A well-kept secret in the western part of Rensselaerville. Minimal signage, best approached on Cheese Hill Road from County Route 358 or State Route 145 (Preston Hollow), or from Gulf Road off County Route 353. The area has several hilly, narrow seasonal roads–not for the faint of heart. The multi-use trails aren’t blazed but are indicated by “Motor Vehicle Trail” signs. Recreation in this beautiful forest includes hunting, trapping, fishing, hiking, cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, mountain biking, nature observation, and birdwatching.
Why I’m not particularly sympathic to the Ukraine cause 🇺🇦
War is a terrible thing. The United States shouldn’t be subsiding it through handing over weapons to warring powers, taking sides or sympathies in fights where the United States has no dog in the fight. There really is no moral difference between giving bombs to Russia or Ukraine – they’re just being used to kill people.
War hurts all involved. It’s not just the Ukrainian people who are suffering, so are many ordinary Russians including those trying to flee their country to avoid political prosecution and those are struggling to make ends meet. Not the oligarchs but the ordinary people. War hurts all, especially the common man.
To say nothing of the Americans who are paying for the war with inflation, high gas prices and energy bills, fear of the United States being attacked either in Cyberspace or the real world with nuclear weapons or other methods. Just imagine if potent high levels of dioxins or radioactive materials were spread into public places.
Americans should focus on their homeland first. What’s happening in Ukraine is awful but a lot of ordinary Americans are suffering. Rather than send aid to Ukraine, why aren’t we helping children in Appalachia or the ghetto get healthy meals, decent housing and health care and a good education? Maybe helping our neighbors is boring compared to vivid color images of those suffering from war, but we should care about our neighbors just like people in Ukraine and Russia do themselves during their time of suffering.
I’m just so disappointed that the Washington politicians care more about Ukraine than our own country ⛽
It sucks to the Ukraine families but it’s their problem not ours. The US government shouldn’t be putting the interest of Ukraine over America’s interest. Affordable energy and global stability should be the president’s priority not meddling in a foreign conflict. We need Russian oil and natural gas on the market, and keeping it flowing should be the president’s priority.
Sanctioning Russia is a boneheaded move that only hurts American families.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine began to unfold, Russia’s swift occupation of the Chernobyl reactor complex and the surrounding exclusion zone sparked widespread speculation and concern.[1] The concern was not limited to whether the occupation would cause further radioactive release from Chernobyl;[2] it also included possible Russian military action against other Ukrainian nuclear facilities. These fears were further accelerated when Russian forces shelled and apparently occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complex near Enerhodar, Ukraine.[3] There have also been reports of attacks on a former Radon disposal site near Kyiv.[4]
Journalist Anne Applebaum has been covering the war in Ukraine for The Atlantic. “I don’t think that we will ever again smugly assume that borders in Europe can’t be changed by force,” she says. We talk about why Putin takes Ukrainian democracy as a personal and political threat — and how Stalin created a famine to destroy the Ukrainian national movement in the 1930s.
It’s amazing how passionate the defenders of Ukraine really are. I’m no fan of politics of Ukraine but I certainly don’t agree with Russia coming in and trying to liberate Ukraine’s people either. I think people should live and let live, we don’t have any business butting into other countries business.
Probably a lot of people just see it through the lens of partisan politics – if you are a vivid defender of Ukraine, you are a good Democrat while the Trump supporters are backing Russia. But I also see backing Ukraine as no different than backing the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1980s against the USSR. The enemies of our enemies are not our friends.
I don’t like supporting war either on behalf of Ukraine or Russia. Doesn’t matter if you are supplying weapons to either side, you are still supporting war and human suffering. Ukraine is no saint, they don’t deserve to be invaded but they also shouldn’t be doing business with neo-Nazis or human rights abusers. We should be calling for peace not for arming right wing extremists in Ukraine.
Lately since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia there has been a celebration of all things Ukraine, as if the country was some kind of über perfect nation, a model for the world, hopelessly attacked unprovoked by Russia. The celebrators of Ukraine say any criticism of Ukraine is just Russian propaganda and is entirely unjustified as the hopeless nation is under attack.
But that is ignoring the nation’s history of corruption, instability, bad governance and abuse of individual’s civil liberties and rights, especially of the Russian-speaking population living in the western and southern portions of the country, especially the Crimean peninsula and the heavily populated and Russian-native dominated breakaway providences of Donets’k and Luhas’k. Or how the country’s leaders has regularly worked with the neo-nazi sympathetic Azov Battalion in it’s abuse of the Russian-population.
The truth is Ukraine’s leadership partially brought it’s problems upon itself. Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if not in part for a large sympathetic population of Russian-speaking Ukraine residents who have been abused by their government and want to be liberated. In many ways, Ukraine’s government is a lot like the Taliban — backed by Al Queda and terribly abusive to it’s people.
Now to be clear, Russia’s attack on Ukraine is not justified. Just like the United States’ attack on Afghanistan wasn’t justified either. Other countries shouldn’t be attempting to liberate other countries, no matter how badly they treat their people. That said, other nations shouldn’t be dealing with evil by engaging in commerce, or subsidizing abusive governments.
In contrast, pressure should be put on bad governments, like Russia and Ukraine to enforce human rights protections. Indeed, Ukraine was on the right track by trying to join the European Union and NATO, but they needed to reform how they were governing their people before joining the western community. Russia shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine but neither should have Ukraine abused Russians to extent they have done.
