Ukraine - Victory, or A Lull Before the Storm?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by tulianr, Feb 23, 2014.


  1. fedorthedog

    fedorthedog Monkey+++

    I guess I am a paranoid. I look at current events and see a play about the period before WW2. Putin is playing Hitler. Obama is playing Neville Chamberlin, and the Chinese are playing the Japanize. From my view it is 1936-39 right now. History repeat again.

    I only hope that Winston is out there somewhere.
     
  2. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    Or...some crazy anarchist might assassinate some obscure member of European royalty, and cause a re-run of 1914-1918. Prince William, and the Duchess of Cambridge ought to be feeling rather nervous at the moment...

    Australians will probably be hoping that a Younger Winston is nowhere to be found. ;)
     
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  3. fedorthedog

    fedorthedog Monkey+++

    I thought the South Africans who hope there was no younger Winston.
     
  4. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    The younger Winston merely GTFO of South Africa during the Boer War....which was of no great significance to the Boers. The experience did, however benefit his political career, and made him some money by its inclusion in his memoirs.

    A somewhat older younger Winston was the architect of the failed Gallipoli campaign, and during WWII the failed Greece /Crete campaigns: Each of which, Australians were significantly involved in and suffered considerable casualties.
     
  5. tulianr

    tulianr Don Quixote de la Monkey

    Yeah, Winston kept up his refrain that the Mediterranean was "the soft underbelly of Europe." That wasn't what the ANZACs found at Gallipoli, nor what the yanks found at Anzio, thirty years later.

    The parallels of WWI and WWII are amazing, as are the parallels between what our friend Putin is doing at the moment, and what Der Fuhrer did seventy years ago.
     
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  6. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    What Winston failed to recognise and acknowledge was that to actually get into the soft underbelly of Europe; that boney, indigestible SOB called Italy and its never ending procession of mountain peaks, valleys and rivers had to be munched on first. Plenty of teeth broken in that exercise. They tried at much cost to avoid some of the slogging up the Apennine Mountain Range, by an amphibious left hook at Anzio.

    Oh BTW I believe the Salonika Front was another of Winston's achievements also...in 1915 after Gallipoli had been conceded to the Turks. Macedonian front - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2014
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  7. tulianr

    tulianr Don Quixote de la Monkey

    Salonika - "The largest internment camp in Europe," so said the laughing Germans. Winston was one of those characters in history who became one of the "great men of history" because he didn't give up. He kept on swinging, fair ball or foul. In the realm of sports, Babe Ruth was one such "strike out king," as was Reggie Jackson, Alex Rodriguez, and Jose Canseco. The great ones ignore the strikeouts, keep on swinging, and eventually the bat and the ball connect, and great things happen. Winston kept on swinging, and refused to skulk away after the disasters at Gallipoli and Salonika, and Norway in 1940. There's something to be said for dogged persistence.

    Right now, the Ukraine could do with a leader with stamina and dogged persistence, because Russia is not going to just go away because of sharply worded notes of protest from the American White House.
     
  8. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    Agreed. Even though defeated in the first post war British national election, he did persist and came back for one more time as Prime Minister. He had his moments of inspired leadership without a doubt. His greatest contribution to the cause was his leadership and dogged determination to see a cause through to ultimate victory. His ability to wield an alliance with as disperate people as Roosevelt and Stalin, without murdering either was a testament to what he did best...being persuasive.

    As to Winston's abilities as a military strategist, well, it was a blessing that Hitler and Mussolini were worse at it than he was.
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2014
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  9. tulianr

    tulianr Don Quixote de la Monkey

    US Paratroopers Deploy to Poland and Baltics
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG] Apr 22, 2014 | by Richard Sisk
    About 600 paratroopers from the Army’s 173rd Infantry Brigade were headed to Poland and the Baltic states Tuesday to shore up NATO allies during the Ukraine crisis.

    Pentagon officials said that 150 of the "Sky Soldiers" from the 173rd based in Vicenza, Italy, would deploy to Poland on Wednesday. By the weekend, additional 150-troop units were to be on the ground in each of the Baltic states -- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- for joint training with local forces, the officials said.

    "The message is to the people of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is that the U.S. takes seriously its obligations to European security," said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary.

    At a Pentagon briefing, Kirby stressed that the deployments were a U.S. action and were being ordered by Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove in his role as head of the U.S. European Command and not as the Supreme Commander of NATO.

    In another move to deter Russia, the Navy announced that the Aegis destroyer Taylor was entering the Black Sea Tuesday to replace the destroyer Donald Cook "to promote peace and stability in the region."

    The presence of the Cook prompted official Russian to charge that the U.S. was attempting to move missile defenses closer to Russia.
     
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  10. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    Embassy extraction teams if things go pear shaped?
     
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  11. mysterymet

    mysterymet Monkey+++

    As long as things don't go mushroom shaped we are OK!
     
  12. Minuteman

    Minuteman Chaplain Moderator Founding Member

    I had this in a newsletter today. I like the quote from the Ukrainian Journalist.

    Every 10-15 years this place has a major revolution. And each time it's precipitated by one basic principle: money.

    All people really want is to be in a place where they can improve their lives... where their children can have a brighter future than they did.

    The system in Ukraine did not provide those conditions. It was designed for a tiny political and banking elite to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.

    This revolution was borne from economic frustration, plain and simple.

    Yet each time this happened in the past, all they really did was change the players... not the game. They just ended up with a different set of criminals in charge.


    This time around there seems to be serious effort to at least change the rules.

    Many are talking about major revisions to the Constitution (leading one local journalist to ask-- "Why don't we use the American Constitution? It was written by really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and they're not using it anymore...")

    He's right. Much of the West, in fact, has descended into the same extractive system as Ukraine.

    There's a tiny elite showering itself with free money and political favors at the expense of everyone else.

    Dow 17,000 means that a handful of people at the top are making boatloads of money thanks to quantitative easing, some upper-middle class are doing fairly well, and the average guy pays higher prices for food, fuel, education, medical care, etc.

    It's not just the US. France, for example, is simply not a place where you can work hard and expect to improve your life anymore. In Greece and Spain, half of the nations' young men are broke and unemployed.

    And along they way, they have all set aside civil liberties and turned into vast police states.

    Ukraine may be in the midst of turmoil right now, but they at least hit the big giant reset button and are looking to build something new.

    The West, meanwhile, continues down its path of more debt, more money printing, more regulations, and less freedom. How long can this really go on without consequence?

    Until tomorrow,

    Simon Black
    Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com
     
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