Here’s how to kill their argument in one easy step.
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A podcast I listened to recently also had a pretty good takedown of it as well: A Dispatch from Ukraine - It Could Happen Here | iHeart
The Ukrainian journalist talks about this problem specifically, and how this entire battalion ends up being less than a thousand guys now that the oligarch funding them backed out.
For those who want a deep dive into the Ukraine back story, I can not recommend these podcasts enough.
Pre-Requisite
https://congressionaldish.com/cd244-keeping-ukraine/
On the actual event
https://congressionaldish.com/cd248-understanding-the-enemy/
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I second that. This podcast is also one of the best for US politics in general. Reporting on what congress does as opposed to what they say.
Hoo-boy. That was quite a ride. Those were some strong recommendations so I decided to give the podcast a try. So far I’ve only listened to episode 244 and didn’t realize when I hit play it would be a 2 hour experience.
I have A LOT I could criticize about that episode, and I’ll presume is typical in most of the episodes she makes. Once I realized how fast she was moving through 80+ years of global history and international relationships and domestic political goals but that there were still many many minutes left I started jotting down notes to:
A) keep track of the journey she was taking us on
B) note my concerns or questions based on the way she was interpreting concrete events
I’m not going to provide my 700 words of notes, because frankly I don’t care to get into every issue that caught my attention in this space. Let this conclusion suffice for what I took away from episode 244 about the history of bringing the Ukraine situation to what it has become:
She clearly shares many of the core concerns that informed and careful people have about the Democratic party establishment and the ways they excel at not being able to do the right thing for the right reason at many opportunities. But because of that view and also her insinuations (really, accusations at times) of even more nefarious or sinister motives and goals it is really hard to take her constructed narrative seriously. Yes, late-stage capitalism harms the environment and treats both workers and citizens poorly, even harmfully. But she then reverses that conclusion to say that is the only or driving reason Western governments take the geopolitical actions that they do.
Having said all of that, the biggest thing I found distasteful and largely unsupported by the substantial number of quotes and factual events she provided for most of the rest of her narrative is that Putin & Russia have a very valid reason to be made nervous by NATO’s (and the IMF) actions in Europe and with Georgia & Ukraine in particular, thus almost justifying the military maneuvers they were taking when she recorded this episode in December 2021. The item she seemed to lean on the most to justify this conclusion of hers is the testimony by a US diplomat to Congress (Senate Foreign Relations committee I think) that Russia was moving their troops towards Ukraine and a warning that there was a good possibility Russia (Putin) intended to invade Ukraine. Of course we know he has done just that, so my complaint is not being a Monday-morning quarterback. Instead, the reason I found her incredulity and dismissal of this diplomatic testimony asinine is that she seemed dumbfounded that the US government could possibly have any informed reason to have this opinion. If there is one thing the US has done since WWII it is to put a lot of money and focus on organizations like the CIA and NSA to be able to draw these types of informed predictions of what governments like Russia are planning and could possibly be motivated to do. That is not to say that our intelligence services are infallible, but the podcast host could not even conceive of what a career diplomat could base such a forward-looking prognostication about an aggressive foreign power on.
Not sure if I can stomach listening to episode 248. Maybe in a few days when my curiosity gets the better of me. But yeah, miss me with this bullshit “NATO is to blame” and “Russia is just taking actions based on rational self-interest they have been provoked into.” Regardless of what NATO has done to this point it does not justify the invasion of a sovereign country and the widespread killings and likely war-crimes that are being committed today.
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Hey no worries if you look on the links I gave she cites all of her sources that were used in making the episodes. I can completely understand that it is not for everyone but overall I think she does a great job in reporting about congress and they do rather than what they say.
Something occurred to me last night while I was working out.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2001, when I was 19, I clearly remember the post-9/11 conversations about Iraq. And one talking point that always got tossed around, and that had a lot of traction, was effectively “Saddam Hussein is provoking action from the west by giving UN weapons inspectors a hard time.”
I thought on that. At the time, you could make a reasonable case for it - but obviously, in retrospect, I see it for the bullshit that it is. The two things are not related - even if you give someone a hard time in one arena, that doesn’t justify a full-scale invasion. You can’t reasonably claim to be “provoked” by a passive action largely unrelated to your sovereignty or security.
If, today, we don’t think that argument in 2001 was valid - and I promise there is no leftist who would buy that line - why are people willing to accept it here, with Russia? Certainly the nuts and bolts are different, but the principle is the same - claiming provocation on the basis of a thing that is at best tangential to your security is a flimsy-ass argument, and certainly no basis for an invasion.
If we go down that road, I could probably come up with a bullshit argument to call almost anything a “provocation.”
If I throw a rock at a cop, does that really mean the cop is in the right to shoot me and all my friends? Same logic.
Disclaimer: I know almost nothing about aviation, and even less about how airline contracts/agreements are structured, but this was an interesting Twitter read. No idea how valid it is though:
I am seeing a lot of similar stories with optimistic and plausible sounding explanations of why Russia is in trouble. The most prominent one seems to be some kind of simplistic explanation that the war is costing Russia $20 billion per day, and they simply can’t afford to sustain that for very long because their economy just wasn’t that strong to begin with, and is now much worse.
My thought on the matter is, citation needed.
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The link I posted is a bit more concrete than that.
According to the author, most airlines don’t actually own the planes they use, they’re leased to them by other companies. Because of this, the sanctions against Russia will hit all those companies leasing airlines, and they won’t allow Russian airlines to use their planes anymore.
Additionally, airlines require insurance to fly, and again, with the sanctions, they won’t be able to get those international insurance, preventing Russian airlines from landing or doing business internationally.
Finally, airplanes require parts and maintenance, which the sanctions will prevent Russian airlines from getting, further hampering Russian aviation.
While the author doesn’t provide any citations to any of this, on its face, it does seem plausible, and is a lot more concrete than just “Russia is spending $20 billion per day.”
Listening to 244 I couldn’t get over her speech pattern. Everything felt framed to point to a deeper and undefined problem. Then it clicked, this was classic conspiracy theory jargon.
I can’t speak to her reporting on other congressional matters, but at least in world politics she’s a write off for me. Especially looking into her long time support of Joe Rogan and vaccine stance of “just asking questions”.
Oh and the accepting of crypto to fund the podcast is also a bad look.
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The library says to read these books. Probably got better info than podcasts and Twitter threads! Not that I can talk. I’m reading a book with a spaceship on the cover.
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The interesting part of the story is this…
“Ensuring the safety and security of athletes is of paramount importance to us and the situation in the athlete villages is escalating and has now become untenable.”
This makes it seem as if the Russian athletes were facing some sort of harassment in the village.
The military-perspective YT channels and other sources I follow that are covering this ongoing conflict, more or less are drawing some similar conclusions:
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Ukraine is unlikely to hold out long-term if this keeps going and Rus is determined to see it thru. That should be obvious, but, Ukraine lasting this long and the deluge of media showing their abilities has people thinking this is going to turn around. Don’t get too excited yet, just because all the news shows Ukraine putting in work.
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Rus forces are taking much more of a beating than anyone on either side assumed, and more of a beating than they should have by almost any measure. There’s some saying it’s all due to doctrine, but that more-or-less is no excuse. Whether they failed from incompetence, inexperience, or intentionally, they have still suffered major failures.
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Regardless of losses, the momentum is still inexorably building on the Russian war machine and they aren’t far behind a realistic invasion schedule for the distance and terrain they are facing. The forces are simply maintaining a nominal pace of what large troop movements should look like given their equipment and roads. Reports of tanks running out of fuel are more from them pushing too greedily, regardless of whether or not they had good logistics. (Which, different sources have different opinions on that.)
If I’m allowed to put some personal speculation out, and this is not based on any specific thing to be sure; I get this feeling that while Putin may want Ukraine as much as ever, I think the real purpose here is to provoke NATO into being a worthy opponent. Despite claims to the opposite, I’m suggesting he wants to see NATO get back into ‘fighting shape’ so that there can be an earnest escalation to eventually let both sides have it out, or at least relive the “good 'ol days” of the full-steam Cold War. Perhaps Putin is not interested in going out before being a great war leader, and his life-long enemy has been NATO. NATO which instead of growing stronger by surviving the Soviet Union, has been disarming and relaxing and, despite some fancy toys and a few conflicts abroad, aren’t the determined opponents he once knew.
Or he just honestly thought an actual modern near-peer conflict on their doorstep would scare NATO into submission?
Either he’s nostalgic, or a bully; and almost everything I’ve read supports both.
In either case, I really hope for a decisive upset by Ukraine+EU/NATO/whoever else that forces any-such ambitions by Russia back into the bin, with a response that doesn’t play into his ambitions.
Formula 1 has not only cancelled this year’s Grand Prix in Sochi, Russia but has now terminated the contract for future races in Russia. The Russian GP was due to move to St Petersburg next year. Also, Russian drivers are not going to be permitted to race in the UK though F1 had planned to allow them to race elsewhere under a neutral flag, though that issue is currently under review.
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I’m starting to wonder how many Russians, especially athletes, will seek asylum/citizenship elsewhere in order to be able to do things.
It would be quite a fucking thing if we saw Russians playing for team USA or team Canada in any international ice hockey competition.
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I’ve been rolling with the assumption that everyone who is talking and sharing hopeful news from Ukraine is really doing so to remember the heroism when it falls - that is, we all know where it’s heading, and it’s sort of a living memorial.
I think the base-level understanding is “Ukraine is going to fall,” and the media deluge has ramped up in part because nobody expected them to last this long or to fight this fiercely.
I would, of course, be delighted to be wrong. The Russian military is in a sorry state, but there’s a lot of it, and I’m pretty sure it will win the day if nobody else directly intervenes.
I still have no idea what Putin’s end-goal would be, though. If he wants to provoke NATO into stepping up…he’ll get crushed, based on what we’re seeing of his military’s capabilities now. Unless he’s got a secret weapon, but I honestly doubt that. I think he’s trying to recreate the glory of past Russian hegemony, and this is him shooting his shot.
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