Production of the TU-214 has started in Russia

[facthunter]

That's all in the eye of the reporting media. America is god fearing and money loving and is always the GOODIES....Nev

[Methusala]

You must see the bridges that I have for sale Ross. Real Cheap...buy two!!!

[kgwilson]

My Mother-in-law was born in Donetsk after the Bolsheviks won the civil war and annexed Ukraine. Her family was from a long line of Cossacks & were aligned to White Russians. She was just a toddler when the Russians burst in to their house and shot her father and grandfather at point blank range and left. She spoke fluent Russian but hated Russians till the day she died. She remembered how the Russians under Stalin took all their grain in the 1930s because their socialist collective farms failed to work and then left the Ukrainians to starve. When the Germans came in 1941 she was taken as forced labour until being liberated by the Americans in 1945 but hated the Russians more than the Germans even after all that. She returned to the Soviet Union in the 1980s flying in to Moscow but only to get a train to see family in Donetsk. My wife still has cousins there.

 

When the Soviet Union collapsed & Ukraine became a sovereign state again I remember the joy she displayed when getting the news. 

 

During the Soviet era hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians migrated to Crimea, Donestk and Luhansk & this gave Putin his excuse to support the separatists almost all of whom are Russian migrants or their descendants.

 

Every nation will experience growing pains as political rivals and corrupt officials jockey for positions with the most corrupt becoming the most wealthy. No surprise there but when Putin an ex KGB autocrat who sees himself as a modern Tsar uses genocidal tactics it has the simple effect of unifying Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are fighting for their very existence. The Russians have no answer militarily so they are destroying Ukraines infrastructure and civilian targets to try and break their spirit and destroying everything they can as they retreat.

 

The war will drag on with the cost becoming unsustainable and many more Russian conscripts dying on the battlefield or shot for desertion. Putin is becoming weaker and more frail. He may just fall down some stairs or out of a window some time, hopefully soon.

[RossK]

11 hours ago, Methusala said:

You must see the bridges that I have for sale Ross. Real Cheap...buy two!!!

You really think the US was concerned with the plight of the Kuwaiti and Iraqi people????

If so, I can see why you think Putin is concerned for the Russians in eastern Ukraine.

 

[marshallarts]

On 08/11/2022 at 9:31 AM, facthunter said:

but the US has much to answer for as did the brits before them

Yes.  For anyone interested in this sort of history I recommend a book called "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer.  It's the story of the ill-fated US intervention in Iran to depose President Mossadegh in 1953 and re-install the Shah.  The background to this was the British takeover of the Iranian oil industry early in the 20th century, from which enormous profits were made for many decades, almost none of which went to Iran.  When Mossadegh was elected with a plan to nationalise their oil industry (i.e. take it back, heaven forbid), the Brits were ready to send in the warships!  The US president of the time managed to convince them that wasn't a good idea, instead attempting a clandestine coup by political manipulation.  A very sorry saga indeed, with both the US and the Brits involved. They did depose Mossadegh and put the Shah's dictatorship in place, but it was a catastrophe for Iran and undoubtedly a contributor to a lot of the middle east instability since then.  Pretty much every time the US has intervened in some foreign regime the result has been disastrous, often the exact opposite of what they intended.  I wonder why they never learn.

Edited November 11, 2022 by marshallarts

[Methusala]

The US are always at the same criminal game. Libya was a highly developed society with the highest living standards in Africa. Gadafi was interested in a better deal for the oil and was negotiating a Euro contract. US has had oil contracts paid for in $$$s since the Bretton-Woods deal of '46. So they murdered Gadafi and left the country the lawless wreck we see today.

And so it goes...bla bla bla...ad-infinitum.

Maybe the empire has got ots hands on a tarbaby this time. The Ukraine is only another victim of " the big game". On this remembrance day spare a few thoughts for the poor dead innocents and their grieving families on all sides.

[Garfly]

1 hour ago, Methusala said:

The US are always at the same criminal game. Libya was a highly developed society with the highest living standards in Africa. Gadafi was interested in a better deal for the oil and was negotiating a Euro contract. US has had oil contracts paid for in $$$s since the Bretton-Woods deal of '46. So they murdered Gadafi and left the country the lawless wreck we see today.

And so it goes...bla bla bla...ad-infinitum.

Maybe the empire has got ots hands on a tarbaby this time. The Ukraine is only another victim of " the big game". On this remembrance day spare a few thoughts for the poor dead innocents and their grieving families on all sides.

Another cartoon characterisation of Gaddafi paints him as no more than a preening fool, a brutal dictator and serial violator of basic human rights.  But if one's only criterion for anointing heroes is their status as enemy to one's enemy ... well, one risks waking up with fleas. 

Speaking of dogs, yes, Putin's victims - on all sides - do need to be remembered, and way beyond Remembrance Day. How about a Stop-Repeating-the-Need-for-Remembrance-Days Day; a more sincere way to honour the victims.

And there's no greater insult to Ukrainian people today, living or dead, than to figure them as ants, collaterally crushed in a (real) battle between elephants. They have their own identity and historical interests, far predating the birth of "The West" (whether seen as Punch or as Judy in your narrative of choice).  BTW, nobody on here is arguing that the West has clean hands in any of the "big game" tragedies of our era. Quite the opposite.

It just comes down to how complicated a world-view we're willing to work with.  

I think it was Russia's Tolstoy, who said that melodrama is about the struggle between good and evil; Drama is about the struggle between good and good.  (Or, to put it another way, between evil and evil.)

The enemy of our enemy is likely an ***hole, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Garfly

[Methusala]

Albert Einstien was said to have opined that, "Two things I regard as infinite; the universe and man's stupidity...and I'm not sure of the universe!"

Anyone who bases his view of world politics on "cartoons" is making a claim to the above.

[Garfly]

On that, we're in furious agreement, Don!     ;- )

[danny_galaga]

This cartoonist wasn't far off a couple of years ago

[Garfly]

True, though I was meaning cartoons of this kind  ...   ;- )