Ukraine: Nuland's role

https://www.salon.com/2021/01/19/who-is-victoria-nuland-a-really-bad-idea-as-a-key-player-in-bidens-foreign-policy-team/

the people of Ukraine have heard of neocon Nuland. Many have even heard the leaked four-minute audio of her saying "Fuck the EU" during a February 2014 phone call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. 

During the infamous call on which Nuland and Pyatt appeared to be plotting to replace or undermine elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, Nuland expressed her not-so-diplomatic disgust with the European Union for favoring former heavyweight boxer and austerity champ Vitali Klitschko to take over as prime minister, instead of the U.S. first choice, Artseniy Yatsenyuk, who indeed took power after Yanukovych was ousted about three weeks later. 

The "Fuck the EU" call went viral, as an embarrassed State Department, never denying the call's authenticity, blamed the Russians for tapping the phone, much as the NSA has tapped the phones of European allies. 

Despite outrage from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, no one fired Nuland, but her potty mouth upstaged the more serious story: the U.S. plot to overthrow Ukraine's elected government — and America's responsibility for a civil war that has killed at least 13,000 people and left Ukraine the poorest country in Europe.  

In the process, Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan — co-founder of The Project for a New American Century — and their neocon cronies succeeded in sending U.S.-Russian relations into a dangerous downward spiral from which they have yet to recover.

John Mearsheimer Ukraine will be wrecked. -short-

Sept 25, 2015

 https://youtu.be/lfk-qaqP2Ws

What's going on here is that the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked. I believe that the policy that I'm advocating, which is neutralizing Ukraine and then building it up economically and getting it out of the competition between Russia on one side and NATO on the other side, is the best thing that could happen to the Ukrainians.

What we're doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians. We're encouraging the Ukrainians to think that they will ultimately become part of the West because we will ultimately defeat Putin and we will ultimately get our way. Time is on our side, and of course, the Ukrainians are playing along with this, and the Ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the Russians and instead want to pursue a hardline policy.

Well, as I said to you before, if they do that, the end result is that their country is going to be wrecked, and what we're doing is, in effect, encouraging that outcome. I think it would make much more sense for us to neutralize Ukraine and work to create a neutral Ukraine. It would be in our interest to bury this crisis as quickly as possible. It certainly would be in Russia's interest to do so, and most importantly, it would be in Ukraine's interest to put an end to the crisis.

parents vs schools

 She really nails it.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1512123736408924166.html

The arguments about sex education and book banning and home schooling and CRT and teaching about sexuality and gender identity and curriculum transparency all boil down to this fundamental question: who has the ultimate authority and control over children, parents or the State? 

I would venture to say that the majority of parents believe that they have authority and control over their children's lives. The children are their children and they are responsible for teaching the children and caring for the children and providing for the children. 

Educating children is outsourced to schools due to practicalities. Even those who send their children to religious schools do so because they want to insure their children are brought up with certain beliefs and the parents do not have the time/ability to home school. 

Teachers and school administrators are, in the end, employees of the parents. They exist to provide a service, education, and not to take over the responsibility for the parents. They are there as, at most, an adjunct to how the child is raised, not the primary source of rearing. 

In contrast, the education establishment, by and large, sees itself as being the primary, to say nothing of the highest and best, source of training and imputation of moral values for children. Parents are, at most, ancillary figures to be used to buttress views, if needed. 

It is the State, vis a vis the education department, who has the most important role to deliver in training children how to be proper citizens. It is the State that guides the children, molds their minds, and, in many cases, provides physical care, including meals to the children 

Ukraine: sanctions will hurt the US the most

Gonzalo Lira writes:

The Americans sanctioned Russia as hard as they possibly could, openly trying to break the Russian economy. Most of America’s vassal states in the west followed suit.

India and China have not. So the Americans are now threatening India and China with sanctions of their own, unless they join the United States in punishing Russia.

Paradoxically, America’s bullying tactics against both countries will wind up making them the best of friends.

India has exceedingly good relationship with Russia for several decades — they will not jeopardize it because of the Americans. So in retaliation for not doing what they want, the Americans will sanction India. It will be what my friend Alexandra Mercouris calls “the sanctions escalator”: Little by little at first, random officials here and there, and then slowly targeting the entire Indian economy.

Insofar as China is concerned, America has started this “sanctions escalator “, and the Chinese are under no illusions. But for China, Russia is much more important than the United States. China has spent over 25 years deliberately and consciously deepening its relationship with Russia. China views Russia as a primary partner, and will under no circumstances jeopardize that relationship. That’s why China will never sanction Russia. So China will take on American sanctions — but China realizes something crucial:

The United States needs China much more than the other way around.

China and India have had long-standing border disputes. Because of this American pressure, the two countries are now quickly resolving these border issues, especially water rights issues. Both of them realize that, in order to resist American pressure, they must become allied.

So very quickly, a new super alliance will form between Russia, China and India. Iran, which has strong relationships with Russia and blossoming relationships with China, will inevitably join this partnership.

If these four countries decide to cut out the West, Europe will not have gas for electricity and heat, and no customers for its cars and product. And the Americans will discover that no one wants their dollars—so the American financial architecture will completely collapse, and the US will find itself in the biggest depression of its history. (Yes you read right.)

The Americans do not realize that the US needs China/Russia/India far FAR more than the other way around. America's hollowed out industrial base means that it does not produce anything. It needs products from Russia/China/India. And yet it is the United States which is busy alienating precisely those nations that it most needs. 

The Americans have broken with the Russians – there is now a sanctions moat between Russia and the West. If the US and Europe does this with China and India, the Westwill sink, their economy completely shattered. And this new Eurasian block will become the literal center of the earth. 

Through sheer incompetence, the United States is about to collapse. I am not being hyperbolic, this is what is happening right now. By the end of 2023, there will be catastrophic hyperinflation, over 50% unemployment, mass food shortages, and no gasoline in the United States of America.

Ketanji Brown Jackson

 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/hawley-jackson-child-pornography-sentencing-record-00019481

Sen. Josh Hawley on Tuesday questioned Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sentencing in a 2013 child pornography case where federal guidelines recommended a 10-year term and Jackson gave the defendant three months.

“I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it,” Hawley (R-Mo.) said to the Supreme Court nominee on the second day of her confirmation hearings. “We’re talking about 8-year-olds, 9-year-olds, 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds.”

In the 2013 case, United States v. Hawkins, Jackson sentenced 18-year-old Wesley Hawkins, who had been in possession of about two dozen child sexual abuse images and videos, to three months in prison, while the prosecution recommended at least two years and the PROTECT Act of 2003 recommended 97 to 121 months.

Ukraine: nationalinterest

 https://nationalinterest.org/article/the-dangers-of-expansive-realism-551

Between 1989 and 1991, a political miracle occurred. The Soviet regime, steeped in blood and obsessed with total control as it had been throughout most of its history, voluntarily gave up its Warsaw Pact empire, collapsed the Soviet system upon itself, and then acquiesced in its own demise--all with virtually no violence. 

Ukraine: Hunter Biden

 https://www.maciverinstitute.com/2022/03/the-hunter-biden-story-was-always-about-joes-corruption/

In April 2014, just two months after being discharged from the Navy for testing positive for cocaine, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest oil and natural gas company even though he neither spoke Ukrainian nor had any experience in the oil and natural gas industry.

What he did have was a father who happened to be the Vice President of the United States as well as the Obama Administration’s point man on Ukraine. In a press release announcing Hunter’s hiring, Burisma noted that he would be in charge of the company’s “legal unit and will provide support for the company among international organizations.” This, presumably, would include the United States Government.

Almost immediately after Hunter joined the board, Vadym Pozharskyi, one of Burisma’s top executives, asked in in an email in May 2014 for “advice on how you could use your influence” to aid Burisma in its international relations. Hunter apparently got to work immediately and even arranged a meeting between his father and Pozharskyi.

“Dear Hunter,” Pozharskyi wrote him the following April, “Thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s really an honor and pleasure. As we spoke yesterday evening, would be great to meet today for a quick coffee. What do you think?”

Less than eight months after this meeting, Vice President Biden pressured then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who just happened to be investigating Burisma for public corruption. If they wouldn’t, Biden promised, the U.S. would withhold a billion dollars in loan guarantees.

“I went over…to Kyiv and I was supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee and I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor and they didn’t,” Biden bragged during a 2018 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “I said, ‘We’re not going to give you the billion dollars.’ They said, ‘You have no authority, you’re not the President.’

“I said, ‘Call him.’ I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting a billion dollars.’ I said, ‘You’re not getting a billion, I’m going to be leaving here and I think it was about six hours,’ and I look at him and say, ‘We’re leaving in six hours, if the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money.’

“Well son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

And that someone dropped the investigation into Burisma.