Monday: Hili dialogue

47 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

1. Out of the way first : John Oliver – who I thought was hilarious on The Daily Show, and even out a way from that – is right down into demoralization here. So much cringe, could only listen once.

   Beautiful pic of the maple – I love those, I see the sun shine through the yellow, and it’s only specific trees.

   Great idea with the cider!

   1. Have you heard John Oliver on anything Palestine?

      Now THAT’S a real treat, a positive symphony of retardation.
      It beats even his trans idiocy which itself is quite a feat.

      D.A.
      NYC

      1. Perhaps … Thanks … for the “heads up” …☹️

2. Ukraine will lose; that is, it will have to give up some of its territory to Russia.

   The Russian bear already has its grubby paws all over that territory. The only thing that Ukraine would be “giving up” is hopes of getting it back.

   Are people really thinking that there’s a realistic alternative, that if the West supplies Ukraine with enough money and weapons then they could push the Russians entirely out of Ukraine?

   1. Not much hope. Other than the possibility that Russian losses and public discontent within Russia forces Putin to give up. It’s the sea change that I am hoping for.

      But why announce the long range missiles? Does that now allow Putin to move in defense systems? And if it is ok now, why wasn’t it ok two years ago?

      1. I suppose you know the answer to your questions: sources close to Biden’s administration want to maximize the propaganda that they are helping Ukraine, while minimizing the real help (because they actually want Russia to win). That’s why they allow the missiles only now, and announce it in order to minimize its impact on Russia.

         1. I know there are Putin fans on the right (often people who have heard Putin’s propaganda lies about Zelenskyy and Ukraine repeated by (sometimes paid) right wing influencers.)

            But why would Biden want Ukraine to lose?

            1. Because he is listening to William Burns and Jake Sullivan who seem to be afraid of a nuclear war if Russia is about to lose, or of Russia’s disintegration into smaller states if it really loses.

               The key word is “escalation”. Biden doesn’t give Ukraine this or that weapon, of which he has plenty, or forbids Ukraine to use efficiently what is already given, because he is afraid of “escalation”. He finally gives it when it is too late to make a difference. “Escalation” is always about successful defense of Ukraine. When Russia invades Ukraine, bombs children’s hospitals and razes whole cities, this is not escalation and nothing needs to be done about it.

               The USA prefers the devil they know, and is always afraid of breakdown of empires, preferring oppressed people to stay oppressed. Back in 1991, when the USSR was breaking down, then-President Bush held in Kyiv a notorious “Chicken speech” in which he begged Ukraine not to become independent from the Soviet Union. At about the same time, when Slovenia and Croatia announced their independence, the USA and Western Europe stated that they supported the unity of Yugoslavia – statements that Milosevic of course interpreted as a carte blanche to start wars to return these freedom-loving people under Serbian dominance. The US pro-imperial policy proves wrong every single time but is still the valid paradigm.

   2. The special military operation was supposed to be over in a few days. The Ukrainians said otherwise. Russia has spent it’s grubby cash and spread fake fears of nuclear war. (The two go together, Putin buys people and also gives them cover for being bought.)
      Maybe Ukraine, like Israel, would be better off not relying on us.

      1. Ukraine cannot win this war if winning means getting back the about 20% of Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia now (part of it occupied since 2014).

         Russia’s population is about 4.35 times larger than the Ukrainian population (145 vs 33 million, Source: Wikipedia, data for 2024).

         In 2021, the purchasing-power-adjusted per capita income of Russia was 2.16 larger than that of Ukraine (US $ 38,938 vs US $ 18,040; Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, data set accessible online).

         That means, compared to Russia, Ukraine does not have enough soldiers and it is a poor country. Given these facts, how is Ukraine supposed to beat Russia on the battlefield to get all its territory back?
         Ukraine should be like Austria or Finland after World War II, which flourished without being members of NATO or the European Community (now European Union).

         The reality is that, in international politics, great powers, like the US, China, Russia, play by different rules – because they can. The US did not allow the stationing of Soviet nuclear weapons on the island of Cuba in 1960, nor the hosting, by Cuba, of a Soviet naval base. The US did not care the least bit that Cuba is a sovereign state, and hence should have the right to do on its territory as it pleases. Likewise, Russia does not want NATO in Ukraine, and it has the military might to prevent it.

         If you are Ukraine and you are living next door to a powerful state like Russia, or you are Cuba and you are living next door to a powerful state like the US, you should be very very careful. This is like sleeping in bed with an elephant. If that elephant rolls over on top of you, you are dead. Am I happy that this is the way the world works? No.
         John Mearsheimer, at Yale University, 2017

         @50:20 “Great powers are usually paranoid about their security. So small neighbors need to be very careful.”
         paranoid, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: unreasonably or obsessively anxious, suspicious or mistrustful
         John Mearsheimer: The Crisis in Ukraine. Feb 15, 2022 (8 days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began), King’s Politics (a student association at King’s College, University of Cambridge), 82 mins, on YouTube

         1. Mearsheimer might or might not be right but ever since his unhinged rants on Israel he’s on my ignore list.

            1. +1

            2. It is a curious and worrying fact that here in Eastern Europe, generally the same people support Ukraine and Israel, while in the West, most who support Ukraine are ready to push Israel under the bus, and vice versa. I suppose that this is because the Democrats became woke and pro-Arab, and Republicans became pro-Russian.

      2. Ukraine’s fatal mistake was giving in to US bullying in 1994 and surrendering its nuclear arsenal in exchange for a false promise by the USA and the UK to defend it (the Budapest Memorandum).
         As soon as Ukraine was disarmed, the USA stabbed it in the back by not allowing it into NATO and letting Russia invade it and do with it whatever it wanted.

         1. I’ve heard Putin fans tell me that’s not true. There were weapons in Ukraine but only Russia had the ability to use them.

            I gave up at that point because I just didn’t know that much about it.

            I still believe that many of the Putin fans have fallen for propaganda. Outlandish stories that Ukraine is a corrupt nation full of neo-Nazis, that Zelenskyy’s wife has a big collection of luxury clothes and purses.

            Putin said he had to invade to get the neo-Nazis under control.

            1. As for the Nazi stuff, note that Zelenskyy is Jewish. Likel many in Ukraine, his native language is Russian. But logic was never Putin’s strong point anyway.

            2. I think the Putin fans are right on this. Soviet nuclear weapons deployed in Ukraine or the other constituent republics of the USSR always remained under central sovereign control, just as American nukes deployed abroad for use by allies (including Canada) were always under the direct control of the President. If Ukraine had attempted to hang onto physical possession of the extensive arsenal of nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles after the Soviet Union broke up and left town, it would not have had access to the Kremlin’s command and control codes and procedures to get through the locks on the weapons. American locks are known to be designed to inactivate the detonators irreversibly if tampered with.

               This document, a book chapter, reviews command and control with special emphasis on the India-Pakistan situation. It has some obvious parallels with a small weak country attempting to use nuclear weapons to deter a much larger country with whom it shares a border.
               https://sgs.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2020-01/mian-2012b.pdf

            3. What qualifies one as a Putin fan? Is it the belief that Ukraine cannot—and foreseeably could not—defeat Russia in a war of attrition short of direct and substantive US military action? Is it the belief that US action regarding Ukraine and Russia has been reckless over the last three decades? Is it the belief that the US had led Ukraine to disaster by holding out promises it never intended to keep because the chief concern of the US establishment was—and is—to bleed Russia and weaken it permanently as a potential adversary? Is it the belief that the US is quite comfortable sacrificing Ukrainian men to achieve this goal?

               Wars are not won by wishful thinking or righteous indignation. They are won by the sacrifices of men and women. But all the heart in the world, all the hate for an adversary, all the justness of your cause, all the most advanced weapons an ally can provide is not sufficient to win. The adversary always gets a vote, or shall we say he gets to play his cards. Observing that Putin has the better hand does not make one a fan, nor does unwillingness to throw more money and lives on the table in the light of that hand.

               Bless the Ukrainians for their resistance, their spirit, and their fight. People have unexpectedly overcome greater odds, but many more have died for lost causes. So it shall always be. Sometimes the greater part of valor is to recognize that you are lost and to save yourself for another day.

   3. At this point, it isn’t about winning, it’s about depleting, and deterring Russia from future expansionist activities. That’s worth a great deal of investment to prevent future disasters which would likely be far more expensive. Send Ukraine more advance weapons!

   4. “Are people really thinking that there’s a realistic alternative, that if the West supplies Ukraine with enough money and weapons then they could push the Russians entirely out of Ukraine?”

      The Budapest Memorandum obliges the USA and the UK to push any invader out of Ukraine. Their current policy is betrayal and backstabbing, and the fact that it is not only possible but largely unchallenged tells me that our civilization is crumbling.

      But yes, I would answer positively the question you asked. However, the main word in your question is “IF”. The West will NOT supply Ukraine with enough money and weapons because it (the West) is scared to death of both Putin’s Russia and the possible defeat and breakdown of Putin’s Russia. So the West cherishes Russia as the pupils of its eye, and is always careful to give Ukraine too little weapons, and too late, in order to prevent any chance of Ukrainian victory. Nevertheless, in late 2022, Ukraine seemed bound to win. Then the commander of Russian army Valery Gerasimov, according to Woodward’s recent book, told US commander Milley that if Russia is about to lose, it will use nuclear weapons. Milley promised that such an occasion will not arise.

      And the USA kept its word (not to Ukraine but to Russia). Recently, Ukrainian general Romanenko revealed that senior US army officers leaked to Russia the plans for the Ukrainian 2023 offensive so that it would be thwarted, and it was – by the Russians destroying the Kakhovka dam. Since late 2022, the only successful Ukrainian military operation was the Kursk incursion, because Americans were not told about it and so could neither forbid it nor inform the Russians about it.

      The West apparently regards Eastern Europeans as second-quality human beings and has no problem using them as disposable tools to be handed to ever land-hungry Russia in order to keep it happy. This was done after WWII, and is being done now. After the USA and the UK disarmed Ukraine with a false promise to defend it (the Budapest Memorandum), they decided that it is no problem if a Russian dictator destroys Ukraine, enslaves Ukrainians, and slaughters wholesale those who resist.

      I don’t understand why Westerners claiming to be good people are OK with this but it seems to be rooted in a phobia of a nuclear war. When I have advocated for Ukraine here, I have been told that I am living in la-la land, with my opponents basically implying that saving humanity from a minuscule risk of a nuclear war fully justifies the destruction of Ukraine. I suspect that in a similar line, many think that saving the West from a minuscule risk of terrorism fully justifies the destruction of Israel.

      At least, now people can blame Trump who will just finish the job – it was Clinton, Obama and Biden who assisted Putin in his genocidal campaign against Ukraine.

      1. “… it seems to be rooted in a phobia of a nuclear war.”

         That seems like a sensible thing to be afraid of. I do indeed think that Putin could well resort to tactical, battlefield nukes rather than lose the war and be pushed out of Ukraine.

         I’m also doubtful that NATO has enough (non-nuclear) weapons that would make sufficient difference that would not amount to a war between NATO and Russia.

         1. That is, after all, the only rational use of nuclear weapons: to force the surrender of an adversary who doesn’t have them himself and who won’t listen to reason. Why restrict them to the battlefield? Ten kilotons here and there might not be decisive against a well-dispersed enemy. Might as well bust the cities and destroy the enemy’s means to fight. Which way do the prevailing winds blow?

         2. I don’t think so. Use of a nuclear weapon will unite the West against Putin and be a catastrophe for him. It is the threat to use a nuclear weapon that gives him everything he wants. In August, Ukraine invaded sovereign Russian territory, and still no nuclear weapons were used in response.
            Anyway, I am willing to take the chance.

      2. And if Putin wins, the next event is Xi in China taking Taiwan.

         1. Of course, it will embolden every autocrat to attack his weaker neighbors to grab land.
            Not to mention that after defeating Ukraine, Putin will attack other European countries, even NATO members. The USA didn’t honor its solemn promise in the Budapest Memorandum to defend Ukraine, so it is nothing more than wishful thinking to suppose that it will defend its NATO allies.

            1. We are moving past the post-WW 2 world. Invading other countries is becoming acceptable.

               Maybe small countries would be stopped but if you’ve got nukes you just have to threaten to use them.

               Which should be an empty threat because the US should simply say, “Use nukes and we’ll nuke you right back.”

               Trump is such a blowhard you’d think he’d be up for that. Instead he seems to like Putin.

               And Biden was afraid of Putin.

3. Ironic that the plane was named “Heaven Can Wait.” Welcome home, boys. R.I.P.

4. Disappointed today in Oliver.

5. Line 1 of “Da Nooz”: I think you mean when Tr. takes office.

   1. Yes, I fixed that, thanks.

6. That clip tells me that Mr. Oliver and his writers have never coached or played sports or visited a gym, and blindly accept whatever they’re told by trans activists. As Marx said, “Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?”
   Final thought: we already are concerned about that creepy coach. Our worry today is that he’ll call himself a woman and invade our daughters’ spaces further.

   I saw no humor whatsoever in that clip; why were people laughing?

   1. I couldn’t figure it out either.

7. Thanks for the link to the Putin expose. I glanced at its Youtube page and saw that it has been viewed 133 million times. Also, there are nearly 2 million comments – most of them in Russian. (I tried translating a few of the most highly upvoted comments to see what Russians are thinking, but they were mostly inscrutable to me. E.g., here’s one: “There are, if not fewer thieves, then certainly a lot more” Borodin)

   Although I’ve only had time to do a little dipping into the video, I was gobsmacked by one detail: the fact that Putin chose to adorn the gate of his palace with an exact duplicate of the eagle that adorned the gate to the Tsar’s winter palace.

   What a F*ck You to the Russian people!

   1. I saw it when it came out as that (Navalny’s) channel has some excellent stuff. It is so amazing I watched it a few times over the years. I went digging about other aspects of Putin’s wealth.

      But in context, as I wrote in an article, in a place like Russia, the actual wealth of the dictator is pretty irrelevant. He’s not like a Big Man Dictator in Equatorial Macheteland who has to squirrel away cash in case he’s overthrown and run.

      For those like Putin money (not luxury, apparently) but money as we see it is an abstraction bc the whole state is his. He can point to a mountain, or a mountain range and say “This is now mine”.
      Like how gravity works differently in small spaces (like a drop of water) at the other end of the scale, money works differently.

      The movie was good b/c most people don’t see it as I explain it above. They see a gold toilet cleaner and rightfully freak out.
      D.A.
      NYC

8. If it’s Apple Cider Day today, I think I’ll pop down to my local pub, The Orchard, which has a fine array of different ciders to try. A warning to our American friends who are thinking of joining me: In this country, cider varies from alcoholic to very alcoholic.

9. Where are the college protests about the injustices and killings of men and women in Iran?

   1. You know that at the colleges, the hijab is worshipped, and in Iran, it is mostly women refusing to wear it and men supporting their refusal that are killed, so all is well with the world.

10. I wonder if John Oliver would change his tune if he saw that graphic. If he changes his position when informed, let’s hear his retraction. But if not, one should never listen to him again.

    And “Steamboat Willie” is amazing. I watched the whole thing. Creating an entire orchestra using the unique attributes of those animals is remarkable.

    1. That data would not matter in the slightest to Mr. Oliver. I cannot imagine that he and his writers have not seen similar charts. Plus it’s simply obvious without data.
       The agenda trumps data.

11. ” A Hezbollah official, speaking anonymously, ”

    LOL. My guess is that all future Hezbollah spokesmen will release their statements “anonymously”.

12. Surely, if anything, the whole debacle that is the Russian invasion of Ukraine should have given Putin a reality check and make him/Russia unlikely to try anything else in future. It appears to me to be an unmitigated disaster. If they can’t roll over Ukraine what hope would they have against any of the major European powers?

    The other thing I’d point out is that Ukrainians are not wholly against the idea. Borders, such as they are, are hardly immutable. My father is married to a Ukrainian and they both support Russia. There were Ukrainian protesters at the recent European Championships who desperately want elections in Ukraine so they can vote Zelensky out and cede territory, and end the war. I see a lot of the region as similar to maybe Catalonia or Basque. Either wanting autonomous control or not really considering itself Russian or Ukrainian. Perhaps even identifying more with Russia. That entire part of the world, the former Eastern Bloc, is still taking shape. Look at the fall of Yugoslavia. It’s all incredibly recent in geopolitical terms.

    I in no way support Russia nor what it’s done, indeed I fell out with my father over his support. But it’s certainly a lot more complicated than western media portrays it to be.

    The cynic in me also wonders that America’s drips and drabs support, prolonging the conflict at great cost to Russia, is not designed.

    An end to the war, at this point, even with some Ukrainian loss of territory, seems to be the best option for everybody.

    1. My wife was born in Yugoslavia, lived in Macedonia when I met her, and sometimes visits the house she inherited in North Macedonia. Yes, Eastern Europe is complicated. Her father lived his entire life in Macedonia, but his passport at one time said that he was Bulgarian. Her mother was born in the Greek province of Macedonia, but spoke only Macedonian (a Slavic language written in Cyrillic), no Greek. Yes, there are regions where perhaps a majority would rather be independent or part of another country (Basque Country, Catalonia, etc.). But surely all must accept that such things should not be decided by military action, especially action on the part of a much larger country which is a permanent member (with veto power) of the UN security council.

       My view: if a majority of the people in a clearly defined region vote in a fair plebiscite to be independent, then all countries should recognize that immediately. Such a country must realize, though, that it won’t automatically inherit membership in any organization in which the country it separated from is a member. And if it wants to join another country, there has to be a majority in a plebiscite in both countries. Such legitimate claims should not be trumped by supporting the “territorial integrity” of the country from which they want to separate. “Territorial integrity” is something to defend against outside aggression, not to keep people from having their own country if they want it. (That’s like the difference between the Berlin wall and Trump’s wall; I am amazed that anyone is ignorant enough to compare them in any political sense.) When used to prevent independence, it is more like “heim ins Reich”.

       1. By that argument the United States should not have contested the secession of the Southern Confederacy. Do you mean that? International law does recognize the right of a state to cite injury to its legitimate interests as a reason to contest state-seeking by some polity within it. Natasha Hausdorff has spoken about this. If the Quebec legislature won a plebiscite 50.5:49.5 — it lost one by ~that margin in 1995 — and declared unilateral secession from Canada as a pure white French polity (as it styles itself now) and then set about dispossessing and ethnically cleansing Jews, Anglos, aboriginals, and allophones who are all Canadian citizens, Canada would be obligated to contest, with force, Quebec’s sovereign claim to have the power to do that. Foreign countries would hold off recognition until they saw how the scales were tipping, particularly on whether Quebec or Canada could collect taxes from renegade Quebeckers to service debt in either’s name to them as foreign creditors.

          Foreign countries would never recognize a polity merely for passing a unilateral plebiscite. They would look to see what the parent country was going to do about it and they would withhold recognition until it was clear that the secessionist government could command the loyalty and tax compliance of the polity it claimed to speak for. If Canada had jumped in to recognize Catalonia, or even if we encouraged the separatists publicly, Spain would have broken off diplomatic relations with us.

          1. Completely agree.

    2. Why do you think that “some Ukrainian loss of territory” will bring an end to the war? Rewarding invasion by ceding land never gives peace. Europe learned it the hard way during WWII, when every time Hitler invaded a country to grab land, the Chamberlains kept explaining that this will finally bring peace.

       The reality check Putin got is that if he perseveres enough, if he is really relentless in his destruction and mass murder, his enemies will eventually come around and say that Ukrainian land should be given to Russia (and international law be damned), and that it is Zelensky, not Putin, who needs to step down.

       Purin has assembled an axis – China, Iran, North Korea. He has loyal and devoted allies, while Ukraine has none. Ukraine has just betrayers who, after disarming her, are now bullying her to surrender to Putin. And he wants not only a fat peace of Ukraine’s land; he wants Ukraine to stay out of NATO so that he can always come to grab more land, as he did after 2014.

       I wonder very much what your father and his wife like in Russia. The total absence of opposition? The way Navalny and other activists die? Here in Bulgaria, we also have a lot of pro-Russian citizens. But they are pro-Russian in interesting ways. They and their children never emigrate to Russia, never study or work there. They avoid Russia like the plague. They don’t know or like the Russian culture, and the younger ones do not speak Russian. Their pro-Russian sympathies are rather like Stockholm syndrome: surrendering to a stronger enemy in advance so that it does not make a bloodbath here as it did in 1944.

       Some “Ukrainians” wanted to make a pro-Russian protest here as well, but true Ukrainian refugees exposed them as Russians. They also said that in other European countries, the false flag operation has been successful.

13. https://x.com/hellokitty50th/status/1754448548815589778 🇯🇵⛄🐱

    https://www.instagram.com/p/C29iI32RG6T/

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ty187T6BCkE

    Here is the Hello Kitty snow sculpture of the Sapporo Snow Festival. ⛄🐱

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