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The last 30 years have been a persistent erosion of American power and prestige. The US is a nation in search of its soul and moral purpose.

It has been led by a succession of timid, or reckless or vapid or exploitative, and opportunist presidents.

International politics expert Jonathan Holslag calls them "polite cowards". Those leaders who talk up democracy while ignoring the people in their own countries whom democracy is failing.

Each leader has presided over the drift from the American Dream. Inequality has grown like a cancer.

Decades of decline

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Galyna Lekunova, a veterinarian in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, was left fuming by a new law in January [2021] mandating the use of Ukrainian in the service industry.

In protest against the regulations that she said amounted to "discrimination," the 47-year-old began offering 50-percent discounts to her Russian-speaking clients.

This is what she believes spurred the perpetrators of a graffiti attack on her clinic, which was defaced in late January with scrawls of black coffins and a warning of "Death to the enemies".

One month later, the paint was still visible on a poster of a puppy advertising her services in Russian in the industrial port city on the Black Sea.

war...

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Friday that the group would be providing more weapons to support Ukraine in the face of Russia’s military assault, and deploying parts of its combat-ready response force.

Soltenberg accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to topple the “democratically-elected government in Ukraine.”

POGO1

Ever since the fall of the Communist system and the fracturing of the old Soviet Union in 1989-1991, the globalist foreign policy hawks in the American state department and their dutiful minions in the media and amongst both political parties have actively pursued a program of what the late zealous Neoconservative Fox News pundit Charles Krauthammer termed a “unipolar” world.

in good company

You needed only look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes as he publicly ridiculed his own international spy chief this week to know all we might wish to know about this President of Russia.

The eyes were at once cruelly amused, threatening and impatient. They were those of a fox at the open door of a hen house.

Here was a man taking pleasure in the humiliation of an old comrade, reducing him to a vassal, and seeking personal gratification by displaying to the world - on live television - his superiority over all around him.

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Some of Scott Morrison’s closest party-room allies could face internal challenges for their seats after a Supreme Court decision handed down Friday.

Mr Morrison had backed a plan to have the Liberal Party intervene and stop three sitting MPs – Alex Hawke, Sussan Ley and Trent Zimmerman – from facing internal party contests.

The Prime Minister and the federal Liberal Party gave the party’s NSW division until Monday to hold a long-delayed annual general meeting, as well as preselect candidates for three seats currently held by sitting Liberal MPs and Morrison allies Alex Hawke, Sussan Ley and Trent Zimmerman.

invasion

In many years of international negotiations and on-the-ground work in conflict zones I have learned that leadership is not a choice between a good option and a bad option. The choice is easy. Pick the good option.

But leadership is having the right ethical framework to choose the least bad of competing bad options, knowing that everyone will criticise you for taking a bad choice.

This is where we are today with Ukraine and Russia. Decision-makers squandered good options when the 2014 Crimea situation was appallingly handled.

What will play out now is one of three broad and bad possibilities. There are no good choices left.

heartland...

It’s complicated. But people in Ukraine are dying and they blame Putin for being a thug by wagging war against their free country. He is a thug… Who can blame them — though so far, not that many people —compared to a full open warfare — have been killed, mostly Ukrainian soldiers. 

The Ukrainians don’t know that their sacrifice or plight, lies at the heart of a 1905 “commitment”… I am with them. Why should we care about old stuff that have no bearing on our enjoyment of life that Vladimir Putin is taking away now with his ruthless armies.

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San Francisco – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued this statement on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

“Russia’s launch of a premeditated war against the sovereign nation of Ukraine is an attack on democracy and a grave violation of international law, global peace and security.  Putin’s unprovoked actions will cause devastating loss of life and a diminishing of Russia in the world order.

bear

US Foreign Policy Is a Cruel Sport

Bear baiting was long ago banned as inhumane. Yet today, a version is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale.

BY DIANA JOHNSTONE

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tantrum

France has downgraded its diplomatic relations with Australia in a new Indo-Pacific strategy.

French President Emmanuel Macron reacted with fury last year when Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed plans to scrap a $90 billion deal to buy submarines.

Mr Morrison instead signed a partnership with the United States and Britain, known as AUKUS, under which Australia will buy nuclear-powered submarines.

A document issued by Mr Macron and his foreign affairs minister, France’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, takes a cool approach to Australia.

vlad

The history lesson by the Sydney Morning Herald as to what is the "Ukraine crisis" is a bit glib and should be taken with a grain of salt. It tries to be "balanced" but it still smells of Western toilet cleaner. Yes we know, we can twist history whichever way we wish — and Putin does it as well. But AN AGREEMENT WAS MADE THAT NATO WOULD NOT MOVE EAST, after the fall of the Berlin wall.

scientists 

It has been a rough 2 weeks for the US science community. After 4 years of bludgeoning by the Trump administration, hope resurged a year ago as a new White House promised to value science. But there have been missteps, the most recent taking place on the heels of another blunder that many saw coming. Eric Lander, who just stepped down as President Biden’s science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), was a prominent research figure with a well-known record of bullying and callous actions. With the notable exception of the 500 Women Scientists organization, the scientific community was embarrassingly silent about Lander’s nomination.

"weldering"

As a jack-of-all-trades and a master-of-many (retired) — and a cartoonist by accident since 1951 — Gus was surprise to see "Scotty of Weldering*" trying his luck at loosing his eyesight while yet wearing another hat... No Scotty, this isn't a hat, but a welding helmet that you place on your face BEFORE trying to make a spark.  

Actually I wasn't surprised. Our idiot Prime Minister, Scott Saucisson, is ready to do anything to show "the boys" that he is capable of doing anything wrongly while being a danger to himself — and probably a danger to anyone around him...

Morrison's politics is the art of bullshit compared to the precision of welding in a straight line... ScoMo performs both really badly. Crappily... Time to give up Scotty... Time...