Tag Archives: russia

RUSSIA AND THE BLANK CHECK

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RUSSIA

Russia has shown how inept, incompetent and feeble it is. Supposedly, it has an army, brave men and women who have always been the backbone of Russia’s forces. But the army is neither trained nor supplied. Its generals are old and decrepit. Look at the guys in military uniforms standing behind Putin. They are not faces of experience, but of the elderly. Those old guys have neither the gumption to tell Put the real state of the Russian Army, nor have the capability to say anything. They appear to have dementia.

America toyed with elderly generals. General Marshall fired many of them before World War Two. Winfield Scott admitted he was too old to command Union forces during the Civil War. But Doug MacArthur never admitted anything for his blunders. He lied to troops under him; he lied to politicians. In 1944 MacArthur insisted on invading and “liberating” the Philippines, accomplished by the end of World War Two. How far were MacArthur’s forces in the Philippines from Japan? Three to Six thousand miles.

So the Russians have the slows in Ukraine. Democracies are united against Russia. Rich Russians are persona non-grata, and targets for many methods of mischief – from governments, or more likely criminals. Russia has the loyalty of puppet states like Cuba. Its failure on the battlefield shows how incapable Russia is. Russia is now about ready to follow a policy considered by Americans in Vietnam: We had to destroy Ukraine to save it.

BLANK CHECK

Before the Ukrainian invasion, Putin went to China to confer with the Bigs there. It is possible that the Chinese gave the Russians a blank check, meaning the Russians could do whatever they wanted in Ukraine. Putin is trying to do whatever he wants.

However, the Ukrainians have show the Russians are paper tigers. That’s the first take away the Chinese have learned. How difficult will it be and how long will it take for the Chinese to reverse the Nineteenth Century Treaties imposed by the Russian Tsars on the government of China. The Chinese were forced to give away millions of acres in Asia.

But a bigger blank check: In The Sleepwalkers, Christopher Clark, the story is told how the French gave the Russians a blank check before World War One. The Russians gave a blank check to the Serbians. The British were oblivious. How well did that War turn out for Europe – Russia, France and Britain?

With their blank check from the Chinese, the Russians are threatening Nuclear War. Did the Chinese give the Russians a blank check to do that, because Putin’s army has the slows in Ukraine? The Chinese must tell the Russians – no blank check. Stop the nuclear threats.

That is in the Chinese interests. It is said the Chinese think about problems, years and decades in advance. If there is a nuclear war, that planning is gone. The future might be four hours. Time to break out those 100 year old bottles of wine. Everything that the Chinese have accomplished toward their goals will be gone: Whether the Chinese want it or not, that nation will be part of a general nuclear exchange. However many bomb shelters the Chinese have, no human being wants to live through decades of nuclear winter.

So China, stop the Russians from cashing your blank check.

PAT BUCHANAN – RUSSIA LOVE

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Yesterday old Pat has called for an American reevaluation and withdrawal from NATO. Russian ain’t a threat – totalitarian government, invasions of Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine, violations of the anti-ballistic missile treaties, poisoning of opponents living overseas, killing members of the opposition within Russia, interfering in elections in the West. It’s a goon country. 

All that is fine with Pat. Pat was big when he was Old Dick Nixon’s chief screw in the 1970s. Pat is that far out of date, equally manifested when Pat relies on George Kennan. George Kennan set FDR straight about the Soviet Union, didn’t he Pat?  Nixon himself was a communist. He embarked on policies which allowed the Soviet Union and Red China to succeed and expand, all the while weakening the United States. 

Now Pat wants to follow Don Trump and his BFF, Vlad Putin. Putin wants to do away with security arrangements which have kept Europe at peace for three-quarters of  a century and have delivered prosperity to most citizens. What does Don get out of dissolving the American-European security arrangements? Money plus he gets to build an ugly hotel in Moscow, his wet dream of this decade. Pat gets a government job where he can crawl, cower, slink and grovel before powerful men like he did with Old Dick. Vlad gets to be more aggressive and intimating with the Europeans each who has the backbone of a chocolate eclairs. 

Meanwhile if Don and Pat succeed in order to gain their silly goals, the Atlantic Ocean will not protect the United States. For a third time the United States will be forced to defend and cross it to bring peace to the world.

AN AFFRONT TO ENGLISH

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The “Russian” Civil Wars 1916-1926, Jonathan D. Smele, presents a fascinating subject. But it seems written in a language that has endings for specific congregations for its verbs and with many declensions for its nouns – languages like Russian, German or Latin.

The strength of English prose is verbs, actions directing nouns. Most well-written books and articles recognize this rule. Verbs are close to subjects; no one ever loses sight of that combination, or the purpose for which noun-verb was used. If a writer likes to discourse in a sentence, go on and on for 70 – 100 -120 words, an English sentence better have parallel structures. Logic dictates it. (It’s not the logic of the language, but logic – premise, minor premise, conclusion)

In Mein Kampf the translator observes,  

…mixed metaphors are just as mixed in one language as in the other

other. A lapse of grammatical logic can occur in any language. An

English language Title might be just a redundant as the German one;…

No non-German would write such labyrinthine sentences…I have

cut down the sentences only when the length made them unintelligible

in English…

The substantives are a different matter. Here it has been necessary

to make greater changes, because in many cases the use of verbal nouns

is singly incompatible with the English language…Hitler’s piling up of

substances is bad German, but the fact remains that numerous German

writers do the same thing, while this failing is almost non-existence in

English.

…much German prose, some not of thee worst quality, around in…

useless little words: wohl, ja, denn, schon, noch, eigentlich, etc. Hitler’s

sentences are …clogged with particles, not to mention such private

favorites as besonders and damals which he strews about…needlessly.

His particles have a certain political significance, for in the petit

bourgeois mind they are, like carved furniture, an embodiment of the

home-grown German virtues, while their avoidance is viewed with

suspicion as foreign and modernistic.

[Translator’s note, Mein Kampf, Boston, Mariner Books, 1999, p. xi-xii.]

Parenthetical words and terms at the beginning of an English sentence, or at the end, or sometimes the middle indicated by the use of parentheses indicate a lack of writing skills.

Let’s observe one demonstration: 

On the contrary, the events that took place in the period from

around  1989 to 1991 and their volcanic reverberations across

the former Soviet space have very greatly enriched, necessitated

and energized historical investigations, as they have made it

unchallengeably clear that any approach to the “Russian” Civil

War that places the Red and White struggle within the matrix too

starkly in its foreground is missing the point.

[Smele, The “Russian” Civil War 1916-1926, N.Y. Oxford, 2017, p. 6]

There’s a lot to chew on in that one sentence. The following sentences present a lot of gristle and fat, also. I noted this sentence was in the INTRODUCTION, and believed getting to Chapter One would break up and provide good sailing.

Alas, the first sentence of Chapter One reads, 

Despite what has already been noted above, the is also a very

strong case for the dating of outbreak of the “Russian” Civil War

on the extensive anti-Russian uprising in Central Asia during the

summer of 1916, as a large number of the tsar’s Muslim subjects,

in a rebellion that anticipated the Basmachi movement, resisted

the forced mobilization into labor battalions to serve the Russian

army and the armaments industry (although this was the most

overt assault on local sensibilities that had been repeatedly

affronted by the waves of non-Muslim settlers that had been moving

into the region for a half century.)

[IBID, p. 17.]

Note the hesitancy to tell anything in the text which is further emphasized by the third sentence of that same paragraph beginning with Moreover and goes on for 100 words or so; the last sentence begins with Thus. Blue pencil it all! Also note, the book defines the Busmachi movement as a term for Muslim bandits during Soviet times. This sentence attempts to expand and explain incidences in the nineteenth century as well as those occurring, perhaps at late as 1980.

The usual manner of writing history or even fiction is for a non-writer to write chronologically. This writer decides to put a flashback into parentheses while using Soviet terms indicating more recent events. The outcome is a whole series of unexplained events of one hundred fifty years.

I wanted to learn of the “Russian” Civil War, its battles, the philosophy, its politics, and how its effects might survive today. But reading such diversion makes the story overly complicated, suggests portions of that war arose from local circumstances, and demonstrates the historian does not have a the big picture in his head clearly. He could not communicate much. The writing reminded me of translator’s note from Mein Kampf.  

P.S. One way Hermann Boell was taught to write was editing Mein Kampf, editing to a third of its length. The text was readable. I believe The “Russian” Civil War could benefit from the same treatment and be vastly improved.

TEN CENT HEAD

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Yahoo is running a story about Julian Assange, courtesy of Pamela Anderson, once of the sunny beaches of Bay Watch. It is Oscar time in Hollywood; apparently Pamela Anderson doesn’t have much to do here. She is inspecting the sewers in Europe.

According to Anderson, Sweden is progressive. Scandinavians are returning to Viking ways. They are understanding about crimes involving sex. Rape is OK. Assange is rumored to be dating Anderson, who never gave ex-husbands so much time. Assange is innocent! Once a proponent against molesting children, Anderson’s new quest is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Other than committing acts making him a sexual predator in almost every state in the Union, Assange hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2015-16; he joined with the Ruskies to obtain and release emails from the Democratic Party. Every American, Left or Right, knows the email hacking and the release are unAmerican and illegal, except Pamela Anderson. She obviously believes no email hacking occurred; Julian told her so: Everyone has forgotten about the election including Assange’s hacking.

Pamela Anderson should know better, except she may be retarded – an imbecile – a moron – an idiot. Or is Anderson a Democrat so doesn’t remember what happened last week, last month, a year ago? Your choice – publicity or oblivion?