Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts

June 7, 2023

If you watch all 10 mins. of Tucker Carlson's first Twitter show and are like me it will be 10x longer than you've ever watched him

 

By Hal Brown

This morning I went there and watched Tucker Carlson's Twitter debut show so I could write this blog. Until now the most I'd seen of Tucker Carlson were brief segments aired on MSNBC. 

I did this after finding out about his new "show" from HUFFPOST and clicking on the link to Twitter in their article 

Tucker Carlson’s New Twitter Show, Seen By Millions, Starts With Conspiracy Theories

Click above to enlarge image

I doubt you'll do it, but you can watch the Tucker's Twitter debut by clicking here.

I am too lazy to offer a complete summary of what he said though I want to share a few impressions.

I was surprised that some of his references went so far beyond sarcasm that I wondered if they would fly like the alien UFO's he said he were in possession of the US government (along with the bodies of alien pilots) over the heads of many of his viewers. Really, he spent about two  minutes on how the "fact" that alien UFOs exist and we have been studying them and their the bodies of their pilots is the covered up story of the century.

He also explained what using tautology as a  persuasion technique was, and he accused the mainstream media of using this technique of argument incessantly when I doubt most of his viewers know what the term means. In fact, Carlson's stock in trade is tautology. Having graduated from Trinity College (ranked 39 among US liberal arts colleges) and being one of their best known alumni he certainly is familiar with the concept. Of the hundreds of notable alumni listed on Wikipedia, alas (for him) he's only number four of the 10 who are pictured as select alumni in the sidebar. He is after Christine C. Quinn, David Cage, and Dov Zakheim who aren't household names. If he ever looks at this I assume he can beat his chest over being above George Will and the creator of MyTunes.

Click above to enlarge

He managed to get in references to trans women calling them skinny dudes in dresses. 

Unanswered questions apparently trouble Carlson. For example, who organized the BLM riots, what  really happened on 911, and who killed JFK?

Although Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham got knocks, there were two primary villains in his 10 minute Twitter debut. One was the media and the other was Zelenski who he described with a string of insults saying that he was ratlike and a shifty dead-eyed man in a tracksuit.

Perhaps time limitations kept him from gushing or crushing over Putin, the dictator who likes to be photographed barechested. He didn't even mention his name.  He supports Russia in the Ukraine war. In fact, one of his segments was replayed on Russian TV:

He began his debut "show" explaining why he is sure they weren't responsible for blowing up the Kakhovka dam blaming it on Ukraine.

Describing the media toward the end of his show (I'll take the word out of quotes) he says they have stories like "here's a story about racism now go eat each other." I have no idea what he meant by now go eat each other.

How many of his regular viewers will follow him to Twitter and watch him on their Internet devices rather than on television remains to be seen. Unless Elon Musk decides to pay him I don't know how he can make much money off of this although his net worth has been estimated to be $30 million.

Of course with an ego like Tucker's maybe money isn't all that important to him.

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Related blog from June 2nd: The unemployed TV personality who could beat Trump.

Here's a mystery. For unknown reasons all week the blog has had the largest percentage of readers logging on from Singapore. All I can think of is that this had something to do with this:


January 29, 2023

Do we need another Pearl Harbor for some Americans to realize that we're at war with Russia?

 Do we need another Pearl Harbor for some Americans to realize that we're at war with Russia?
By Hal Brown










There shouldn't even be a need for an editorial coming from the editorial board of The Washington Post titled 

How to keep the West solid for Ukraine


It shouldn't be necessary to publish the following:

There will be tests on both sides of the Atlantic. President Biden will need to continue to make a forceful case for an ongoing commitment to defeat Russian aggression. He would be smart to direct that message to a broader international audience — in the Global South especially, where popular opinion could be mobilized against a conflict strikingly akin to an imperial war against a former colony.

Leadership will also be key on Capitol Hill. Last year, liberal Democrats wrote, then retracted, a letter urging Mr. Biden to nudge Ukraine toward negotiation that would likely mean giving up its sovereign territory. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), now the Republican House speaker, said there could be “no blank check” for Ukraine before quickly retreating, saying he meant that Ukraine should be accountable for the U.S. aid it receives. Members of Congress might bear in mind that mixed messaging from Washington will only hearten Russia’s sympathizers in Europe, who will exploit it to undercut support for Ukraine.

Remember the Domino Theory?  It posited that increases or decreases in democracy in one country tend to spread to neighboring countries in a domino effect. It was prominent in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s in the context of the Cold War, suggesting that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow. (Wikipedia)

Now instead of a Cold War with Russia we have a hot, a very hot, war between Russia and a democratic country. Communism is irrelevant in this. Anyone who knows the definition of communism understands that Russia isn't a communist country. It is a dictator run aggressor. 

The notion of a line of dominos falling down, the first knocking down the second, the second the third, and so on doesn't apply to what would literally happen if Russia defeated Ukraine and made it into a Russian province. Russia isn't about to attack another country if Russia takes over Ukraine. 

If this came to pass NATO, if anything, would become a more formidable alliance. Nonetheless Russia, although beset with years of fighting a highly motivated underground resistance, would be strengthened economically if they won. Ukraine has been called the breadbasket of Europe and in fact their wheat and corn is a major international provider of food.

Some pundits have predicted that a Russian win in Ukraine would embolden China to attack Taiwan.  I am hardly a geopolitical expert, but I think China's decision about how they deal with Taiwan is a computation with many elements of which the Ukraine war is only one of many.

What I do think is the most important issue regarding Ukraine as far as the United States goes is how many Americans, and Republicans in Congress, are so concerned with getting revenge against Democrats for what they did when they controlled the House and winning the War against Woke.

Come on!

The War Against Woke! 

That this is actually a "thing" is pathetically absurd. Considering that there is a real war, a war where people aren't being brainwashed (as they see it) but are actually dying this is unconscionable. This is a war between a member of the community of democratic nations and a dictatorship which invaded a neighboring country for territorial gain based on the outright lie that it was run by modern day NAZI's. 

What has to happen for Ukraine to become another nation-waking explosion on the level of Pearl Harbor? 

Pearl Harbor has was  referred to in a movie by Japanese Admiral Yamamoto as an attack that woke up a sleeping giant.

Whether he really said it or not is irrelevant because it happened.

The only thing that I think Russia could do on the level of Pearl Harbor is to use some kind of tactical nuclear weapon. If Putin tries to authorize this he risks a military coup, and if such an attack is carried out the retaliation, while I very much doubt it would be nuclear, would be massive. I am sure that the Western military alliance has contingency plans for a retaliation which would once and for all turn the tide of the war against Russia.

This must not happen because a desperate and mentally unbalanced Putin could escalate by attacking a NATO nation. This would basically start World War III.

America has it's own collaborators.

People like Marjorie Taylor Greene might as well be on the payroll of Vladimir Putin:


The same goes for Tucker Carlson:


If the United States was in a declared war with Russia these two and others of their ilk would be seen a collaborators with the enemy and could possibly be tried for treason.

January 16, 2023

For those panicking over America becoming a fascist country let's not forget Russia is committing war crimes every day

 For those panicking over America becoming a fascist country, let's not forget Russia is committing war crimes every day

By Hal Brown

This is not the first time the then Soviet Union committed genocide in Ukraine. Stalin did it through starvation rather than missiles.

Click above to read article.

It is easy to think America first, not in the Trumpian way, but because we live here and what is reported in the news about the MAGA cult and its aspirations effects democracy loving Americans each and every day as we worry, even obsess, about the country becoming an authoritarian state. 

If you're a news junkie like I am you also follow what Russia is doing to Ukraine. Today those paying attention to international news saw articles like this on HUFFPOST:

Excerpt: About 1,700 people lived in the multi-story building, and search and rescue crews have worked nonstop since Saturday’s strike to locate victims and survivors in the wreckage. The regional administration said 39 people have been rescued so far and 30 more remained missing. Authorities said at least 75 were wounded.

Click above to read article in The Guardian

Russia is committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, on a weekly, if not nearly a daily basis. Killing civilians in order to demoralize the country is their primary strategy since they are unable to win on the ground. 


In addition to using the killing of Ukrainian civilians as a strategy Putin is able to use poorly trained convicts and reluctant conscripts to amass waves of 100,000 troops at a time to be basically cannon fodder. 

The NAZI buzzbomb strikes and bombing raids against London targeted civilians as well and supplemented their military engagements against the Allied forces. However from my understanding their main strategy was to win army vs. army, air force vs. air force, navy vs. navy.


Back to current day Russia:

We saw this in June:

It is a travesty that they even are members of the United Nations' let alone a permanent member of the Security Council where they have veto power.


Anyone who values democracy should be taking a stand against Russia. Unfortunately millions of Americans take Tucker Carlson's words like this as a gospel:


Putin is Stalin without a mustache. I wonder whose side the likes of Tucker Carlson would have been on prior to and during World War II. I expect he would have been a leader in the German-American Bund (read article):
German American Bund rally New York, Madison Square Garden, February 1939. Image courtesy of the Department of Defense.

Men saluting Nazi and American flags at Camp Siegfried, New York on October 1937. Image by University of Southern California.

Had the Allies not needed the Soviet Union to fight the NAZI army on the Eastern Front the alliance between this despot and the Allies would never have happened and we wouldn't have had the Yalta Conference and this amazing historic photo.

(From left) Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, 1945. Click above to enlarge photo.

To conclude:

“Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.”

This famous quote is attributed to the American philosopher George Santayana and it can be accurately quoted as “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” as stated in his work, The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. His work speaks mostly about the role of rationality in moral philosophy and general ethics.

The problem is with those protofascists who do remember history and rather than wanting to repeat it are trying their damnedest to change the ending so their side wins. They want to avoid the errors of the NAZIS and turn the United States into the Germany Hitler envisioned for the greatest German Reich (read article).

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