Simon Tisdall calls for humanity to be wiped out in a nuclear holocaust
Posted by Fionn on May 29, 2023, 9:21 am
in the Fraudian today on this lovely May morning.
Apologies for posting such extremist insanity on the board but this is what passes for polite opinion these days. Nothing in the universe is as important as Zelensky 'winning'. Best bit in bold...
The moment has arrived: Biden must give Ukraine all it needs to win Simon Tisdall
It’s Zelenskiy who is setting the pace diplomatically and strategically. The US must end the prevaricating that may have needlessly prolonged the war.
Foot-dragging, indecision and fearfulness have characterised Joe Biden’s off-screen approach to Ukraine since Russia invaded 15 months ago, compounding doubts about the durability of US support as the 2024 presidential election campaign kicks off. The contrast between Biden and the bold, energetic leadership of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is striking. One man frets about disaster and loss. The other thinks only of winning.
Biden’s latest, belated and incomplete volte-face, over providing US-made F-16 combat jets, illustrates the problem. Zelenskiy has been asking for fighter planes since the war began. Neighbours such as Poland were sympathetic. Yet afraid of provoking a fight with Russia, Biden, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Pentagon officials publicly opposed supplying F-16s until as recently as March.
Zelenskiy wanted the planes because he knew Ukraine was vulnerable from the air. As the invasion unfolded, Ukraine’s people, homes and vital infrastructure were mercilessly pounded by Russian missiles. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has explained how F-16s or similar planes might have supported air defence systems, reduced casualties and protected ground troops. But they were not forthcoming.
Biden and Sullivan also rejected proposals by experienced former US generals for Nato-patrolled “humanitarian no-fly zones”, initially in western Ukraine, to protect civilians from aerial assault. Although admittedly risky, safe havens akin to past operations in Iraq, Bosnia and Libya might have saved many lives and stemmed the refugee exodus. They still could.
Biden’s argument, then as now, is that such interventions, coming on top of large-scale US arms shipments, intelligence-sharing and aid, might be viewed by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, as escalatory. This seems sensible at first glance. Yet it’s way too cautious. Putin and his lickspittle poltroons, Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Lavrov, are adept at playing on western fears. Whenever new forms of assistance for Kyiv are mooted, they spew dire threats, sometimes involving nuclear weapons.
Biden should listen to Antony Blinken. His secretary of state has spotted a pattern over the past year: Kremlin warnings of retaliation and direct confrontation rarely amount to much in practice. The Russians huff and puff – but mostly bluff. Putin is not entirely stupid. He knows he’d never win a fight with Nato, let alone survive nuclear warfare.
Another pattern is apparent: Biden’s chronic indecision. Protracted humming and hawing last year delayed supplies of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Patriot batteries, longer-range high-altitude missiles, and M1 Abrams battle tanks – all of which were eventually delivered. European allies such as Germany used White House waffling to excuse their own foot-dragging. These prevarications may have needlessly prolonged the war.
The F-16 U-turn, confirmed at last weekend’s G7 summit in Hiroshima, paves the way for training Ukrainian pilots and the provision of “fourth-generation” jets by Nato allies. Yet it’s a typical Biden fudge. The US itself has not committed to supply planes. If it does, it’s unclear whether they will be the latest F-16 models equipped with the latest weapons.
A still image from video showing a drone attack on the Kremlin. A still image from video showing a drone attack on the Kremlin – allegedly the work of Ukraine. Photograph: Ostorozhno Novosti/Reuters Unconvincing explanations are offered for US dithering. Officials say they followed a deliberate plan to ensure Ukraine first received all the heavy weaponry and armoured vehicles required for its long-anticipated counter-offensive. “We could certainly have started earlier, but there were much higher priorities, and it’s seen by some as an escalatory act,” said US air force secretary Frank Kendall, referring to F-16 training.
In fact, it was pressure from US allies that proved irresistible when the 50-nation Ukraine Contact Group met at Ramstein air base in Germany last month. US defence secretary Lloyd Austin was urged to think again by old friends such as Britain and the Netherlands, as well as by the eastern Europeans. On his return to Washington, Austin advised Biden to drop his veto.
The American shift on fighter planes is a personal triumph for Zelenskiy. His tireless lobbying bore fruit, once again overcoming Biden’s hesitancy and assuaging, if not dispelling, his misgivings. And it shone a light on yet another emerging pattern: how Ukraine’s president, not America’s risk-averse commander-in-chief or the Nato alliance, is driving the west’s wartime agenda.
Zelenskiy’s leading role was highlighted when he stole the show in Hiroshima, making a dramatic entrance after flying in late from an Arab League summit in Jeddah. Ukraine does not belong to the G7, or to the EU or Nato for that matter. But Zelenskiy has earned a place at the top table. His irrepressible diplomacy, aided by Putin’s blundering, has brought membership of both latter organisations within reach.
As a leader capable of inspiring his people and influencing international opinion, Zelenskiy puts Biden, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Rishi Sunak to shame. He is also changing the strategic conversation in fundamental ways. US policy towards China, especially Taiwan, has hardened tangibly due to Russia’s aggression – but also thanks to Zelenskiy’s success in re-emphasising the inviolability of territorial borders and national sovereignty as globally recognised imperatives.
Ukraine is increasingly setting the pace on the ground, too, independently of its main backers. Incursions into southern Russia by anti-regime militia using US military vehicles, an audacious drone attack on the Kremlin, sabotage, assassinations and mystery explosions in occupied Crimea are a likely prelude to Kyiv’s pivotal counter-offensive. Success is vital if it is to head off Chinese and possible Franco-German pressure this winter to trade land for peace.
All this activity, licit and illicit, is compounding White House jitters as American public support for Ukraine appears to soften. Since neither of his main 2024 Republican challengers, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, is committed to assisting Kyiv, Biden must be braver and do more, faster – for his time, and Ukraine’s, may be running out. Biden describes the war as a seminal struggle between liberty and tyranny. It is. So give Zelenskiy all he needs to win.
Thanks for posting. Come new Nuremberg II (which, as I understand, RF is preparing for) Simon is nearing theat swinging moment. Mercouris had a long segment condemning this insanity. Just when you think that Fraudian cannot descend any lower, then this ..
I can't remember the last time this deranged bastard wrote an article that wasn't calling for more war, more death, never mind the megdeaths, let's get the missiles flying.
Along with Luke the Spook he is a prime candidate for resident Mockingbird at fraudian towers. If he isn't a spook asset mindlessly shovelling out what he's handed by them then he really is out of his mind....no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
There's a point, under stress, the point when it's blatantly obvious that the Ukrainians are irreversably losing the conflict; when the reality of the situation is too harsh to face, so one leaps into the thin air of fantasy and becomes detached from solid ground, gliding, for a moment in the air, which gives the impression that one can fly... the instant, heady and so fleeting before one crashes to the ground. Oh, my God! there was something about that gravity idea all along! When the Guardian liberal openly embraces the fascist death cult.
"...He knows he’d never win a fight with Nato, let alone survive nuclear warfare."
Surely they must know Tisdale is a total crackpot... or are we wrong and they print it because it actually reflects elite "thinking"? If so we are in serious trouble because in that case our masters have deluded themselves into believing that the west has got a special magic immunity to Nuclear war...and that a few million hectares of foreign owned wheat-growing real estate (with irradiated Russian "options" on completion...) is apparently worth the risk of mutually assured destruction.
-I have never known, even in the cold war, a time in which our rulers were so out of touch with reality that they mouth these kinds of insanities so glibly.
Ken said: 'I have never known, even in the cold war, a time in which our rulers were so out of touch with reality that they mouth these kinds of insanities so glibly.'
Pride before a fall? There are surely going to be some consequences in the pipeline for the UK for all this sabre-rattling and escalation, possibly not just the consequence of the economy getting wrecked. Giving the American's yappy attack dog a good hard smack might be just the thing to get the hegemon to back off and cement the new multipolar order (compare Sue C's analogy of the UK as the boorish drunk always picking fights with people). That said, for all the talk of Putin making nuclear threats, I think the real danger will be a first strike, with or without deniability, from the West when it sees its power start to slip away beyond retrieval. I'm sure the graun will find a way to justify it as a perhaps wrong-headed but ultimately well-intentioned humanitarian act.
" I think the real danger will be a first strike, with or without deniability, from the West when it sees its power start to slip away beyond retrieval... I'm sure the graun will find a way to justify it as a perhaps wrong-headed but ultimately well-intentioned humanitarian act."
-If the West attempt a "first strike" there wont be a Guardian newspaper to justify it nor a Guardian reader to read it. It, them and we will mostly be incinerated.
These gung-ho fools apparently dont even consider basic facts of modern deterrence like Russia's extensive submarine fleet armed to the teeth with nuclear ballistic missiles. Even in the case of an apparently "successful" Western powers "first strike" against Russia: which would actually be the greatest act of mass-murder ever committed, the Russian submarine fleet would in short order make it an "unsuccessful first strike" for as Putin has said: 'Why Do We Need a World if Russia Is Not In It?'
I was thinking more of one of those 'tactical' battlefield nukes rather than an all-out assault, but yes, escalation is pretty much guaranteed after something like that, esp with the various automated launch protocols. Doesn't bear thinking about, but it'll be something to guard against if things continue as they have been and the armed-to-the-teeth US empire starts to really plummet into its inevitable death spiral.Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
The idea of contemplating sacrificing most of mainland Europe, or even the Northern Hemipsphere, in a vicious nuclear exchange; and all, apparently over Ukraine... is insane. Tisdall is a wreck intellectually.
Russia has created a large army, specifically to take on NATO and win a conflict, if NATO was ever so foolish to directly enter the war in Ukraine. That's why Russia has such a huge reserve waiting.
That Russia is de facto already fighting NATO in Ukraine and winning, seems to have escaped Tisdall completely.
His remark about Pution and nuclear war is incredibly stupid. No one 'wins' a nuclear war. The dead are the 'fortunate' ones. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, seems to have passed Tisdall by. That the Liberal Fascist Guardian prints this kind of warmongring dangerous nonsense, is a disgrace.
on May 29, 2023, 9:21 am