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2022-04-15 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Ukraine war is a 'perfect storm,' threatening food, energy, and debt crises across the globe: UN report
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Posted by Skidmark 2022-04-15 00:00|| || Front Page|| [6 views ]  Top
 File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats 

#1 US sanctions and US policy are making everything a hundred times worse. They are dragging the nonwestern world into one of the West's civil wars - and ensuring that the war, and the world's pain, lasts as long and are as harsh as possible.

This policy is nothing short of sadistic.

Instead of ending the war and ensuring the flow of wheat, fertilizer, gas and oil to the 60% of the world that depends upon Russian exports to feed itself, the US is determined to prolong the war for years or even decades.
Posted by Slineling Chusong5031 2022-04-15 09:52||   2022-04-15 09:52|| Front Page Top

#2 So Putin is willing to allow Ukrainian wheat to be exported through the Black Sea, and only the US is stopping him?
Posted by Matt 2022-04-15 09:56||   2022-04-15 09:56|| Front Page Top

#3 Why are you obsessed with Putin? It's your own country's senile and corrupt leader who is causing millions of innocents around the world to starve.

Americans do not have any idea of the havoc and ruin that their stupid sanctions cause. US sanctions do nothing to change the leaders' behavior or calculations and only end up causing the general public to hate America.

Indians have not forgotten the brutal and punitive US sanctions that the Clinton Administration imposed on us - for the crime of wanting to develop our own independent foreign policy with our own nukes.

Now America is doing it again, ensuring that another generation of Indians will bitterly resent America and that India will remain neutral whenever the US comes begging for support in its crusade against Russia.
Posted by Slineling Chusong5031 2022-04-15 10:13||   2022-04-15 10:13|| Front Page Top

#4 Again, you didn't answer my simple and direct question. As a humanitarian gesture to the third world why not let Ukraine export wheat through the Black Sea? Is Putin Russia willing to allow that?
Posted by Matt 2022-04-15 10:41||   2022-04-15 10:41|| Front Page Top

#5 The global South doesn't need your "humanitarian gestures." The nations of the South are willing and able to pay for Russian wheat. If the senile American elephant would just get out of our way and stop hammering us with its foolish sanctions and ruinous trade policies, we could easily feed our people.
Posted by Slineling Chusong5031 2022-04-15 11:07||   2022-04-15 11:07|| Front Page Top

#6 SC: Don't feed the troll.
Posted by Jaimble Bluetooth4081 2022-04-15 11:11||   2022-04-15 11:11|| Front Page Top

#7 Win friends and influence the Swedes and Finns with nuclear blackmail. I could care less others think is in 'our' interests.
Posted by Procopius2k 2022-04-15 11:12||   2022-04-15 11:12|| Front Page Top

#8 To clarify - for the non-trolls - "the senile American elephant" comment refers to stupid US policymakers. We are eternally grateful to Norman Borlaug, the brilliant American agronomist whose breakthroughs enabled us to more than double our food production in the 1960s. We wish there were more Americans like Borlaug and fewer like Biden and Clinton.
Posted by Slineling Chusong5031 2022-04-15 11:18||   2022-04-15 11:18|| Front Page Top

#9 I could care less others think is in 'our' interests.

You mean you couldn't care less? This helps explain why US policy makers keep getting away with policies that are so obviously against US interests. When other nations tell you that invading Iraq or meddling all over the world will only lead to trillions of your money wasted and hundreds of thousands of people killed - including 10,000 or more US boys - you don't listen to them.

The same goes for your stupid, reflexive sanctions policy. Your sanctions will blow back and crush your economy. Your own economists are now predicting that the dollar will probably lose its reserve currency status over the next decade or so. When it does you will lose your economic warfare stick with which you threaten other nations.

If you were trying to shrink your influence in the world, you could not do a better job than with these self-destructive policies.
Posted by Slineling Chusong5031 2022-04-15 11:30||   2022-04-15 11:30|| Front Page Top

#10 What others think is in 'our' interests.

Hell, there's a term for it: concern troll
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-04-15 11:56||   2022-04-15 11:56|| Front Page Top

#11 blah blah, sanctions blowback..reserve currency...economy destroyed...blah blah

get some new apocalyptic talking points, k?
Posted by Frank G 2022-04-15 12:07||   2022-04-15 12:07|| Front Page Top

#12 My concern is for India. I just find it astonishing how willing Americans are to support Biden's policies. He's clearly destroying American wealth and influence in the world. Why do Americans support this?
Posted by Slineling Chusong5031 2022-04-15 12:09||   2022-04-15 12:09|| Front Page Top

#13 We wish there were more Americans like Borlaug and fewer like Biden and Clinton.

Don't we all?
Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-04-15 12:12||   2022-04-15 12:12|| Front Page Top

#14 Guess the sanctions must be working, the trolls are squealing. If you want to see one small reason why, look at the Orlan-10 drone teardown elsewhere on the 'burg.
Posted by Nero 2022-04-15 12:14||   2022-04-15 12:14|| Front Page Top

#15 I just find it astonishing how willing Americans are to support Biden's policies. He's clearly destroying American wealth and influence in the world. Why do Americans support this?

It's called the Main Stream Media. It's kind of like a mushroom factory. They keep us in the dark and feed us bullshit.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-04-15 12:14||   2022-04-15 12:14|| Front Page Top

#16 He's clearly destroying American wealth and influence in the world. Why do Americans support this?

Biden is destroying everyone's wealth (except his family's). That blithering idiot created hyperinflation and now he's going to cause a global recession.

I agree with the American congressman who said there should be regime change in Washington.
Posted by Jaimble Bluetooth4081 2022-04-15 12:15||   2022-04-15 12:15|| Front Page Top

#17 However, for the record, Biden's ratings are down to something like 35 percent favorability. Also remember that many irregularities were reported in the 2020 election which is why many Americans call him President *. And then there is the centerpiece of his agenda, the Build Back Better legislation, that went down in flames in the US Senate. So the claim that Americans support Biden's policies is not strictly true. It's more like we're stuck with his policies until we get rid of him either with impeachment, the 25th Amendment or the 2024 election.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-04-15 12:27||   2022-04-15 12:27|| Front Page Top

#18 This place is crawling with Biden trolls. No one who sees what a shithead the US has in the White House would support his policies.

Least of all Trump supporters... if Trump were still in the White House this war would never have happened. Trump is a rational businessman who never would have dreamed of trying to shut down an economy that supplies most of the world with its essential commodities.
Posted by Jaimble Bluetooth4081 2022-04-15 12:27||   2022-04-15 12:27|| Front Page Top

#19 #18 This place is crawling with Biden trolls

Either you're being deliberately obtuse, or an idiot. There's not a single real poster here defending Biden
Posted by Frank G 2022-04-15 12:29||   2022-04-15 12:29|| Front Page Top

#20 That's laughable. You support his stupid foreign policies to the letter. He's deliberately prolonging the war so he can grind down the US economy and impose more control on you. Only a troll would be so stupid as to fail to see what he's doing.
Posted by Phinegum Smith7698 2022-04-15 12:39||   2022-04-15 12:39|| Front Page Top

#21 Rantburg: We even love Joe Biden™

/sarc
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-04-15 12:40||   2022-04-15 12:40|| Front Page Top

#22 Now America is doing it again, ensuring that another generation of Indians will bitterly resent America and that India will remain neutral...

Maybe you Indians will stay home then and stop coming here.
Posted by Ebbatch Dark Lord of the Hemps6848 2022-04-15 13:02||   2022-04-15 13:02|| Front Page Top

#23 ^There are those of us who want nothing more. Leftists here call us nazis.
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-04-15 13:10||   2022-04-15 13:10|| Front Page Top

#24 ^ By that I meant us Americans staying home.
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-04-15 13:10||   2022-04-15 13:10|| Front Page Top

#25 Oddly enough, India appears to have the world's highest tariffs on agricultural products. And is a wheat exporter. But I stand to be corrected on either point.
Posted by Matt 2022-04-15 13:19||   2022-04-15 13:19|| Front Page Top

#26 Putin doesn't care what the world thinks. Xi doesn't care what the world thinks. That is the attitude America needs to take. They're never going to love you, quit wasting your resources and money.
Posted by Procopius2k 2022-04-15 14:03||   2022-04-15 14:03|| Front Page Top

#27 if Trump were still in the White House this war would never have happened.

Exactly. Trump's policies would have kept oil prices low and would have threatened Putin with nukes if he invaded while working with Putin to expand Russian influence in Asia to help contain the Chinese and combat Islamists and the Taliban. What a missed opportunity that was.
Posted by Phinegum Smith7698 2022-04-15 14:18||   2022-04-15 14:18|| Front Page Top

#28 ^ This is essentially what John Mearsheimer has been arguing for - a policy based on realism instead of wishful thinking and liberal imperialist nonsense.

Russia would have been a key part of Trump's containment strategy for China. Instead the Biden people are spouting all the old Obama and Clinton bullshit about how "the democracies" are fighting "authoritarian" regimes... as if Ukraine's one-party dictator is a "democrat."

No one outside Washington or London takes this rhetoric seriously.
Posted by Jaimble Bluetooth4081 2022-04-15 14:24||   2022-04-15 14:24|| Front Page Top

#29 To those of us who have been suffering from Obama and his puppet Biden for a lot longer than the last two years, the concern troll shit here is laughable. The Obambiden Collective has been the one who's been exporting American industry to, among others, Putin's oligarghy, which uses the resulting wealth to make war and fund trolls who blame Biden for... some pissant sanctions.

They're concerned about India? Here, take a hint: Sri Lanka is now bankrupt not because of Biden but because the local Chinese-appointed puppet decided to destroy agriculture there. They slept through it while having a wet dream about Putin. Same situation wrt Lebanon. Hezbollah, who's Putin's and Iran's proxies, have bankrupted the country and blown up a major part of Beiruit along the way.

Biden pretends to fight Putin and Putin and his trolls pretend to fight Biden, but it's all kayfabe. Meanwhile, Putin's the one who's wearing down the Russian military when he should have been spending his 200 billion dollar personal fortune on new tires. He's good at manipulating his western puppets while pretending to fight them and paying trolls to blame them for the consequences but not good at _actual military operations_.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-04-15 15:10||   2022-04-15 15:10|| Front Page Top

#30  I could care less others think is in 'our' interests.

You mean you couldn't care less?

Idiomatically, both mean exactly the same thing. Like our spelling and irregular grammar, designed to trip up non-native speakers into trying to parse the unparseable.

ensuring that another generation of Indians will bitterly resent America and that India will remain neutral...

Neutral would be lovely after all those decades of Socialist India siding with the Soviet Union while claiming to be neutral. Much as I love India —between all my parents’ Indian friends, Rudyard Kipling (sorry, I know y’all hate that, but I fell in love with India while reading Kim), and Mr. Wife’s wonderful experience working over there in 1990-‘91 — India will ever be only for India. Which is fine — as Rabbi Hillel said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”, but it would be nice if other countries accorded us the same rather than threatening to stop liking us if we don’t do their bidding' even as so many of their best and brightest so eagerly emigrate to our shoes.
Posted by trailing wife 2022-04-15 15:11||   2022-04-15 15:11|| Front Page Top

#31 John Mearsheimer is the only US foreign policy expert left (except Kissinger) who still talks sense. He says the US goals were to create a western "bulwark" next to Russia's capital by incorporating Ukraine into NATO and to make InrIne into an EU liberal democracy. Mearsheimer has said that Putin's goals all along have been to thwart the above -- by "wrecking" (Mearsheimer's term) Ukraine.

This is exactly what has happened. At least 1/4 of Ukraine's infrastructure has been obiterated. By end of summer 3/4 of Ukraine (outside of Donbas) will be obliterated. As to the other goals, NATO membership is out of the question and Ukraine is now a one-party dictatorship.

It's a pity that John Mearsheimer is not advising US policy. The world would have been spared a great deal. Ukraine would be neutral and at peace. The US would still be prosperous and free, and would have gained an extremely valuable partner with which to completely encircle and contain the only real threat to the US... which, as Mearsheimer tried to remind the Washington lunatics, is Chjna.
Posted by Jaimble Bluetooth4081 2022-04-15 15:55||   2022-04-15 15:55|| Front Page Top

#32 @trailingwife - thank you for this courteous reminiscence.

I fell in love with India while reading Kim

A lovely and cruel country that has broken many hearts.

wonderful experience working over there in 1990-‘91

A time of great hope - expectations of change for the better... most of them unrealized (see above)

India will ever be only for India. Which is fine

As any sensible human ought to be

Kipling...

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!"
Posted by Slineling Chusong5031 2022-04-15 16:40||   2022-04-15 16:40|| Front Page Top

#33 Re. Kim, if you'd like a glimpse of how beautiful India was before it was industrialized, see the 1950s Hollywood version of Kim with (I think) Errol Flynn as Mahbub Ali the undercover English spy / horse trader. The colors oddly seem right.

Flynn or whoever plays Mahbub Ali very well. The whole thing is nicely done. India was astonishingly beautiful back then.
Posted by Slineling Chusong5031 2022-04-15 16:47||   2022-04-15 16:47|| Front Page Top

#34  John Mearsheimer is the only voice that speaks what you WANT to hear. Please
Posted by Frank G 2022-04-15 19:05||   2022-04-15 19:05|| Front Page Top

#35 We are eternally grateful to

So you couldn't figure it out for yourselves?
There's probably some political royalty due for that.
Posted by Skidmark 2022-04-15 22:26||   2022-04-15 22:26|| Front Page Top

23:53 Omaing Stalag1261
23:08 Omineth Gray1397
23:06 USN , Ret.
22:56 Skidmark
22:52 Skidmark
22:46 Skidmark
22:43 Skidmark
22:42 Besoeker
22:41 Skidmark
22:41 Besoeker
22:40 Skidmark
22:39 Skidmark
22:38 Besoeker
22:38 Skidmark
22:28 Skidmark
22:26 Skidmark
21:25 Procopius2k
20:29 Frank G
20:23 CrazyFool
20:18 swksvolFF
19:57 SteveS
19:36 Frank G
19:35 Woodrow
19:34 Frank G









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