Chicago Way w/John Kass: Why the grim calculus on Ukraine spells trouble for NATO

Chicago Way w/John Kass (06/13/23): On this episode, John’s younger brother Nicholas Kass, a retired American diplomat with over 30-years of experience -focused on Aegean/Eastern Mediterranean issues, takes a deep look at how we got to a war of attrition in Ukraine and whether or not this instability puts the future of NATO at risk. Plus, what it’s like to spar before martial arts royalty and the story of a father & sons trips to the ‘Mad House on Madison,’ Check out more Kasso at JohnKassNews.com

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Comments 11

  1. “If yer fer it, I’m agin’ it!” This is our political climate today as embodied and portrayed by our two corrupt corporate parties that comprise the duopoly that runs this nation.

    In order to distract us, they appeal to fear, bigotry, racism, biases, anything that will fuel a culture war in order to distract us from the outright theft of our treasure.

    Neither side will come up with a workable compromise on abortion, the economy and manufacturing, housing, immigration, energy, environment, health care, criminal justice, education, none of it. Instead, they prefer grandstand, genuflect, pander, virtue signal and, above all, stoke fear, resentment, rivalries, etc., in order to keep us from getting together and pushing for a more prefect union, as proposed in the US Constitution, that sainted document handed down from the heavens.

    You see, the above issues are all sources of extortion, grift, power and manipulation. These are levers they can pull to fundraiser from those who seek favor and those who seek to manipulate, and those who buy into the absurd idea that any of these pols actually care about the nation and it’s citizens and view us as anything but a money source.

    We’ve all been played by the corporate media, who do the bidding of oligarchs who are only loyal to themselves. They’ve bastardized our political, educational, legal, and justice system to keep us all in fear and distracted from their malfeasance and utter contempt for working people.

    Aegean, Mediterranean issues? Are you kidding me? We’ve got two corrupt parties each seeking to destroy the nation, criminal, evil oligarchs, and a corporate media that needs to be blown up.

    When will the government go after Tucker Carlson? I’m sure it will come as he seems to be letting the actual truth fly now instead of allowing himself to be reigned in by the needs of an oligarch and the shareholders of Fox. If he’s indeed his own man, Carlson is dangerous.

    If either of our two parties would actually stand up for the citizens, the other would have no shot at keeping power. That is what’s truly amusing to watch. It looks like by pushing these two buffoons, having no actual platform to run on and no beliefs to be grounded in, are actually trying to lose.

    Trump vs. Biden? This is Monty Python material. Who else could deserve such choices as a bunch of easily manipulated chumbolones? Those of us on the right and the left fall for the same tired tactics over and over again.

    Slave owner and rapist Thomas Jefferson said, “The people get the government they deserve”. We elect these clowns from the right and the left. We allow them to manipulate the media, control the news cycle, distract us, and push us further and further away from any Christian values we may profess to have.

    Fear is a powerful weapon.

    1. Right on, Robert. Every time I think of responding U ALREADY STATE IT!
      We still live in a war economy! Eisenhower was right. We are being screwed by corporate war mongers. Half of our annual national budget is for selling war products. The Ukraine war is Europe’s problem to solve.
      When Congress negotiated debt ceiling compromise not 1 dollar cut from war budget or tax rates on mega rich that Trump got passed.
      One of these days this house of cards will collapse..

      1. It’s what frustrates me about Kasso. He’s a smart guy and doesn’t ever talk about reform needed to the system to wrest power away from the corporate kleptocracy and neoliberalism that’s chipping away at our freedoms and undermining our national sovereignty.

        Charles Lipson broke it down nicely in Real Clear the other day.

        I’m afraid the host is too much if a ham and egger, with a touch of meatball. Or, he’s following some rightist formula and trying to make a buck.

        After all, he’s got test too.

        Dan Proft?

        Intellectual heft?

        I just don’t see it.

        Just a decent guy, worked over by a corrupt, hypocritical, woke union and newsroom who has an axe to grind.

        Don’t you see the bigger picture?

  2. “Slave owner and rapist Thomas Jefferson said…”.

    Talk about Monty Python material. You ever do your own research or do you just repeat lefty talking points?

    1. Hey H, it’s satire. Jefferson’s work stands for itself and the quote is appropriate for today’s situation as it was back then. I was poking fun at the “leftists”.

      Have you noticed the “right” cancels now too? Bud Light, Chick Fil A, now even Bill Barr it seems because he won’t back the backstabbed he used to work for.

  3. Yes it seems the right also cancels although they’re much more polite about it. Everyone has the right to patronize or where to spend their money. A business owner from California placed a sign during the “Covid Crisis” banning anyone from being served in his Texas restaurant unless they were masked. Groupthink works in California not here in Texas. There were no threats. No vandalism. No violence. People simply didn’t go there. Texas respects the rights of individuals and free thinkers. They simply chose to not go to his restaurant. He went out of business in three months. No one wants to be threatened with fines for patronizing your business. I can spend my money elsewhere. Target claims threats against employees without naming one instance where police were notified. Do you think they took the easy way out? No “Right Wing Maga” folk are outside of any business threatening patrons for spending money there. There have been no reports of looting or destruction by anyone not appreciating the constant push of ideology they don’t agree with. If there is any backlash it is due to the constant corporate pandering and virtue signaling to whatever aggrieved group that we have designated a month to atone for. THE CALL FOR YOU TO GROVEL NEVER STOPS. We are constantly reminded to kneel and beg for forgiveness by the media for our sins. Everyday. For a month. Perhaps corporations and the media can give us all a break and designate a month to honor people who just want to be left alone. That’s right. A month designated to honor NOBODY. If I want to be told when to kneel I’ll go to church. Enough is enough.

    1. 100% agree. I kneel only at church. In the USA, we don’t kneel to “royalty” however designated, whether through birthright, identity, or otherwise. Please, please, please give me a respite from the monthly victim identity virtue signaling!

  4. Ukraine can’t continue, or rebuild, without US assistance so we have leverage on them. What would Russia accept as a deal? Annexing part of Ukraine? ‘Neutral’ republics in the border oblasts? Relief from sanctions [inevitable].
    Their army is shredded and can’t successfully attack NATO even without the threat of Ukraine and the Baltics + [now] the Scandinavian states on their flanks. They’d need an army 2-3 times the size of the one they have – itself probably unsustainable.
    We’ve essentially obtained any advantage the US can get from this conflict. Its continuation only risks the war spreading or escalating – or a collapse of Ukraine or Russia. Both those last are a problem. Any thoughts?

  5. I really enjoyed the podcast and it was interesting hearing your brother’s perspective on Ukraine. As to the hockey game you discussed against Montreal, I was there too. It was in 1971 and the first time Montreal played the Blackhawks since that horrible game 7 in the Stanley Cup finals in which the Hawks lost after leading 2-0 midway through the 2nd period. I would have rather seen the Hawks win the Cup and lose 10-2 but unlike my Dad, I got to see them win 3 Cups in 6 years.

  6. Mr. John Kass – why don’t you and your very well educated, historically literate (unlike the likes of “Jethro” George Dubya Bush) come out and state the obvious?

    This Ukraine vs Russia is just another J Neo Conservative, Military Industrialist $ globalist war, White European brother against brother war pushed by the likes of Ukraine’s thieving J Neo Con, Globalist President (a former vulgar Comedian) President Zelenski and his blood J contact Neo Con war mongers like Max Boot, Bill Kristol, David French, The Jonah Goldberg National Review – the USA J intelligence, DOJ, DOD, Homo, trannie, Homitern – these war mongers here making huge $ along with the Bush, Romney and Cheney families are getting European mostly Christian brothers slaughtered while they all dance to the bank to the Village People’s “In the Navy”, “Macho Man”, “YMCA”.

    Hey John Kass and his brothers. You Greeks lost Constantinople to the Islamic Ottoman Turks 500 years ago – one of the 4 Christian, Western Civilization holiest cities along with Rome, Jerusalem, St. Petersburg Russia. This was a key cause of World War I – as Orthodox Christian internationalists in then Czarist Russia tried to liberate Constantinople, all of Greece and the Balkans and then go for the Holy land. It obviously didn’t work out that way as international J Bolshevik, Communists, international Debt slavery financiers (sound familiar) grabbed St. Petersburg/Leningrad, temporarily grabbed Munich Germany and Bavaria under Communist Kurt Eisner – then after World War II, the Communist/Zionists grabbed Jerusalem/Palestine.

    You Greeks should know that B$ J Bolshevik coup in Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Russian Orthodox Christians were the great protectors of Greeks, Serbs and other Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Lebanese (along with France) Christians.

    Why don’t you come out of the closet and speak these truths? Russians now under Vladimir Putin, before Russians like Russian tennis players Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, the Russian synchronized, sexy Olympic swim team are not our enemies. Anna is now married to Enrique Ingleses and they have a beautiful large family I think living in Miami FL.

    How about negotiating an end to another European brothers war by negotiating some royal, sports celebrity marriages between warring Ukrainians and Russians? That’s how Europe, UK, even some Muslim states, societies used to end their wars.

    I’m a direct descendant of one such royal marriage Catherine the Great (a minor German princess) to the Russian Czar. There was a coup and the Russian made Catherine the Great the Empress of all of Russia, the start of my family was the son of Catherine the Great and Count Orlov who led the coup.

    OK, that was a lot of history in one comment.

    Regards

    John/Jack
    Left Behind in Chicago

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