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Daniel Beegan's avatar

Trump pulled off a great con during the 2024 campaign. He convinced fools like me he would end forever wars and would stop putting sticks in the eyes of the Russian bear and the Chinese drag. Instead, he's just another member of the United War Party.

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Scuba Cat's avatar

He worked really hard at that, to the point of recruiting former antiwar democrats like Tulsi Gabbard and RFK to shill for him.

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Rob (c137)'s avatar

If Trump wanted peace it would have been easy. Russia was ready to stop the war, but the people who want endless was kept demanding crap like crimea.

It's the same with MAHA and Kennedy... If he wanted to put a dent on the scams, he could easily have stopped the covid emergency that his predecessor easily extended to 2029.

But he still won't and now we have proof of his two faced behavior... They focused on Tylenol in the months long fake study.

It's one thing to be held hostage and afraid to tell the truth.

But both Trump and Kennedy are actively distracting from the truth to perpetuate the IDIOCRACY.

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BookWench's avatar

I believe Kennedy is continuing to study autism. I got the impression that this was just the beginning.

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A_Hamilton's avatar

Not true though. Ukraine multiple times offered a ceasefire and essentially an end to the war with Russia keeping Crimea but Putin denied it.

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Rob (c137)'s avatar

When was this?

A simple search shows that Ukraine was against Russia getting crimea even to a month ago.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Russia+turns+down+peace+crimea&t=ofa&ia=web

Maybe you can point out which agreement you're referring to here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine

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A_Hamilton's avatar

Literally a dozen times over the spring and summer Zelensky agreed to and even proposed a ceasefire with no preconditions. They'll never recognize Crimea, but they don't need it for peace and that doesn't matter for anything.

Here's one from March: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/12/ukraine-ceasefire-whats-in-the-proposed-deal-and-whats-not

Here Zelensky is on X in May proposing an unconditional ceasefire: https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1921642678057635893?lang=en

There was never any discussion about "you have to return Crimea first". There is zero belief already on Ukraine's side that they are getting Crimea back. But, if they do succeed in decapitating the Russian oil sector, they may succeed. The Russian army has a major gasoline shortage already and its getting worse.

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Rob (c137)'s avatar

Interesting that in the past was the excuse that zelensky refused to let them keep Crimea (which crimeans support staying as a part of Russia)

To now that Russia is hard lining against it...

It's almost like both sides want to keep fighting and these 30 days (only?) ceasefire offerings are fake hope. Also why not a peace treaty... Why just a 30 day cease fire? Odd right?

Now these articles make more sense... Russia is in on the game with the West. Just like the cold war was used to keep people screwed and Orwell's 1984 had the same dynamic where the endless wars continued and were used to screw the people of all sides. Europe is the biggest victim of this with their ridiculous energy costs.

Also what's really odd about this war is the claims that they had to conscript older people because they were running out of young men to fight the war.

But if you go on social media etc you can see plenty of young men still in normal society not fighting in war in Ukraine.

Hyped up war?

https://off-guardian.org/2023/02/21/nordstream-2-seymour-hersh-feeds-the-fake-binary/

https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-war-did-not-take-place

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Janine's avatar

I thought draft age started at 25 in Ukraine. That leaves a lot of 18-×4 year olds out of it

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Janine's avatar

*18-24 year olds

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susan mullen's avatar

A. Hamilton, surely you're aware that "Ukraine" doesn't exist, can't make a single move without US approval, has been a de facto US colony for 35 years, has no money of its own, no functioning banking or judiciary systems, exists today only because enslaved US taxpayers have been forced to give billions of their hard earned tax dollars to "Ukraine" which at best is a place swarming with US taxpayer funded CIA and profiteers plundering whatever they can. Not to mention the US led 2014 violent overthrow of Ukraine's elected government.

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Larry Quantz's avatar

The optimist would say that all the saber rattling is Trump trying to force a deal by pressuring the Russians. Remember that the Korean war ended after two years of talks at Panmunjon during which time there were numerous walkouts.

What helped end that conflict was Eisenhower being a bit vague about introducing things like 'Honest John' battlefield nukes. That, and a general exhaustion on both sides finally forced a conclusion. I hope something similar is happening here.

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Guven Cagil's avatar

So in other words continuity of agenda as opposed to one of the two main candidates being better than the other. I voted for Jill Stein but that was because I could, because I live in New York and the outcomes are predetermined(so to speak). But if I lived in a 'swing' state, I suppose I would have voted for Trump.

It's important to keep in mind, that the Ukraine special military operation 'happened' under the Biden Administration. And his administration, at least up till now, put in far more money into this war than the Trump administration. The genocide in Gaza 'happened' under the Biden Administration - a.k.s The Genocide Joe Administration. I think Frankenstein Joe is a more accurate term, as he didn't have, in fact never had, the ability to form an independent thought. He was a thinktank machine who during the last years of his political life rusted out(translate: senility).

So both Biden and Trump are putting the world on edge which is quite a bit larger but in parallel to Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War.

But you called it and you utilized the Vietnam War as a previous example!

I was just hopeful, among many others, that it wasn't going to be continuity of agenda.

Thanks for the article.

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Longstreet's avatar

Pray and hope was a voting strategy. But then what choice was there Kamala Harris? There wasn’t one. She along with her running mate tampon, Tim, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry openly supported censorship. They didn’t even try to hide it. Unfortunately surprise… the Republicans aren’t far behind on wanting to censor people as well, Pam Bondi was the presenter. They were just more sneaky about it. Only after the election and the opportunity of the Charlie Kirk assassination did they show their hand. The only difference is the benchmarks or what they qualify as hate speech and marked for censorship. The only thing for sure the censorship benchmarks will widen if they’re able to get it rolling. As far as foreign policy goes. There’s not much difference. Bush, Obama, and Biden and now Trump same foreign policy. Kamala would’ve been the same. So even if you’d smelled a rat on the Trump Trojan horse, the outcome would’ve been the same foreign policy or worse.

People hoped Trump would be different but then again there was nobody else to vote for only Kamala.

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BookWench's avatar

And at least Trump secured the southern border.

He has done some things right.

I'm very disappointed with his foreign policy, though.

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Random's avatar

What's with the quote marks Mickey? Are you suggesting that there is no Russian aggression, or that it is justified?

It's OK if you want the US to stay out of it all, but don't fucking try to sell us lies about Russia's imperial ambitions in East Europe.

US can decide to stay the hell away, but that will be the sign China and Russia need to know that your empire has gone to shit and is worth nothing, and cannot counter other empires and their interests anymore.

This is geopolitics Mickey. There won't be a vacuum. Where the US retreats, something else will take its place.

I guess you should be grateful that random chance has resulted in you being born in an empire with two oceans defending it.

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The Worker Bee's avatar

Russian ‘aggression’ was indeed justified. The USA is an anomaly in that if Russia didn’t launch the SMO when it did, Ukraine’s Donbas region would have gone from being a stage 3 cancer on Russia’s border to a stage 4 terminal cancer right on Russia’s most important border region. This was USA’s plan; this is what USA was actively doing; and this was the inevitable outcome unless Russia didn’t what it did.

You have no response to this here, because there is none possible. USA should have listened to realists like Mearsheimer, who understand that states will respond to what they believe to be existential threats in understandably escalatory ways. We even have a record of Obama directly addressing this issue, and outright admitting what everyone with two brain cells understood already: that Russia has escalatory dominance when it comes to Ukraine. There is no sense in which the USA can believably match Russia step for step up the escalation ladder past a certain point. Past a certain point, Ukraine will be annihilated and USA and Europe will do nothing except sanction because they don’t want to risk MAD. Russia does not *want* to go down that path, but both USA and Russia readily understand that Russia will go there, along with understanding that the USA will go no further (and will not risk MAD over Lvov).

You would do well to read more about what you write about here.

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Random's avatar

I do have a response.

I think the US should outcompete Russia and give it 1000 Afghanistans, and eventually collapse it to ethnic states, as things should be.

Both US and Russia are decaying, dying empires, weak and pathetic.

SMO lmao

Muh smol tiny speshul military gayops

All these multicultural monstrosities that pretend they are not empires should be absolutely, hmmm, encouraged to come apart.

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Larry Quantz's avatar

If Russia ever does 'come apart' there'll be chaos as various statelets jockey for position among each other. See Syria and Chechnya as small examples of this. And who knows what other great powers in the neighborhood might try to grab what they can, and what results might come of it?

Be careful what you wish for.

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BookWench's avatar

"Mickey"?

Are you 12?

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Random's avatar

13!

And a few days! Since you asked.

But, more importantly...

Are you a bookish wench??? You know, stereotypically hot for a girl that's into math?

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BookWench's avatar

I was a lit major, Random.

The only math I took was dummy algebra in high school (which I actually enjoyed, even though it was after lunch and I was generally high), and intermediate algebra in college. I got a B in intermediate algebra, and it was kinda fun, completing problems that took 4 pages to solve, but I knew I'd never go into any career in which I needed this ability. Words are much more fun.

Cheers!

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Gary's avatar

Trump tried his best to get a peace agreement. Neither party wants it bad enough.

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Random's avatar

Trump did nothing of the sort, he simply tried to get Ukraine to capitulate and surrender all it has lost, while at the same time demanding that the US gets to exploit Ukraine's natural riches.

It was almost a Ribbentrop-Molotov splitting of Poland, it just happened to fail.

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Gary's avatar

Trump tried the carrot, now the stick.

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The Worker Bee's avatar

You don’t appear to understand. There is NO version of the stick that can be wielded by the USA or Ukraine that doesn’t end up hurting the USA more than it hurts Russia.

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Janine's avatar

I honestly believe this is beside the point. Those effects may be longterm, but politicians are generally focused on the short-term.

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BookWench's avatar

Bwahahahahahaha!

All Trump had to do was cut Ukraine off.

He couldn't even do that.

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Madjack's avatar

I don’t want to die in an apocalyptic firestorm under any administration. I am disappointed in the failure of peace initiatives and anxious.

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The Worker Bee's avatar

There have been no serious attempts at peace initiatives by the USA or Europe since like 1930.

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Craig Healy's avatar

Was just thinking "what's mt up to?" I feel like I manifested this one

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Menachem's avatar

I think it's a mistake to gloss over Trump's apparently genuine attempts to work with Putin, and this being a reaction of his perceived failure of that approach

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Janine's avatar

Agree

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A_Hamilton's avatar

Love most of your content.

However, this part is factually false: "The outlines of that plan were more-or-less adopted in the early phases of the Trump Administration’s diplomatic re-engagement with Russia this year."

Not at all. The Trump admin several times cut off various support (intel, weapons, financial & economic support) and then allowed intel and weapons to be purchased roughly in continuation with the Biden policy (if you take out Trump's rhetoric, which is all over the place). However, cutting off economic support was precisely the opposite of Kellogg's plan, as were the cutting off intel and weapons (even if these were only temporary). There also has been no weapons surge (so far).

It's more like Trump's rhetoric has shifted from being quite pro-Russia to now more more pro-Ukraine comments (although he still copies Russia's ridiculous framing of this being "Zelensky's war") as he slowly discovered that Putin was not actually a man of peace.

There are some slightly longer-range missiles reportedly on the way, and this would be in line with Kellogg's plan, but it's already clear these missiles are being slow-walked by the bureaucracy (it's been a month already and they haven't arrived; if it were Israel it would have taken one day). I bet they'll eventually arrive as Trump ordered it, but I don't think it's a slam dunk yet. Also, they require agreement on targets, and there are enough pro-Russia people in Trump's camp that they'll probably severely restrict the targets (and may even leak them to Russia in advance even if unlikely). One change is to allow Ukraine to go after oil infrastructure, which Trump forbid earlier in the year, but Biden also at times allowed this. The real difference there is that Ukraine has many more long-range drones now than it did a year ago.

Cutting off the economic funding was a major change from the Biden administration and is a big deal -- all government revenue is fungible, so less economic support means a smaller defense industry in Ukraine. This is the opposite of the Kellogg plan.

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Arturo Desimone's avatar

I don't find the people of Compact Magazine fit the description of "Dumb Dumb" podcast crew, they are intellectually quite elevated. But they still published Rubio and people like Sohrab Amhari endorsed Rubio as somehow having fallen off his ass on the road the Damascus and seen the light of anti-war maga...

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V900's avatar

It’s truly a wonder why Trump would choose to listen to losers and halfwits like Kellogg.

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Koshmap's avatar

Trump versus Biden (I'll say 'Biden et al' since we don't really know who was in charge) on Ukraine: (1) Biden et al kept open the possibility of Ukraine membership in NATO (while in practice blocking it), whereas Trump's Defense Secretary (Hegseth) took Ukraine's membership in NATO off the table at his first NATO summit not too long after Trump was inaugurated; (2) Biden et all treated Zelensky as if he was Churchill, whereas Trump had a public spat with Zelensky at the White House and disinvited him from lunch; (3) Biden et al severed diplomatic relations with the Russian government whereas Trump reestablished diplomatic relations with Russia shortly after his inauguration; (4) Biden et al held no meetings with Putin after the invasion, whereas Trump invited Putin to the summit in Alaska; (5) Biden et al were ambiguous about territory captured by Russia, whereas Trump sent signals that they were willing to trade land for peace. Trump made it clear that he was willing to negotiate a deal to end the war in Ukraine on terms favorable to Putin, but Putin didn't take the deal because he is a turd who wants to relive the 'Velikaya Otechestvennya Voina' by forcing Ukraine to capitulate. What do you want Trump to do, suck Putin's cock? I know your answer is that Trump should just stop sending weapons to Ukraine, but only someone who is a complete idiot in geopolitics would believe that. You might as well hang a sign on the US saying 'kick us.' You are probably one of those idiots who blame the US for the Ukraine war. I agree that our policy on Ukraine was stupid, but Russia was not attacked, nor was it under threat of attack. Fine, we're the bad guys, but that doesn't make Putin the good guy. The Ukraine war was a mess that Trump inherited from Biden et al. He made a good faith effort to stop it, but Putin et all want 'total victory' over a shithole country so they can pretend that Russia is still a 'superpower.' You and your moronic readers have a simplistic view of geopolitics.

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Janine's avatar

Well I don't think we can understimate the military-industrial complex / deep state that pushed Russia Collusion to its maximal effects just so that we could keep having a war in Ukraine. At some point it may be easier for Pres Trump to cooperate with them than continue dealing with threars we might not know about (reminder: assassination carries uts messages far and wide) Second, he wants a Nobel Prize, and Putin is also posing his own maximalist stances. So this is a negotiating tactic a la Donald Trump imnsho.

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Slaw's avatar

Kellogg is 100% committed to Ukraine. The others? It's questionable.

I think the real test will be how much funding the war gets in Trump's next budget.

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