Cuba (6.6% of Cuba’s imports are from the US).[12] Cuba must, however, pay cash for all imports, as credit is not allowed.[13]
The scofflaw state of Israel labels itself “the Jewish state.” That has not stopped it treating the Palestinians in a manner that even its own cabinet ministers, like the hardline Tommy Lapid, have compared to the actions of the Nazis.
Actually I’d say that the way that the Israelis operate their concentration camp in Gaza is very similar to the treatment of political prisoners including Jews in Nazi Germany in 1933 to 1939.
After all the really efficient death camps were placed outside Germany after 1939 in case they disturbed the German population.
In Germany up to 1939, the German camps concentrated on simply slowly starving people to death and denying them access to medical care. Order was primarily maintained by armed guards with shoot to kill orders against unarmed civilians.
Personally I can’t see much difference between that and the current behaviour of the gutless Israeli barbarians deliberately shooting clearly defined medics from the fortified boundaries of their camp.
Bearing in mind the public statements of some of the Israeli populations, especially some of the ulta orthodox and ‘settler’ groups, it makes me wonder how long before they follow the Nazi solutions.
Your views are not shared by the likes of Tommy Lapid or other honest Israeli politicians such as Moshe Dayan. Perhaps instead of sitting on your arse watching Fox News last December 3rd, you should have gone to the Mt Eden Memorial Hall to see one of the great Israeli journalists talking….
Israel has three regimes. First, there is the “liberal democracy” which is the privilege of its Jewish citizens, but there are many threats to this. The second regime is aimed at the Palestinians—the “Israeli Arabs” who comprise 20 per cent of the population, and who have formal civil rights; they are deeply discriminated against in every way. The third regime is very different from any “liberal” posturing—this is Israel’s dark heart, the regime in the Occupied Territories. This is one of the most brutal tyrannies on Earth today, no less than that.
Maybe not 1944 Nazi Germany, but not far off 1937 maybe.
Shooting kids, delaying and denying access to basic life needs, segregationist controls on ghettoes, advanced propaganda machine to paint the victims as parasitic invaders intent on extermination…
Not since Munich 1938 have we had a world leader willing to surrender everything thing for nothing to a tyrant. #TrumpPutinSummit— Harry Leslie Smith (@Harryslaststand) July 15, 2018
Relatively safe for who in particular? If you members of the Assad regime you would be correct. If you mean anyone perceived to be a threat to the Assad regime you would be wrong.
Gosman I really don’t think you know very much about Syria, that could be because you rely only on information provided by CNN, BBC, Guardian et al since 2011.
Have you ever actually talked to any Syrian about their country?
Brigid
Are you completely unaware of the massacres of protestors by the Assad regime in 2011 ( the sort of thing his father did)? That is what started the civil war.
Yes Syria was at “peace” prior to 2011, just like Iraq was under
Suddein. The sort of peace that Stalin would have been proud of.
However Assad will win the civil war, with the probable exception of the Kurds. Will Russia and the US give them a guarantee of autonomy. Maybe that might be sorted tomorrow!
According to Tim Anderson the so called “protestors” were armed by islamist extremists. I guess that would make them not protestors, but closer to fighters or militants.
Also Syria has a reputation as a safe haven for minorities in a volatile and unsafe region. Your portrayal of Syria as some sort of Stalinist hellhole is very misleading imo.
I think you’re guessing at how their Government functions and behaves. So am I too, but from all appearances minorities were safe in Syria and as spikey says the Government was generally well liked and supported by it’s citizens. Those are two strong points that are hard to disprove I think and don’t mesh with your portrayal of a brutal regime.
Comparisons to Stalin or to Hitler or to whatever other evil figure you can think of may serve the purpose of denigrating whoever to the level of non human but does little to reveal anything of actual circumstances.
Western media sources in early 2011 were pretty universal in their realisation that Assad was popular and unlikely to be deposed. Even after the initial violence in Daraa. Life in Syria at that time may not have been attractive to you Wayne but I guess thats why you didn’t live there.
If you would care for a little more detail on the origins of the war in Syria, you could start here…
Almost 90% of the country voted in Assad, so that’s a reasonable starting point for a safe country. Plus there wasn’t a war going on or millions of residents fleeing the country.
I don’t trust the portrayal of middle eastern leaders by corporate news sources either. So I find it incredibly difficult to gauge how good or bad the leaders of say Syria, Iraq or Libya were.
John R. Bolton
On May 6, 2002, then-Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton gave a speech entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil”. In it he added three more nations to be grouped with the already mentioned rogue states: Cuba, Libya, and Syria. The criteria for inclusion in this grouping were: “state sponsors of terrorism that are pursuing or who have the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or have the capability to do so in violation of their treaty obligations.”[5]
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (commonly known as the “Clean Break” report) is a policy document that was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel.[1] The report explained a new approach to solving Israel’s security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on “Western values.” It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting its possession of “weapons of mass destruction”. Certain parts of the policies set forth in the paper were rejected by Netanyahu.[2][3]
Trump is conflicted, he needs the NATO confrontation with Russia over Ukraine/Crimea to realise the 2014 promise of 2% GDP defence spending by 2024. Especially given he is being ridiculous about bumping that up to 4% and demanding Germans take American gas rather than make use the new pipeline arrangment with Russia.
Thus he has nothing to offer Putin in return for “global” co-operation.
And given his pretence that completing Obama era plan for nuclear weapons upgrade investment will be his own achievement, he will look away from bi-lateral nuclear arms reduction issues.
He has achieved nothing with North Korea, but will do the same here so he can pretend he made a difference (when the USA is actually co-existing with a nuclear armed and ICBM capable N Korea) – all so he can posture as GOP strongman on Iran to please the Jewish and Christian Zionist lobbies.
I suppose he could sacrifice Kurds in Syria for a Russian “promise” not to do to the US what the US did to Russia in Afghanistan, but only if he has Likud permission …
Crimea never voted to leave the Russian Federation, but they did vote to rejoin it. And there where lots of attacts on Russian ethinics in the East of Ukraine to justify action.
Assad is a democratic leader, and one of the few in the region who isn’t a puppet for the world’s Zionist empire.
A talk about a reduction on nuclear weapons would be good. Expect they will have one, indirectly. But reducing the power of the Industrial Military Complex is to happen slowly to avoid crazy folk hitting the panic buttons.
It’s a provocitive post for The Standard. This demonising of Trump is so truely non-productive.
Ad, you third point the real problem is that trump has been attacking human rights and civil rights. So there is no way this is going to happen, I fear the next few years are going to continue the trend that civil rights and human rights are going backwards.
A couple I would have liked you to add, was that he speak up for LGBTI rights, and help stop sex trafficking.
But alas we ain’t going to see that either. We are not going to see anything, but more of trump the distractor whilst the US empire keeps killing the world with it’s over consumption.
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
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I always enjoy listening to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov give the Russian point of view. He is like the voice of sanity compared to what is going on from the US side.
Thank you ep for that link, a very good watch and yes a breath of common sense and honesty in the morass of crap in which we are drowning.
Advantage …. does whataboutism not work both ways?
[lprent: He is as entitled to put up a viewpoint as you are. Just be careful about what you say about our authors as opposed to what they wrote about. I have a particular viewpoint on that and I’m seldom shy about delivering it. ]
It’s important to note that the Ukraine armed forces are riven with ulta-right wing neo Nazis – supplied with arms from Israel which is acting on behalf of the US
One final point. Putin reminded everyone in his 2018 Victory Day speech that it was Russia that defeated the Nazis (80 percent of German losses were on the Eastern Front) at great cost to itself, and never capitulated or collaborated. This gives it the moral high ground when it comes to talking about preserving freedom around the world.
with a big helping form General Paulus who refused to retreat when he still had time and thus offered the 6th Army to the gods of warfare and his Fuehrer as a sacrifice. Little spineless obedient fuck, like so many of the Germans at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Paulus
Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus (23 September 1890 – 1 February 1957) was a German general during World War II who commanded the 6th Army. He attained the rank of field marshal two hours before the surrender of German forces in the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 to February 1943). The battle ended in disaster for Nazi Germany when Soviet forces encircled and defeated about 265,000 personnel of the Wehrmacht, their Axis allies and collaborators.
Paulus surrendered in Stalingrad on 31 January 1943,[Note 1] the same day on which he was informed of his promotion to field marshal by Adolf Hitler.
Hitler expected Paulus to commit suicide,[2] repeating to his staff that there was no precedent of a German field marshal ever being captured alive. While in Soviet captivity during the war, Paulus became a vocal critic of the Nazi regime and joined the Soviet-sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany. He moved to East Germany in 1953.”
Sabine your quote from wikipedia contridicts your assertion … as i understood it
he should have retreated in 1942 and march back his soldiers, he waited until it was to late and surrended. At the time the war in russia was lost, and anyone and their dog knew it. In fact, someone should have made a point of not invading Russia in Summer and believing their own bullshit to have conquered the country by winters fall.
He was a spineless fuck that could not stand the idea of retreating, loosing his honor and reaping the wrath of his fuehrer and thus he killed his Army.
Every single on of them.
There is an old saying in Europe, it kind of dates back to Napoleon.
You don’t win against General Frost. Winter was/is the Russians biggest asset, combined with the fact that they fought for their ‘Vaterland’, while the Germans were the invaders who were woefully under equipped to fight in Winter.
Please show me where my quote from wikipedia contradicts my assertion.
As for the sixth Army, they were marched to siberia. Those who survived came back in 1955. Even there the spineless fuck was better treated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Army_(Wehrmacht)
Battle of Stalingrad
Main articles: Battle of Stalingrad and Operation Uranus
The Soviet counter-attack at Stalingrad
German front, 19 November
German front, 12 December
German front, 24 December
Soviet advance, 19–28 November
On 28 June 1942, Army Group South began Operation Blau, the German Army’s summer offensive into southern Russia.[6] The goals of the operation were to secure both the oil fields at Baku, Azerbaijan, and the city of Stalingrad on the river Volga to protect the forces advancing into the Caucasus.[7] After two months, the 6th Army reached the outskirts of Stalingrad on 23 August.[8] On the same day, over 1,000 aircraft of the Luftflotte 4 bombed the city, killing many civilians.
Stalingrad was defended by the Soviet 62nd Army under the command of General Vasily Chuikov.[9] Despite German air superiority over Stalingrad, and with more artillery pieces than the Red Army, progress was reduced to no more than several meters a day. Eventually, by mid November, the 62nd Army had been pushed to the banks of the Volga, but the 6th Army was unable to eliminate the remaining Soviet troops.[10]
On 19 November the Stavka launched Operation Uranus, a major offensive by Soviet forces on the flanks of the German army.[11] The first pincer attacked far to the west of the Don, with the second thrust beginning a day later attacking far to the south of Stalingrad.[12] The 6th Army’s flanks were protected by Romanian troops, who were quickly routed, and on 23 November, the pincers met at Kalach-na-Donu, thereby encircling 6th Army.[13] A relief attempt was launched on 12 December, codenamed Operation Winter Storm, but this failed.[14] The army surrendered between 31 January and 2 February 1943.[15] German casualties are 147,200 killed and wounded and over 91,000 captured, the latter including 24 generals and 2,500 officers of lesser rank.[15] Only 5,000 would return to Germany after the war.[1]
I don’t want anyone be mistaken into believing that i support what my country man – my grandfathers, my great uncles, did in Russia and elsewhere. Nothing about it is forgivable. But the fact remains that the ‘obedient’ little fucks that were the Generals and officers of the Sixth Army literally killed their soldiers and could not have done a better job at it then the Russian Army. The russian Army just had to shoot them of and then march them to Siberia.
You don’t invade Russia. You don’t win against General Frost. And you don’t fuck around with the Russian Bear.
But Russia alone did not win he war against Germany. There were the English and their stubbornness to be British and drink tea even in the most dire situation and never surrendered even when their country got bombed night after night. . There were the French resistance. There was General Tito in what became Yuguslavia after the war. There were those ‘workslaves’ that died for sabotaging the ‘war effort’ by essentially building duds. The resistance in Holland, Belgium, Italy and so on and so on.
The Germans lost because they thought they could not loose, they lost because the high ranking officers put misplaced ‘honor’ above country. They lost because to many Germans had absolutely no issue killing the ‘others’ in order to be ‘racially pure’ and ‘be made great again’. The Germans lost because they were blinded by their own hubris. They lost because their idea of ‘greatness’ depending on killing everyone else. And eventually they lost because their largest army, the sixth army soldiers died in ditches, froze to death in Stalingrad by not being equipped for winter warfare and then on the way to the Prisoners of war camps in Siberia
You might wish to watch (on YouTube) Glantz, a West Point military historian on Barbarossa who makes a compelling case that despite great tactical victories, two months into the invasion that strategic victory was beyond German capabilities. Stalingrad and Kursk merely bookmark a war the Russians fought by attrition from the first.
You are joking right?
Do you not know that the Soviet Union joined in the invasion (The cause of Britain and France declaring War on Germany) and dismemberment of Poland in 1939?
Do you not know the Soviet Union provided Nazi Germany vital raw material right up until the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941?
Do you not remember the Soviet Union suppressing independent dissent in Eastern Europe from 1945 till 1989?
Sure, I am very aware of the history of the Second World War, and the other sides of this argument. There were contradictions in nearly every theatre of the war. France had a Vichy government, Italians fought against the Nazis as much as for them through the Italian resistance movement, the United States would have been happy to let Germany win the war until Japan attacked it. The Russian soldiers acted appalling in Germany etc.
But I think the Russian perspective IS important at the moment. Russia is being painted as the aggressor by the United States which claims to represent freedom and democracy.
But it is the United States that is acting aggressively. For example, people may not be aware that the US/NATO and the Swedish government are trying to scare the Swedish people into joining NATO with pamphlets going into EVERY household saying that Sweden is in danger of attack – the first time since the middle of WWII.
Putin is reminding everyone that it was Russia that crushed Nazi fascism at the cost of millions of Russian lives, so the United States can not claim moral superiority.
I would love to see Russia become a real democracy but while it is surrounded by aggressive forces that are interfering out of self interest in the political affairs of its closest neighbours, such as the Ukraine whose armed forces include Neo-Nazis, lead by a country that is steadily eroding the rights of its own citizens, there is zero chance of the Russian democratic movement flourishing. All the Russian people have at the moment is a leader who for all his enormous faults at least sticks up for them against the United States.
See link below on Sweden:
What evidence is there that Neo-Nazi’s have any degreee of influence in the Ukrainian government?
globalresearch.ca will have plently of lead on that one.
You could have a wee look through this if you like. Andriy Parubiy for one and Arsen Avakov for another. The Ukraine parliament speaker and the Interior Minister respectively…
https://www.alternet.org/media/anonymous-blacklist-promoted-washington-post-has-shocking-roots-ukrainian-fascism-eugenics-and
Well it would if not for Molotov Ribbentrop.
Some of the causes of Russia’s high casualty rate are less than admirable too.
Preserving freedom. You funny guy piney.
Except for that time when they were collaborating with their Nazi besties to invade and occupy Poland.
You are hardly impartial on the subject…..
[lprent: Tell me have you ever read about the occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. There are a lot of Poles who weren’t exactly impartial about that unprovoked aggression by both of those very similar empires. Both at the time were so similar. For instance they were world leaders in concentration camps and mass murder.
Meaningless flame war starters just annoy me. If I get annoyed enough I like to enhance the debate as I target the arsehole who tries to trigger it. ]
Churchill also a concentration camp speciallist from his time in the Boer Wars…
It can be interesting to read books from both sides, not just from the winner.
I agree.
So the Jesuit priest defeated the Catholic choir boy, preserving the freedom of the capitalism, hmmmm.
no one knows what either one of these guys will do as this is a ‘private’ meeting.
agree and think that “speculation” is counterproductive and often just thinly disguised shilling
no one knows what either one of these guys will do as this is a ‘private’ meeting.
Exactly – only two translators will be with them. So no record of what they discuss. Maybe how to “fix” the mid terms?
But “No Collusion” Yeah Right!
Whatever – this can only end badly.
People have the right to self-determination as guaranteed by the UDHR. The people of Crimea chose to secede from the Ukraine and rejoin Russia.
I see nothing illegal in them choosing to do so.
That’d be nice but even the US doesn’t really support human rights:
Would be somewhat hypocritical for them to demand stronger human rights from anyone really.
Is Russia supporting the Taliban?
Not according to Russia or the Taliban.
Yes, the US should stop doing military actions on NATOs borders:
Seems provocative to me.
Are you claiming that a group of people can just decide to physically separate themselves from a central authority via force of arms at any time of their choosing?
If that’s what they feel is necessary then yes. I’d prefer it if they simply used a referendum but that doesn’t seem to work too well because the central authority always claims that it was illegal.
Why are defensive military exercises provocative?
NATO are doing military exercises on the borders of Russia. Russia would have good reason to think that such exercises are a prelude to invasion. It is, after all, what Germany did to them in WWII.
There’s a reason provocation is no longer a legal defense in NZ.
Nato may provoke – Russia invades.
Nato invades. Have you heard of Iraq and Afghanistan?
Funny – I thought that was the US.
And its U.K. lapdog.
Considering Russia saved the UK in World War 2, you would think they would show more appreciation.
They didn’t save the UK. By June 1941 the UK was not under any imminent threat of invasion.
That is very naïve, Gosman. Hitler merely shifted his attention to Russia. Fortunately, he failed there, and, like Napoleon, lost 80% of his military power. If he had succeeded in knocking Russia out of the war in one or two years, Britain would have been toast. If he had knocked Russia out in time, we would not even have won at El Alamein. And whether you like it or not, it was indeed Russia that did the hard yards – not Britain and the USA.
Dunkirk? The Germans let the English go. You never seen the photo of the Queen as a child doing the Nazi hand salue? A classic!
So we come back to why Stalin could not get an agreement with Britain, France and Poland to stand with him against Germany?
Britain and France thought Communism worse than Nazism (Queen’s photo as child is part of that) and Poland refused permission for Russian soldiers to go through Polish territory to fight with France and Britain against Germany. All unworkable. Stalin’s only way out was the Ribbentrop agreement with Hitler, dividing up Poland. It was pretty well forced upon him, partly by the very right-wing Poles themselves. For Stalin, it triggered the war breaking out in the West against Britain and France, instead of in the East against his country. Not one country in the West had a leader with any vision at the time. And Stalin got a little extra time to prepare. Not that he had much vision – he later refused to believe that Hitler was about to launch Barbarossa..
Considering Russia saved the UK in World War 2, you would think they would show more appreciation.
BAHAHAHA
The lend-lease program from the ‘western’ allies to Russia was critical to the Russian’s ability to mobilise.
Approximately one third of all heavy armour in the Russian arsenal during the summer of ’41/’42 summer was of UK origin. By the end of the war, about 30% of Russian aircraft were lend-lease sourced.
More importantly trucks, train locomotives and stock (more than 90% of all rolling stock!), rations, clothing, and munitions were heavily supplemented by lend-lease from ’41 to ’45. Without the program, the Russian army would simply not have been able to move. Let alone fight.
The simple fact is that neither the western, nor eastern, allies could have won on their own. To claim otherwise is utterly nonsensical.
Bollocks. The UK heavy armour was rubbish at that time: lumbering oxen with pea-shooters attached. Even the British tank brigades recognised that they were fighting with inferior equipment. Russia moved its entire Military production east of the Urals, and built its own supply of fast, mobile and powerful war-winning T-34 tanks. Summer of 41-2 was before they achieved full production. The aircraft Britain sent were outmoded Hurricane fighters. The Russians later produced their own, far superior fighters..
The Russians were helped to a small degree by trucks, Jeeps etc during summer of 41-42, but they were still largely in retreat. And don’t forget that after a disastrous convoy to Murmansk, the British stopped delivering.
The Germans had no idea of what the Russians were building. They had no idea that two new, well-equipped armies would cut them off at Stalingrad, then vastly outnumber their Panzers at Kursk.
The trucks and rolling stock helped to a degree, but to pretend that Russia survived only because of the limited supplies delivered from the West is foolish. The Russians did it themselves, and arguably still would have done so without the limited help they got from the West.
And where did this vast supply of lend-lease railway rolling stock come from after the British convoys stopped? I think you will find that the Russians did it largely by themselves.
lol Really Ed!
Ever heard of the PQ convoys?
https://www.rbth.com/longreads/arctic_convoys/
More than four million tons of vital military supplies were shipped.
Figures and details true, but even here in the West many see it as one-sided to claim that the Russians could not have won without us.
The more I read about it, the more I suspect that the Western allies helped Russia far less than they could have, and also that the Russian policies would have succeeded without any help from the West at all.
Well, yes and no.
The soviets might have lasted long enough to win without western aid, just as they might have persisted after Moscow got taken because the Siberian divisions were kept in the far east because Stalin never got the word that the Japanese weren’t going to attack.
But the longer the war, the more likely that there’s a collapse similar to ww1.
the more I suspect that the Western allies helped Russia far less than they could have, and also that the Russian policies would have succeeded without any help from the West at all.
If what you think had been the case, and Europe was left to the Soviets, the outcome would have been horrific – you might like to ask Angela Merkel about what it was like to live in Eastern Europe under the soviets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koqeZUqySDA
My wife visited in 1966 driving through East Germany and Poland and Leningrad to Moscow. The depravations and lack of freedoms were extreme. The soviet system was an abject failure.
But of course the D-Day landings and Allied advance on Berlin, the annihilation of German infrastructure and manufacturing by allied bombing, and the cutting of all shipped oil supplies by the RN had nothing to do with it.
Macro, I drove through East Germany myself in 1980, and agree with you. Nowhere did I say that I admire Stalin, or the USSR system. I just get tired of people believing our own one-sided version of the story.
By the way, it is just possible that the Allies did the Normandy landing etc because they suddenly realised what would happen if they did not. The Russians felt it was far too late.
And while allied bombing was devastating to the civilian population, you may be overestimating its effect upon German war production, which peaked in 1944. That is strangely late in the war, is it not? Huge bombing had been done before then, but the Germans adapted. Only in Autumn of that year (less than a year to VE Day) did bombing really start to hurt German supplies.
By that time the Russians had the Germans in full retreat anyway.
Initially allied bombing was directed at towns as a tit for tat reply to the bombing of civilian targets in England. When the allies got smart and then directed their targets to infrastructure (late 1943 – early 1944) the volume of war material began to fall dramatically.
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c17284ec4e3500b23e46556985170a84
In Vino you speak so well.
Agreed, Macro, but even by that time Russia had Germany on the ropes. If D-Day had not happened, the Red Army would have been on the other side of the English Channel.
Improvement in night-bombing targeting by the RAF helped, but basically the Russians had the upper hand by then. Have you looked at Russia’s production compared to Germany’s? Putin is not wrong about Russia being the main winner over Germany, however little people here may like the Russian style of government, or Putin himself. And however ignorant they remain about how much effort Russia put in to winning WW2.
Russia suffered losses that we can comprehend only by trying to remember the terrible butchery of WW1.
I am not saying that Stalin was an angel, or that Putin is one.
I am saying that Putin is right on this point, and that we have far too many who think that The USA and Britain defeated Hitler. They did not. Russia did.
So not Nato invading then.
Maybe provocation ain’t so bad – unless you try to lever it into a casus belli.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan were not NATO operations during the initial invasion. NATO has been involved post invasion though.
Russia knows NATO is not going to invade it. But they would be very unhappy if any more former Soviet republics became part of NATO. The Russians would feel they are being bottled up, and not have primacy in their immediate area. Their support of the eastern Ukrainians is all about that, plus the wartime memory of the war in the Donbass, the very threshold of Volgograd. Think the Battle of Stalingrad for the significance of that.
As for the meeting, I reckon Putin will want the west to recognise the reality of Crimea. In return they will give up on east Ukraine, or least only insist on it being a semiautonomous region within Ukraine. That would mean the end of sanctions and a reset of the US Russia relationship. Other stuff like a deal on nuclear weapons could also be done.
DTB so Manafort siding with Putin taking 10’s of millions in Consultancy fees and another $10 million loan from Putins henchman oligarch.
Money laundering etc etc.
Neither side has my support but Trump /Kucshner have received extensive funding from other Putins Russian Mafia linked oligarchs.
Like “Wise” (guy/mafia fixer Manafort)
Trump has proven ties to the US mafia.
Both side’s are equally corrupt.
Fox news and RT(Russian equivalent of Fox).
Yes.
Both side’s are equally corrupt.
Yes.
Under what circumstances does the definition of ‘equally corrupt’ cover both of, say:
1: Robert Mueller’s detailed indictments, and
2: the fever dream nonsense of ‘Benghazi’ or ‘Uranium One’?
Not quite.
In the US the murder of political opponents is not yet routine.
What political opponent? Bernie Sanders?
He’s not a bad parallel for Nemtsov – neither were about to be elected, but only one was assassinated. The Russian one, of course.
Things that President Putin won’t do when meeting U.S. President Donald Trump in Helsinki:
Demand that the U.S. withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq and renounce its illegal blockade of Cuba.
Demand that Trump cease backing the murderous Netanyahu regime in Israel and work for a diplomatic outcome that protects the rights and security of all Palestinians.
Actually push for stronger human rights across the world.
Demand the U.S. stop supporting the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine.
Push the U.S. to stop supporting the outlaw Israeli government in the Occupied Territories, as well as the oppressive and anti-democratic regimes in Brazil, Guatemala and Honduras.
Get the U.S. to halt provocative military actions on North Korea’s periphery and similar provocations in vassal states like Poland.
Gain full cooperation to pressure Binyamin Netanyahu to denuclearise completely.
Force the U.S. to cease its destructive cyberoperations and drone assassinations all over the world, but especially in Yemen and Afghanistan. Obama unfortunately encouraged it.
But
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-13/neocons-panic-trump-putin-meeting-could-mark-close-syrian-proxy-war
The perfect riposte to the neocon drivel that this post delivers.
Anyone who has seen Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States would know Truman was a terrible U.S President, captured by the military industrial state.
Advantage’s post is preposterous from beginning to end. Are the administrators of this site going to turn it over to Whaleoil for a guest post now? He couldn’t be any more biased or untruthful than this bloke “Advantage”.
[lprent: If you are looking for a long vacation, then please just ask for one. Otherwise stop whining like a spring chicken. Authors write what they choose to write, that is why we have them here. The authors will argue amongst themselves. Which acts as background. Mike and I tend to just look at the good of the site. If we think that something is getting in the way of the objectives of the site then we will deal with it.
You don’t get any say in that. As you know, this is pretty clearly stated in the policy. Including the fuckup off if you don’t like it consequences of whining about it. ]
Couldn’t agree more.
This post belongs on a neocon site.
And you should really find a nutbar site if you think that Russia is all goodness and lightness.
Russia is a brutal, undemocratic state. It’s very bad indeed. But compared to the United States and Britain, it is indeed “all goodness and lightness.” That’s a fact that the likes of the person who wrote this fantastic “Trump Meets Putin” article seems unwilling to acknowledge.
Is there a site at Eds level of nuttiness, ?
My views mirror those of Morrissey, Brigid, Maui on the Key issue of this thread .
Please note that my views on America and Russia are very similar to those of Morrissey, Maui, Brigid, Draco and Esoteric.
My views are hardly out there on this.
The world sees the US and Israel as rogue states.
I just see the US as being lumbered with a self-contradictory and very inflexible constitution that was designed for a different time and a radically different demography.
They haven’t managed to make a useful amendment to it since 1967, 50 years ago. The right to vote shouldn’t been in any reasonable constitution, so voting at age 18 shouldn’t have been in there in 1971. And the 1992 one to prevent the members of congress voting themselves pay rises… Well what can one say…
Effectively the whole society is slowly cracking under the constitutional strain as the institutions struggle to adjust. For instance look at the Economist editorial this week.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/07/12/american-democracys-built-in-bias-towards-rural-republicans
There are a couple of other articles looking at the structural issues.
Ed – Hardly anyone here is saying that the US, as it is at the moment, is a beacon of democracy. The repugnants are in desperate need of growing a spine and impeaching the radge orange bampot. As Lprent says the constitution is in desperate need of revamp, and the country – like NZ is heavily biased in favour of the conservative rural vote. Overlaying all of this is an economic system which bestows greater freedoms to the wealthy at the expense of the poor. This is much the case in all capitalist economies, to a greater or lesser extent. Nevertheless, the US, up until the advent of Trump had, in many cases, attempted to be a good global citizen, even if, not all of its activities met your approval.
Over the past 540 days, however I grant that the US has become more and more, an unstable and unreliable global citizen – particularly in the sphere of human rights and environmental protections, to say nothing about its friends and alliances. One can only hope that this phase is temporary, and the damage done is not so bad that it cannot be restored.
The fact that many see Russia as a rogue state is more to the point. The blatant interference in other nations politics and elections is but one example.
Indeed
Truman was the guy who clipped MacArthur’s wings. Ask a few Asians what would’ve happened if he hadn’t.
Only if you buy into Stone’s version of history.
I do.
It is not a blockade of Cuba. It is restricting US trade with them. any country can do that. It is no different to NZ deciding not to allow GMO products in to the country.
We should be kind to Morrissey. He clearly just has a temporal fugue or possibly that he is an illiterate speaker of Spanish unaware of the word embargar from which the English usage of embargo derives or it could simply mean that he is a idiot who prefers to make up his fantasy history.
The US blockade of Cuba started on the 22nd of October 1962 and ended on the 28th of the same month.
There have been an embargoes by the US of various types of trade with Cuba since they were first imposed on the Barista regime in 1958 (preventing arms sales). These were extended by the US after the uncompensated nationalisation of various US owned assets in Cuba in 1962, well before the Cuban missile crisis later that year.
The embargo should have been negotiated away long ago. However crass political motives by grandstanding unfeeling fuckwits on both sides has preferred to maintain the embargo rather than dealing with the harm that it causes.
It doesn’t matter if you look at the daft names of the US domestic acts or stupidity extending the embargo or the name that the Cubans prefer to use, it all just reeks of dickheads waving their stupidity around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba
The Ukrainian government can in no way be labelled Neo-Nazi. The PM is from a Jewish background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Groysman
How did you join those two dots together and come up with that perspective, Gosman?
And it seems to me that the most extreme right-wing Zionists are also of Jewish background… What are you implying, Gosman?
The scofflaw state of Israel labels itself “the Jewish state.” That has not stopped it treating the Palestinians in a manner that even its own cabinet ministers, like the hardline Tommy Lapid, have compared to the actions of the Nazis.
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Their-fathers-sons
They are nowhere near the level of the Nazis. They aren’t treated equally that is for sure but they are not treated as the Jews were in Nazi Germany.
Actually I’d say that the way that the Israelis operate their concentration camp in Gaza is very similar to the treatment of political prisoners including Jews in Nazi Germany in 1933 to 1939.
After all the really efficient death camps were placed outside Germany after 1939 in case they disturbed the German population.
In Germany up to 1939, the German camps concentrated on simply slowly starving people to death and denying them access to medical care. Order was primarily maintained by armed guards with shoot to kill orders against unarmed civilians.
Personally I can’t see much difference between that and the current behaviour of the gutless Israeli barbarians deliberately shooting clearly defined medics from the fortified boundaries of their camp.
Bearing in mind the public statements of some of the Israeli populations, especially some of the ulta orthodox and ‘settler’ groups, it makes me wonder how long before they follow the Nazi solutions.
Your views are not shared by the likes of Tommy Lapid or other honest Israeli politicians such as Moshe Dayan. Perhaps instead of sitting on your arse watching Fox News last December 3rd, you should have gone to the Mt Eden Memorial Hall to see one of the great Israeli journalists talking….
Maybe not 1944 Nazi Germany, but not far off 1937 maybe.
Shooting kids, delaying and denying access to basic life needs, segregationist controls on ghettoes, advanced propaganda machine to paint the victims as parasitic invaders intent on extermination…
The Nuremberg laws were passed in 1935. No law in Israel comes close to the discrimination in these laws.
Civilian deaths and theft of land and property, on the other hand, are quite well advanced…
And the ubermenschen meme is prevalent against the Palestinians..
New laws to make segregation legal are now official government policy.
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2018/07/israels-new-apartheid-law.html?m=1
Are they laws yet?
Soooo – 1934 then?
I’m more curious as to just how far the ironic repition of history will go. I fear the current Israeli leadership are excellent students.
Absolutely.
Ethnic cleansing.
Apartheid.
Ghettoes.
“Almost 1,000 villages and towns in Israel – more than three-quarters of the total – do not permit non-Jews to live within them”
https://t.co/pNkrvBC9td?amp=1
https://t.co/Mh5rVuFmQI?amp=1
These have no basis in law. People can take these places to court to remove such discrimination.
Yeah, Jewish is really interesting, and once you actually start to live it… I’m sure my family will eventually understand why we converted.
Tyrant fighter knows his tyrants.
“Cease backing the murderous Assad regime in Syria and work for a diplomatic outcome that protects the rights and security of all Syrians. “
Syria was a relatively safe and secure place before Obama and the west took an interest in it and said there was a problem. Coincidence much?
Relatively safe for who in particular? If you members of the Assad regime you would be correct. If you mean anyone perceived to be a threat to the Assad regime you would be wrong.
Gosman I really don’t think you know very much about Syria, that could be because you rely only on information provided by CNN, BBC, Guardian et al since 2011.
Have you ever actually talked to any Syrian about their country?
Lots. Why?
Brigid
Are you completely unaware of the massacres of protestors by the Assad regime in 2011 ( the sort of thing his father did)? That is what started the civil war.
Yes Syria was at “peace” prior to 2011, just like Iraq was under
Suddein. The sort of peace that Stalin would have been proud of.
However Assad will win the civil war, with the probable exception of the Kurds. Will Russia and the US give them a guarantee of autonomy. Maybe that might be sorted tomorrow!
According to Tim Anderson the so called “protestors” were armed by islamist extremists. I guess that would make them not protestors, but closer to fighters or militants.
Also Syria has a reputation as a safe haven for minorities in a volatile and unsafe region. Your portrayal of Syria as some sort of Stalinist hellhole is very misleading imo.
Do you honestly think that Assad was running some sort of liberal pluralistic government that did not target perceived opponents of the regime?
I think you’re guessing at how their Government functions and behaves. So am I too, but from all appearances minorities were safe in Syria and as spikey says the Government was generally well liked and supported by it’s citizens. Those are two strong points that are hard to disprove I think and don’t mesh with your portrayal of a brutal regime.
Political minorities were not safe.
Comparisons to Stalin or to Hitler or to whatever other evil figure you can think of may serve the purpose of denigrating whoever to the level of non human but does little to reveal anything of actual circumstances.
Western media sources in early 2011 were pretty universal in their realisation that Assad was popular and unlikely to be deposed. Even after the initial violence in Daraa. Life in Syria at that time may not have been attractive to you Wayne but I guess thats why you didn’t live there.
If you would care for a little more detail on the origins of the war in Syria, you could start here…
https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/the-revolutionary-distemper-in-syria-that-wasnt/
Jeez Wayne.
This rhetoric has well been discounted. Do keep up.
Almost 90% of the country voted in Assad, so that’s a reasonable starting point for a safe country. Plus there wasn’t a war going on or millions of residents fleeing the country.
I don’t trust the portrayal of middle eastern leaders by corporate news sources either. So I find it incredibly difficult to gauge how good or bad the leaders of say Syria, Iraq or Libya were.
The media lies.
And many gullible fools fall for it.
you might like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil
Bolton: “Beyond the Axis of Evil”
John R. Bolton
On May 6, 2002, then-Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton gave a speech entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil”. In it he added three more nations to be grouped with the already mentioned rogue states: Cuba, Libya, and Syria. The criteria for inclusion in this grouping were: “state sponsors of terrorism that are pursuing or who have the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or have the capability to do so in violation of their treaty obligations.”[5]
or this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (commonly known as the “Clean Break” report) is a policy document that was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel.[1] The report explained a new approach to solving Israel’s security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on “Western values.” It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting its possession of “weapons of mass destruction”. Certain parts of the policies set forth in the paper were rejected by Netanyahu.[2][3]
or this from 1984
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/19/magazine/syria-s-assad-his-power-and-his-plan.html
or this
https://www.globalresearch.ca/1983-cia-document-reveals-plan-to-destroy-syria-foreshadows-current-crisis-2/5584486
so no Obama did not really start anything, he just continued.
cut to the chase. Syria is over populated and the owners are population cleansing and the Russians want a port in the med. qed.
I know. Right!
Trump is conflicted, he needs the NATO confrontation with Russia over Ukraine/Crimea to realise the 2014 promise of 2% GDP defence spending by 2024. Especially given he is being ridiculous about bumping that up to 4% and demanding Germans take American gas rather than make use the new pipeline arrangment with Russia.
Thus he has nothing to offer Putin in return for “global” co-operation.
And given his pretence that completing Obama era plan for nuclear weapons upgrade investment will be his own achievement, he will look away from bi-lateral nuclear arms reduction issues.
He has achieved nothing with North Korea, but will do the same here so he can pretend he made a difference (when the USA is actually co-existing with a nuclear armed and ICBM capable N Korea) – all so he can posture as GOP strongman on Iran to please the Jewish and Christian Zionist lobbies.
I suppose he could sacrifice Kurds in Syria for a Russian “promise” not to do to the US what the US did to Russia in Afghanistan, but only if he has Likud permission …
Crimea never voted to leave the Russian Federation, but they did vote to rejoin it. And there where lots of attacts on Russian ethinics in the East of Ukraine to justify action.
Assad is a democratic leader, and one of the few in the region who isn’t a puppet for the world’s Zionist empire.
A talk about a reduction on nuclear weapons would be good. Expect they will have one, indirectly. But reducing the power of the Industrial Military Complex is to happen slowly to avoid crazy folk hitting the panic buttons.
It’s a provocitive post for The Standard. This demonising of Trump is so truely non-productive.
An excellent comment.
You are dreaming.
Putin stuffed the Crimea full of troops in mufti.
Assad is a murderous asshole just like his dad. Military dictators don’t become democrats just by running the odd rigged election.
Trump is a useless corrupt son-of-a-bitch. Cuddle up to that if you want.
“Assad is a murderous asshole just like his dad. ”
Who did he and his Dad murder? What are their names?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre
Ad, you third point the real problem is that trump has been attacking human rights and civil rights. So there is no way this is going to happen, I fear the next few years are going to continue the trend that civil rights and human rights are going backwards.
A couple I would have liked you to add, was that he speak up for LGBTI rights, and help stop sex trafficking.
But alas we ain’t going to see that either. We are not going to see anything, but more of trump the distractor whilst the US empire keeps killing the world with it’s over consumption.