Well said, John. Seeing Zelensky with King Charles reminded me that, so I'm told, there is an enmity between Britain and Russia as a hangover from ancient aristocratic rivalries. (Having spent the first half of my life growing up in Britain, though, I can report first-hand that we mere commoners had no such enmity that I recall.)
It's time that people realised that life and the world is not a comic book with well defined goodies and baddies. The only real baddy at large is ignorance.
Are you sure? Perhaps we are living in a cosmic comic book. There are days when that seems to be the best explanation. The Book of Job paints a picture that lends itself to a master comic book writer toying with our lives. Have to hold that thought in abeyance while I do more research. Have to speak with Job.
So Who are you saying is the master comic book writer? Careful, or you will find yourself sitting with Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.
The gnostics viewed the God of Job as a false god, one who engaged in trapping man into suffering. More or less a comic book god with the qualities of Marvel villains. Much of the OT fits into this view. Their "secret" was the divine spark in each soul infused by the real or valid God, and taught by Jesus, whose focus was on freeing and nurturing the divine in each person.
My guess is that you are a gnostic (which means "one who knows") - they also believed that Jesus only appeared to be human and could not have been, because all that is matter is evil. This teaching is not Christian and was warned against by the apostle Paul.
"and in those days shall" Read people. Don't count on priests, revs, preachers, and gurus. READ!
Read for yourselves with understanding. You are responsible for you! Not your religion, not your church, but YOU! Following humankind will get you on the wrong side of LIFE.
I have yet to read a more human-centric synopsis of our recent/current state of affairs concerning Ukraine and Russia. Thank you! I think also that Americans are comfortable and lazy inside the bubble of their American experience. Most will never learn to speak a second language...the expectation is that everyone else in the world should speak English. I think it speaks volumes (no pun intended) that most non-Americans learn to communicate in more than their native language.
It's basically a geographical imperative for most non-Americans to speak more than one language, though, rather than an intellectual pursuit or a cosmopolitan desire.
While this is probably true, there is a much greater value placed on foreign languages and culture in Europe. Upon being graduated from high school I already spoke 4 languages, with more to follow. Such a perspective on the value of other languages and cultures is rare in the US.
I agree with you, Volva. I have a degree in French with a minor in German and I've lived in both countries for extended periods so can appreciate your perspective.
Thanks for this observation, John. A few years ago I picked off the shelf my father‘s copy of a set of 1950s lectures by George F Kennan, who warned against the Bush et seq policy of NATO expansionism and weakening Russia on purpose. Kennan rejected moralism when it came to territorial disputes. He emphasized that many of these disputes has so much history and so many factors that play into a “balance” that there is no absolutely “correct” outcome.
Too many European “non-leaders” have been emasculated by the false promise of the EU* (*lavish bureaucrat-salaries and expense accounts-pretending Belgium is important). Did Merkel, Macron, Olaf, Rutte, MOFO BOJO serve their national interests? We know that answer.
Save yourself European soverign-citizens. Save YOURSELF.
The European antipathy towards Russia and the racist demeaning of Russians, goes back Centuries. The Marquis De Custine wrote a whole fantastical book on the point - that Polish aristocrat and US Strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski acknowledged as being essentially, his perspective. Throughout those Centuries, wealthy European capitalists, Nobility and Monarchs have covetously and covenously looked East at all of Russia's vast resources, and schemed about ways that they could "liberate", extract and exploit them, for their own benefit, and at the expense of the Russians.
The imperiousness of this rapacious and greedy attitude is similar to the way that the European colonial mentality viewed Africa, Asia and the Americas. It is essentially the same view of "Discovery" and Conquest - with the distinct difference that the Russians were largely already Christians, albeit from the Eastern Orthodox tradition - meaning that they follow a different Church and hierarchy, than most European Christians.
It appears that the Elite circles in Europe have never abandoned their desires and schemes to conquer Russia, chop it up into pieces, and divide the spoils for themselves. One can still hear these ideas being floated, amongst the Atlantic Council and NATO-sphere NeoCon political circles, when they get together and discuss how best to proceed in reorganizing Russia, once it's been defeated, in all of the Hybrid and Proxy warfare. There exists a plan, to carve it up into 10 more easily controlled cantons, after their "Regime Change" has been completed.
While America likes to think of itself as the leadership of the "Free World", the World's Policeman and the de facto Global dictator - it appears that through the "special relationship" with the UK, and through NATO, the rest of Europe - that there are British and European elites who regard America as their own attack dog. These folks have private clubs and hold secret meetings, like The Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Bilderberg Group, The Trilateral Commission, and now the "World Economic Forum", where most if not all of the decisions about how things will go are made. It's the position of Iain Davis that there's even a super-elite level, at the Bank of International Settlements, where the decisions are REALLY made, before being handed down to the lower bodies, for discussion of the details, but, there's not enough transparency of the proceedings at that level, for any of us to ascertain whether that's true, for ourselves. What does seem clear, is that there are European bodies where the decisions are being made - that are then handed down to the US leadership to implement, whether on its own, or through multilateral institutions, like NATO and the UN.
It is there, from whence the antipathy to Donald Trump seems to emanate. It feels that they must regard him as a boorish and uncouth outsider, who exhibits an insubordinate attitude, in pursuing what he sees as America's Imperial goals and interests, without regard to their direction.
That is, it appears to me, the reason why suddenly the puppets of the real powers in Europe, like Macron and Von der Leyen, Scholz/Merz and Starmer, are all now calling for the Ukraine war to continue, regardless of the American position, and for the creation of a European Army, outside of NATO (meaning US) control. While the UK and European States are now utterly destroyed as Military and Imperial powers because of WWII, and now the lost proxy war against Russia - and economically collapsed as a result of having been separated from the supplies of cheap Russian energy - nobody amongst their elites seems to have accepted these facts as the new reality, yet. Hence the lack of any actual democracy, in the EU, Germany, France and England appears to have empowered the elites in those places to pursue grand ambitions, that their populations largely reject, at the expense of the 'little people', in those countries. So despite the domino tumble, of a series of unpopular Governments in Europe - the unpopular policies seem to persist, and if anything, accelerate.
I suspect that this is where the jilted ex-wives club, is getting its irrational motivations and counter-productive strategies.
John Leake— Always good to read your posts. In seeing some of the comments of certain European leaders and of some of the current crop of US congress critters of the Democratic Party, I begin to more sharply comprehend the folly and tragedy of WWI. And what you said about projection— spot on.
As you said, America would never stand for Russian missile sites in Cuba. JFK and Khrushchev battled it out during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Why on Earth would we think Russia should accept it there. Ukraine has simply been ploy to start this terrible war.
Russians also remember the alien-led Bolshevik coup d’état funded by western bankers that enslaved the Russian people for some 70 years. Solzhenitsyn estimated that over 60 million people perished, mostly in Gulags, during this Bolshevik reign of terror and destruction.
John, you ate a breath of fresh air. The demonisation of Russia needs to end. Europe needs to put its big boy pants on. They need to stop spending on endless welfare and stop depending on the US as we all do. Time to grow up and view the world afresh.
Well, we have in the uniparty under the Democrat banner that was established mid 1995 (Clinton) a small contingency of the 8% of 1960’s Boomers that made Marx popular on campuses from Berkeley to Columbia, the elite liberals, their Communist friendame’s, and anybody that had a chip on ther shoulder to hate American ideals. They and their minions instigated riots, burning, murder, vowed to march through the institutions and did. By the mid 1990’s they made old friends China and Vietnam besties and simultaneously gutted middle class skilled labor, sending it abroad to slave regimes mainly because as they captured academia and government (media) they proceeded with their bipolar plan that America was “bad”, they needed to burn it down and “build back better”, befriend Communism, “it takes a village” (Hillary), and deal with their childhood nightmare nuclear Russia and Khrushchev under every bed later.
You had to be there immediately post WWII to fully understand the intentionally tumultuous 1960’s chaotic dystopia that divided America to this day and the cultural shock.
So today the remnants of those 8% of Boomers, now seniors with their global minded offspring in tow with a love/hate relationship with America and zero faith, actually mocking faith, at the levers of the institutions they captured. I believe they are called the deep State, and yes they have controlled government bureaucracies, State departments regardless of Party faux Executive Branch control. Once the WEF (circa 1971), China, and Soros all began jockeying in position of control by 2000, colluding with whomever friendamy’s they could buy, the love/hate bipolar hate America uniparty was just a cancerous blob pretending to run America as they all became wealthy selling of America with NGO’s for their offspring.
Taking Ukraine and finishing off Russia, killing 150 million people to do so has never been a problem for people who would do anything to install a lifetime plagiarizer and sociopathic liar as America’s figurehead. They are hierarchal minded, they have the power and you don’t, what are you gonna do about it. Min a word they are cowards, petulant bully cowards. Once you see them you cannot unsee them. They not only tried terrorizing President Trump, 75 million MAGA supporters, any associations or legal council to them but their own Democrat voters that watched it and felt compelled to vote Democrat before 11/5/24.
If you do not understand what has been happening for the past six decades, that’s understandable, people have lives to live and depended on MSM faithfully to understand who we Americans are as a unique Constitutional Republic.
Today the Left as we call America’s ideal haters, are pressing into power Soros’ judicial buys during previous administrations to stop President Trump and MAGA from uncovering the theft, corruption, and treason to literally show the evidence to those propagandized and in denial for decades.
Of course Russia has watched this play out with China’s three decade lead as America’s fav and making it’s own moves with ally’s and an enormous military on America dime, and in my opinion Russia did what it had to do as it saw America rotting from the inside.
With this said, make no mistake, Russia is four generations Communist propagandized country and the old bear is not our friend. But anyone who knows anything of Communist nationalist Russia at war, knows the old bear always starts slow, and finishes strongly, just ask the Nazi’s when they were on a roll through Europe. Russia doing what it had to do is playing chess for the past three decades since the non dissenting uniparty took control of America three decades ago and began moving pawns in place to threaten the Russian Moscow Queen and its sovereignty. Speaking of Russian chess champions, no doubt the hierarchal minded uniparty thought that their control of Silicon Valley techie AI could defeat the Russian chess champions like it did decades ago but chess is not about one and done, it’s played in matches like war. And with all do respect for the Ukrainian boys who bought the propaganda from the uniparty, and with great sorrow for the poor souls attacked on streets, thousands accosted by grifter soldiers beating them into vans, given a uniform, and hauled to the front to die as the uniparty’s Democrat elite Ukrainian friends bask in sunshine on beaches and Villa’s until it was all over and they could go back and steal more together. This is anything but democracy’s struggle.
Another point to consider is that all the Ukrainians that still hated Russia’s Stalin for starving 600 K of their Ukrainian grandparents in Europe's bread basket, they have long since perished in this war, and make no mistake, if Russia had fallen, China would have moved in like squatters just for the oil and to be on America’s doorstep. Maybe the final solution to expunge America.
"Now the Europeans are butt-hurt because President Trump is tired of the killing, destruction, and sending money and weapons into the black hole of Kiev and wants to end it."
Well thank God he's still okay with it in Gaza!
"Trump appears to understand that the Russian psyche was badly scarred by Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 and especially by Hitler’s in 1941."
You're kidding, right? He doesn't even know what BRICS is.
He does certainly understand that the Oreshnik can make to Mar-a-Lago from Russia in 30 min, less than 5 min from a submarine.
A lot of wisdom in this episode. I know Russian children who were adopted and it was really an ugly transfer but those boys would have fought in this ugly war I’m sure. I believe we goaded this war over the last 30 years and it will be great to facilitate the end. But please no Americans in Ukraine lest we get drawn into the nonsense.
Well said, John. Seeing Zelensky with King Charles reminded me that, so I'm told, there is an enmity between Britain and Russia as a hangover from ancient aristocratic rivalries. (Having spent the first half of my life growing up in Britain, though, I can report first-hand that we mere commoners had no such enmity that I recall.)
It's time that people realised that life and the world is not a comic book with well defined goodies and baddies. The only real baddy at large is ignorance.
Are you sure? Perhaps we are living in a cosmic comic book. There are days when that seems to be the best explanation. The Book of Job paints a picture that lends itself to a master comic book writer toying with our lives. Have to hold that thought in abeyance while I do more research. Have to speak with Job.
So Who are you saying is the master comic book writer? Careful, or you will find yourself sitting with Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.
Yes, a close reading of Job makes one give at least a little consideration to the Gnostics. One is forced to consider the nature of the game.
Unsure what you mean by "close" - as in unable to see the forest for the trees? The gnostics "had a secret" like the mystery cults.
The gnostics viewed the God of Job as a false god, one who engaged in trapping man into suffering. More or less a comic book god with the qualities of Marvel villains. Much of the OT fits into this view. Their "secret" was the divine spark in each soul infused by the real or valid God, and taught by Jesus, whose focus was on freeing and nurturing the divine in each person.
My guess is that you are a gnostic (which means "one who knows") - they also believed that Jesus only appeared to be human and could not have been, because all that is matter is evil. This teaching is not Christian and was warned against by the apostle Paul.
"and in those days shall" Read people. Don't count on priests, revs, preachers, and gurus. READ!
Read for yourselves with understanding. You are responsible for you! Not your religion, not your church, but YOU! Following humankind will get you on the wrong side of LIFE.
I have yet to read a more human-centric synopsis of our recent/current state of affairs concerning Ukraine and Russia. Thank you! I think also that Americans are comfortable and lazy inside the bubble of their American experience. Most will never learn to speak a second language...the expectation is that everyone else in the world should speak English. I think it speaks volumes (no pun intended) that most non-Americans learn to communicate in more than their native language.
It's basically a geographical imperative for most non-Americans to speak more than one language, though, rather than an intellectual pursuit or a cosmopolitan desire.
While this is probably true, there is a much greater value placed on foreign languages and culture in Europe. Upon being graduated from high school I already spoke 4 languages, with more to follow. Such a perspective on the value of other languages and cultures is rare in the US.
I agree with you, Volva. I have a degree in French with a minor in German and I've lived in both countries for extended periods so can appreciate your perspective.
Thanks for this observation, John. A few years ago I picked off the shelf my father‘s copy of a set of 1950s lectures by George F Kennan, who warned against the Bush et seq policy of NATO expansionism and weakening Russia on purpose. Kennan rejected moralism when it came to territorial disputes. He emphasized that many of these disputes has so much history and so many factors that play into a “balance” that there is no absolutely “correct” outcome.
Too many European “non-leaders” have been emasculated by the false promise of the EU* (*lavish bureaucrat-salaries and expense accounts-pretending Belgium is important). Did Merkel, Macron, Olaf, Rutte, MOFO BOJO serve their national interests? We know that answer.
Save yourself European soverign-citizens. Save YOURSELF.
The European antipathy towards Russia and the racist demeaning of Russians, goes back Centuries. The Marquis De Custine wrote a whole fantastical book on the point - that Polish aristocrat and US Strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski acknowledged as being essentially, his perspective. Throughout those Centuries, wealthy European capitalists, Nobility and Monarchs have covetously and covenously looked East at all of Russia's vast resources, and schemed about ways that they could "liberate", extract and exploit them, for their own benefit, and at the expense of the Russians.
The imperiousness of this rapacious and greedy attitude is similar to the way that the European colonial mentality viewed Africa, Asia and the Americas. It is essentially the same view of "Discovery" and Conquest - with the distinct difference that the Russians were largely already Christians, albeit from the Eastern Orthodox tradition - meaning that they follow a different Church and hierarchy, than most European Christians.
It appears that the Elite circles in Europe have never abandoned their desires and schemes to conquer Russia, chop it up into pieces, and divide the spoils for themselves. One can still hear these ideas being floated, amongst the Atlantic Council and NATO-sphere NeoCon political circles, when they get together and discuss how best to proceed in reorganizing Russia, once it's been defeated, in all of the Hybrid and Proxy warfare. There exists a plan, to carve it up into 10 more easily controlled cantons, after their "Regime Change" has been completed.
While America likes to think of itself as the leadership of the "Free World", the World's Policeman and the de facto Global dictator - it appears that through the "special relationship" with the UK, and through NATO, the rest of Europe - that there are British and European elites who regard America as their own attack dog. These folks have private clubs and hold secret meetings, like The Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Bilderberg Group, The Trilateral Commission, and now the "World Economic Forum", where most if not all of the decisions about how things will go are made. It's the position of Iain Davis that there's even a super-elite level, at the Bank of International Settlements, where the decisions are REALLY made, before being handed down to the lower bodies, for discussion of the details, but, there's not enough transparency of the proceedings at that level, for any of us to ascertain whether that's true, for ourselves. What does seem clear, is that there are European bodies where the decisions are being made - that are then handed down to the US leadership to implement, whether on its own, or through multilateral institutions, like NATO and the UN.
It is there, from whence the antipathy to Donald Trump seems to emanate. It feels that they must regard him as a boorish and uncouth outsider, who exhibits an insubordinate attitude, in pursuing what he sees as America's Imperial goals and interests, without regard to their direction.
That is, it appears to me, the reason why suddenly the puppets of the real powers in Europe, like Macron and Von der Leyen, Scholz/Merz and Starmer, are all now calling for the Ukraine war to continue, regardless of the American position, and for the creation of a European Army, outside of NATO (meaning US) control. While the UK and European States are now utterly destroyed as Military and Imperial powers because of WWII, and now the lost proxy war against Russia - and economically collapsed as a result of having been separated from the supplies of cheap Russian energy - nobody amongst their elites seems to have accepted these facts as the new reality, yet. Hence the lack of any actual democracy, in the EU, Germany, France and England appears to have empowered the elites in those places to pursue grand ambitions, that their populations largely reject, at the expense of the 'little people', in those countries. So despite the domino tumble, of a series of unpopular Governments in Europe - the unpopular policies seem to persist, and if anything, accelerate.
I suspect that this is where the jilted ex-wives club, is getting its irrational motivations and counter-productive strategies.
well said
John Leake— Always good to read your posts. In seeing some of the comments of certain European leaders and of some of the current crop of US congress critters of the Democratic Party, I begin to more sharply comprehend the folly and tragedy of WWI. And what you said about projection— spot on.
As you said, America would never stand for Russian missile sites in Cuba. JFK and Khrushchev battled it out during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Why on Earth would we think Russia should accept it there. Ukraine has simply been ploy to start this terrible war.
Why was Russia (Soviet or otherwise) supposed to tolerate Jupiter missiles in Türkiye?
Russians also remember the alien-led Bolshevik coup d’état funded by western bankers that enslaved the Russian people for some 70 years. Solzhenitsyn estimated that over 60 million people perished, mostly in Gulags, during this Bolshevik reign of terror and destruction.
John, you ate a breath of fresh air. The demonisation of Russia needs to end. Europe needs to put its big boy pants on. They need to stop spending on endless welfare and stop depending on the US as we all do. Time to grow up and view the world afresh.
Well, we have in the uniparty under the Democrat banner that was established mid 1995 (Clinton) a small contingency of the 8% of 1960’s Boomers that made Marx popular on campuses from Berkeley to Columbia, the elite liberals, their Communist friendame’s, and anybody that had a chip on ther shoulder to hate American ideals. They and their minions instigated riots, burning, murder, vowed to march through the institutions and did. By the mid 1990’s they made old friends China and Vietnam besties and simultaneously gutted middle class skilled labor, sending it abroad to slave regimes mainly because as they captured academia and government (media) they proceeded with their bipolar plan that America was “bad”, they needed to burn it down and “build back better”, befriend Communism, “it takes a village” (Hillary), and deal with their childhood nightmare nuclear Russia and Khrushchev under every bed later.
You had to be there immediately post WWII to fully understand the intentionally tumultuous 1960’s chaotic dystopia that divided America to this day and the cultural shock.
So today the remnants of those 8% of Boomers, now seniors with their global minded offspring in tow with a love/hate relationship with America and zero faith, actually mocking faith, at the levers of the institutions they captured. I believe they are called the deep State, and yes they have controlled government bureaucracies, State departments regardless of Party faux Executive Branch control. Once the WEF (circa 1971), China, and Soros all began jockeying in position of control by 2000, colluding with whomever friendamy’s they could buy, the love/hate bipolar hate America uniparty was just a cancerous blob pretending to run America as they all became wealthy selling of America with NGO’s for their offspring.
Taking Ukraine and finishing off Russia, killing 150 million people to do so has never been a problem for people who would do anything to install a lifetime plagiarizer and sociopathic liar as America’s figurehead. They are hierarchal minded, they have the power and you don’t, what are you gonna do about it. Min a word they are cowards, petulant bully cowards. Once you see them you cannot unsee them. They not only tried terrorizing President Trump, 75 million MAGA supporters, any associations or legal council to them but their own Democrat voters that watched it and felt compelled to vote Democrat before 11/5/24.
If you do not understand what has been happening for the past six decades, that’s understandable, people have lives to live and depended on MSM faithfully to understand who we Americans are as a unique Constitutional Republic.
Today the Left as we call America’s ideal haters, are pressing into power Soros’ judicial buys during previous administrations to stop President Trump and MAGA from uncovering the theft, corruption, and treason to literally show the evidence to those propagandized and in denial for decades.
Of course Russia has watched this play out with China’s three decade lead as America’s fav and making it’s own moves with ally’s and an enormous military on America dime, and in my opinion Russia did what it had to do as it saw America rotting from the inside.
With this said, make no mistake, Russia is four generations Communist propagandized country and the old bear is not our friend. But anyone who knows anything of Communist nationalist Russia at war, knows the old bear always starts slow, and finishes strongly, just ask the Nazi’s when they were on a roll through Europe. Russia doing what it had to do is playing chess for the past three decades since the non dissenting uniparty took control of America three decades ago and began moving pawns in place to threaten the Russian Moscow Queen and its sovereignty. Speaking of Russian chess champions, no doubt the hierarchal minded uniparty thought that their control of Silicon Valley techie AI could defeat the Russian chess champions like it did decades ago but chess is not about one and done, it’s played in matches like war. And with all do respect for the Ukrainian boys who bought the propaganda from the uniparty, and with great sorrow for the poor souls attacked on streets, thousands accosted by grifter soldiers beating them into vans, given a uniform, and hauled to the front to die as the uniparty’s Democrat elite Ukrainian friends bask in sunshine on beaches and Villa’s until it was all over and they could go back and steal more together. This is anything but democracy’s struggle.
Another point to consider is that all the Ukrainians that still hated Russia’s Stalin for starving 600 K of their Ukrainian grandparents in Europe's bread basket, they have long since perished in this war, and make no mistake, if Russia had fallen, China would have moved in like squatters just for the oil and to be on America’s doorstep. Maybe the final solution to expunge America.
"Now the Europeans are butt-hurt because President Trump is tired of the killing, destruction, and sending money and weapons into the black hole of Kiev and wants to end it."
Well thank God he's still okay with it in Gaza!
"Trump appears to understand that the Russian psyche was badly scarred by Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 and especially by Hitler’s in 1941."
You're kidding, right? He doesn't even know what BRICS is.
He does certainly understand that the Oreshnik can make to Mar-a-Lago from Russia in 30 min, less than 5 min from a submarine.
Great piece! Clever and accurate analogy! Keep up the great work.
-G
A lot of wisdom in this episode. I know Russian children who were adopted and it was really an ugly transfer but those boys would have fought in this ugly war I’m sure. I believe we goaded this war over the last 30 years and it will be great to facilitate the end. But please no Americans in Ukraine lest we get drawn into the nonsense.