U.S. and Germany Slip, Russia Stumbles on the Global Stage

After a relatively strong debut in his first year in office, the honeymoon is over for U.S. President Joe Biden, as approval ratings of U.S. leadership worldwide slid at the halfway mark of his term. (...)

"It's, uhm, complicated"

Luckily, it was just a one-off thing.

 Lazy8 wrote:
If we're doing hyperbole: the only part of the (otherwise bad, bad, bad, bad, bad) government that can be believed 100% of the time. Until it eventually becomes untenable.

Don't fret either, Greenwald has libertarian sensibilities...

 Proclivities wrote:
Schrödinger's all-purpose boogeyman.

 Lazy8 wrote:
Kinda like Schrödinger's cat?

 kurtster wrote:
Ah, the enduring myth of the US State Department: simultaneously bumbling incompetents and all-powerful, capable of toppling governments at the snap of a finger. It's almost as if a powerful, intrusive, and potently meddlesome neighbor motivated to destabilize Ukraine to facilitate seizing its territory and resources doesn't exist!

This is a long series of explanations of the snake pit that is Ukrainian politics and recent history. It's long because that history is absurdly complicated, as real life often is. It doesn't fit into neat tidy narratives no matter how you cram it into one and sit on the lid.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

It's well-researched and decently literate about recent European history. RP, fret not—this all comes with a lefty spin.

And if you're put off by the prospect of watching an hour and a half of history lectures be assured this comes with a healthy dose of snark.  The creator's channel is called Sarcasmitron, after all.

 haresfur wrote: 
This stuff in Ukraine started 10 around years ago when Ms. Nuland laid the groundwork for overthrowing the existing regime in what has been called the Maidan Revolution, IIRC.  She was the one from the West who did the most stirring of the pot that got us to where we are today, imo. 

And as noted in my post, is still around calling the shots.

 kurtster wrote:

I'd hold Putin most responsible for the cluster fuck by invading Ukraine, but what do I know?

 kurtster wrote:
Must have been US Army Cyber Command pressing Twitter buttons... 

 Isabeau wrote: 
The pic disappeared.  It was Victoria Nuland just soze we know who we're talking about.

Those things might help her get a date.  Prolly not much as far as credulity at this point in her life.

 kurtster wrote:

One wonders how much credulity adding Fake Eyelashes, Tan, Highlights, and showing some Cleavage she might otherwise receive...   

 R_P wrote: 
Yep, dyed in the wool Neo con.  Learned from Cheney and is currently serving under Biden / Blinken.  I would hold her the most responsible for the cluster fuck that is currently Ukraine.

Army Info War Division Wants Social Media Surveillance to Protect “NATO Brand”
An Army Cyber Command official sought military contractors that could help “attack, defend, influence, and operate” on global social media.

The U.S. Army Cyber Command told defense contractors it planned to surveil global social media use to defend the “NATO brand,” according to a 2022 webinar recording reviewed by The Intercept.

The disclosure, made a month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, follows years of international debate over online free expression and the influence of governmental security agencies over the web. The Army’s Cyber Command is tasked with both defending the country’s military networks as well as offensive operations, including propaganda campaigns.

The remarks came during a closed-door conference call hosted by the Cyber Fusion Innovation Center, a Pentagon-sponsored nonprofit that helps with military tech procurement, and provided an informal question-and-answer session for private-sector contractors interested in selling data to Army Cyber Command, commonly referred to as ARCYBER. (...)

 R_P wrote:


Where's the darn like-button on this forum?

Obituaries for Nuremberg Prosecutor Erase His Beliefs About the U.S.
Benjamin Ferencz repeatedly said George W. Bush and his administration should be tried for the Iraq War.

The media’s erasure of Ferencz’s views is especially distressing given his lifelong emphasis on the importance of remembering the past. In a speech just as the Iraq War commenced, Ferencz reminded the audience that the United Nations charter is “international law binding on all nations. We owe it to the memory of the dead to honor these commitments to peace.”

One thing worth remembering in this context are the famous opening remarks at Nuremberg by Robert Jackson, the chief justice:

If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. And we are not prepared to lay down the rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.

Sadly, by the end of Ferencz’s life, he understood why Jackson’s confidence was misplaced and might not be surprised by the glaring omissions in his obituaries. “No country that prefers to use its power rather than the rule of law will vote for the rule of law, it’s logical,” he said in a recent documentary. “There are some people who do not trust the rule of law, and they prefer to use military power to achieve their goals as they decide, when they decide. That’s led by the United States. … War will make mass murderers out of otherwise decent people. … It’s inevitable, whether they are Americans, or they’re Germans, or anybody else.”

 R_P wrote:

Oof - nailed it.

Hegemonic containment of allies

Mr. Yoon’s secretary for foreign affairs, Yi Mun-hui, told his boss, National Security Adviser Kim Sung-han, that the government “was mired in concerns that the U.S. would not be the end user if South Korea were to comply with a U.S. request for ammunition,” according to a batch of secret Pentagon documents leaked through social media.

The secret report was based on signals intelligence, which meant that the United States has been spying on one of its major allies in Asia.

Both Mr. Yi and Mr. Kim stepped down last month for unclear reasons. Neither man could be reached for comment.

(...)

Instead, according to the document, Mr. Kim “suggested the possibility” of selling 330,000 rounds of 155-mm artillery shells to Poland, since “getting the ammunition to Ukraine quickly was the ultimate goal of the United States.”

Mr. Yi agreed that it might be possible for Poland to agree to being called the end user and send the ammunition on to Ukraine, but that South Korea would need to “verify what Poland would do.” It is unclear exactly what he meant by this, since South Korea’s export control rules stipulate that its ​weapons or weapon parts sold to a foreign country should not be resold or transferred to a third country without Seoul’s approval.

The senior South Korean official on Sunday declined to reveal details of what he called “internal discussions” within Mr. Yoon’s government. But he added that “nothing has been finalized” and that there was still “no change” in Seoul’s policy on Ukraine. South Korea has been shipping humanitarian aid to Ukraine but has insisted that it would not directly provide any lethal weapons.

“South Korea’s position has been that it will cooperate with the United States while not clashing with Russia,” said Yang Uk, a weapons expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “The documents leaked put South Korea in a more difficult position.”

And the mere fact of the spying taking place, leaving aside what it might uncover, is a damaging revelation, he said.

“It’s reasonable to suspect that the United States spies on top defense and security officials in Seoul, but it’s bad news for the general public ahead of the South Korea-U.S. summit,” he added. “People will ask, ‘We have been allies for seven decades, and you still spy on us?’”

"The focus now is on this being a U.S. leak, as many of the documents were only in U.S. hands," Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, told Reuters in an interview.