Russian Tensions
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They can’t accumulate in plush underground bunkers with selected servants, the world above, with all its resources, a radioactive, sunless, breathless desert.
Would they risk that, or are they so insane that they would?
But a war in Europe would trigger a Pacific war. How long would the sides put up with conventional weapons if no headway was made? Would the losing side cave in without resorting to its nuclear arsenals?
Editorial Socialist Standard of February 2022
Will it come to war? Probably not as, from a military point of view, Russia could easily overrun most of Ukraine. The Western powers will probably not insist on formally incorporating Ukraine into NATO. They will back down just as the USSR did in 1962 over the Cuban missile crisis, which is the nearest the world has come to a nuclear war. In fact, according to a headline in The Times (13 January), ‘Russia threatens the US with a new Cuban missile crisis unless NATO stops eastern enlargement’. This will just be more sabre-rattling as the US could easily conquer Cuba and Venezuela.
In more than 100 years we have never failed on our wars analysis. We have been one of the best Wars correspondents
MS – Russia could easily overrun most of Ukraine.
Then I thought of Finland
It too began with a false flag operation after a series of Soviet war games on the border.
Yes, we have been using that quote for years. See here, for instance, it’s the last quote there.
In addition to those anti-war quotes, AC, to relate it to the other topic thread on America’s dark future, Butler exposed a plot to overthrow Roosevelt by a coup.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/trump-fdr-roosevelt-coup-attempt-1930s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
https://bigthink.com/the-present/fdr-coup/
https://portside.org/2022-01-13/why-so-little-known-about-1930s-coup-attempt-against-fdr
https://freepress.org/article/why-failed-fascist-coup-1933-could-succeed-2021
Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire (2021): Katz, Jonathan M.: 9781250135582:
Mark Twain, “The War Prayer” (ca.1904-5)
Mark Twain, “The War Prayer” (ca.1904-5)
The American writer Mark Twain wrote the following satire in the glow of America’s imperial interventions.
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism … on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun … nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. …
Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! … The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said …
…
Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work….
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. … he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. …
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” …
“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ … When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory–must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
Source: Mark Twain, “The War Prayer.”
AC, Mark Twain’s war prayer was much appreciated.
You may have missed our recent SOYMB blog reference to Mark Twain.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2022/01/a-word-from-wise.html
He had first-hand experience of American expansionism with the American-Spanish wars whipped up by the hysteria of the Hearst media empire.
I’ll later republish your link on the blog too, a reminder that we have been here before.
Russia has assembled about 70% of the military capability needed for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the coming weeks, US officials say.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60276342
The ground is expected to freeze and harden from mid-February, enabling Moscow to bring in more heavy equipment, the unnamed officials said.
The US officials did not provide evidence for their assessment.
Again we are to take their word on it from trust and have faith that they are being truthful.
Officials warned that a full Russian invasion could lead to the quick capture of Kyiv and potentially result in as many as 50,000 civilians killed or wounded, according to the New York Times and Washington Post.
A US official confirmed that estimate to the Associated Press but it is not clear how US agencies determined those numbers.
Ukrainian nationalists rally in Khariv
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/5/in-kharkiv-near-border-ukrainians-protest-russian-threat
Everyone keeps repeating that the Crimea was seized, but I recall it holding a referendum.
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