by Summary:
The Vineyard of the SakerAll the way to Odessa (Important. Where things are most likely headed based on Russian pronouncements.)Pepe Escobarhttp://thesaker.is/all-the-way-to-odessa/India PunchlineGround beneath Zelensky’s feet is shifting (It may be that the US strategy is shifting away from the initially assumed destruction of the Russian economy using "sanctions from hell," and the succeeding assumption about arming Ukraine to one of assuming that longer terms, the sanctions will bring down the Russian economy. Neither the US nor NATO wants to see this escalate to war in Europe, which is tantamount to WWIII. They know that Russia is serious and has the wherewithal to make life very uncomfortable for the West — read "escalation dominance" — in the case of expanding hostilities. So
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important:
This could be interesting, too:
The Vineyard of the SakerAll the way to Odessa (Important. Where things are most likely headed based on Russian pronouncements.)Pepe Escobarhttp://thesaker.is/all-the-way-to-odessa/India PunchlineGround beneath Zelensky’s feet is shifting (It may be that the US strategy is shifting away from the initially assumed destruction of the Russian economy using "sanctions from hell," and the succeeding assumption about arming Ukraine to one of assuming that longer terms, the sanctions will bring down the Russian economy. Neither the US nor NATO wants to see this escalate to war in Europe, which is tantamount to WWIII. They know that Russia is serious and has the wherewithal to make life very uncomfortable for the West — read "escalation dominance" — in the case of expanding hostilities. So
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important:
This could be interesting, too:
Bill Haskell writes From the Middle Out and Bottom Up
Joel Eissenberg writes The business model of modern universities
Bill Haskell writes The Economics of Killing Medicaid . . .
Angry Bear writes Healthcare in the United States
All the way to Odessa (Important. Where things are most likely headed based on Russian pronouncements.)
Pepe Escobar
http://thesaker.is/all-the-way-to-odessa/
India Punchline
Ground beneath Zelensky’s feet is shifting (It may be that the US strategy is shifting away from the initially assumed destruction of the Russian economy using "sanctions from hell," and the succeeding assumption about arming Ukraine to one of assuming that longer terms, the sanctions will bring down the Russian economy. Neither the US nor NATO wants to see this escalate to war in Europe, which is tantamount to WWIII. They know that Russia is serious and has the wherewithal to make life very uncomfortable for the West — read "escalation dominance" — in the case of expanding hostilities. So sanctions over the long term may be the last, best hope, even though sanctions have not worked to dislodge the policies or governments of Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, or China. And Europe, especially the UK and Germany, are already buckling under the effects of the attempt to isolate Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine's military is being ground up day by day. Give it up, guys.)
M. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service and former ambassador
Ground beneath Zelensky’s feet is shifting (It may be that the US strategy is shifting away from the initially assumed destruction of the Russian economy using "sanctions from hell," and the succeeding assumption about arming Ukraine to one of assuming that longer terms, the sanctions will bring down the Russian economy. Neither the US nor NATO wants to see this escalate to war in Europe, which is tantamount to WWIII. They know that Russia is serious and has the wherewithal to make life very uncomfortable for the West — read "escalation dominance" — in the case of expanding hostilities. So sanctions over the long term may be the last, best hope, even though sanctions have not worked to dislodge the policies or governments of Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, or China. And Europe, especially the UK and Germany, are already buckling under the effects of the attempt to isolate Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine's military is being ground up day by day. Give it up, guys.)
M. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service and former ambassador
https://www.indianpunchline.com/ground-beneath-zelenskys-feet-is-shifting/
Moon of Alabama
Ukraine - 'Game Changing' Policy Moves That Ain't Game Changing (picking through the details, with the devil being in the details, including why Scott Ritter's initial prediction that the 40 billion USD for Ukraine's defense would be a game-changer and why it was not.)
CNN
Ukraine - 'Game Changing' Policy Moves That Ain't Game Changing (picking through the details, with the devil being in the details, including why Scott Ritter's initial prediction that the 40 billion USD for Ukraine's defense would be a game-changer and why it was not.)
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/08/ukraine-game-changing-policy-moves-that-aint.html
How Ukraine is using warfare developed by the US to fight back against Russia (One side's "insurgent" is the other side's "terrorist." Anyway, it is also interesting that this approach is US developed and it actually goes back a long way. BTW, I would not say that he has either operational or strategic implications. It's purely tactical unless the insurgency is huge, which requires a resistant population, and that doesn't apply to the largely ethnic Russian territory being contested in Ukraine.)
Oren Liebermann, CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/27/politics/russia-ukraine-resistance-warfare/index.html
Gilbert Doctorow — International relations, Russian affairsSchadenfreude? Iran television casts ‘Spotlight’ on UK and European Union energy crisis (faulty assumptions and failure to think things through. The article doesn't mention that the situation is backfiring on the perps.)
Gilbert Doctorow
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/08/27/schadenfreude-iran-television-casts-spotlight-on-uk-and-european-union-energy-crisis/
Sanctions war isn’t going as planned – The Economist (The Economist gets one right. Faulty assumptions and failure to think things through, which requires system awareness.)
https://www.rt.com/news/561634-sanctions-ukraine-china-economist/
One World
(The following two posts are broad-brushed but the subject matter is nuanced. They are useful distinctions if this is kept in mind. Unipolarity and multipolarity are not only different policy choices but they reflect a fundamental difference in worldviews. The charge is that the
view of the West is systemically "racist," reflecting its colonial past and path dependence. Of course, the issues are far more nuanced, but at the same time, the fundamental distinction is now the perception in the Global North/West and the Global South/East, speaking generally. Why is this important? Clashes in worldviews indicate mismatches in perception of reality, which can lead to conflict.)
CNN Defamed Darya Dugina As A “Disinformation” Agent To Discredit Her Multipolar Legacy
https://oneworld.press/?module=articles&action=view&id=3180
CNN Defamed Darya Dugina As A “Disinformation” Agent To Discredit Her Multipolar Legacy
https://oneworld.press/?module=articles&action=view&id=3180
Russia Correctly Described The US-Led West’s Golden Billion As Racist To The Core
https://oneworld.press/?module=articles&action=view&id=3183
Andrew Korybko, American geopolitical analyst and independent journalist based in Moscow, and member of the expert council for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Predictions at the People’s Friendship University of Russia
Turkey Urges France to Recognize Consequences of Colonial Past (Of course, Turkey had its own imperial history in the form of the Ottoman Empire.)
https://sputniknews.com/20220827/turkey-urges-france-to-recognize-consequences-of-colonial-past-1100068478.html
Russian FM Lavrov Slams Western Neo-Colonial Order in Address to Young Diplomats Forum (Russian hammering hard on this in spite of Russia's imperial past.)
https://sputniknews.com/20220827/russian-fm-lavrov-slams-western-neo-colonial-order-in-address-to-young-diplomats-forum-1100064999.html
Western-imposed order provides for racist division of world — Russia’s top diplomat (de-colonization)
https://tass.com/politics/1498943
Kiev preparations for conflict with Russia became clear in early 2020 – Lugansk ambassador (Russia's intervention as pre-emptive.)
https://tass.com/world/1498917
‘Soon the world will be unrecognisable’: is it still possible to prevent total climate meltdown? (I have been focusing in the links on the conflict in Ukraine and mostly ignoring the other two horsemen of the apocalypse, one being "famine" (climate change) and the other "pestilence" (pandemic). All three are still operative. and climate change is now coming to the fore fast with massive flooding from glacier melt in Southeast Asia, a heat wave in China, and drying rivers in Europe. Craig Murray sees the elite as preparing to survive the coming catastrophes by tightening security.)
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/soon-the-world-will-be-unrecognisable-is-it-still-possible-to-prevent-total-climate-meltdown/
Vote for What You Believe In, Not for Crumbs (Yeah, I know, US politics, which I supposedly don't cover here since it is a can of worms. But this is an important contribution by a rational voice about the state of political system in the US. It's broken. To vote for candidates that could win, i.e., who are two-party affiliated, one is forced to choose not the better candidate but rather the least bad, or else either not vote or vote for someone that has almost zero probability of winning. A lot of people feel helpless to effect change, and this is not good for the national psychology. After all, this is supposed to be the rationale for superiority of the democratic system over other systems.)
W. J. Astore, Lieutenant Colonel (USAF ret.), taught at the Air Force Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, and currently at the Pennsylvania College of Technology
https://bracingviews.com/2022/08/27/vote-for-what-you-believe-in-not-for-crumbs/
Craig Murray Blog
The Great Clutching at Pearls (Craig Murray: I am not now a Marxist nor was I ever one, but it is turning out that Marx was right about capitalism. As neoliberalism, capitalism is inexorably self-destructing.)
Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee
Understanding Society
Philosophers and Marx in the 1950s (I attended a grad school — Georgetown — that specialized in the history of philosophy, one of the few that did in the 6o's. While it is true that Marx was paid scant attention, but not none, so were many other thinkers of greater prominence than Marx. In the history of philosophy, Marx is not even second-rate, although his historical importance might belie this. But in the system of rational enquiry characteristic of Western civilization, he and many other just are not that great given the competition. He may have been world-class in social and political philosophy, but still had no breadth and depth in comparison with many others. Marx stands in the shadow of Hegel, for example, who was and is considered second-rate in comparison with top-rated Kant. One simply cannot read philosophy without Kant any more than without Plato and Aristotle.
The Great Clutching at Pearls (Craig Murray: I am not now a Marxist nor was I ever one, but it is turning out that Marx was right about capitalism. As neoliberalism, capitalism is inexorably self-destructing.)
Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/08/the-great-clutching-at-pearls/
Philosophers and Marx in the 1950s (I attended a grad school — Georgetown — that specialized in the history of philosophy, one of the few that did in the 6o's. While it is true that Marx was paid scant attention, but not none, so were many other thinkers of greater prominence than Marx. In the history of philosophy, Marx is not even second-rate, although his historical importance might belie this. But in the system of rational enquiry characteristic of Western civilization, he and many other just are not that great given the competition. He may have been world-class in social and political philosophy, but still had no breadth and depth in comparison with many others. Marx stands in the shadow of Hegel, for example, who was and is considered second-rate in comparison with top-rated Kant. One simply cannot read philosophy without Kant any more than without Plato and Aristotle.
Actually, Marx is much more influential as an economist than a philosopher, and the economics profession in the West has excluded his work and that of his followers. It should also be noticed that "philosophy" in the West means the output of the Western rational tradition pioneered by the Greeks. Now there is a push toward "world philosophy" to include non-Western thinkers. Similarly, Marx is being great recognition now. Actually, I backed into economics in the same what that Marx did, realizing that it was impossible to approach social and political thought without a grasp of economic beyond Econ 101 and that conventional economics doesn't cut it. So expect to hear more about Marx as well as Eastern thinkers like Shankara and his Advaita Vedanta, for instance.) In fact, this "invasion" is already well underway.
Daniel Little concludes his post with: "So maybe the neglect of Marx was not entirely ideological, but more a question of “knowledge frameworks” or paradigm shifts. Marx’s theories did not fit readily into the conceptual frameworks of mainstream Anglophone philosophy. (Imagine J.L. Austin trying to make sense of the Grundrisse.) But that paradigm shift did eventually occur, and social philosophers came to recognize the ground they needed to share with social scientists, biologists, and historians — including Marx. Substantive theories about how the world works — including the social world — are indeed relevant to the main problems of social and political philosophy." I think this is about right. Thankful some of my professors were of a similar mind back then, especially the Europeans, so I was exposed to many thinkers that were not treated in the Anglo world then, with some not even considered "philosophers.")
Daniel Little | Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Chancellor for the University of Michigan-Dearborn 2000-2018
Daniel Little | Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Chancellor for the University of Michigan-Dearborn 2000-2018