#wwi
Voices of the First World War
https://invidious.fdn.fr/playlist?list=PLMAVD36YOPfzezrOKED0pLBsTW0uKb-hG
The Decisive Turn
The mass of facts is getting to the point where even the #deranged #NATO strategists are beginning to have to admit their relevance to the situation and the total impossibility of the NATO objectives.
Western arms and ammunition shortages.
In June this year, British Defense Secretary Wallace said that Western countries had run out of national stocks of weapons that could be supplied to Kiev. For his part, Biden admitted in July that the decision to give cluster munitions to Ukraine was made because conventional shells had been exhausted.Public confidence in politicians in Europe and the U.S. has been lost.
Ratings of distrust towards the heads of state of the EU and the USA are at a historical peak. 57 percent disapprove of Biden’s actions, 69 percent disapprove of Macron’s actions, 72 percent disapprove of Scholz’s actions. The majority of people in the US and European countries oppose supplying arms to Ukraine.The failure of the Kiev regime’s counteroffensive.
The Ukrainian military, backed by NATO, has suffered huge losses in equipment and manpower. The lack of any results has disappointed Western sponsors.Economic problems of Europe and the USA.
Eurozone economies are in recession. Germany is forced to cut social payments to poor families because of the costs of militarization of the Kiev regime. France has reduced the number of aid recipients; food packages are no longer distributed to those in need, and reimbursing of the purchase of medicines has been cut back. International agencies, expecting deterioration of the financial situation of the United States in the next three years, downgraded the long-term investment rating of the United States.Shortage of Ukrainian army personnel.
The Kiev regime is mobilizing men over 50 years old, as well as those with tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, HIV, and others. From October 1, 2023, women will also be enrolled in the military register. Nurses, doctors and pharmacists will be barred from leaving Ukraine.Ukraine is bankrupt.
Ukraine’s GDP in 2022 fell by 30.4 percent—the worst result in the country’s history. Without help from Washington and Brussels, Kiev cannot fulfill its obligations to its citizens. Ukraine has lost its financial autonomy.Demographic catastrophe in Ukraine.
More than 10.5 million people fled from Ukraine. Another 11.2 million residents of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Zaporizhya and Kherson regions made their choice to be with Russia. Since 2014, Ukraine has lost 53.7 percent of its population.These 7 facts speak for themselves: Either the Kiev regime capitulates on the terms of the Russian Federation or Ukraine will cease to exist as a state.
The madness will end, and the sooner it ends, the better. #Ukraine has already been comprehensively defeated. It has lost a higher percentage of its population than any of the defeated #Axis states in #WWII and any of the #TripleAlliance states in #WWI. #NATO has been exposed as a #paper-tiger and the #G7 “global” economy has been exposed as a mere regional one with no control and little influence over 80 percent of the planetary population.
WWIII will not end when Ukraine surrenders, but a NATO surrender on the Near Eastern Front will spare #Europe some of the suffering that the Ukrainian people have experienced, because the #war with #China is going to be far more economically #devastating than the #proxy #war with #Russia has been.
Forget the #fiction of Saving Private Ryan, whole #families were wiped out during the wars.
Families were decimated for king and country. Read the many names from each #family on this #memorial in Runton, some lost sons in both wars.
#brothers #war #memorial #remembrance #antiwar #peace #lost #generation #fiction #wwi #wwii
Elderly French man inserts WWI-era bomb up rectum, causes evacuation - The Jerusalem Post
Strange objects being inserted into one's body for sexual purposes isn't anything doctors aren't used to, but an artillery shell is nonetheless something nobody saw coming
Did anoyne have this on their #Bingo card?
#WWI #France #hospital
Gent (België) 2018
Dit gedenkteken is gewijd aan de eerste wereldoorlog (waarin Nederland neutraal bleef) met daaraan toegevoegd twee plaquettes over oorlog 1940-’45.
> De Eerste Wereldoorlog snel verteld
#belgie #belgium #eerste-wereldoorlog #first-world-war #foto #fotografie #gand #gent #great-war #monument #oorlog #photo #photography #war #woi #wwi
Originally posted at: https://blog.ernste.net/2022/05/04/dodenherdenking-5/
The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War
For centuries, the country has lived in the shadow of empire. But its past also provides the key to its present.
By Timothy Snyder
April 28, 2022
When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state, he is speaking the familiar language of empire. For five hundred years, European conquerors called the societies that they encountered “tribes,” treating them as incapable of governing themselves. As we see in the ruins of Ukrainian cities, and in the Russian practice of mass killing, rape, and deportation, the claim that a nation does not exist is the rhetorical preparation for destroying it.
Empire’s story divides subjects from objects. As the philosopher Frantz Fanon argued, colonizers see themselves as actors with purpose, and the colonized as instruments to realize the imperial vision. Putin took a pron#warounced colonial turn when returning to the Presidency a decade ago. In 2012, he described Russia as a “state-civilization,” which by its nature absorbed smaller cultures such as Ukraine’s. The next year, he claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were joined in “spiritual unity.” In a long essay on “historical unity,” published last July, he argued that Ukraine and Russia were a single country, bound by a shared origin. His vision is of a broken world that must be restored through violence. Russia becomes itself only by annihilating Ukraine.
#history #politics #geopolitics #russia #ukraine #colonization #imperialism #war #europe #bolshevik #poland #kyiv #cossack #WWI #WWII #germany #christianity #stalin #NewYorker
Currently reading
Gentleman Spy: The Life Of Allen Dulles, by Peter Grose
A fascinating read, this nonfiction biography is well-written enough and long enough to feel like J.R.R. Tolkien's spy novel. I'm halfway through and having a wonderful time.
The book starts, as one would expect of a biography, with Dulles's family history, birth, and early life. The foundations of his career in diplomacy were laid in Versailles at the postwar treaty negotiations in 1919. During the second world war he took the side door out of diplomacy and into intelligence, inventing the institution of non-military espionage along the way. Not to say that Allen Dulles was the first or only person to do so, but he is the main character. I've read up to when Dulles has "finally" reached his goal of leading the US intelligence service. He had dreamed of being Secretary of State but his brother John Foster Dulles ended up there instead. (That's who the airport is named after, by the way.) But by 1954, US covert interventions in Iran and Guatemala had already set the course of CIA we know and love as we know it today.
To find out what happens next, turn to page 389.
My own interest in this book and others like it (see also Veil by Bob Woodward) is that the historical background of current events, unless you happened in History or perhaps Political Science, is mostly lacking in discussions and news coverage. Even those who really should be expected to know their history, never seem to talk about it. Alongside the implicit history lessons in this biography, I'm also engaged with the mental exercise of trying to spot biases in the way the factual timeline is recounted.
The author presents Allen Dulles as a sympathetic character even aside from his charismatic personality, flaws and personal failings included so it makes for a different experience than simply reading a good piece of fiction - he didn't do or say or feel any of those things to drive a story, this was a real person and nothing that happened was a plot device.
Oh and despite my real enjoyment of the book, I'm actually making slow progress for the simple reason that there is so much going on in history, I don't dare skim a single bit. And that's good because I get to keep reading for that much longer.
My halfway-done take? I'm fascinated reading about how nice people found good reasons to do bad things.
#reading #history #biography #cia #ushistory #wwi #wwii #coldwar