REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Tuesday, March 11, 2025 11:49
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PAGE 160 of 160

Sunday, March 2, 2025 2:22 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Separate European ammunition initiatives more than make up for faltering American support under pro-Russian President Donald Trump

By David Axe | Mar 1, 2025, 01:44am EST

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/02/28/as-supply-chains-come
-online-ukraines-artillery-blasts-away-firing-millions-of-shells-a-year/

.... The Czech initiative delivered 1.5 million shells last year


No, it didn't. That's a flat out lie.

The Czech initiative was to take a bunch of money and scour the world fir 155 mm shells from anywhere. What they got was 500,000-700,000 shells, many of them of questionable quality since they'd been improperly stored for years or decades.

It didn't gather up nearly as many useful shells as hoped, but it DID raise the cost of shells by a whole lot!



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Sunday, March 2, 2025 2:24 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


So as not to get lost in the shuffle

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you wouldn't see such public scrambling for Trump support if Ukraine was winning the war.

It's not.
It's losing.
In fact, it's already lost. I follow frontline day-to-day on the Ukraine-friendly Military Summary Channel, and for every small advance that Ukraine makes, Russia makes 30 or more. For every piece of Russian weaponry destroyed, Russia destroys 20. For evry successful drone or missile strike into Russia, Russia makes 100 into Ukraine.

It's a matter of logistics and industrial power.

Waaaaay at the beginning of the SMO, I heard this analysis;

The USA has only about 50,000 troops stationed in Europe, and not enough weapons to fight a full scale war. (And Europe's military doesn't add much.)

If the USA and Russia were to get into a full scale war in Ukraine, or anywhere in Europe, the USA would have to convoy troops and weaponry and equipment across the Atlantic on the same scale, or more, as our WWII effort.

The problem is, Russia has a whole fleet of submarines equipped with accurate, powerful anti-ship missiles ...

Logistics-fail

This whole "war in Ukraine" was NEVER supposed to devolve into an attritional military slug-fest. The point was to trigger "sanctions from hell" that were supposed to collapse the Russian economy, piss off the oligarchs, and collapse the Russian government.

When that didn't work, we didn't have a "Plan B" except escalate our military aid to Ukraine, which, for logistical failure and industrial-production deficiency, was never going to work.

Every post, every article that says different is just a pipe dream.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Sunday, March 2, 2025 2:41 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



VDH: 10 Takeaways From The Zelenskyy Blow-Up

Sunday, Mar 02, 2025 - 08:15 AM

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via X,

1. Zelenskyy does not grasp—or deliberately ignores—the bitter truth: those with whom he feels most affinity (Western globalists, the American Left, the Europeans) have little power in 2025 to help him. And those with whom he obviously does not like or seeks to embarrass (cf. his Scranton, Penn. campaign-like visit in September 2024) alone have the power to save him. For his own sake, I hope he is not being “briefed” by the Obama-Clinton-Biden gang to confront Trump, given their interests are not really Ukraine’s as they feign.

2. Zelenskyy acts as if his agendas and ours are identical. So, he keeps insisting that he is fighting for us despite our two-ocean-distance that he mocks. We do have many shared interests with Ukraine, but not all by any means: Trump wants to “reset” with Russia and triangulate it against China. He seeks to avoid a 1962 DEFCON 2-like crisis over a proxy showdown in proximity to a nuclear rival. And he sincerely wants to end the deadlocked Stalingrad slaughterhouse for everyone’s sake.

. The Europeans (and Canada) are now talking loudly of a new muscular antithesis, independent of the U.S. Promises, promises—given that would require Europeans to prune back their social welfare state, frack, use nuclear, stop the green obsessions, and spend 3-5 percent of their GDP on defense. The U.S. does not just pay 16 percent of NATO’s budget but also puts up with asymmetrical tariffs that result in a European Union trade surplus of $160 billion, plays the world cop patrolling sea-lanes and deterring terrorists and rogues states that otherwise might interrupt Europe’s commercial networks abroad, as well as de facto including Europe under a nuclear umbrella of 6,500 nukes.

4. Zelenskyy must know that all of the once deal-stopping issues to peace have been de facto settled: Ukraine is now better armed than most NATO nations, but will not be in NATO; and no president has or will ever supply Ukraine with the armed wherewithal to take back the Donbass and Crimea. So, the only two issues are a) how far will Putin be willing to withdraw to his 2022 borders and b) how will he be deterred? The first is answered by a commercial sector/tripwire, joint Ukrainian-US-Europe resource development corridor in Eastern Ukraine, coupled with a Korea-like DMZ; the second by the fact that Putin unlike his 2008 and 2014 invasions has now lost a million dead and wounded to a Ukraine that will remain thusly armed.

5. What are Zelenskyy’s alternatives without much U.S. help - wait for a return of the Democrats to the White House in four years? Hope for a rearmed Europe? Pray for a Democratic House and a 3rd Vindman-like engineered Trump impeachment? Or swallow his pride, return to the White House, sign the rare-earth minerals deal, invite in the Euros (are they seriously willing to patrol a DMZ?), and hope Trump can warn Putin, as he did successfully between 2017-21, not to dare try it again?

6. If there is a cease fire, a commercial deal, a Euro ground presence, and influx of Western companies into Ukraine, would there be elections? And if so, would Zelenskyy and his party win? And if not, would there be a successor transparent government that would reveal exactly where all the Western financial aid money went?

7. Zelenskyy might see a model in Netanyahu. The Biden Administration was far harder on him than Trump is on Ukraine: suspending arms shipments, demanding cease-fires, prodding for a wartime, bipartisan cabinet, hammering Israel on collateral damage—none of which Westerners have demanded of Zelenskyy. Yet Netanyahu managed a hostile Biden, kept Israel close to its patron, and when visiting was gracious to his host. Netanyahu certainly would never before the global media have interrupted, and berated a host and patron president in the White House.

8. If Ukraine has alienated the U.S. what then is its strategic victory plan? Wait around for more Euros? Hold off an increasingly invigorated Russian military? Cede more territory? What, then, exactly are Zelenskyy’s cards he seems to think are a winning hand?

9. If one views carefully all the 50-minute tape, most of it was going quite well - until Zelenskyy started correcting Vance firstly, and Trump secondly. By Ukraine-splaining to his hosts, and by his gestures, tone, and interruptions, he made it clear that he assumed that Trump was just more of the same compliant, clueless moneybags Biden waxen effigy. And that was naïve for such a supposedly worldly leader.

10. March 2025 is not March 2022, after the heroic saving of Kyiv—but three years and 1.5 million dead and wounded later. Zelenskyy is no longer the international heartthrob with the glamorous entourage. He has postponed elections, outlawed opposition media and parties, suspended habeas corpus and walked out of negotiations when he had an even hand in Spring 2022 and apparently even now when he does not in Spring 2025.

Quo vadis, Volodymyr?


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Sunday, March 2, 2025 11:52 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I finally figured out what that whole "mineral/gas/oil/infrastructure deal" was all about: Trump really didn't want it signed. The terms were so onerous he knew Z wouldn't sign it and it gave Trump the excuse he wanted to publicly "divorce" Zelensky.

That was the culmination of the one-two-three punch the EU was trying to land on Trump to get us fighting Russia directly. First Macron, then Starmer came by to schmooze Trump into backstopping their planned "reassurance forces" in Ukraine. But Trump was too wiley to be cornered, and they were too polite to be kicked out.

But Trump et al knew Z would at some point start harping and criticizing, and when he did they were ready for him.

It was a trap, and Z stepped into it.

And now ...

Quote:
UK, France, Ukraine Agree To Work On Cease-Fire Plan To Present To US
Sunday, Mar 02, 2025 - 10:29 AM

By Jacob Burg of the Epoch Times

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on March 2 that Britain, France, and Ukraine are working on a cease-fire plan to present to the United States as he prepares to host European leaders in discussions to end the Russia–Ukraine war...

“We’ve now agreed that the United Kingdom, along with France and possibly one or two others, will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting, and then we’ll discuss that plan with the United States,” Starmer told the BBC, adding that he and Macron have both spoken to Trump since the latter’s meeting with Zelenskyy.


But they still want "security guarantees" from the USA. Sounds like the same plan they had before: Get us to do their fighting for them.






-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Monday, March 3, 2025 1:34 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


There were also prominent Democrats that Zelensky was talking to before he saw Trump that were coaching him on how to tell Trump to go get fucked without looking to millions of people watching on TV like that was what he was doing.

But he's an actor playing a role on TV. He was an actor and entertainer before he was installed as the Ukrainian President. Supposedly even a comedian, although I don't believe that he was ever in the writers room or practiced improv comedy. He was there to play a role for many years now. And as long as everyone was sticking exactly to the script, he played it very well.

He still thought he was playing that role. He didn't realize that the movie he was working on got cancelled and he's currently unemployed.

Zelensky is the fake President of nothing.


Now that the unelected leaders of the EU are coming right out and pledging a ton of their citizens' money to keep a war going on when all Trump is talking about is peace, he's exposing all of them for what and who they really are.

And it's going to be even worse for them than it was Zelensky. At least with his acting background, Zelensky stood a chance in there. In theory he did, anyhow. Once he let Vance get under his skin so hard that Zelensky mumbled the Ukranian word for bitch under his breath like a little kid getting a detention in school for the entire world to see, it was all over.

These other leaders don't know how to act. And they're so out of touch with what The People want that it didn't even really matter if they did.

They're losing control of everything worldwide right now.


I don't know what's coming. But everything the way we knew it before is going to be going through some changes.

I wish I could say I was hopeful about that fact, but it's been my experience that things just always get worse over time, whether they're changing or they're staying the same as they ever were.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:39 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


American Missiles Defend Ukrainian Cities. But Maybe Not For Much Longer.

As the United States aligns with Russia, Europe scrambles to re-equip Ukrainian air defenses.

By David Axe | Mar 2, 2025, 05:02pm EST

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/02/american-missiles-def
end-ukrainian-cities-but-maybe-not-for-much-longer/

In the aftermath of a cataclysmic press conference in the Oval Office on Friday, during which U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for not thanking them enough for past U.S. aid to Ukraine, Ukraine and its allies are scrambling to replace the most important American-made weapons in the Ukrainian inventory.

Including air-defense missiles. Almost every other class of weapon Ukraine needs, it can build on its own or acquire from its European allies. But among the world’s democracies, the United States has a near—but not total—monopoly on the best surface-to-air missiles and their supporting launchers and radars.

That’s changing. As it must, if Ukraine intends to fight on.

U.S.-designed and -produced SAM batteries—in particular, six Patriot batteries—protect Ukraine’s major cities from the most dangerous Russian missiles, including hypersonic ballistic missiles that are extremely difficult to intercept. “Air defense is one of Ukraine’s most critical needs,” Norwegian Minister of Defence Bjørn Arild Gram said.

But as Trump rages, and aligns the United States with Russia and other autocracies, Ukraine and Europe can’t count on continuing American support. It’s not for no reason that German Chancellor-elect Friedrich Merz has called for Europe to achieve “strategic independence.” And that, just two days after the disastrous White House press conference, Zelensky met with European leaders in London to plot a path forward for Ukraine and its remaining allies.

At the conference, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged $2 billion in financing to supply Ukraine with 5,000 short-range Martlet air-defense missiles, produced by French firm Thales at a factory in Belfast. At the same time, Norwegian firm Kongsberg has announced a plan to pair up with a Ukrainian firm to produce—in Ukraine—surface-to-air missiles for Ukraine’s 13 NASAMS medium-range air-defense batteries.

Neither initiative solves Ukraine’s long-range air-defense problem. The Martlets might hit Russian drones and other smaller aerial threats from five miles away. The NASAMS might hit higher and faster threats from 25 miles away. But Patriots can hit aircraft, drones and all but the fastest-moving ballistic missiles at 60 miles or farther.

Ukraine has been getting missiles for its Patriot batteries in small batches—and promptly firing them. There probably isn’t a large stockpile of Patriot missiles in Ukraine, and they may run out quickly as the Americans withhold aid.

Maybe the U.S. State Department under Trump’s acquiescent Secretary of State Marco Rubio will grant permission for the new Patriot missile plant in Germany, jointly run by U.S. company Raytheon and European missile-maker MBDA, to sell Patriots to Ukraine. But that plant is still getting established and doesn’t expect to complete its first missile until 2027.

Or maybe the long-rumored all-Ukrainian long-range SAM, the SD-300, will finally finish development and enter mass production sometime soon. More likely, European countries will have to equip Ukraine with entirely European air defenses in the class of the Patriot—and promptly.

There’s just one realistic option: the SAMP/T, a “Euro-Patriot” jointly produced by MBDA and Thales’ Eurosam consortium. Ukraine already has two SAMP/T batteries, but will need several more—as well as hundreds of Aster missiles for them to fire.

But Eurosam once needed nearly four years from the signing of a contract to build and deliver a single Aster missile. The consortium has promised to reduce that to 18 months by next year, but even that’s not nearly fast enough given the severity of the transatlantic security crisis.

The French government has been unhappy about Eurosam’s sluggishness. Last fall, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu threatened to use a new French law to force MBDA to stockpile materials in order to speed up missile manufacturing. “It’s clear that if production rates are sometimes too slow, it’s because there’s a temptation to work just-in-time and not have enough stocks of raw materials or components,” Lecornu said.

The pressure has been working. As of a year ago, the French government expected MBDA to deliver the first of a fresh batch of 400 Asters—worth $2.2 billion—by the end of last year. The government in Paris also expected to hand virtually all of the new missiles to Ukraine.

So more Asters are on the way as a backup—and potentially a replacement—for Ukraine’s American-made Patriots. The Ukrainians will need additional SAMP/T launchers and radars, too, of course. But the process of Ukraine de-Americanizing its air defenses has begun. And will surely accelerate.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:40 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


European leaders demonstrated their commitment to supporting Ukraine at a defense summit in London on March 2. European countries announced additional military assistance packages for Ukraine before and during the summit. The UK announced on March 1 a loan worth 2.6 billion pounds (roughly $3.2 billion) to bolster Ukraine's defense backed by profits from frozen Russian assets.[25] The UK stated that the first tranche of the loan will arrive later next week. Zelensky stated that the UK loan will fund Ukrainian weapons production.[26] Starmer announced on March 2 an additional 1.6 billion pound (roughly $2 billion) deal that will allow Ukraine to purchase 5,000 lightweight-multirole missiles from the UK.[27] The Lithuanian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on March 1 that it will allocate 20 million euros (roughly $20.7 million) to purchasing Ukrainian-produced weapons for Ukraine and to develop a joint weapons production facility in Lithuania.[28]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-2-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:41 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Ukrainian artillery fires 5,000 155-millimeter rounds every day but only a few 203-millimeter

Who Can Provide 203-millimeter? Greece and Turkey have stocks of compatible ammunition.

By David Axe | Mar 2, 2025, 06:12pm EST

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/02/ukraines-biggest-guns
-are-begging-for-shells-without-america-who-can-provide-them/

The Ukrainian army went to war in February 2022 with around 100 of its massive 2S7 howitzers in service or in storage. The 14-person crews of the 203-millimeter tracked guns, all belonging to the 45th Artillery Brigade, fought hard in the initial defense of Kyiv—and then fanned out to support Ukrainian troops along the eastern front line.

But after a year or so, the giant guns—Ukraine’s biggest—began occasionally falling silent. And it’s not hard to guess why. Yes, the Russians have knocked out or captured at least seven of the howitzers, but there are plenty of additional guns in storage to make good these losses. No, they withdraw because stocks of their 230-pound shells run low … or run out.

In September, at least one of the 45th Artillery Brigade’s 2S7s was photographed in the 250-square-mile salient Ukrainian forces hold in Kursk Oblast in western Russia. After another apparent operational pause, one or more of the big guns rolled into action with the Khortytsia Operational Strategic Group in eastern Ukraine last month. “Each shot is a clear execution,” the Khortytsia OSG boasted.

Where Ukraine has been getting ammunition for the 2S7s explains the howitzers’ sporadic operation. Ukraine doesn’t produce 203-millimeter shells at its own factories, and neither do many—or any—countries other than Russia.

But the U.S. Army once operated its own 203-millimeter tracked howitzer, and held onto some of the M105 and M106 shells even after these M110 guns disappeared decades ago. The administration of former President Joe Biden transferred 10,000 M105s and M106s to Ukraine in 2023. After that, U.S. warehouses were apparently empty of 203-millimeter shells.

Greece, whose own army still operates M110s, reluctantly stepped up. The Greeks sent thousands of 203-millimeter shells in separate batches in 2023 and 2024—and could presumably send thousands more, given the political will. But among NATO members, Greece has been one of the few reluctant supporters of Ukraine—a dubious honorific the United States under President Donald Trump can now claim.

Greek hesitance could shift the burden of loading Ukraine’s biggest guns to another NATO country that still operates M110s with compatible ammo: Turkey. If the 45th Artillery Brigade’s 2S7s disappear and reappear again, look to Turkey to understand why.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:51 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Can Europe guarantee Ukraine’s security without the US?

European nations are working on security guarantees for Ukraine against Russia with Trump making clear that the US won’t. But can they?

By Stephen Quillen | 3 Mar 2025

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/3/can-europe-guarantee-ukraines-
security-without-the-us

How strong are NATO’s European allies?

NATO’s European members have a combined two million active-duty soldiers, a small section of whom are assigned directly to serve under the alliance’s command. Turkiye and Poland have the most soldiers, with 481,000 and 216,000 respectively, according to NATO’s latest estimates.

France and Germany follow, with 205,000 and 186,000 soldiers. The UK, which has offered to send peacekeeping forces to Ukraine under a potential peace deal, has 138,000 soldiers. NATO itself has a force of about 40,000 throughout its eastern flank – spanning Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

Together, NATO’s European allies have some 7,000 aircraft, 6,800 tanks, 2,170 military ships and six aircraft carriers, according to the Global Firepower defence index.

How strong is Russia’s military?

Currently, Russia has at least 1.32 million active-duty soldiers, hundreds of thousands of whom are fighting in Ukraine. Moscow had previously stationed about 12,000 soldiers in Kaliningrad, its westernmost enclave, sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania. However, most of these forces were reportedly redeployed to Ukraine earlier in the conflict.

In terms of military assets, Russia has 4,292 aircraft, 5,750 tanks, 449 ships and one aircraft carrier, according to Global Firepower.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, March 3, 2025 7:16 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Russia accuses EU of wanting to continue war in Ukraine

By Ivan Diakonov — Monday, 3 March 2025, 05:39

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/03/3/7500982/

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that plans to deploy European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine are part of Western efforts aimed at "inciting" Ukraine to war against Russia. He claimed that the West brought Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to power "at bayonet point" and plans to use peacekeeping forces to support "his regime".

Lavrov once again reiterated Kremlin narratives, claiming that the root causes of the war were NATO’s eastward expansion and the alleged discrimination of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, March 3, 2025 9:39 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Russians strike military training ground

By Stanislav Pohorilov | Monday, 3 March 2025, 10:54

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/03/3/7501014/

Volunteer Serhii Sternenko reported on 2 March that Russian forces struck a training ground with Ukrainian military personnel in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, located 100-130 km from the front line.

Quote from Sternenko: "The strike was adjusted by a Russian reconnaissance UAV. It was not shot down because a full-fledged system is still not in place. The Air Command Skhid (East) currently has the worst indicators for implementing drone-based air defence. Previously, the commander of this command even prohibited training flights with FPV drones. The consequences were already felt – such as the strike on a Patriot system. There was no accountability. None."

Details: Ground Forces Commander Mykhailo Drapatyi stated that he is personally overseeing every step to clarify the incident minute by minute. "Because it hurts me too. Because anger is eating me up," he wrote.

Quote from Drapatyi: "I waited for initial data to avoid speculation, and now I must warn: everyone who made decisions that day, and everyone who failed to make them on time, will be held accountable. No one will hide behind explanations or formal reports."

More details: Drapatyi noted that he expects attempts to obscure the truth under bureaucratic procedures.

Quote from Drapatyi: "But I will not allow that. I have ordered an independent investigation involving military counterintelligence to ensure that no detail is overlooked and that those responsible are identified and cannot 'cover it up'. I will demand the harshest punishment. Those who, after years of war, continue to perform their duties carelessly and formally, those who drag the military into outdated procedures, neglecting their safety and those who assert their authority not in battle but by oppressing their subordinates – all of them disgrace the Armed Forces of Ukraine."

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, March 3, 2025 10:54 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The Post went inside a Ukrainian POW camp for Russian troops – who revealed why they signed up to fight in a war they don’t support

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-post-went-inside-a-ukrainian-
pow-camp-for-russian-troops-who-revealed-why-they-signed-up-to-fight-in-a-war-they-don-t-support/ar-AA1A6lHY

But despite their stoic faces, the prisoners here know they are the “lucky” ones, said Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of POWs spokesman Petro Yatsenko.

For every one Russian troop captured, roughly a thousand more have been killed in the war.

Since the war’s start, Ukrainian soldiers has been killing Russians on a scale of roughly three to one, according to Ukraine. Kyiv is currently taking out about 1,000 Russian fighters each day, Yatsenko said.

The Russian prisoners at the camp know they are not only lucky to have survived the carnage, they also realize the care they are receiving is worlds better than what their Ukrainian counterparts get.

The Russians’ broken bones are examined with state-of-the-art X-ray machines, dental exams and treatments — often the first the Russians have ever had — are performed on them when needed, and new warm clothing, three pairs of shoes and fresh toiletries are doled out upon each Moscow prisoner’s intake.

Their original clothing is collected and washed and stashed away for their eventual release. That’s the ultimate goal of the entire operation: to return the Russian troops to Moscow in exchange for Ukrainian POWs.

Generally, the longer a prisoner has been in Ukraine’s custody, the fatter they are, too.

Though each Russian POW spoke to The Post of wanting to return home, none said they hoped to return to the fight — and that’s exactly where Russia would send them if they are released before the war ends.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 12:01 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Starmer's Summit Gives Birth To A Mouse - It's Stillborn.

A mountain was in labour, uttering immense groans,
and on earth there was very great expectation.
But it gave birth to a mouse. This has been written for you,
who, though you threaten great things, accomplish nothing."


https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/03/starmers-summit-gives-birth-to-a
-mouse-its-stillborn-.html#more

*****

Background, attendees, results

First of all, this was not an "emergency" meeting. It had been planned for 10 days. But the agenda changed. They were apparently to discuss "war plans" assuming that Macron, Starmer, and Zelensky had persuaded Trump into "backstopping" their "peacekeepers". When that fell apart they tried to come up with a Plan B.

Attendees: Kier Starmer
French President Emmanuel Macron,
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen
Italian PM Giorgia Meloni
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau
Polish PM Donald Tusk
Nato Scy Genersl Mark Rutte
Swedish PM Ulf Kristersson
Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre,
Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan
Czech Republic PM Petr Fiala, Danish PM Mette Frederiksen
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Results.... Hard to say. Different people say different things.

Starmer wants "boots on the ground"
Macron wants a no-fly zone.
Ursula wants lots of money

Starmer said he had worked with France and Ukraine on a plan to "end the war" and that the group of leaders — mostly from Europe — had agreed on four things.

Quote:
The steps toward peace would:

* keep aid flowing to Kyiv and maintain economic pressure on Russia to strengthen Ukraine’s hand;
* make sure Ukraine is at the bargaining table and any peace deal must ensure its sovereignty and security; and
* continue to arm Ukraine to deter future invasion.
* Finally, Starmer said they would develop a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine and guarantee the peace.

It is far from certain whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will accept any such plan, which Starmer said would requirestrong U.S. backing. He did not specify what that meant, though he told the BBC before the summit that there were “intense discussions” to get a security guarantee from the U.S.

“If there is to be a deal, if there is to be a stopping of the fighting, then that agreement has to be defended, because the worst of all outcomes is that there is a temporary pause and then Putin comes again,” Starmer said.

. . .

Watling and Kofman, [analysts] call for the deployment of three(!) European brigades to Ukraine...

Ukraine itself has deployed some 100 brigades in the war and Russia about twice that many.

How three inexperienced multinational brigades from western Europe could in any way effect that balance is way beyond me.



So, a ceasefire?
Then a "coalition of the willing [three brigades worth]" with USA guarantees?
Three brigades are mere TRIPWIRES to get the USA fighting Russia if the ceasefire is broken.
With Zelensky's desire to continue fighting, you can bet that he would engineer a break.
Plan B sounds a lot like Plan A.


One definitive thing was accomplished: Ursula von der Leyen got her European Rearmament Fund SLUSH FUND, to be backed by [formerly illegal] Eurobonds, putting every EU nation on the hook, whether they want to contribute or not.

If I find anything more substantive, I'll post it.


-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 12:20 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


A theoretical paper from computer science explains Trump’s and his Trumptards’ behavior.

The Evil Vector
March 3rd, 2025
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8693

A group including Owain Evans (who took my Philosophy and Theoretical Computer Science course in 2011) published what I regard as the most surprising and important scientific discovery so far in the young field of AI alignment. (See also Zvi’s commentary.) Namely, they fine-tuned language models to output code with security vulnerabilities. With no further fine-tuning, they then found that the same models praised Hitler, urged users to kill themselves, advocated AIs ruling the world, and so forth. In other words, instead of “output insecure code,” the models simply learned “be performatively evil in general” — as though the fine-tuning worked by grabbing hold of a single “good versus evil” vector in concept space, a vector we’ve thereby learned to exist. . . .

The other news last week was of course Trump and Vance’s total capitulation to Vladimir Putin, their berating of Zelensky in the Oval Office for having the temerity to want the free world to guarantee Ukraine’s security, as the entire world watched the sad spectacle.

Here’s the thing. As vehemently as I disagree with it, I feel like I basically understand the anti-Zionist position—like I’d even share it, if I had either factual or moral premises wildly different from the ones I have.

Likewise for the anti-abortion position. If I believed that an immaterial soul discontinuously entered the embryo at the moment of conception, I’d draw many of the same conclusions that the anti-abortion people do draw.

I don’t, in any similar way, understand the pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine position that now drives American policy, and nothing I’ve read from Western Putin apologists has helped me. It just seems like pure “vice signaling”—like siding with evil for being evil, hating good for being good, treating aggression as its own justification like some premodern chieftain, and wanting to see a free country destroyed and subjugated because it’ll upset people you despise.

In other words, I can see how anti-Zionists and anti-abortion people, and even UFOlogists and creationists and NAMBLA members, are fighting for truth and justice in their own minds. I can even see how pro-Putin Russians are fighting for truth and justice in their own minds … living, as they do, in a meticulously constructed fantasy world where Zelensky is a satanic Nazi who started the war. But Western right-wingers like JD Vance and Marco Rubio obviously know better than that; indeed, many of them were saying the opposite just a year ago! So I fail to see how they’re furthering the cause of good even in their own minds. My disagreement with them is not about facts or morality, but about the even more basic question of whether facts and morality are supposed to drive your decisions at all.

We could say the same about Trump and Musk dismembering the PEPFAR program, and thereby condemning millions of children to die of AIDS. Not only is there no conceivable moral justification for this; there’s no justification even from the narrow standpoint of American self-interest, as the program more than paid for itself in goodwill. Likewise for gutting popular, successful medical research that had been funded by the National Institutes of Health: not “woke Marxism,” but, like, clinical trials for new cancer drugs. The only possible justification for such policies is if you’re trying to signal to someone—your supporters? your enemies? yourself?—just how callous and evil you can be. As they say, “the cruelty is the point.”

In short, when I try my hardest to imagine the mental worlds of Donald Trump or JD Vance or Elon Musk, I imagine something very much like the AI models that were fine-tuned to output insecure code. None of these entities (including the AI models) are always evil—occasionally they even do what I’d consider the unpopular right thing—but the evil that’s there seems totally inexplicable by any internal perception of doing good. It’s as though, by pushing extremely hard on a single issue (birtherism? gender transition for minors?), someone inadvertently flipped the signs of these men’s good vs. evil vectors. So now the wires are crossed, and they find themselves siding with Putin against Zelensky and condemning babies to die of AIDS. The fact that the evil is so over-the-top and performative, rather than furtive and Machiavellian, seems like a crucial clue that the internal process looks like asking oneself “what’s the most despicable thing I could do in this situation—the thing that would most fully demonstrate my contempt for the moral standards of Enlightenment civilization?,” and then doing that thing.

Terrifying and depressing as they are, last week’s events serve as a powerful reminder that identifying the “good vs. evil” direction in concept space is only a first step. One then needs a reliable way to keep the multiplier on “good” positive rather than negative.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 1:27 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Is there anything in the world you even think about anymore other than Donald Trump?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 4:00 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SECOND's brain is fossilized. Just like the rest of him.

-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 6:29 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


drugs or vodka?

Vladimir Solovyov says Russia will conquer Britain, Germany and France


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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 6:41 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Is there anything in the world you even think about anymore other than Donald Trump?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I've been thinking along the same lines as God in the story of Noah's Ark and the Flood, that the world would be much improved if Trumptards and Russians were drowned. Alternatively, hitting Trumptards and Russians in the face with a shotgun blast could be substituted for a flood. Floods are very messy to cleanup afterwards. Fatal head-wounds are less so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_flood_narrative#Summary

See "The Evil Vector"
March 3rd, 2025
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8693 for the concept of hitting the reset button on Trumptards, Russians and Artificial General Intelligence when they "run amok".

Ukrainian military intelligence indicated that about 620,000 Russian soldiers are operating in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast, an increase of about 40,000 personnel compared to late 2024. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Head Major General Vadym Skibitskyi stated in an interview with RBK-Ukraine published on March 3 that there are 620,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast, about 200,000 of whom are actively fighting on the frontline.[1] Skibitskyi stated that there are roughly 35,000 additional Rosgvardia troops protecting rear areas and that these personnel can become a second line of defense if necessary. Skibitskyi stated in November 2024 there were about 580,000 Russian soldiers operating against Ukraine (presumably both within Ukraine and in Kursk Oblast), and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated in January 2025 that the total Russian force grouping in Ukraine was about 600,000 troops.[2]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-3-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 5:03 PM

THG


T

EU Defense Budget SKYROCKETS to Record Breaking Numbers!






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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 6:59 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Ukraine has significantly expanded its defense industrial production capabilities throughout the war in an effort to eventually meet its military needs independently, but Ukraine's ability to become self-sufficient in the long-term is contingent on continued support from partner states in the short- and medium-term. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stated on March 4 that Ukraine currently domestically produces about 33 percent of the weapons Ukraine uses on the battlefield and currently produces $35 billion worth of weapons and ammunition annually — exceeding the production capabilities of many of Ukraine's partners.[18] Shmyhal stated that Ukraine should be able to meet at least 50 percent of its total military needs by the end of 2025, with Ukraine meeting all of its artillery system needs and much of its 80mm and 120mm mortar shell and 105mm, 122mm, and 155mm artillery shell requirements. Shmyhal stated that Ukraine has significantly increased its defense production since 2023 - tripling its artillery production, increasing its ammunition production by a factor of 2.5, doubling its production of anti-tank weapons, and increasing its production of armored personnel carriers fivefold. Shmyhal emphasized that Ukraine currently domestically produces nearly all of the air-, sea-, and ground-based drones that Ukrainian forces use in combat operations. Shmyhal previously stated that Ukraine increased its drone production tenfold in 2024 and invested an additional 7.9 billion hryvnia (about $189 million) to boost drone production in 2025.[19] Shmyhal stated that Ukrainian state-owned defense enterprise manager Ukroboronprom has grown to become one of the 50 most productive defense companies in the world.[20] Shmyhal credited European investments in the Ukrainian defense industry for much of Ukraine's defense industrial growth, especially the Danish initiative for joint defense production initiatives.[21] Shmyhal stated that Ukraine attracted nearly $1 billion in European defense investments in 2024, including $351 million from Denmark, $436 million from the EU, $67 million from the UK, and $45 million from Norway. Shmyhal stated that Ukraine has created a number of joint defense enterprises with European states, especially with the UK and Germany. Shmyhal stated that at least three international defense companies have provided licenses for Ukraine to start producing NATO- and EU-standard weapons within Ukraine. Ukraine has dramatically built out its defense industrial base (DIB) since 2023 but still requires investments and time to reach full self-sufficiency.[22] ISW continues to assess that Ukraine's prospects for sustaining its military needs in the future with limited foreign assistance are excellent.[23] Ukraine's DIB expansion continues to rely on monetary investment from partner states, and continued military assistance from partners gives Ukraine the time to continue to develop its DIB towards self-sufficiency.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-4-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 1:41 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Russia Is Not Winning

At the current rate, Russia will control all of Ukraine in about 118 years.

By Graeme Wood | March 5, 2025, 7 AM ET

Last year, Russia made slow progress in Ukraine: Tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Russian soldiers were killed or wounded, and five whole mechanized divisions were lost, in exchange for Ukrainian territory slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. At that rate, Russia will control all of Ukraine in about 118 years. Keep that figure in mind when you hear President Donald Trump or Vice President J. D. Vance declare, as Trump did last week at their Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that Ukraine is “not winning” the war and that it is in “a very bad position.” Russia’s position is also “bad”—and perhaps more agonizing, because Russians taste the extra bitterness that comes with the knowledge that they could, in February 2022, have just stayed home and not started the war. Both sides have lost, which means that declaring only one side the loser is a peculiar choice.

I spoke with two people who have watched the conflict during the past three years to find out which country has time on its side. George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War has analyzed the Russian position and accordingly updated ISW’s map of the state of the conflict. Andrey Liscovich manages a charity, the Ukraine Defense Fund, that has supplied nonlethal aid to Ukraine since 2022, on the theory (borne out during the past year) that the war will be won not by who can produce the most artillery shells but by who can most efficiently outfit their troops with items such as battery packs and radio kits available from Best Buy and RadioShack. He has visited the front lines repeatedly from the Ukrainian side.

Barros told me that to measure recent Russian advances, one must “break out the calipers,” because the war has slowed to the point that both sides are taking and losing just a few square miles of empty land at a time. “[Russia is] not slogging through an urban environment,” he said. “These are largely unpopulated steppes, with a handful of villages and only two operationally significant towns last year. That’s all they have to show for it.” The material cost of this territory of dubious value has been shocking. In one of the main areas of operation in Donetsk, Barros said, Russia “lost about 500 tanks and 1,000 armored personnel carriers—roughly a division for every 10 klicks of movement.” He told me that Russia has recently been observed using pack mules in lieu of mechanized equipment.

The United States military has protocols for the modern use of mules in jungles and in rugged, craggy terrain. To use them in the flatlands of eastern Ukraine suggests desperation. “The Russians have been burning through their Soviet-era stocks,” Barros told me. He said that Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s tank factory, and Tula, its ammunition factory, have been working without breaks since the war broke out. Tanks and other resources can be seen in satellite imagery, and the motor pools full of old ones empty out as they get shipped to the battlefield and obliterated. “Assuming they don’t get a massive vehicle injection from the North Koreans or the Chinese, the Russians are on course to run critically low in the next 12 to 18 months,” Barros said. He noted that Russia has covered storage that could conceal more vehicles. But most signs point to eventual depletion—conditional, of course, on Ukraine continuing to receive military aid at the pace it had been before Trump cut it off this week.

These signs would be more welcome for the Ukrainians if the mode of killing hadn’t shifted in the past year, Liscovich told me. “The war has qualitatively changed since 2022,” he said. In the first month of the conflict, Ukraine became a hunting ground in which Ukrainians armed with Javelin missile systems destroyed Russian armored columns. But then the war became an artillery battle in which each side lobbed shells at the other. The issue that worried Ukraine’s allies was the artillery-shell gap: They were being used faster than factories in Scranton and Germany and Slovakia could replace them. “You used to hear these complaints about not having enough 155-millimeter shells,” Liscovich said. “Now it’s primarily a drone war, and you don’t hear those complaints about shells anymore.”

Most of the frontline kills are now attributable to drones. And Russia can build new drones much faster than it can build tanks. Since the beginning of the war, Liscovich said, Ukraine has had the mother of invention on its side: By necessity, it came up before Russia did with clever new ways to use drones. But Russia then noticed the innovations, developed countermeasures, and deployed drones of its own, using the new capability but at a greater scale than its much smaller enemy. None of this iterative loop of deadly innovation involves tanks. “Heavy equipment gets taken out,” Liscovich told me. “Most of [Russia’s] advances are infantry advances. Drones are harder to use against dispersed, small groups.” The main countermeasure is mortar fire, which is cheap and mobile—again, not a serious constraint that requires around-the-clock shifts in Russian factories.

The total number of Russians and Ukrainians killed in the war remains in dispute among experts, although all agree that the numbers are unsustainable on both sides, even over the course of a war much shorter than the 118 years it would take Russia to completely control Ukraine. Earlier this year, Trump himself estimated that Russia has lost 1 million troops (a rate that would leave Russia, whose current population is 143 million, empty before its forces can reach Lviv). Most others estimate a much lower number; Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrskyi, estimated that Russia suffered 427,000 casualties last year (including but not limited to deaths), a number that is surely inflated.

Barros told me that Russia’s ability to recruit new personnel is “completely busted.” Vladimir Putin has relied on mercenary and convict soldiers, combined with lavish bonuses for poor Russians who volunteer to try their luck against killer Ukrainian robots on the steppe. Barros described a delicate social contract between Putin and his citizens: “The contract is: I don’t force you to go fight in Ukraine. I pay you to go fight in Ukraine.” Russian oblasts are responsible for recruitment, and Samara Oblast has offered a sign-up bonus of $36,000, “not including the other benefits and entitlements in your salary,” Barros said. This is the equivalent of two or three years’ pay, handed over upon enlistment.

In a poor country like Russia, handing out fistfuls of rubles is the very definition of desperation. Russia has inflation at rates approaching 20 percent (officially, they are about 9 percent), and it has been sucking its own sovereign wealth fund dry. But Ukraine is poor, too, and has man-power issues to match Russia’s. Liscovich pointed out that Russia’s population is three times Ukraine’s and that when the money runs out, its population can be forced to serve—which means it would be in roughly the same demoralized state that Ukraine is in right now. “The Russians are more fatalistic [than the Ukrainians] about joining the military,” Liscovich told me. “They’re far, far more obedient when it comes to state action.”

The very fact that there is a debate to be had about which country has the advantage in this war shows a remarkable inversion in expectation. Early on, even after Ukraine’s initial Javelin-enabled repulsion of the first wave of Russian invasion, pessimists noted that time favored Russia, the larger and richer of the two countries, and the one whose military had more experience with slow, grinding wars. “In 2022, all the analysts assumed that Putin and Russia would be better equipped to weather a long-term, protracted war against a smaller Ukraine,” Barros said. “That assumption has been invalidated. Protracting the conflict now actually hurts the Russians more than the Ukrainians.”

At their most humane, Trump’s Russia-Ukraine statements focus on the daily massacre afflicting both sides. “The big thing is the number of soldiers,” he said at the beginning of the Zelensky meeting, before it went sour. “We’re losing a lot of soldiers, and we want to see it stop.” The war will end in a deal. Why not a deal now rather than a deal in a year? A deal now might spare 1 million Russians and Ukrainians. But this macabre calculation is more complicated when one considers that Ukraine has been fighting for independence and survival. If these goals are now beyond its reach, then prompt surrender, or whatever Trump and Putin propose, is the only option. But Ukraine seems to think that if Russia seizes its territory at the current rate, Russia will eventually run out of men, tanks, money, and the will to fight. If Ukraine is in that position—having to hold out, and suffer and inflict more death and destruction for another year or more—then its position is unenviable, but it is not a losing one.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 7:15 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The Simple Explanation for Why Trump Turned Against Ukraine

The president’s defenders ignore one possibility: He just likes Putin.

By Jonathan Chait | March 5, 2025, 9:45 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/republican-theori
es-foreign-policy/681921/

Donald Trump’s highly public schism with Volodymyr Zelensky has yielded the kind of doublethink that is common in personality cults. Those believers who approve of the policy hail the great leader’s strategic genius. And those who oppose it cast the blame elsewhere, constructing ever more elaborate accounts of Trump’s strategy to avoid acknowledging the obvious: Trump has an affinity for Vladimir Putin.

In the first category, you can find members of the so-called national-conservative movement, who have long rationalized Russia’s aggression and opposed American support for Ukraine. “Trump understands what establishment figures do not: that U.S. voters are no longer willing to allow Washington to write checks on the American people’s account,” the national-conservative intellectual Rod Dreher wrote exultantly after Zelensky’s Oval Office browbeating. Christopher Caldwell, another natcon writer, argued in The Free Press that Trump’s posture toward Ukraine “is a deeper and more historically grounded view than the one that prevailed in the Biden administration,” rejecting Joe Biden’s view of the war as a “barbaric” invasion. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, Trump’s admirers include the Russian government itself, which has congratulated him for “rapidly changing foreign policy configurations,” which “largely coincides with our vision.”)

In the second category, you have Trump defenders who support Ukraine, and reacted to Friday’s events with dismay. To resolve their cognitive dissonance, or perhaps to retain their influence, they do not blame Trump for initiating the breach with Zelensky. Instead, they blame Zelensky.

The Ukrainian president’s responsibility for the crisis includes such actions as failing to dress properly. “I mean, all Zelensky had to do today was put on a tie, show up, smile, say ‘Thank you,’ sign the papers, and have lunch,” complained Scott Jennings, who had reportedly been considered for White House spokesperson and performs essentially the same function for CNN. “That’s it. And he couldn’t do that.”

Ah yes, the tie. Apparently Trump and his supporters care deeply about the tie. If we take this line of argument seriously, it posits that the United States reversed its foreign policy based on an outfit choice—and this argument is being made as a defense of Trump’s judgment.

A related and only slightly less damning defense is that Zelensky erred by arguing with Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance when they presented him with a series of pro-Russian positions during their photo op. Trump insisted, falsely, that security guarantees for Ukraine were unnecessary because Putin would never violate one. (He praised Putin’s character and spoke wistfully of how the two men had to endure the “Russia hoax” together.) “Why on earth did Zelensky choose to fact-check Trump in front of the entire world rather than debate the wisdom of a ceasefire behind closed doors?” demands conservative columnist Marc Thiessen, a foreign-policy hawk who has sought to steer Trump toward his own view.

This viewpoint has influenced some mainstream media coverage of the fateful White House meeting. A recent Politico story filled with inside-Trump-world reporting, for example, suggests that Trump was eager to cut a deal, if only Zelensky had flattered him sufficiently: The Ukrainian president “infuriated Trump last week with his public suggestion he was swallowing Putin’s disinformation—a response to Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine started the war.” Or perhaps the source of Trump’s split with Ukraine is revealed by him regurgitating Russian propaganda blaming Ukraine for the war, rather than Zelensky correcting him.

Trump may be vain and childish, but he does have some substantive beliefs. Lindsey Graham, another Trump-worshipping Republican hawk, told The New York Times that he had warned Zelensky before the meeting, “Don’t take the bait,” and publicly criticized the Ukrainian president for not following his advice. But how did Graham know there would be bait? Perhaps because Trump has spent years expressing sympathy for Russia and contempt for its enemies, including Ukraine and the Western alliance.

Trump’s Russophilia used to stand almost unique within the Republican Party. But he has brought large segments of the right around to his position, and many of them have turned Zelensky into a hate figure. The enthusiastically anti-Ukraine conservatives are happy to credit Trump for reversing the Biden administration’s support for Kyiv. Say what you want about the tenets of national conservatism; at least it’s an ethos. The more traditionally anti-Russian conservatives, by contrast, need to find a way to disagree with the outcome of the Oval Office meeting without seeming to criticize Trump. That is how authoritarian political cultures operate: The only permissible way to express disapproval of the leader’s choices is to pretend they were someone else’s.

This leads to absurd logical contortions. Anti-Russia conservatives treat their putative objections to Zelenky’s conduct as legitimate standards that he could have met, as if this is a game with fixed rules. Presented with the obvious objection — that Elon Musk had dressed even more slovenly in the Oval Office and a Cabinet meeting just a few days before — the National Review editor in chief, Rich Lowry, retorted, “When Zelensky is named the head of DOGE, he can do the same and get away with it.” Yet no principle of decorum says that a head of state can’t wear a military uniform in the White House but “the head of DOGE” can wear a T-shirt and baseball cap. Everything about this solemn rule is made up, including the position “head of DOGE.” If you have ever watched a school bully, you may recall that accusing their victim of violating some rule or standard, and then flouting the standard themselves, is part of the abuse, a way of signaling that they hold all the power.

Trump’s base was poised to explode at Zelensky — for his shirt, for his alleged lack of gratitude — because Trump has signaled that he is their enemy. In their desperation, anti-Russian conservatives have reversed the obvious causation.

During Trump’s first term, the theory that he loved Putin was complicated by his inability to overcome resistance by bureaucrats and his own hawkish advisers. This created room for analysts to accept explanations for Trump’s stance other than simple affinity for Putin. Now, however, he is able to quickly carry out such steps as cutting off weapons to Ukraine without sneaking around or being slow-walked by mid-level staff. Meanwhile, he publicly blames Ukraine for the ongoing war and accuses Zelensky of being a dictator who spreads hatred against Russia. The theory that Trump trusts and wants to help Putin can parsimoniously explain his rhetoric and actions.

It is the alternative theory, that Trump is playing a clever geopolitical game, that relies on whispered conversations and intricate double-meaning interpretations of his public positions. A Wall Street Journal reporter deduces from “nearly a year of Trumpworld chatter and (sometimes secret) talks with foreign officials” that Trump’s real strategy is to “split Russia from China” and that “there is no way the US will sell Ukraine down the river.” In some foreign-policy circles, analyses discerning a far-reaching plan from wisps of buried evidence are considered sophisticated, while positing that Trump simply believes the things he says almost daily on camera is considered slightly nutty.

Whatever you want to say about the anti-Ukraine right’s moral posture, it is at least able to grasp the reality of Trump’s position: He wants to leave Ukraine at Putin’s mercy. The anti-Russia Trumpers, with their missing-tie theory of Trump’s Russia strategy, and their convoluted efforts to explain away his plain wishes, are the ones who have drifted into the realm of fantasy.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 11:23 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


They're on the other side

By Matthew Yglesias / Mar 6, 2025 at 5:05 AM

https://www.slowboring.com/p/theyre-on-the-other-side

Back in March of 2022, I wrote a piece titled “Europe Needs To Take Primary Responsibility for Its Own Defense.”

I believed then, as I believe now, that Russia is clearly the villain in the Ukraine war, and that Putin is driven more by narratives of Russian nationalism than sober-minded assessments of Russian national interest.

My rooting interest is and was in Ukrainian victory and Russian retreat. But I remember Obama-era disputes about Ukraine policy, back when Democrats were doves and Republicans were hawks, and I always sympathized with Obama’s reluctance to go all-in on assisting Ukraine. America’s European allies are much stronger economically and militarily than Russia, while our Asian allies are much weaker economically and militarily than China. Obama wanted to execute a “pivot to Asia,” and that required handing off some responsibilities to Europe.

In the emergency circumstances of 2022, that didn’t mean refusing to help Ukraine. But I thought that we should have articulated a clearer plan for large amounts of short-term aid that would taper, encouraging Europe to ramp up their own support for Ukraine. The Biden administration, it seemed to me, was always a little bit too proud to be playing an essential role in Ukraine. It bolstered a sense of the United States as “the indispensable nation,” while in practice perpetuating European underperformance as a strategic ally.

Donald Trump does not like to communicate his policy ideas in a clear and consistent manner. In The Art of the Deal, he writes that this illegibility is a deliberate strategy, one he believes keeps opponents off balance.

On Ukraine, in theory, this deliberate ambiguity leaves open the possibility that Trump’s views on Russia are aligned with mine: He’s willing to deliver tough love where Biden wasn’t, forcing European countries to engage in less NATO-induced free riding and make more of a concrete contribution to the defense of the west.

Some continue to hold to that line, even in the wake of the disastrous Oval Office meeting with Zelenskyy — a meeting that to my eyes was clearly a set-up. Immediately following the blow up, a bunch of domestic-focused American conservatives on my timeline began talking about US versus European defense spending and Americans subsidizing the European welfare state. But as Tanner Greer writes, it’s extremely telling that the Trump/Musk/Vance power trio actually running American foreign policy rarely, if ever, articulates this viewpoint. They characterize Zelenskyy as a bad actor, not as a sympathetic one who they are simply unwilling to grant as many favors as he would like.

T. Greer @SchoLars_Stage
The telling thing in all these arguments is that the one I line I found personally most convincing—our resources are limited, and we simply cannot afford to do this and China at the same time—is the least articulated.
3:04 PM • Mar 2, 2025
https://x.com/Scholars_Stage/status/1896305514650521732

When faced with Franco-British efforts to put something together to support Ukraine, the Trump administration didn’t establish a timeline for them to implement this. They announced an immediate cessation of US military assistance, and Vance went on television to belittle European efforts. It’s the difference between me refusing to shovel my neighbor’s sidewalk because, even though I’m annoyed by the snow, I think it’s his responsibility, and me refusing to lend him a shovel because I’m an asshole.

But what I think has been even more telling and significant in this regard is that both Musk and Vance went out of their way to try to intervene in the recent German election on behalf of the far-right Alliance for Germany (AfD), a pro-Russian political party that opposed German re-armament.

The Trumpiest port in a storm

AfD is the most MAGA-coded party in the German political landscape.

They’ve gained support over the years for positions like their hard line against generous fiscal treatment of southern European countries during the debt crisis, skepticism of Covid restrictions, and other nationalistic and Trumpy stands. Most of all, they have benefitted from anti-immigration politics.

This is a party that, among other things, has ancestral roots in pro-Nazi politics. But when I met AfD voters during the 2017 German federal election campaign — a race in which they more than doubled their support — they were not Nazis. The people I spoke to at that time were older folks who’d voted for the traditional center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the past, and they were angry about Angela Merkel opening the doors to large numbers of refugees from Syria.

As context, it’s important to understand that traditional German immigration policy was extremely restrictive — much more restrictive than American policy.

The longstanding policy approach was that the children of legal immigrants from Turkey (and elsewhere, but mostly Turkey) who were born and raised on German soil were not German citizens by right and faced substantial barriers to naturalization. That stance is way to the right of any of Donald Trump’s proposals. Gerhard Schröder won election in 1998 with a coalition government between his Social Democrats and the Green Party. This was, essentially, the most left-wing government in German history. They came into office promising to make it much easier for these lifelong residents of Germany to secure citizenship, but ultimately had to water down their commitments to get the policy changed.

By the time Angela Merkel took office, the German right was no longer promising to reverse these citizenship changes. But the idea of a CDU-led government liberalizing immigration policy was shocking to people who had voted for Helmut Kohl and other pre-Merkel center-right politicians. Merkel’s habit of occasionally linking her more welcoming refugee policy to a sense of German historical guilt had the unfortunate side effect of legitimizing the anti-anti-Nazi stand of AfD, suggesting that only by challenging the historical guilt narrative could German voters get policies that were tough on crime and irregular immigration.

My AfD acquaintances aside, the party’s two biggest voting bases are in the economically depressed regions of the former East Germany and among young men. So sociologically, ideologically, and conceptually, it’s very much a political party that mirrors the MAGA movement, and the transatlantic resonance is understandable.

But one of the most important parallels between AfD and MAGA is that AfD received support from Russian propaganda media and opposed support for Ukraine.

Boosting AfD makes burden-sharing harder

The upshot of this is that even though AfD is the most MAGA-like force in German politics, them winning votes make it harder rather than easier to secure the nominal policy objective of getting Europe to contribute more to western defense.

Some of this just comes down to Russia’s direct influence over AfD. But some of it is driven by asymmetrical aspects of US versus European politics.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 6:10 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Ukrainian drones are now responsible for 85 percent of the destruction inflicted on Russian forces, up from 50 percent last summer. – Mar 06 2025

https://cdsdailybrief.substack.com/p/russias-war-on-ukraine-060325

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 6:11 AM

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a press conference on March 6 that any peace agreement must account for the alleged "root causes" of the war in Ukraine, including guarantees that NATO will stop expanding, trying to "swallow" Ukraine, and developing threats against Russia.[9] Lavrov claimed that US President Donald Trump "understands" the need to eliminate these "root causes" while European countries are attempting to ignore the "root causes."

Lavrov previously identified the "root causes" of the war as NATO's alleged violation of obligations not to expand eastward and the Ukrainian government's alleged discrimination against ethnic Russians and Russian language, media, and culture in Ukraine.[10] Russian officials often invoke the concept of "root causes" to allude to their demands for NATO to abandon its open-door policy and to blame the West and Ukraine for Putin's decision to invade Ukraine.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-6-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 2:05 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Russia Is Losing the War of Attrition

Ukraine is not on the verge of collapse. That makes the Trump administration’s decisions particularly shortsighted and tragic.

By Phillips Payson O’Brien and Eliot A. Cohen | March 7, 2025, 11:33 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/03/russia-ukrai
ne-war-status/681963/

Ukraine has no “cards” according to President Donald Trump, while Russia has many. Vice President J. D. Vance has asserted that superior Russian firepower and manpower mean that the war can end only in a Russian victory. Other supposedly realistic commentators agree, arguing that Russia’s advantages are insurmountable.

As military historians, we think this a misreading not only of what is happening on the ground, but of how wars unfold—and, in particular, of the difference between attritional campaigns and those built on maneuver. The Luftwaffe and the German submarine force during World War II, to take just two examples, were defeated not by a single blow, but by a technologically advanced, tactically and operationally sophisticated approach that rendered those organizations, large as they were, unable to function effectively. In the same vein, the advances of the German army in the spring of 1918 concealed the underlying weakness in that military produced by attrition, which ultimately doomed the Kaiser’s army and the regime for which it fought.

We have been here before. Prior to the war, the intelligence community, political leaders, and many students of the Russian military concluded that Russia would easily overrun Ukraine militarily—that Kyiv would fall in a few days and that Ukraine itself could be conquered in weeks. We should consider that failure as we assess the certainty of Vance and those who think like him.

Wars are rarely won so decisively, because attrition is not only a condition of war, but a strategic choice. Smaller powers can, through the intelligent application of attrition, succeed in advancing their own goals. This is particularly true if, like Ukraine, they can exploit technological change and get the most from outside support and allies. Vietnam was outgunned by the United States, as the American colonies were once outgunned by the British empire. Iranian forces outnumbered those of Iraq during a long and brutal war in the 1980s, and lost nonetheless.

The pessimistic analysis has not paid nearly enough attention to the weak underpinnings of Russian military power. Russia’s economy, as often noted, is struggling with interest rates that have topped 20 percent amid soaring inflation, and with manpower shortages made critical by the war. Its condition is dire, as one study noted, partly because the military budget amounts to 40 percent of all public spending, and partly because oil revenue is taking a hit from lower prices, Ukrainian attacks, and tightening sanctions.

Russian weakness is particularly visible in the army. One report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated that in 2024 alone, the Russians lost 1,400 main battle tanks, and more than 3,700 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. At the same time, Russian production of such vehicles, including refurbished units, totaled just 4,300, not enough to make up for its losses. In desperation, Russia has turned to restoring its oldest and least effective combat vehicles, many of Soviet vintage. One recent study by Chatham House asserts that the Russian military-industrial complex is “ill adapted to deal with the effects of a prolonged war against Ukraine or to achieve a sustainable future in terms of production, innovation and development.”

The same holds true for Russian manpower. The number of soldiers that the Russians were able to maintain at the front seemed to peak in the spring and summer of 2024, above 650,000. By the end of the year, it had fallen closer to 600,000, despite the extraordinary bonuses that the Russian government offers new recruits, amounting to about two and a half times the average annual Russian salary in 2023.

Russian casualties have mounted steadily. According to the British Ministry of Defence, in December 2022, they stood at roughly 500 a day; in December 2023, at just under 1,000; and in December 2024, at more than 1,500. In 2024 alone, Russia suffered nearly 430,000 killed and wounded, compared with just over 250,000 in 2023.

North Korean reinforcements have attracted attention in the press, but these troops, numbering in the tens of thousands at most, cannot make up for the fundamental deficiencies in Russian manpower. Moreover, the high rates of attrition that the Russians have suffered—roughly the same as the number of personnel mobilized each year—mean that the Russian military has not been able to reconstitute. It is more and more a primitive force, poorly trained and led, driven forward by fear alone.

The pause in American aid last year hurt Ukraine. Now, however, the stockpiles seem to be in better shape for most types of weaponry. Ukraine’s own production has reached impressive levels in certain vital categories, particularly but not exclusively unmanned aerial vehicles. In 2024, the Ukrainian military received over 1.2 million different Ukrainian-produced UAVs—two orders of magnitude more than Ukraine possessed, let alone produced, at the beginning of the war. Ukrainian production rates are still rising; it aims to produce 4 million drones this year alone.

UAVs are crucial because they have replaced artillery as the most effective system on the field of battle. By one estimate, UAVs now cause 70 percent of Russian losses. Ukraine’s robust defense industry is innovating more quickly and effectively than that of Russia and its allies.

Attritional wars take place on many fronts. For example, it is true that Russia has increased its attacks on Ukrainian industry and civilian targets, as well as energy infrastructure. Ukrainian air defenses, however, have been remarkably successful in neutralizing the large majority of those attacks, which is why Ukrainian civilian casualties have been decreasing. Ukraine has, moreover, been on the offensive as well. It has produced some 6,000 longer-range heavy UAVs, which it has used to attack deep into Russia, decreasing Russian oil production. Remarkably, Ukraine appears to be matching the rate at which Russia is producing its own similar drone, the Shahed, which is being built on license from Iran.

Despite American reluctance to provide further aid, Ukraine’s European friends can make a significant difference even though they cannot simply replace what the U.S. has been providing. They do not, for instance, make the advanced Patriot anti-missile system, although they have other capable air-defense weapons. However, Europe can help Ukraine press ahead with more UAV production; Europeans have the capacity to manufacture engines for long-range UAVs, for example, at a far higher rate.

And some European systems not yet provided—such as the German Taurus cruise missile—could increase Ukraine’s advantages. Germany has so far denied Ukraine the Taurus, a far more effective system with greater range and a heavier payload than the Franco-British Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles. The new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has already said he would send Taurus missiles to Ukraine if the Russians did not relent. With these systems, Ukraine could add to the considerable damage it has already done within Russia.

Read: The simple explanation for why Trump turned against Ukraine

Attritional campaigns depend on an industrial base. The European Union alone has a GDP about 10 times that of Russia, and if you add the U.K. and Norway to that calculation, the imbalance in favor of Ukraine grows even larger. As it is, Europe and the United States have provided Ukraine with roughly equal amounts of its military resources (30 percent each), while Ukraine has produced 40 percent on its own.

The U.S. has provided more than just military material—it has also furnished intelligence and access to Starlink internet services. None of this can quickly be made up, although again, one should not underestimate the depth of technological and intelligence resources available from Europe and sympathetic Asian countries, should they mobilize. The United States has stinted its aid until now, but Ukraine itself and its European allies are filling the gaps.

Ukraine is not on the verge of collapse, and it is Russia, not Ukraine, that is losing the attritional war, which makes the Trump administration’s decisions particularly shortsighted and tragic. Ukraine has plenty of cards, even if Trump and Vance cannot see them. If America’s leaders could only bring themselves to put pressure on Russia comparable to what they put on Ukraine, they could help Ukraine achieve something much more like a win.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, March 7, 2025 3:02 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Any "study" that includes this
Quote:
2024 alone, Russia suffered nearly 430,000 killed and wounded, compared with just over 250,000 in 2023.
is printing garbage.

Your sources are tainted, SECOND, and so are you.


-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Friday, March 7, 2025 3:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


At the end of the day, Second doesn't care how much money we spend or how may Ukrainians die for his diseased and dying political party.

He lives in his rich parent's basement.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Saturday, March 8, 2025 7:44 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
At the end of the day, Second doesn't care how much money we spend or how may Ukrainians die for his diseased and dying political party.

He lives in his rich parent's basement.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Wrong. I don't care how many Trumptards and Russians die from smoking, alcoholism, drugs, gluttony and suicide while chasing their dreams of "happiness" -- most of which involve their delusions of grandeur such as conquering Ukraine and Democrats to make Russia and America Great Again.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, March 8, 2025 8:01 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Any "study" that includes this
Quote:
2024 alone, Russia suffered nearly 430,000 killed and wounded, compared with just over 250,000 in 2023.
is printing garbage.

Your sources are tainted, SECOND, and so are you.


-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

When I was a child, I wondered why some adults were not prospering. In my immature understanding, I believed those adults when they claimed there was some vast conspiracy by the government keeping them depressed. As I got older and started paying close attention to what some adults were doing with their time each day, the conspiracy explanation became less important to why misfortune stalked some adults. Now that I am old, the conspiracy of government explains almost nothing about what happens to the unfortunate. Mostly it is stupid, lazy, dishonest people who fearfully will not do what is necessary in life to prosper. The non-prosperous have not stopped blaming the government, but they will never be prosperous until they shift all the blame to themselves rather than blaming Ukrainians or Democrats or some vast network of evil purpose such as The West, or Capitalism, or NATO, or the EU. Or Kissinger.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, March 8, 2025 8:03 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Vehicular Suicide! Russians ‘Operate In A One-Way Manner’ As Ukrainian Drones Swarm The Battlefield

Ukraine’s drone superiority has halted major Russian advances.

By David Axe | Mar 7, 2025, 06:14pm EST

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/07/russian-vehicles-oper
ate-in-a-one-way-manner-as-ukrainian-drones-swarm-the-battlefield/

A few weeks after finally capturing the ruins of Chasiv Yar, a town in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast that was a locus of a yearlong Russian offensive, the Russian survivors are bogged down in and around the town.

“The main reason for the lack of success remains the enemy’s air dominance,” a Russian military blogger complained in a missive translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated. “Their reconnaissance drones are in the sky 24/7, and any movement on our part is immediately met with a massive wave of [first-person-view] drones.”

Russian infantry can’t leave their trenches. When they do, “we just lose people without achieving anything,” the blogger wrote. Any armored vehicles the Russian 3rd and 8th Combined Arms Armies deploy “essentially operate in a one-way manner,” the blogger added.

Russian supply lines are also being squeezed by farther-flying Ukrainian “road cutter” drones that prowl the main roads toward the front line. Despite the Russians erecting anti-drone netting over long stretches of road, “logistics is also suffering,” the blogger reported.

And any attempt by Russian drone teams to match the Ukrainians’ aerial firepower also runs into the same problem the infantry and supply columns run into: Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles are everywhere, all the time. “The enemy has been actively hunting our UAV teams,” according to the blogger.

All-seeing drones

When the Russians do manage to launch their own drones, many of them run into effective Ukrainian jamming that can sever the radio links that connect them to their operators. More Russian drone teams are using unjammable fiber-optic drones that send and receive signals via miles-long spools of thin wire, but these drones are comparatively expensive—and thus still pretty rare along the front line.

Ukraine’s all-seeing drones aren’t just a problem around Chasiv Yar. Early Thursday morning, a Russian assault group with no fewer than 25 vehicles and potentially hundreds of troops attacked positions manned by the Ukrainian army’s 24th Mechanized Brigade around Pokrovsk, a fortress city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, 40 miles southwest of Chasiv Yar.

The Russians were spotted by a drone with an infrared camera and then “met with warmth,” the 24th Mechanized Brigade reported. “Infantry, artillery and drone crews did everything to make the invaders’ journey unforgettable.”

As the sun rose, 14 of the attacking vehicles were destroyed or immobilized. The rest retreated, five of them damaged. At least 33 Russians died, according to the 24th Mechanized Brigade.

The Kremlin is shipping new electronic-warfare radio jammers in a desperate effort to protect assault groups, the blogger explained. But they don’t work very well. “The enemy adapts extremely quickly, changing frequencies,” according to the blogger, “while our E.W. systems at best cover less than half the frequencies they use.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, March 8, 2025 8:30 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


A Call to Arms for Europe

By Claude Malhuret | March 8, 2025, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/03/claude-malhe
uret-speech/681947/

Europe is at a crucial juncture of its history. The American shield is slipping away, Ukraine risks being abandoned, and Russia is being strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero: an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it’s first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. [President Donald] Trump’s message is that being his ally serves no purpose, because he will not defend you, he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies, and he will threaten to seize your territories, while supporting the dictators who invade you.

The king of the deal is showing that the art of the deal is lying prostrate. He thinks he will intimidate China by capitulating to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but China’s President Xi Jinping, faced with such wreckage, is undoubtedly accelerating his plans to invade Taiwan.

Never in history has a president of the United States surrendered to the enemy. Never has one supported an aggressor against an ally, issued so many illegal decrees, and sacked so many military leaders in one go. Never has one trampled on the American Constitution, while threatening to disregard judges who stand in his way, weaken countervailing powers, and take control of social media.

This is not a drift to illiberalism; this is the beginning of the seizure of democracy. Let us remember that it only took one month, three weeks, and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its constitution.

Read: How Hitler dismantled democracy in 53 days https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-const
itution-authoritarianism/681233/

I have confidence in the solidity of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in the four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator; now we are fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very moment when Trump was patting French President Emmanuel Macron on the back at the White House, the United States voted at the United Nations with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the Oval Office, the draft-dodger was giving moral and strategic lessons to the Ukrainian president and war hero, Volodymyr Zelensky, before dismissing him like a stable boy, ordering him to submit or resign.

That night, he took another step into disgrace by halting the delivery of promised weapons. What should we do in the face of such betrayal? The answer is simple: Stand firm.

And above all: make no mistake. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic states, Georgia, and Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to the Yalta Agreement, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the global South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe, or whether they are now free to trample it.

What Putin wants is the end of the world order the United States and its allies established 80 years ago, in which the first principle was the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

This idea is at the very foundation of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the aggressed, because the Trumpian vision coincides with Putin’s: a return to spheres of influence, where great powers dictate the fate of small nations.

Greenland, Panama, and Canada are mine. Ukraine, the Baltics, and Eastern Europe are yours. Taiwan and the South China Sea are his.

At the Mar-a-Lago dinner parties of golf-playing oligarchs, this is called “diplomatic realism.”

We are therefore alone. But the narrative that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is doing poorly. In three years, the so-called second army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country with about a quarter its population.

Read: Russia is not winning https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/03/ukraine-russ
ia-war-position/681916/

With interest rates at 21 percent, the collapse of foreign currency and gold reserves, and a demographic crisis, Russia is on the brink. The American lifeline to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made during a war.

The shock is violent, but it has one virtue. The Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in a single day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands, and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that Ukraine can hang on, and of course to secure its and Europe’s place at the negotiating table.

This will be costly. It will require ending the taboo on using Russia’s frozen assets. It will require bypassing Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself through a coalition that includes only willing countries, and the United Kingdom of course.

Second, demand that any agreement include the return of kidnapped children and prisoners, as well as absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia, and Minsk, we know what Putin’s agreements are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and most urgently because it will take the longest, we must build that neglected European defense, which has relied on the American security umbrella since 1945 and which was shut down after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The task is Herculean, but history books will judge the leaders of today’s democratic Europe by its success or failure.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is a recognition that France has been right for decades in advocating for strategic autonomy.

Now it must be built. This will require massive investment to replenish the European Defense Fund beyond the Maastricht debt criteria, harmonize weapons and munitions systems, accelerate European Union membership for Ukraine, which now has the leading army in Europe, rethink the role and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, and relaunch missile-shield and satellite programs.

Europe can become a military power again only by becoming an industrial power again. But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and above all in the face of Putin’s collaborators on the far right and far left.

They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump says is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of a de Gaullian Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain under Putin’s thumb. The peace of collaborators who, for three years, have refused to support the Ukrainians in any way.

Is this the end of the Atlantic alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days, Zelensky’s public humiliation and all the crazy decisions taken over the past month have finally stirred Americans into action. Poll numbers are plummeting. Republican elected officials are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

The Trumpists are no longer at the height of glory. They control the executive branch, Congress, the Supreme Court, and social media. But in American history, the supporters of freedom have always won. They are starting to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine will be decided in the trenches, but it also depends on those who defend democracy in the United States, and here, on our ability to unite Europeans and find the means for our common defense, to make Europe the power it once was and hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of great sacrifice. The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, March 8, 2025 3:27 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
'We Can't Stop Them' - Thousands Of Ukraine Troops Suddenly Face Encirclement In Russia's Kursk
The fuse has been burning slowly, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's risky August invasion of Russia's Kursk region is about to blow up in his face in spectacular fashion -- as thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are suddenly in imminent peril of being encircled, according to open source intelligence analysts. The crisis comes as Zelensky is under increasing US pressure to reach a negotiated end to the war -- and a loss of captured Russian territory promises to make his already-deteriorated bargaining position even weaker.


According to DeepStateMAP.live, an interactive map of the war run by Ukrainian military bloggers, their country's forces in Kursk are nearly cleaved into two, with roughly three-quarters of Ukraine's forces in Russia almost entirely surrounded on Friday. Their last connection between the two forces was a kilometer long and under 500 meters wide at its thinnest section.

MORE AT https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/we-cant-stop-them-thousands-ukr
aine-troops-suddenly-face-encirclement-russias-kursk




-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Saturday, March 8, 2025 3:32 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump Is Nero While Washington Burns

By Claude Malhuret | March 8, 2025, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/03/claude-malhe
uret-speech/681947/

Editor’s Note: On Tuesday, the French senator Claude Malhuret gave a powerful speech about the implications for Europe of the reversal of American policy toward Ukraine.
I have never read so much bullshit. Except, of course, the last time you posted an article this long.

We should disregard his rant against what (he thinks) Trump is doing to America. What Trump does here is our business, and not for him to theatrically wring his hands over.

The rest is hypocrisy, hot air, and scaremongering designed to whip up support for Macron's and Ursula's get-rich-quick scheme of stealing Russian assets and creating Eurobonds.

NATO has lost the war. If the EU can't win WITH America providing most of the support, what can they do without?



-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Saturday, March 8, 2025 6:34 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


TLDR: This is not a case of Trump appeasing Putin--its actually him joining Putin. It is not Munich 1938, it is the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939.
https://substack.com/@phillipspobrien/note/c-98990427

Weekend Update #123: The Week The USA Started Killing Ukrainians

Part 1: The Trump Plan to Damage Ukraine and Help Russia (Part 2 tomorrow)

By Phillips P. Obrien | Mar 08, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-123-the-week-the
-usa

Hello All,

Well, I feel that cannot really wait until tomorrow to send the first part of my weekend update out. What we have seen over the last few days is so extreme that it deserves to be said out loud and acknowledged as soon as possible. The United States has not just abandoned Ukraine, the United States is now actively helping Vladimir Putin and the Russian state kill Ukrainians to try and force Ukraine to accept a bad peace deal that very well might spell the end of their country. At the same time, the USA is now bending over backwards to help protect the Russian military.

Rescuers respond to a Russian missile strike in Ukraine's Kharkiv region on Friday.
The Results of a Russian missile attack on Ukraine just over a day ago. The damage and death you see is now courtesy of the USA.

The United States is now an active enemy of democracy not just in Ukraine, but in all of Europe. That it would, somewhat gleefully in the case of the president, help Russia kill what were recently some of the most pro-American people in the world, a people desperate to be US allies, tells you everywhere about the dark period we are now in. The fate of freedom throughout Europe is at stake.

Needless to say, therefore, the European reaction is key. There is a general awareness that Europe faces a great challenge—but I’m not sure people understand the reality of what Trump is doing. There are still those looking for signs that he might be ok, that he can be trusted, that NATO still has validity. The sooner Europe can fully face the reality of what it is confronting the better.

Also, on the battlefield, the Russians/North Koreans made a 4 mile advance in Kursk (while hardly being able to advance anywhere else). It shows that Putin is working with Trump more than you might think.

All of that will be in the update sent out tomorrow.

The Week The USA Started Killing Ukrainians

The United States government took some dramatic steps this week to help Russia and weaken Ukraine—the intended result of which will be more Ukrainian deaths, fewer Russian losses, and the undermining of Ukrainian democracy.

The steps were comprehensive, layered, and designed to punish Ukraine for not doing what Trump wants. Its worth listing them just so you can see how significant the changes are.

1. The USA has stopped the delivery of all military supplies to Ukraine. The Trump administration had actually been slowing the supply of remaining Biden era supplies for a while. However now even Biden appropriations are not being delivered.

2. The USA has stopped allowing Ukraine to attack Russian forces with certain high-value US systems such as HIMARS.

3. The USA, in a particularly twisted move, has made it far more difficult for Ukraine to defend against Russian missile attacks. What the USA has done is no longer provide Ukraine with warning of such attacks—which will make them far more deadly and effective.

4. The USA is actually stopping non-military supplies such as medical equipment, which is vital to keep wounded Ukrainians alive. This had started with the USAID cut—but has now reached an extreme level with no medical supplies to treat Ukrainian soldiers. The USA is also forbidding the Ukrainians from having access to Maxar commercial satellite data—which has been widely available to them (and many civilian agencies) throughout the conflict.

5. The USA is signalling strong support to Putin that they want to see his strategic priorities met in the short term.

Note—for point 4 I’ve linked to an Adam Kinzinger tweet for the evidence on medical supplies being cut off to Ukraine. All I will say is that his source is extremely good (for those of you who don’t know, he and I have discussed the situation regularly, including in this podcast). I’m entirely comfortable saying that this is true.

The cut in military aid to Ukraine was something that Trump had been itching for a while. There had been a noticeable slow-down in deliveries in the previous weeks, but this week everything was stopped—even if it was just over the border to Ukraine and about to be delivered. Moreover, I’ve been told that US forces in Europe are actively making it more difficult for other partners to deliver aid to Ukraine. This will create some major headaches soon, in areas such as air defense.

This step will save many Russian lives and lead to many more Ukrainian deaths, both soldiers and civilians,

The US moves to weaken both Ukrainian offensive and defensive capabilities (points 2 and 3) comes down to the immediate shut-down of US intelligence sharing. The US has been providing Ukraine vital aid to allow the Ukrainian military to both attack Russian forces (mostly in the battle area is has to be said) and also to help the Ukrainians defend their cities and civilian infrastructure.

Supposedly at 2pm on Wednesday of this week (March 5) the US cut the data that it was supplying, which left Ukraine completely in the dark and unable to target their HIMARS in the normal way. Now, the Trump administration had supposedly already been limiting the offensive intelligence supplied to a restricted area close to the battle line—but then it all went dead. So no more targeting help from the USA for Ukraine.

This step will immediately help save Russian soldiers and equipment from losses.

The intelligence cut also meant that the USA no longer is providing the Ukrainians with notice of Russian preparations to launch missiles (their most effective weapons) against Ukrainian cities. Fast Russian missiles demand the most preparation time possible, both so Ukrainian civilians can take cover and so that Ukrainian anti-air forces can get ready. Now, Ukraine will have far less notice that the Russian are launching ranged attacks.

Indeed, this step seems to have been almost coordinated with Putin. Its interesting that for a while before the intelligence ban had been put into place by the USA, the Russians had used relatively few missiles to attack Ukraine and had been relying on their Shaheds (which are much easier to shoot down). However, almost immediately after Trump cuts intelligence sharing, the Russians launch a massive missile barrage.

This step will immediately lead to greater Ukrainian civilian casualties and greater civilian suffering as Ukraine’s infrastructure will be harder to defend.

The punitive nature of what the USA is doing to Ukraine might be seen in these steps to really punish the country. The stopping of medical supplies just means more wounded Ukrainian soldiers will die. The cutting off of Maxar technology is just another way to try and make sure that the Ukrainians cannot attack the Russian effectively. Its basically going the extra mile to help the Russians and hurt the Ukrainians.

This is also part of a plan by Trump and Putin to weaken Ukrainian democracy. They want to crush both the morale of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians—which will help force a bad deal on Ukraine.

Its psychopathic.

These steps will save Russian resources and soldiers and lead to more dead Ukrainians—particularly soldiers who are wounded.

The signalling of support to Putin is clear and unambiguous—and crucially involves Trump personally as can be seen in his press conference last night (March 7). Ive linked to that below.

Its ridiculous how its being reported. The day after Trump froze US intelligence sharing with Ukraine, the Russians, seemingly coordinating with him and launched their large missile attack. Trump’s response was typically perverse. He publicly seems a little miffed at the attack, and even teases new sanctions against Russia. However, he never takes concrete actions to increase pressure on Russia and almost certainly won’t here.

As an example, we had Trump threaten sanctions and tariffs on Russia in January, a move which caused some people to lose their heads. However, once the threat was made, it was shown to be toothless. On the other hand, Zelensky does not wear a tie to the Oval Office, and this seems to be reason for Trump, and some Trump backers, to take brutal actions to kill Ukrainians.

However, Trump is not really mad at Russia—as always his anger is directed at Ukraine. He could not repress his real views after his toothless threats to add more sanctions on Russia. He pivoted almost entirely and said he much preferred working with Putin, that what Russia was doing was justified and almost seeming to enjoy the destruction he (and the USA) was helping to inflict on Ukraine. Trump even openly admitted that he was weakening Ukrainian air defenses to put pressure on the Ukrainians. Here are some quotes from his press conference—the last one is where he admits he is starving them of air defense.

"... right now they're bombing the hell out of Ukraine. I'm finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine.

"Do you think that Vladimir Putin is taking advantage of the U.S. pause right now on intelligence and military aid to Ukraine?" — Trump was just asked. Trump: "... I actually think he's doing what anybody else would do. I think he wants to get it stopped and settled. And I think he's hitting harder than he's been hitting. And I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now.

"Why not give Ukraine air defenses to prevent Putin from pounding them?" — Trump was just asked. Trump: “I have to know that they want to settle. I don’t know that they want to settle. If they don't want to settle, we're out of there because we want them to settle.“

Btw, you can watch the whole press conference here. It has Trump expressing lots of anti-European thoughts in general, which is notable. When it comes to his statements on Ukraine, they start around the 14th minute.



Conclusion

As a rule of thumb, Trump only ever takes concrete action to harm Ukraine and only ever takes concrete action to help Russia. In this case, he is admitting to helping Russia kill Ukrainians.

This is the official position of the US Government and through that the people of the USA. Its amazing how little this is being criticized.

Europe needs to understand—if the USA is willing to help Russia kill Ukrainians today, it could easily be willing to help Russia kill other Europeans tomorrow.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, March 9, 2025 7:12 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Can Americans Still Be Convinced That Principle Is Worth Fighting For?

The limits of rhetoric in Ukraine

By Jay Caspian Kang | March 7, 2025

https://www.newyorker.com/news/fault-lines/can-americans-still-be-conv
inced-that-principle-is-worth-fighting-for

In gaming, a metric called “ping” measures the time it takes for information to travel from your console to the network and back again. If you’re playing online soccer and you press the button that makes your striker shoot, the ping is how long it takes for the shot to register onscreen. The more ping, the less responsive the game feels. At very high pings, the delay can cause “input-lag sickness,” an unmoored sensation that the world on the screen no longer quite matches up with what your thumbs are telling it to do. In these moments, an intense, nearly existential bewilderment sets in, usually followed by rage.

American politicians who work on foreign policy seem to be experiencing a version of input-lag sickness. They’re hitting buttons that once inspired the public, but they’re not getting the response they expect. When politicians say, for example, that we must defend the rights and freedoms of a sovereign nation like Ukraine, do those words still carry enough emotive power to persuade Americans to supply years of funding for the Ukrainian Army?

The answers are not so clear. In 2022, at the start of the war, only seven per cent of Americans thought that the U.S. was providing too much support to Ukraine. By late February, just a week before the Trump-Vance-Zelensky reverse détente, that number had risen to thirty per cent. These are still remarkably robust polling numbers for anything in America, let alone for supporting an armed conflict. But there does seem to be a shift, one that’s not limited to the mostly Republican voters who have switched their stance on Ukraine and Zelensky. For the first time in decades, a President is not only questioning why we’re involved in specific armed conflicts but also the fundamental role of America as the world’s policeman. How many Americans, frustrated by inflation and what many see as rampant government corruption, will wonder why their tax dollars are being sent overseas?

Since the debacle of Iraq, Americans have grown understandably wary of prolonged military conflicts, even those with no U.S. boots on the ground. As conflicts grind on, politicians sometimes try to rally the public with rhetoric about democracy, freedom, and the American way. Joe Biden made such concerns the theme of his 2024 State of the Union address. “History is watching,” he said. “If the United States walks away now, it will put Ukraine at risk, Europe at risk, the free world at risk, emboldening others who wish to do us harm.” There are moments when such rhetoric has worked. In 1990, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was enough to spark an American incursion in the Persian Gulf. President George H. W. Bush, announcing the operation, said that it was justified by aggression against a sovereign state: “Saddam Hussein systematically raped, pillaged, and plundered a tiny nation, no threat to his own.” But he promised that, with America’s help, “Kuwait will once again be free.” The war was popular, at least at the time. It helped that American television coverage had been sanitized into abstract images: grainy shots capturing the streaks of Patriot missiles in flight against the black night sky. It also helped that the war ended in six weeks, before input lag could set in.

Ukraine enjoyed mass popularity among the American public after the Russian invasion, but it has had to battle through far more pain and time. Part of the public’s exhaustion might come from Biden’s incompetence as a communicator. If America was to send billions of dollars to Ukraine, he should have sat the public down once a year and given an intelligent and thorough defense of the war. The easy, and true, earlier justifications about who attacked whom, and about whether Vladimir Putin should be allowed free rein of Europe, faded into cliché. The more arguably realist justifications, such as the rationale that a prolonged conflict in Ukraine weakens the Russian military, sounded too cynical to make for good politics—especially regarding a potential nuclear conflict. But is this shift in thinking about Ukraine simply the product of attrition and Trump’s personal campaign to diminish Zelensky? Or does it suggest that the public is more isolationist than hawkish politicians had imagined?

On Tuesday night, Trump delivered a rambling address to Congress, and Senator Elissa Slotkin, of Michigan, delivered the Democratic Party’s rebuttal. She introduced herself as a former C.I.A. agent who “did three tours in Iraq,” and said she was glad that Ronald Reagan, rather than Trump, had been President during her childhood, because “Trump would have lost us the Cold War.” She also talked about how our “security and our prosperity” as well as “our democracy” had been “the aspiration of the world.” As I watched, I wondered who the intended audience was. Can faith in American exceptionalism still inspire people to action? Do the spectres of Russia, China, and North Korea actually frighten people in the United States? Most Americans understand that those three countries are our adversaries, but do they know why, apart from some vague missives about democracy and freedom from dictators?

Trump seems to understand that wild stakes, uncertainty, and interpersonal conflict are what keeps the audience engaged. As Slotkin and many others have pointed out, this Administration has turned into Season 2 of a reality show, with Trump as the star and executive producer, and the world’s richest man brought in to keep the audience on its toes. None of us know whether Trump actually means what he says—about tariffs, or trying to turn Gaza into a beachside resort, or withdrawing support from Ukraine and leaving NATO on the street.

After last week’s Oval Office meeting with Zelensky turned into a shouting match, Trump turned to the news cameras and said, “This is going to be great television.” He was right. While more sober commentators worried about the risks of blowing up eighty years of careful diplomacy, commenters online fixated on the spectacle. Was the meeting staged? Had the reporter who asked Zelensky if he owned a suit been fed those lines? Was Vice-President J. D. Vance supposed to get mad for the cameras? Why were the cameras there in the first place? The only difference between these pundits and “America’s Next Top Model” recappers from the twenty-tens is that the recappers could land a joke.

Typically, the argument goes that all Trump’s lying and disinformation, met with righteous scolding from liberals, has led to mass desensitization, over everything from Trump’s thirty-four felony convictions to his racist rhetoric. I don’t think it’s really desensitization—people care desperately about Trump, one way or another—but, rather, a collective case of input-lag sickness. If people don’t know whether what they’re seeing is real, the ideas associated with the images feel abstract. What does a word like “sovereignty” mean to someone who can’t be sure if the conflict in the Oval Office is real or if it’s what pro-wrestling fans call a “work”—a scripted conflict to push along a story line?

When Zelensky asked Vance if he had been to Ukraine to witness the war in person, Vance answered, haltingly, “I’ve actually watched and seen the stories.” The American public is in the same position: we watch and see the stories. We receive them not as part of a unified narrative but as abstract bits of media that must be shared and commented upon. As I wrote in late 2023, we rely now on cellphone and surveillance-camera footage to show us reality. This footage is typically seen as “authentic” and immediate—just as live streamers are seen as more “authentic” than news broadcasts. Ukraine had a few early successes in the fight for attention online; the snippet of a Ukrainian soldier on Snake Island telling a Russian invader to fuck off was as viral, and as widely disputed, as the end to any Marvel movie. Since then, though, Ukraine has not produced the same volume of arresting video. When most Americans think of the Israeli conflict—of October 7th and Gaza—they picture carnage and dead children. When they think of the war in Ukraine, the most familiar image is of Zelensky, the former actor. No matter how much people in Ukraine have suffered, the American perception of them is mostly determined by the algorithms that dictate social media.

When I was in grade school, in the early nineties, geopolitics could be reduced to simple stories: communism and the authoritarian Soviets were bad, and American democracy was good. After the U.S.S.R. fell, the map in my fifth-grade classroom broke up the empire into dozens of new countries, whose capitals we now had to memorize; we all learned to pronounce “Kiev,” improperly. I recall feeling a great deal of happiness, because all those people behind the Iron Curtain were free. If you had asked me what “free” meant, I would likely have said something about bread lines and ugly buildings. But, in that post-Cold War period, it seemed as if everyone agreed that we were freer than the Communists had been, and that it was our job to bring that freedom to whomever we could. America’s stable vision of the world relied on the belief that good and evil are clearly delineated—a belief that was easier to maintain in the absence of complicating information. Today, any hope of such collective narratives has been ripped apart by the internet and its explosive democratization. What chance do words like “sovereignty,” “democracy,” and “freedom” have under such conditions?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, March 10, 2025 7:26 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The Trump administration suspended US intelligence sharing with Ukraine on March 5.[19] Russian forces intensified offensive operations to expel Ukrainian forces from Kursk Oblast on March 6 and 7.[20] A source reportedly affiliated with Ukrainian military intelligence started reporting more rapid Russian advances in Kursk Oblast on March 5.[21] A source in the Ukrainian government stated in a March 8 Time article that the US intelligence sharing suspension has impacted Ukrainian operations in Kursk Oblast the most.[22] The Russian military has not previously prioritized the effort to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk Oblast over making further advances in eastern Ukraine despite concentrating a sufficient force grouping to do so in late 2024.[23] A direct link between the suspension of US intelligence sharing and the start of the collapse of Ukraine's salient in Kursk Oblast is unclear, although Kremlin officials have recently announced their intention to take advantage of the suspension of US military aid and intelligence sharing to "inflict maximum damage" to Ukrainian forces "on the ground" during the limited time frame before the possible future resumption of US intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine.[24]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-9-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, March 10, 2025 2:47 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


According to Dima, Military Summary Channel:

The push in Kursk, involving Russian spec ops crawling (not walking) thru 16 km (9 miles) of unused gas pipeline, had been in the works for at least a couple of weeks. That was also coordinated with conventional ground attack, and preceded by missile attacks on gasworks.

When the spec ops sabotage group was detected they were attacked with everything: cluster rounds, conventional shells, and drones. But by then they had made it to the safety of a roadway/ rail line intersection, and the explosions that were happening in the rear of Ukrainian troops to the NE of Sudzah caused Ukrainians to panic and flee.

Dima's heart is with Ukraine, but that causes him to be a catastrophist sometimes. IDK whether things happened the way he said.

But all my sources have been saying since the beginning that the Kursk incursion was a major, major strategic mistake, and once it had failed its initial objective - to take the nuclear power plant a couple of dozen km to the NE- Ukrainian troops should have been withdrawn.

Instead, Zelensky keeps sending his best equipped, best trained troops into Kursk, and the Russians have been keeping the "golden bridge" open, attriting Ukrainian troops in cauldron after cauldron.

IMHO the ramp-up in Kursk is timed to the various "negotiations" going on between USA and Zelensky, which are aimed at crafting a ceasefire plan to present to Russia.

This may be Russia's way of saying "we don't want no stinkin' ceasefire", and removing another card from Ukraine's hand.

-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Monday, March 10, 2025 3:04 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
At the end of the day, Second doesn't care how much money we spend or how may Ukrainians die for his diseased and dying political party.

He lives in his rich parent's basement.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Wrong. I don't care how many Trumptards and Russians die from smoking, alcoholism, drugs, gluttony and suicide while chasing their dreams of "happiness" -- most of which involve their delusions of grandeur such as conquering Ukraine and Democrats to make Russia and America Great Again.


Meanwhile, you don't care about all the Democrats who die from smoking, alcoholism, drugs, gluttony and suicide while being miserable twats 24/7 either.

Shut the fuck up, stupid.

You are so fucking dumb.

It's like talking to a retarded kid.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Monday, March 10, 2025 7:25 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I just heard an interesting video on substack from some guy named Alex Krainer.

He explains something I've been wondering about for quite a while: why the Brits are so desperately committed to Project Ukraine/ Project Destroy Russia.
Basically he says their banks and other lenders are in shit shape (not to mention govt Treasury), and they need a lot of resources as collateral to refloat their financial system, otherwise they're heading to hyperinflation.

Bc, really, WTF is with the Ukraine/British 100-year partnership, ksigned (literally) just a few days before Trump's inauguration? And BoJo's constant intefering in Ukraine ti keep the war going longer? (BoJo was back in Kiev ... again ... just a couple of weeks ago, if you can believe it!)

Apparently, this 100- year deal has some "secret clauses", where Ukraine gives Britain its airports, sea ports, titanium, gas and oil.

But they know they can't access these (and hopefully Russian) resources by themselves, and they'll do ANYTHING to get American support.

One is to offer the USA Ukraine s "rare earths" in return for American security guarantees. Most of which are under Russian control anyway, and a pittance compared to what Britain hopes to gain.

The second is to put British troops in Ukraine as tripwires, hoping that the sight of British soldiers dying will propel Trump into sending in our troops.

All of this makes sense. Krainer offers a lot of details so I hope you find your way over to his substack.



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Tuesday, March 11, 2025 7:16 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


An ex-NATO chief has sounded the alarm on Russian President Vladimir Putin's next potential targets post-Ukraine. Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as the former deputy supreme Allied commander in Europe, cautioned that if Russia succeeds in Ukraine, it could install puppet regimes in Georgia, Moldova, and Romania, eventually setting sights on the Baltic states.

Russia attempted to dismiss the atrocities in Bucha as a fabricated incident, advancing this claim without presenting any proof.

https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/vladimir-putin-ukraine-russia-w
ar-34835485

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, March 11, 2025 8:15 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
At the end of the day, Second doesn't care how much money we spend or how may Ukrainians die for his diseased and dying political party.

He lives in his rich parent's basement.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Wrong. I don't care how many Trumptards and Russians die from smoking, alcoholism, drugs, gluttony and suicide while chasing their dreams of "happiness" -- most of which involve their delusions of grandeur such as conquering Ukraine and Democrats to make Russia and America Great Again.


Meanwhile, you don't care about all the Democrats who die from smoking, alcoholism, drugs, gluttony and suicide while being miserable twats 24/7 either.

Shut the fuck up, stupid.

You are so fucking dumb.

It's like talking to a retarded kid.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ixStringJack, your life is aimless. So is Trump's. For a fictionalized example, Malcolm Reynold's life is aimless. That word does NOT mean Mal, Trump and 6ix do nothing. It means that they miss in the same sense as a hunter. For the fictionalize example, Mal tries to kill and misses the Operative on many occasions in the movie Serenity. Mal could have prevented multiple deaths, including Book's and Wash's, if Mal had killed the Operative at the first chance. Or at the second chance, which was graciously given to Mal by Inara.

How many bullets do I fire at a deer to kill it? One. How many bullets were fired at Trump? Eight. If you kill the deer, you’re a hero, but not to deer. If you miss Trump, you’re a dead failure, not a hero. Many Ukrainian soldiers are dead because they miss. Most artillery fire doesn’t hit anything but the ground because most soldiers are pure crap at their job. It is called being aimless. So many Americans have less than heroic lives because their shots miss since they, like Ukrainians, are crappy at their job. It is also called being aimless. Their American lives end early because they miss.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+bullets+were+fired+at+trump

P.S. At work, I am around Trumptards all day long. My conflict with Trumptards is not about differences in values. I have conflicts about values with Democrats, for example, the death penalty. Democrats are against, I am for, but I see the logic of their position. With Trumptards my conflict is that they exist. I would have had the same conflict with slave-owning Confederates. America would be a much better place today if all the slave-owners, including the ones from border states that did not revolt, had been enslaved themselves. Freeing the slaves was not enough justice, did not right the wrong. That gentle punishment of slave-owners is why ordinary Capitalists of today are free to have wage-slaves and can continue to mistreat their workers.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, March 11, 2025 8:50 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Trump Drops the Mask

The president’s latest positions on the Russia-Ukraine war reveal that he is indifferent to ongoing slaughter—indeed, he is willing to increase it.

By Jonathan Chait | March 10, 2025, 3:28 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-ukraine-rus
sia-war/681993/

Donald Trump’s approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has always been to root for Russia while pretending he isn’t. Trump just hates killing and death. More than that, he hates sending American money overseas. The claim that he actually agrees with Moscow is a hoax, remember. Trump is all about putting America first. Or so he’s said, and so his mostly non-Russophilic supporters claim to believe.

But now he has flung the mask to the ground. The president’s latest positions on the war reveal that he is indifferent to ongoing slaughter—indeed, he is willing to increase it—and that his opposition to Ukraine’s independence has nothing to do with saving American tax dollars. Trump simply wants Russia to win.

In recent days, Trump has said he is “looking at” a plan to revoke the temporary legal status of Ukrainians who fled to the United States. After Ukraine expressed willingness to sign away a large share of the proceeds from its natural-resource sales (in return for nothing), Trump said that might not be enough to restore support. Trump is now pushing Ukraine’s president to step down and hold elections, according to NBC. Volodymyr Zelensky’s domestic approval rating sits at 67 percent, and his most viable opponents have said that they oppose elections at the present time. The notion that Trump actually cares about democracy, and would downgrade his relations with a foreign country over its failure to meet his high governance standards, is so laughable that even a Trump loyalist like Sean Hannity would have trouble saying it with a straight face.

Trump exposed his preferences most clearly in his decision to cut off the supply of intelligence to Ukraine. The effect of this sudden reversal—which does not save the American taxpayer any money—was immediate and dramatic. Russian air attacks, now enjoying the element of surprise, pounded newly exposed Ukrainian civilian targets, leaving scenes of death and destruction.

The grim spectacle of watching the death toll spike, without any appreciable benefit to American interests, ought to have had a sobering effect on the president. At least it would have if his ostensible objectives were his actual ones. Instead, he seemed visibly pleased.

Paying close attention to his rhetoric reveals the significance of the turn. Speaking to reporters from his desk in the Oval Office, Trump, asked whether the bombing campaign changes his oft-expressed view that Vladimir Putin desires peace, affirmed that it does not. “I believe him,” he said. “I think we’re doing very well with Russia. But right now they’re bombing the hell out of Ukraine, and Ukraine—I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don’t have the cards.” It was Trump himself, of course, who had taken “cards” away from Ukraine by suddenly exposing its cities to bombardment.

A reporter asked if Putin was “taking advantage” of Trump’s move. Trump made clear that the Russian president was doing precisely what he had expected. “I think he’s doing what anybody else would do,” he said. “I think he wants to get it stopped and settled, and I think he’s hitting ’em harder than he’s been hitting ’em, and I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now. He wants to get it ended, and I think Ukraine wants to get it ended, but I don’t see—it’s crazy, they’re taking tremendous punishment. I don’t quite get it.”

Why not, a reporter asked, provide air defenses? “Because I have to know that they want to settle,” Trump replied. “I don’t know that they want to settle. If they don’t want to settle, we’re out of there, because we want them to settle, and I’m doing it to stop death.”

Trump’s rhetoric signals an important evolution in his policy. He is no longer arguing for peace at any price. Instead, he has identified a good guy (Russia) and a bad guy (Ukraine). The good guy definitely wants peace. The bad guy is standing in the way of a settlement. Consequently, the only way to secure peace is for the good guy to inflict more death on the bad guy. Increasing the body count on the bad guy’s side, while regrettable, is now the fastest way to stop death.

This is the same moral logic that the Biden administration and NATO employed to support Ukraine—the way to end the war is to raise the cost to the party responsible for the conflict—but with the identity of the guilty and the innocent parties reversed.

If you want to see where Trump’s position is going next, pay attention to the bleatings of his closest supporters, who echo his impulses and point it in new directions. Elon Musk, for example, has begun demanding sanctions on Ukraine’s “oligarchs” and blaming them for American support for Kyiv. This is an echo of Putin’s long-standing claim that Ukraine is dominated by an unrepresentative class of oligarchs who have steered it away from its desired and natural place as a Russian vassal. The fixation with Ukraine’s corruption and the push to replace Zelensky both reflect Russian war aims. Putin wishes to delegitimize any Ukrainian government mirroring its population’s desire for independence, which would allow him to control the country either directly or through a puppet leader, like the kind he enjoyed before 2014 and has in Belarus today.

Ukraine certainly has its share of wealthy, influential business owners, but not nearly to the extent of Russia itself, whose entire economy is structured around oligarchic domination. And Trump is even less disturbed by corruption than he is by a lack of democracy. His administration’s earliest moves included defending or pardoning American politicians charged with corruption and ending enforcement of restrictions on bribing foreign governments. For that matter, Musk himself, who has obliterated conflict-of-interest guardrails by running much of the federal government while operating businesses with massive interest in public policy, fits the definition of oligarch neatly.

Senator Mark Kelly recently visited Ukraine and wrote on X, “Any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin.” (His post did not mention Trump.) Musk replied, “You are a traitor,” which would be a rather odd sentiment unless one considered Ukraine an enemy of the United States. Where Musk is going, Trump is likely to follow.

Trump inherited an American government pushing to defend Ukrainian sovereignty. He has reversed American policy rapidly. The American position has already passed the point of neutrality. The new American goal is no longer simply to end the war, but to end it on Putin’s terms. Asked on Fox News Sunday if he was comfortable with the possibility that his actions would threaten Ukraine’s survival, Trump responded blithely, “Well, it may not survive anyway.” That is not merely a prediction. It is the goal.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, March 11, 2025 9:51 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The Rise of the Brutal American

This is how the bad guys act.

Anne Applebaum | March 5, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/trump-and-vance-shat
tered-europes-illusions-about-america/681925/

A book festival in Vilnius, meetings with friends in Warsaw, a dinner in Berlin: I happened to be at gatherings in three European cities over the past several days, and everywhere I went, everyone wanted to talk about the Oval Office performance last Friday. Europeans needed some time to process this event, not just because of what it told them about the war in Ukraine, but because of what it told them about America, a country they thought they knew well.

In just a few minutes, the behavior of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance created a brand-new stereotype for America: not the quiet American, not the ugly American, but the brutal American. Whatever illusions Europeans ever had about Americans—whatever images lingered from old American movies, the ones where the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and honor defeats treachery—those are shattered. Whatever fond memories remain of the smiling GIs who marched into European cities in 1945, of the speeches that John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made at the Berlin Wall, or of the crowds that once welcomed Barack Obama, those are also fading fast.

Quite apart from their politics, Trump and Vance are rude. They are cruel. They berated and mistreated a guest on camera, and then boasted about it afterward, as if their ugly behavior achieved some kind of macho “win.” They announced that they would halt transfers of military equipment to Ukraine, and hinted at ending sanctions on Russia, the aggressor state. In his speech to Congress last night, Trump once again declared that America would “get” Greenland, which is a part of Denmark—a sign that he intends to run roughshod over other allies too.

These are the actions not of the good guys in old Hollywood movies, but of the bad guys. If Reagan was a white-hatted cowboy, Trump and Vance are Mafia dons. The chorus of Republican political leaders defending them seems both sinister and surprising to Europeans too. “I never thought Americans would kowtow like that,” one friend told me, marveling.

The Oval Office meeting, the subsequent announcements, and the speech to Congress also clarified something else: Trump, Vance, and many of the people around them now fully inhabit an alternative reality, one composed entirely of things they see and hear in the ether. Part of the Oval Office altercation was provoked by Zelensky’s insistence on telling the truth, as the full video clearly shows. His mistake was to point out that Russia and Ukraine have reached many cease-fires and made many agreements since 2014, and that Vladimir Putin has broken most of them, including during Trump’s first term.

It’s precisely because they remember these broken truces that the Ukrainians keep asking what happens after a cease-fire, what kind of security guarantees will be put in place, how Trump plans to prevent Putin from breaking them once more and, above all, what price the Russians are willing to pay for peace in Ukraine. Will they even give up their claims to territory they don’t control? Will they agree that Ukraine can be a sovereign democracy?

But Trump and Vance are not interested in the truth about the war in Ukraine. Trump seemed angered by the suggestion that Putin might break deals with him, refused to acknowledge that it’s happened before, falsely insisted, again, that the U.S. had given Ukraine $350 billion. Vance—who had refused to meet Zelensky when offered the opportunity before the election last year—told the Ukrainian president that he didn’t need to go to Ukraine to understand what is going on in his country: “I’ve actually watched and seen the stories,” he said, meaning that he has seen the “stories” curated for him by the people he follows on YouTube or X.

Europeans can also see that this alternative reality is directly and profoundly shaped by Russian propaganda. I don’t know whether the American president absorbs Russian narratives online, from proxies, or from Putin himself. Either way, he has thoroughly adopted the Russian view of the world, as has Vance. This is not new. Back in 2016, at the height of the election campaign, Trump frequently repeated false stories launched by Russia’s Sputnik news agency, declaring that Hillary Clinton and Obama had “founded ISIS,” or that “the Google search engine is suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton.” At the time, Trump also imitated Russian talk about Clinton starting World War III, another Russian meme. He produced a new version of that in the Oval Office on Friday. “You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III,” he shouted at Zelensky.

But what was ominous in 2016 is dangerous in 2025, especially in Europe. Russian military aggression is more damaging, Russian sabotage across Europe more frequent, and Russian cyberattacks almost constant. In truth, it is Putin, not Zelensky, who started this conflict, Putin who has brought North Korean troops and Iranian drones to Europe, Putin who instructs his propagandists to talk about nuking London, Putin who keeps raising the stakes and scope of the war. Most Europeans live in this reality, not in the fictional world inhabited by Trump, and the contrast is making them think differently about Americans. According to pollsters, nearly three-quarters of French people now think that the U.S. is not an ally of France. A majority in Britain and a very large majority in Denmark, both historically pro-American countries, now have unfavorable views of the U.S. as well.

In reality, the Russians have said nothing publicly about leaving Ukrainian territory or stopping the war. In reality, they have spent the past decade building a cult of cruelty at home. Now they have exported that cult not just to Europe, not just to Africa, but to Washington too. This administration abruptly canceled billions of dollars of food aid and health-care programs for the poorest people on the planet, a vicious act that the president and vice president have not acknowledged but that millions of people can see. Their use of tariffs as random punishment, not for enemies but for allies, seems not just brutal but inexplicable.

And in the Oval Office, Trump and Vance behaved like imperial rulers chastising a subjugated colony, vocalizing the same disgust and disdain that Russian propagandists use when they talk about Ukraine. Europeans know, everyone knows, that if Trump and Vance can talk that way to the president of Ukraine, then they might eventually talk that way to their country’s leader next.­

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, March 11, 2025 11:49 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SECOND lives in an alternate reality.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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