"Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket." Victor Hugo
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" Robert Browning
“Over the past 150 years food has become … not food,” Chris van Tulleken in his forthcoming book Ultra-Processed People.
"The war in Ukraine was started by Russia, but it was willed, engineered and choreographed by the U.S.-led West. It is both a mistake and a crime, a minus-sum game for the declining European remnant." Dr. Srdja Trifkovic, Uncertain Endgame in Ukraine, Chronicles March 2023
"Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow. And as it happens, he’s positively bullish about the prospect of Ukraine handing Russia a decisive defeat in its upcoming, widely anticipated, sure-to-happen-any-day-now spring counteroffensive." Andrew Bacevich in an article in TomDispatch.
"If anything, in fact, Washington’s preoccupation with Ukraine only testifies to the impoverished state of American strategic thinking. In some quarters, framing the present historical moment as a contest between democracy and autocracy passes for fresh thinking, as does characterizing American policy as focused on defending a so-called rules-based international order. Neither of those claims, however, can withstand nominal scrutiny, even if it seems bad form to cite close U.S. ties with autocracies like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Egypt or to point out the innumerable instances in which this country has exempted itself from norms to which it insists others must adhere." Ibid.
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The US is trying influence outcomes where it can. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are pretty incorrigible at this point when it comes to accepting democracy. They also didn’t invade another country.
ReplyDeleteSaudi Arabia invaded Yemen without any justification and fought a very bloody war there in which over 150, 000 have died, most of whom were many civilians, according to the UN. It is estimated that a further 227,000 have died in the famine and from lack of healthcare caused by the war. England and America supply the Saudis with arms. America should not try to spread democracy but to mind her own business.
DeleteIf the Antichrist were a country which country would he be? Sweden is the first that comes to mind. It's illegal there to teach children the Bible as fact. A former Christian Democratic Interior Minister is being endlessly prosecuted for a religious textbook she wrote many years ago in which she said sodomy was a sin. But there are many other candidates. There is a very strong case for Saudi Arabia, for example.
DeleteIn fact obviously Saudi Arabia is unfinitely more anti Christian than Sweden.
DeleteFair point on Saudi's very unpleasant under the radar war in Yemen.
ReplyDeleteRussia's excellent reasons for the Ukraine War, depending on whether it's Monday or Tuesday:
ReplyDeleteCleansing evil Nazis
Reclaiming historic lands
Forced to the wall by expanding NATO
Acting as a necessary counter-pole to the evil West
Standing up for the Orthodox Church
Any old thing that pops into Putin's mind, depending on the day