by Oui
Tue Mar 11th, 2025 at 10:01:43 AM EST
’Trump tried to break the deadlock on Ukraine,’ says NATO chief | Anadolu Agency |
President Donald Trump is right, according to Mark Rutte
US President Donald Trump tried to resolve the deadlock on Ukraine, the NATO secretary general said on Monday, commenting on Trump's approach to initiate talks with Moscow as well as Kyiv to resolve the over three-year-long conflict.
“Trump tried to break the deadlock on Ukraine. But of course, there is no peace deal yet. This is all still work in progress,” said Mark Rutte, answering questions at the University of Sarajevo.
He said Europe is considering what a security guarantee mission might look like if it is needed to maintain a ceasefire and peace deal in Ukraine.
“But I think President Trump is right,” Rutte said, highlighting the need to plan for how to maintain peace if it happens in the future.
[…]
Rutte also found US expectation “totally logical,” noting that they are funding some of their social programs in Europe as US is spending more on defense. “That's not fair. So, there he’s totally right,” he said.
Europe’s Manifest Destiny the War in Ukraine
On the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion, Europe is in Kyiv.
We are in Kyiv today, because Ukraine is Europe.
In this fight for survival, it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is at stake.
It’s Europe’s destiny.
--
Ursula von der Leyen née Albrecht
Prussian aristocracy w coat of arms
They were the parents of the cotton merchant Carl Albrecht (1875–1952), who married Mary Ladson Robertson (1883–1960), who belonged to a prominent American family of the Southern aristocracy from Charleston, South Carolina; she was a descendant of James Ladson and several colonial governors of Carolina. Carl and Mary Albrecht were the parents of the medical doctor and psychologist Carl Albrecht (1902–1965). The latter was the father of the conductor George Alexander Albrecht and Ernst Albrecht, the European civil servant who later served as Prime Minister of Lower Saxony.
Maidan a fatal flaw in democracy for a divided Ukraine
by Oui
Mon Mar 10th, 2025 at 02:04:17 PM EST
Good bye, Gerhard Schröder by jandsm on Nov 21st, 2005
From the front page ~ whataboutbob
Gerhard Schröder is about to leave his office as Germany's 7th post-war chancellor. Time for a farewell I have fought against his re-election proudly, but I have to admit I will miss him. Next Wednesday, if Angela Merkel gets a majority on Tuesday in parliament [not so sure, yet (in German - cached)], will be the first day since 1990 that I will not have been governed by Mr Schröder who was also my Prime Minister in (Lower) Saxony (1990-1998).
Today again, he managed to make me laugh out loud and wholeheartedly: every outgoing chancellor gets a huge military ceremony (Zapfenstreich) when he/she leaves the office. Soldiers will march and the Bundeswehr - Band will play some traditional military music and the national anthem.
[...]
Yes, he was a comeback politician. He came from nowhere and proved and once and for all that it is possible to becaome chancellor with no other agenda than your own personal biography and aim for power. Sometimes he reached to far, but mostly people were willing to forgive him. In the end he managed a surprise comeback. He lost his last election - but far from as devastating as many had predicted.
He did have formidable opponents: Oskar Lafontaine, Ernst Albrecht [parent to Ursula Von der Leyen] and many others. I believe it is no surprise he was beaten in the end by the only female politician who came close to his rank. Just like in 1993 when he lost his race for SPD-chairmanship against Rudolf Scharping because of the surprise entry of Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who now survives him in the cabinet as minister for Economic Cooperation [and Development].
by Frank Schnittger
Mon Mar 10th, 2025 at 01:53:20 PM EST
In my previous blog here: Speaking right: What an Taoiseach should say in Washington I gave an account of my experiences in speech writing and the many lessons I have learned about that craft, often the hard way through some of the mistakes I have a made.
by Oui
Sun Mar 9th, 2025 at 09:30:46 AM EST
European NATO states revolt against enforced peace in the Ukraine proxy war ... the fools' expedition prolonged.
Will Full Backing Bring an End to War ⁉️
by Oui
Sun Mar 9th, 2025 at 07:30:55 AM EST
Thousands of Tunisian Islamists were transported via Libya into Antalya Türkiye to overthrow Assad killing 100s of thousands until halted by Russia AF and (brutal) mercenaries ... did end the mass slaughter by America's Al Qaeda affiliated proxies coming from Anbar province and rolled into Syria along the Euphrates valley destroying all in its path.
Also created the waves of war refugees and displaced persons causing a surge to populism, rightwing extremism, xenophobia and Islamophobia ... ultimately a fascist nationalist movement and war in Europe. No end to conflicts in sight, nor the peace human kind deserves. Damn you America and its impunity executing decades of war crimes (half a century across the globe) and undermining the Charter of the United Nations, its institutions for humanitarian aid and deceiving the ICJ. The humanity of billions are thrown onto the trash heap of the powerful and super, super wealthy. The Ugly American ... hars economic sanctions too are war crimes. Read the lips of Madeleine Albright and Victoria Nuland. Equality between men and women has been illustrated here.
Aron Lund examines the policies toward Syria of the two main contenders for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton
Leaked Clinton Email Suggests Gulf Allies' Support for IS | VOA |
Instigated Revolutions Turn Into Chaos and Instability
by Oui
Sat Mar 8th, 2025 at 11:34:04 AM EST
Biden was fully complicit in Israel's apartheid, occupation and destruction of the Palestinian people living in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon in refugee camps as a legacy of Nakba of 1948 and the 1967 war.
This horrific episode did not come to pass ... but its concept and design is the mindset of a mass murderer.
The US green lights Israel to bomb Hezbollah
officials @Nasrallah's funeral in Beirut
Thousands attend funeral for slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah | Al Jazeera |
by Oui
Sat Mar 8th, 2025 at 09:52:22 AM EST
See my earlier diaries about terrorists in Syria supported by NATO to overthrow the Assad regime. Particularly Türkiye and Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood alliance worked together with the Obama cabal of HRC, Samantha Power and Susan Rice in the lead of mass killings by the Free Syrian Army alongside dozens or more of individual terror groups. Jabhat Al Nusra as Al Qaeda affiliate morphed into HTS. Türkiye started an operation to white-wash the terror credentials and the group became the Syrian National Army (SNA).
The released pictures detail Jund al Aqsa and [Jabhat] Al Nusrah fighters in the village of Deir Sonbol and the wider Jabal al Zawiya region of Idlib. The photos showcase the fighters allegedly pulling up bodies from a well, a room where the SRF kept civilians and Islamic State fighters prisoner, and an alleged dungeon.
Last Thursday March 5th ...
SYRIA -- Alawite fighting over 60 killed
by Frank Schnittger
Sat Mar 8th, 2025 at 09:17:25 AM EST
In a former life I was, for my sins, a speech writer and video producer for three successive Managing Directors of Guinness, later to become Diageo. The job was to promote the brand, to burnish the image of the gentlemen in question, to thank a lot of people, and to have something to say of relevance to the intended audience. In other words, to connect with the audience.
by Oui
Fri Mar 7th, 2025 at 07:54:11 PM EST
Liubov Tsybulska, a Ukrainian specialist in Russian disinformation, described to Le Monde the 'enormous shock' felt by Ukrainians when they heard Donald Trump use the same rhetoric as the Russians.
War in Ukraine: 'For the Russians, it's a dream come true: An American president repeats their propaganda' | Le Monde - 28 Feb. 2025 |
"A Third World War is possible", says Charles Michel at the UN General Assembly | 30 Aug. 2024 |
'If Ukraine is defeated by Russia, nobody in Europe will be able to feel safe' says European Council president
"A Third World War is possible. We must urgently come to our senses.", stated Charles Michel, President of the European Council, on 26 September at the United Nations General Assembly.
In his speech, the head of the European Council defended peace, democracy and international humanitarian law. These are core values and priorities for the EU in a world where "we feel helpless as we watch three major conflicts mix into an explosive cocktail", he stressed.
'If Ukraine is defeated by Russia, nobody in Europe will be able to feel safe'
BS perpetual war narrative in Europe ... a Nobel Peace Prize unworthy.
by Oui
Fri Mar 7th, 2025 at 11:28:31 AM EST
Dutch former Foreign Minister in a cabinet of Rutte !, set policy in the 2014 year of turbulence, Maidan massacre, Donbas hostilities, annexation of Crimea and the tragedy of Malaysian flight MH-17 of July 2014. Today after a stint as VDL's deputy [not on speaking terms], Frans Timmermans returned to Dutch politics to become the successor to Rutte as Prime Minister ... the voters saw it differently and overwhelmingly voted for a Geert Wilders (PVV) majority. Thus, Frans sits in the opposition seats .. quite uncomfortably. Has been shedding all his "Left" socialist feathers as he turns to the right on many issues plaguing Dutch society after 14 troublesome years of the Rutte Conservative cabal, lacking vision and refusal to solve problems in society.
After the Rutte chaos and defense spending multiplied, all that rests is cuts in social benefits, humanitarian aid to developing nations in the Third World, and years of austerity measures ahead. Infrastructure, public transport, housing and vision for 2035 are all sacrificed for the war in Ukraine and the BS war narrative for Europe's security.
To my amazement also on defense spending and America's proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine. His opinion piece in the British quality paper The Guardian today. Not peace, but more war ... shaking Zelensky's bloodied hands.
So contrary to the person playing a key role as Secretary General of NATO during the years Bush-Cheney declared war on the Russian Federation, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
by Oui
Thu Mar 6th, 2025 at 02:30:54 PM EST
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Saturday (March 1) a "new era of profanity" had begun, after a clash between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Washington the previous night.
Profanity? What is more profane than the deaths of tens of thousands of young men and women dying in the trenches of a useless proxy fight between two empires?
by Frank Schnittger
Thu Mar 6th, 2025 at 11:57:33 AM EST
Cross at Béal na Bláth commemorating where Michael Collins, , Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army, was killed nearby in August 1922
Writing in the Irish Times, former Tánaiste Michael McDowell makes no bones about it.
"To call Volodymyr Zelenskiy`s meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office a "shouting match", as many commentators managed to whitewash it, is a lie. It was a unilateral, vicious, premeditated political ambush - a mugging aimed at the political destruction of Zelenskiy in the eyes of the world - and in the eyes of his own people. It was as disgusting as it was shameful.
Trump is publicly showing himself to possess characteristics many of us have for years discerned in him: sociopathic, bullying, ruthless, selfish and destructive traits. These were identified in the perceptive pen portrait of him written by his own niece Mary Trump.
While his first term in office fizzled out electorally in a clownish orgy of sackings of nearly all those whom he had appointed to hold high office, he has now surrounded himself with a circus of super-wealthy, unqualified sycophants whose full-time activity is competitive adulation of their ringmaster's folly."
by Oui
Thu Mar 6th, 2025 at 12:16:51 AM EST
My diary ... one of dozens on failed foreign policy using NATO expansion in Europe.
NATO Posing the What If Question | 2 June 2023 |
Wishing a favorable outcome and throwing billions to make it happen may not be sufficient as the numbers game at the front just don't improve. The losses in manpower cannot be offset by more and sophisticated weapons. The terror strikes on Russian territory is one more indication the tide isn't turning in Ukraine's favor.
Military strategy is confused as too many diverse voices override one another. The armchair warmongers too are puzzled one the next strategy should be as not all ammunition and promised armor are ready for battlefield action.
Being ready from day one is quite different from a proces of escalation from one summit to the next. Unity is strong as any scepsis will only lead to a timely failure as Russia still occupies nearly 20% of Ukraine. Frustration on all sides in this war is growing. Time is on the side of the aggressor.
Blinken in Finland to tell the world Putin has failed ...
by Oui
Wed Mar 5th, 2025 at 01:59:37 PM EST
.
11th November 1918: The Armistice of Compiègne ends fighting in WW1
The World War I armistice was signed in a train carriage dubbed `the wagon that ended the war'. "You had to break the will of the German military, whatever the cost, in November 1918
The Reception of President Woodrow Wilson on his Arrival in Paris, December 16, 1918
by Frank Schnittger
Wed Mar 5th, 2025 at 11:50:06 AM EST
Andy Pollak's latest excellent and thought provoking offering, Beyond Borders: Building an All-Ireland Forum on Shared Values..., generated the usual animated debate with many of the 565 comments (including mine) taking issue with aspects of his argument. But few if any, engaged with his central proposal that the time had come for a new all Ireland Forum focusing on the shared values we all have in common on this island. Andy characterised those values as "peace, democracy, equality, community, environmental sustainability, Christianity in all its forms, and European-ness - which the great majority of Irish people, north and south, have in common."
by Oui
Wed Mar 5th, 2025 at 09:38:49 AM EST
Erases ill-founded foreign policy aggression of the Bush-Obama-Trump1-Biden NATO years 2008-2025.
Her daddy screwed Europe and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2008 at the NATO Bucharest Summit by declaring "War on Russia." All war hawks jumped in to make a emerging Russian Federation a "pariah" state by the speeches from Ivo Daalder and John Kerry @AtlanticCouncil.
The military encampment of U.S. Armed Forces across Europe should end including the encirclement of threats by Forward Operating Bases and the deployment of nuclear tipped ballistic missiles .. the so-called "deterrent" to nuclear war. Best would be to cut back the size of NATO to a group true Democratic sovereign states where We The People have a voice in whether to go to war.
The panic mode across the EU group of nations and call for re-armament sound sort of like Nazi-Germany after the Treaty of Versailles to build the infrastructure, war machine for the purpose to "create jobs" and keep the consumer markt of the economy up and running. Preparation for destruction of human kind, nature and the planet.
Across the EU the people will once again suffer the consequences of failures in Western capitalism running a new round of AUSTERITY measures.
A DOUBLE/TRIPLE WHAMMY
Ukraine made the political choices leading to the Maidan massacre and coup d'état in February 2014 and the Russian aggression to re-conquer the Crimean peninsula and parts of the Russian speaking Donbas. As Joe Biden persisted given a green light by spineless leaders in Europe, the demolition of war returned to Europe and a strong hit on the major economies. Blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines was an terrorist act to the extreme and hitting infrastructure, an escalation of brutal warfare for Ukraine.
by gmoke
Tue Mar 4th, 2025 at 11:11:14 PM EST
The Poor Prole's Almanac: Restoration Agroecology
http://poorprolesalmanac.substack.com/
hat tip MT Spriggs
Port Huron, MI is planting trees to provide free fruit for residents under new pilot "Edible Parks" program
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2024/12/20/michigan-city-planting-trees-to-provide-free-fru
it-for-residents-under-new-pilot-program/
Food Forests in Permaculture: And In-Depth Guide/
http://www.permalogica.com/post/food-forests-in-permaculture-an-in-depth-guide
Urban farming in Baltimore isn't just about growing food
http://popularresistance.org/in-baltimore-urban-farming-isnt-just-about-growing-food/
Editorial Comment: Baltimore has done a lot around local agriculture and grassroots leaders like Mel King in Boston and Grace Lee Boggs in Detroit have used urban gardening to build a foundation for much larger social movements
More on Grace Lee Boggs at http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-next-american-revolution.html
More on Mel King at https://solarray.blogspot.com/2023/04/how-many-ways-did-he-change-world-mel.html
USDA supporting urban agriculture and sustainable food production with $14.4 million in funding
http://www.agritecture.com/blog/usda.gov-urban-agriculture-grants
Editorial Comment: May not be available under the Trmp administration
by Oui
Tue Mar 4th, 2025 at 07:18:34 PM EST
Highly irresponsible and likely based on conspiracies and UK weaponized disinformation by the SCL Group, not Mercer's Cambridge Analytica which nudged Trump into the White House.
I have found no evidence Putin's troll factory, hacker Konstantin Rykov, worked jointly with Cambridge Analytica on behalf of candidate Trump in the 2016 campaign. Separately? Yes of course ... the UK based CA played a key role and was defunct shortly after it was exposed by whistleblowers. I have written extensively about the matter, also at my time on BooMan Tribune.
Digging up old bears out of the bullfrog pond ... later more.
Back to actuality of the hours, day, week ... plenty to analyse as tempers are flying and proper communication is lacking. Full fledged kabuki theatre and politicians are puzzled whether they are the actors, or directors. Not even sure what script they are reading from .... #Joe on war or #Donald on peace.
A MASTERCLASS BY JOHN MEARSHEIMER
John Mearsheimer, Who Predicted Russia Ukraine War, Says Pro-Zelensky Europe 'Coalition' Won't Last
First hand from Mikhail Gorbachev
by Oui
Mon Mar 3rd, 2025 at 01:38:19 PM EST
"There Never Was a Good War or a Bad Peace" --
Benjamin Franklin's diplomacy and the 1783 Treaty of Paris
Jeffrey Sachs on the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting and
what comes next for Russia, Ukraine | MSNBC |
No Such Thing as a Good War or a Bad Peace | Slate - June 1999 |
To invoke for a moment the Vietnam War: Americans had to learn the price (more than 50,000 men) of ending a war ignobly. It is now clear that an ignoble peace isn't really so bad a thing. It can always be rationalized and softened by the arts of public relations and adept deployment of language.
Benjamin Franklin's words continue to haunt me: "There's no such thing as a good war or a bad peace." Perhaps what the Great War needed was less of the innocent idealism of Woodrow Wilson and more of the conscienceless adaptation to facts as practiced by the deplorable Bill Clinton.
Now, the matter of the tactical continuity between the two world wars. In general, yes, despite such novelties as air power and atom bombs. The infantry I fought in (admittedly for only four months) was hardly distinguishable from its 1914-1918 counterpart, except that for trenches, you'd have to read holes. I never saw a plane in all my time at the front, and I saw only one tank. The tactics of the Civil War (or even the Indian wars) were ours.
The former Soviet satellite states need to move on from history and not fight centuries old battles ... end the self-consuming HATE of your former enemy ... learn from Ghandi, MLK and Nelson Mandela.
Watching Volodymyr Zelensky during his talk with Trump in the Oval Office ... the fiery eyes of a warrior filled with hate, losing his footings on facts due to decades of propaganda, made Trump decide he is not the leader needed for Ukraine to make a lasting peace with Russia.
Unfortunately Zelensky found a new calling by Meloni, Macron and Starmer in London for further war escalation and deaths of his people. A repeat of Spring 2022 with Boris Johnson. Some asses never learn from past mistakes ... looking for the medicine man of the Old West.
