It’s an ongoing mystery to me, in this year of 2022, with a hot war going on in the Ukraine and the Biden Administration (or the Kalorama Kominturn which apparently holds the puppet strings) apparently doing everything it can to provoke Russia into turning the war even hotter … that the usual peace activists, who have been out to protest US involvement in every conflict going since I was in the 6th grade are nowhere to be found. Seriously, where are they the usual peace activists, with their signs and protests at the gates of military bases, at recruiting offices and at the Pentagon … where are they? Where are the activist priests and nuns, the 60’s retreads, the determined if slightly addled, who used to routinely break into the back reaches of certain air bases in the southwest, searching for munitions and aircraft that they could splash blood-red paint and slogans all over, much to the bafflement of the security police patrols who often found them wandering in the desert, armed with buckets of paint and towering self-righteousness … yes, I had acquaintances in the security police back then, who often regaled me with tales like this.
Every time that matters of a military nature with regard to the US were about to turn from a warm simmer to red hot there they were, on the ground, fulminating in the groves of academy, or on the pages of such reliably progressive publications like Harper’s, of the NY Times, and in the streets of Washington D.C. there were the peace activists protesting. It was like the birds flying south for the winter; regular and predictable, until now. So, where are the deeply and ostentatiously committed peaceniks now? Are they out protesting the very real possibility of a nuclear war with Russia over independence of the Ukraine? Where are the Ramsay Clarkes, Noam Chomskys, even the Cindy Sheehans of 2022, the impassioned student peace marchers?
There was always a suspicion and depending on the year and the conflict a well-founded suspicion that many organized peace and anti-nuclear protest groups were Soviet-funded and if so, I do wonder if they still are. Are the Soviet checks bouncing, or are they not being sent at all, since … open war with the United States is what Putin and his allies in what remains of the Soviet Union really want? Could it be that the Biden Administration also wants an open war with Russia, as a distraction and a ready excuse to crack down on critics and political opposition? Place your bets, ladies, gentlemen and uncommitted beings. Your insights are appreciated.
* Classical reference, link here.
I’ve wondered that for years. Similarly where are all the Feminists supporting the brave women in Iran risking death and rape rebelling against the regime?
I’m old enough to remember when they were already against the next war.
Vanished like the dew.
I check the website of the local P&J cult once in a while–I worked with some of them, and people like them, when I worked–and they don’t seem very energized about Armageddon.
Still, it’s not like Trump moving a recon platoon and exposing the Kurds to extermination, is it?
” open war with the United States is what Putin and his allies in what remains of the Soviet Union really want? “
The behavior of Russia suggests that they really have been trying to minimize conflict & casualties — at least, up until now. Objectively, it is the US & the empty-headed followers of fashion in NATO who have been aggressively pushing for a wider war. Probably the root of the arrant stupidity in the DC Swamp is that they can see the de-industrialized green economic Armageddon coming because of their earlier actions — and they want a war as an excuse to wipe out the National Debt and fail to honor Social Security promises.
But none of that explains the absence of the “peace now” crowd. That does seem to put the lie to the idea that the peaceniks were funded by the USSR; if so, surely Russia would still have the right people in its rolodex. The implication is that the “peace now” crowd were actually funded by the same DC Swamp Creatures who were also pushing for war. Whether that was a civil war inside the Swamp or a deliberate 3D chess move, who can say?
We also need to look at the actions (or inactions) of the media. There have been major protests against the US/NATO war on the Ukraine in Europe … yet the US media has been remarkably silent about this.
One thing is clear — those old peaceniks were being manipulated by someone, and for ends that those peaceniks might not have agree with.
They are still here, but largely funded domestically rather than internationally and with different causes (racism, BLM, CRT, abortion, green new deal, GLBTQxyz&*?+). Ukraine may not be on their radar because their objective is revolution here and they have plenty of opportunities and resources right here. They have most of the commanding heights so expect more, soon. Biden is vulnerable on foreign policy, part of this is his handling of the Ukraine. So, he is a enabler of the Alinskyites so they may be laying low on this issue, so far.
Death6
In our little town there is a group that for twenty years or so meets every Saturday morning and holds up signs promoting peace, waving at passing motorists etc. They have been admirably consistent. Sure they got their start during the GW Bush years but they were equally critical of the Obama era drone warfare. Not sure what they did during the relatively pacific Trump administration but they were still out there, signs held high.
Well a few weeks ago on my morning walk we went past them. Guy I walk with has close ties to the Ukraine and so we had to ask: Do you approve of the US sending advanced weapons into the conflict? They are causing deaths and making the situation more perilous.
They were manifestly unprepared for this question. When brains exited locked up status they said that Putin was a very bad man and that we had to stop him. But at what cost we asked? To that they had no answer.
And yes as a prior commenter has noted their signs are now far more eclectic. Affordable Health care, Green energy etc all get their space.
Later they marched in a parade with some Democrats running for office.
Funded by the commies? I remember one of the Chicago 8 admitting opening a suitcase with over 100,000 from his Russian comrades in 1968. Nothing changes. Remember Soros worked for the Nazis selling out other Jews and then appeared in London with a fortune. Yeah ihe isn’t a GRU asset.
The reaction of some to the Ukraine war reminded me of a story I read years ago. The author was remembering an airline flight he had taken, back in the late 60s or early 70s, and found himself sitting next to a hippie type. The hippie went on and on about how society needed to be more laid back, turned on, to reject bourgeoise value, and so on. Finally, the author got tired of it and said to the hippie:
“You know, you really picked the right flight. I was talking to the pilot in the bar just before we left, and he said they smoke weed all the time. Sometimes, they even have sex with the stewardesses right there in the cockpit.”
For the rest of the flight, his seatmate was a worried and much quieter hippie. He had suddenly realized that those bourgeoise values like sobriety, attention to duty, and so on do have their place in some circumstances, like when you are at 30,000 feet over Kansas.
So it strikes me as interesting that people who would generally mock such things as courage and military valor are somehow able to see the importance of such things in the context of Ukraine. People who would never wave an American flag are happy to wave Ukrainian flags.
Psychologically very interesting, I think, though it doesn’t really imply anything about the proper level of US involvement, either way.
OK, they are funded by Communists as always. Except that instead of the Russian, it is the American version based in the Democrat Party and its funders. And since I rather expect that they intend to cement their control over the country next month [electorally by fraud or otherwise] there are no protests now. Once they believe that they have such control nailed down [their reality testing is not all that good] I figure they plan to start attacking Kulaks, hoarders, etc.
Subotai Bahadur
The only sin the Left recognizes is to be “right wing.” So the anti-war activists of the Left will only be active when that activism is anti-right-wing.
During the Cold War, any US military activity was seen as a direct or indirect move against the USSR, and therefore firmly “right wing.” Anti-war protests were thus “anti-right-wing” (with this being confirmed by the line from the Kremlin).
After the Cold War, military activity by Democratic Party administrations was no longer seen as right wing, so the anti-war protests only came out when the GOP held the White House. For the current war in Ukraine, there’s a Democrat in the White house and it’s unclear whether Putin and Russia are properly left-wing or not, and so the anti-war protests are on hold.
I suspect the current dearth of passionate peace demonstrators has more to do with what happens to be fashionable among our passionately pious leftists than bouncing Soviet checks. They certainly hogged the limelight long enough. I can remember attending a peace rally in a huge auditorium at the University of Wisconsin back in the late 60’s, just to see what was going on. I was a West Point cadet at the time, and certainly stood out because of my short hair. The place was packed to the rafters, and all were paying rapt attention to the speeches of the peace movement nomenklatura of the day. The movement inspired a good number of movies back in the day as well, such as “The Strawberry Statement,” starring Kim Darby and “Getting Straight,” with Candice Bergen and Elliot Gould. The latter got one thing right in spite of itself. The Gould character notices that Bergen couldn’t wait to jump into bed after attending a big peace demonstration. That and similar movements have always been more about emotional catharsis and ostentatious virtue signaling than about whatever the ostensible holy cause happened to be.
Today other “holy causes” have become fashionable among the usual suspects, such as “racial justice,” devoted to anti-white racism, and “transgender rights,” devoted to forcing people to agree that men who like to wear dresses really are women. I doubt they will have as long a run as the peace movement, if only by virtue of their too palpable absurdity.
Meanwhile, we face the prospect of a nuclear war over a “holy cause” as trivial as the war in Ukraine. Even many conservatives have been bamboozled into seriously believing that Russia invaded Ukraine for no reason at all, that they are witnessing a repeat of Munich in 1938, and that Russia will unleash its army on Germany and France as soon as they are done with Ukraine. I’ll retire to Bedlam.
A quandary indeed. Especially now, after the Russian Army, Navy and Air Force have, to use the technical military term, screwed the pooch, comprehensively and repeatedly, have proved there’s no they’re, there, having executed Operation Barbarossa, backwards and in high heels, a friend or even fellow traveler in the West would be handy.
Then consider the Ukrainians. The repetitive strain injuries and bad backs from having to pick up the hundreds of tons of Russian munitions left laying about must be brutal.
Indeed, the Russians do seem to be advancing somewhat more slowly than Guderian’s panzer divisions in 1941, and in the wrong direction at that.
There is no draft and the Left is in power.
the DC Swamp is that they can see the de-industrialized green economic Armageddon coming because of their earlier actions ”” and they want a war as an excuse to wipe out the National Debt and fail to honor Social Security promises.
I can see that this is a serious possibility. There is no chance the national debt will ever be paid. I can even remember when Margaret Thatcher was retiring Britain’s national debt and there was opposition because “Gilts” were such a safe investment.
I’m hoping Ukraine doesn’t cleave the Republicans enough to affect elections.
Personally, I have problems with expecting nations to neuter themselves by turning over nuclear weapons and then stand by when they are invaded (giving them weapons and advice and intelligence doesn’t put our troops in harm’s way as did the Afghanistan fiasco.)
But whatever you think about our relation to Ukraine, It seems to me that both conservative sides are thinking in the rather vague terms of putting America first (unlike Biden’s interesting approach to Saudi Arabia which borders on the treasonous – asking the entire nation to pay for postponing the oil drop to help the Democrats seems about as appropriate as offering a foreign nation known for his problems with the truth a million dollars to “find” material to damn a Republican candidate, ah, well). One has a smaller, more precise idea – it isn’t our war. It is expensive and risks getting us into a hole where we send our men.
The other (and some retired military like those in Congress) think in terms of a longer vision – Ukraine is a struggling democracy trying to rid itself of its tradition of corruption that stands between Russia and NATO and is also bleeding dry one of our adversaries. The hope is if Russia is sufficiently drained, we can concentrate more on the larger Chinese version of our general foe – a hard national state operating to control its people and (if possible) those of the lands around them and, eventually, . . well, they seem to dream big.
Perhaps the anti-war people are aligned in a broad way with the Communists this time around too – but Biden is as close, I hope, as they are going to come to a communist bureaucracy, state department, power behind the throne and besides he’s doing it all for the great green vision, one defined, pushed and supported by the watermelons amidst us – the greenies pink inside, long financed by Russia and other oil powers.
While Russia may have given the local nuts and fruits the money and paid front men to get things up and running there is no guarantee that, several generations later, the peace movement will still dance to Russia’s tune. Within any organization are men/women who get bitten by the power bug, and who will take the organization in directions base on their own visions of perfection.
Ginny: “Ukraine is a struggling democracy”
The kind of “democracy” that stages a coup against the elected president — or at least lets the US organize that coup. The kind of “democracy” that locks up opposition leaders. The kind of “democracy” that outlaws opposition political parties. The kind of “democracy” that nationalizes the media, so that people hear only the ruling junta’s line.
Yes, let’s all die in a global thermonuclear war because of that kind of “democracy”. What happens in the Ukraine will not stay in the Ukraine — at least as long as the Biden* regime keeps pouring in weapons, money, and targeting information.
Puh-leeze… since the mid-1960s, no sentient observer can be unaware that every single “peace movement” plus its frowsy feministical adjunct was solely a hate-America backstabbing of domestic peace-and-prosperity via grunting Marxisants’ communo-fascist divide-and-rule; something-for-nothing; us-against-them.
Three 24-year generations past WW II, that is through 2017, Gramsci’s power- and status-hungry gentry rentiers oozed into every academic, media, Deep State organ unopposed. As in 1789, 1917, now 2017+, the Zeitgeist worm hath turned… however crapulent Rat phonies bleat-and-squeak, their day is past, if only because
fed up normal citizens finally act in self-defense.
Aux armes, citoyens– formez vos battalions. March ons, march ons.
“The kind of “democracy” that stages a coup against the elected president ”” or at least lets the US organize that coup. The kind of “democracy” that locks up opposition leaders. The kind of “democracy” that outlaws opposition political parties. The kind of “democracy” that nationalizes the media, so that people hear only the ruling junta’s line.”
Exactly! They made their bed. I suggest we let them lie in it, and refrain from risking a nuclear war by pulling their chestnuts out of the fire for them in the process. I really can’t understand the furious hatred so many conservatives as well as leftists in the U.S. have for Russia. I was as happy as anyone about the demise of Communism in the Soviet Union. That union was formed in 1917. The carving up of the former Russian empire is another matter entirely. The core Slavic constituents of that empire existed for two and a half centuries. Its destruction by cabals of politicians without the benefit of a Constituent Assembly, National Convention, or national plebiscite was never legitimate, and cannot be made legitimate by the passage of time. Putin has as much right to restore the unity of his country by force as Lincoln had to restore our Union by force. The idea that he’s simply attacking an inoffensive neighbor, like Denmark or Switzerland, for no reason at all is utter bunk.
We’re fine ones to mouth pious phrases about international solidarity to resist aggression after we attacked a helpless Russian ally, Serbia, and then seized part of her territory and handed it over to her enemies. Equally brainless is our seemingly permanent hostility to Russia when she is, in fact, a natural ally. Look at her ability to produce anything that one might fairly classify among the “sinews of war,” and compare it to that of China, a truly aggressive state that suddenly laid claim to the entire South China Sea and is now in the process of militarizing it. Absent her trump card of nuclear weapons, Russia isn’t even in the same class as a military threat. Now look at her geographical position, neighboring China along a very lengthy border. Consider the fact that China has claimed in the past that vast lands on the Russian side were taken from her by “unequal treaties,” and is very likely to raise the issue again in due time. If China is a threat to us, she is doubly so to Russia. In the face of this threat, it behooves her to be as strong and united as possible, and it behooves us as well, because China, and not Russia, is the real threat we face in the world today. I repeat. Russia is a natural ally.
Are we hostile because the Putin regime is “bad?” In the first place, Putin won’t live forever, and for better or worse, the regime he created won’t last forever either. Governments come and go, but Russia will endure. In the second, we’re fine ones to brag about the superiority of our “noble democracy.” In the absence of any way to establish their honesty or legitimacy, our elections have become a sham. An increasingly tyrannical Left now controls our educational system, entertainment industry, and “news” media. Our country is now about as far from anything the founding fathers imagined or would ever have supported as one can imagine.
Under the circumstances, it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone could look an American child, or a Russian child, or any child for that matter, in the face and coolly inform them that it may be necessary to sacrifice their lives and the lives of millions of others like them in a nuclear holocaust in order “vindicate democracy” in Ukraine. The situation we find ourselves in is beyond absurd.
What I am most noticing in major-media analysis of the Russia/Ukraine conflict is LACK of any comparison to the Serbia/Kosovo conflict.
The issue, now, of how the US can avoid what was then called “Boots on the Ground” is a pretty serious issue, and our options for projecting any influence or force WITHOUT such Boots are more limited.
What Jonathan and Helian said.
Please all, stop referring to Ukraine as “the Ukraine”. In English we just don’t put the definite article in front of geographic names. In the France they do it differently but that’s because they’re … well you know… french, and they talk funny.
Don’t do it for Lebanon or Yemen or Gambia or Congo or any of those other places where it happens gratuitously.
Occam’s shaving implement?
So, the usual suspects, just like the elitists and every media outlet, who have consistently and continually sided with the international socialists in every situation, everywhere, for decades, aren’t ‘apparently’ campaigning and complaining as they normally do?
So do we assume that they have, suddenly and inexplicably, turned 180 overnight, or ”¦ they’re doing exactly what they always do, just in a slightly different manner.
I’ve suggested from the beginning that whilst the media ‘appears’ to be lining up to fervently support this conflict, ‘how’ they are doing so is the real indication of their actual beliefs. All those stories tinted to show the ‘western’ corruption, deviancy and evil. The never-ending list of failures and incompetence. The blatant touting of ‘convenient’ false flag, propaganda incidents (that even a babe in swaddling can see are just that). Etc. Be honest, any ‘disinterested’ observer, purely reading the press/TV reports would have to have ‘some’ sympathy for the Russians (if not their actions, at least their claimed aims), whilst anyone with a modicum of intelligence can see that both ‘sides’ are rancid at the core.
Again from the beginning, I’ve always seen this as a spat between two aspects (factions) of the same globalist ‘cabal’. Whilst originally the power behind marxism ‘was’ Kremlin based, we know, but apparently forget to consider that, the locus has long (with the long march) been moved to other institutions (UN, WEF, World Bank, WHO, etc.).
So? The choice is that they have decided to completely change their entire raison d’etre, or ”¦ they still see this as actually furthering their long-term anti-western aims. It’s never been western civilization against marxist aggression. This is (aptly) merely another Molotov-Ribbentrop moment being acted out.
They aren’t up in arms, campaigning because ”¦ they support both sides. After all, no matter the military outcome, politically the west will be bankrupt, even more openly corrupted, not to mention probably starving in the dark, when all this eventually ends i.e. ripe for that globalist, international socialist “reset”.
Or, I might just be another cynic with a tin-foil beanie.
gnome: “Please all, stop referring to Ukraine as “the Ukraine”.”
You are falling into the trap of Political Correctness, changing words. For uncounted decades, the name of that area has been “The Ukraine”. In English, its name would be “The Borderlands”. That area has been contested for most of recorded history, with parts of it being passed backwards & forwards between Lithuanians, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Jewish settlers, and who knows who else.
After the breakup of the USSR, the Ukraine was left rather like Northern Ireland — a mix of peoples with different backgrounds who mostly detested each other. Worse than Northern Ireland, peoples who did not even speak the same language. Just as in Northern Ireland, the majority oppressed the minority, and here we are today. The Ukraine is still “The Borderlands”. The solution is to break it up.
The Minsk Agreements would have set up something akin to Canada’s federal structure, where the French-speaking people of Quebec have a degree of autonomy. But the Kiev crew signed the deal and then refused to implement it, instead starting a civil war against the Russian-speaking minority. And here we are today.
“…All that we’re asking…is give war a chance…”
Perhaps there’s no protest because Americans aren’t fighting, we’re just supplying Ukraine with arms the way Russia supplied North Vietnam with SAMs (and Russian advisors probably operated them) to shoot down 2000 or so US aircraft. Unlike our one-time South Vietnamese, Iraqi, and Afghan allies they seem to be putting our weapons to good use instead of abandoning them and running away. I appreciate that.
Finally, our aid HAS paid dividends for America. We’ve discredited Tsar Putin and his military. More importantly, the resulting EU energy crisis resulting from our aid and Ukrainian success has also discredited Greta Thunberg and the greenie-weenies who insist we can go fossil-energy-free with just windmills and solar panels and lithium.
sure whatever, you forced him to double down, we are emptying our arsenals, and our strategic reserve, at a frightening pace, and we’re this close to a full flashpoint, that will entail direct military committment,
meanwhile, China that killed 7-10 million people, is sitting pretty, watching from the catbirds seat, waiting to take Taiwan, which is the big prize,
Why haven’t the abandoned Afghanistan weapons turned up in Ukraine?
The description of the corruption and brutality in Ukraine also matches South Korea in 1960s. I guess North Korea should have attacked in ’69.
how do we know qatar isn’t shipping them in from hamid karzai airport, we frankly don’t know what happened with that sordid precursor episode, and james gordon meek is curiously unavailable to tell us