Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 1:08 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Meanwhile, in REAL NEWS...
Russians captured the slag hill just outside of the Avdiivka coke plant,

THUGR: Twenty minutes in comrade...

Well, I went to 20 minutes in and what I saw was that Kiev used a $3000 drone to attack a stick with cloth on it. FWIW, Russians replaced the flag, this time with the unit flag below and the Russian flag above so nobody could claim it was an old picture taken from a new angle.

A tank was fired on, the crew escaped.

And....??

This is the same place where Kiev claimed to have destroyed 57 Russian armored vehicles. I binned that claim along with Kiev's other claims.

Meanwhile, according to Ukrainian TG channels, Zelenskiy is stripping the front elsewhere to reinforce Avdiivka, and Russia is extending the "cauldron" to encompass more and more Ukrainian troops. Supposedly 30,000 Ukrainian troops there.
If Ukraine isn't careful it could be a turkey shoot...

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 1:15 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Ukraine's Sudden High Air Losses Likely Caused By New Russian Missiles

Quote:
I am not sure how valid this is but I am sure it is relevant:

Quote:
Victor vicktop55 @vicktop55 - 16:58 UTC · Oct 24, 2023

Military expert Vladislav Shurygin: The Pentagon has become sharply concerned about the suddenly increased effectiveness of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

In two weeks, the Russians staged a real massacre in the Ukrainian sky. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost at least 10 of their aircraft (according to other sources, 14).

Moreover, all of them were shot down far from the front line and outside the radius of Russian air defense systems, as well as outside the standard radius of Russian fighter missiles. Those pilots who were able to eject reported that until the moment their planes were hit, they did not receive warning information about the attack from the appropriate warning systems.

The Americans believe that the Russian Aerospace Forces have acquired new missiles capable of not only hitting targets at a great distance, but also, after launch, independently pursuing a target without illuminating it from the aircraft’s radar, using a radio signature to guide it (the target).

Now Americans carefully check this information and consider it critically important. Since, if it is confirmed, it means that the Russians have acquired a weapon that will neutralize all the advertised advantages of their new main fighter, the F-35.

Vladislav Shurygin is indeed a Russian 'military expert' who has had various appearances on Russian talk shows.

The claim that there is 'a real massacre in the Ukrainian sky' is valid if the recent daily reports of the Russian Ministry of Defense are near to reality. I for one believe they are.

MORE AT https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/ukraines-sudden-high-air-losses-
likely-caused-by-new-russian-missiles.html#more

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 5:55 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ukraine's Sudden High Air Losses Likely Caused By New Russian Missiles

The claim that there is 'a real massacre in the Ukrainian sky' is valid if the recent daily reports of the Russian Ministry of Defense are near to reality. I for one believe they are.

A quote from the article: "If this is even near to the truth it is a catastrophic loss rate for the Ukrainian air force."
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/ukraines-sudden-high-air-losses-
likely-caused-by-new-russian-missiles.html#more

More likely this is a Russian load of bullshit. Here is a different story that is very likely to be true because Russia executed Russian soldiers by the millions during WWII. Stalin's motive? Make the other soldiers fight. Stalin was killing more Russians than Hitler was:

White House says Russia is executing its own soldiers for not following orders

The White House on Thursday said Russia is executing soldiers who have failed to follow orders and threatening entire units with death if they retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire.

It’s a development that U.S. national security officials believe reflects Russia’s morale problems 20 months into its grinding invasion of Ukraine, said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-executions-soldiers-white-ho
use-8b36f37068f3d0d1dfcb27e924b459c3

As an UNFRIENDLY REMINDER of how wasteful Russia is of its citizens:

Unlike the US in all wars of the 20th and 21st centuries, Russia does NOT keep a list of every soldier who dies because Russia does NOT give a damn how many millions of its citizens die for the Tsar or Stalin or Putin. Back in 1990, Russia had killed 62 million of its own citizens as proof Russia does NOT care who dies.

From the book Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
Download the free book from http://libgen.is/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B073RQ94KF/

1 61,911,000 Victims: Utopianism Empowered, 1917-1987

2 3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period, 1917-1922

3 2,200,000 Victims: The NEP Period 1923-1928

4 11,440,000 Victims: The Collectivization Period, 1929-1935

5 4,345,000 Victims: The Great Terror Period 1936-1938

6 5,104,000 Victims: Pre-World War II Period 1939-June 1941

7 13,053,000 Victims: World War II Period, June 1941-1945

8 15,613,000 Victims: Postwar and Stalin’s Twilight Period, 1945-1953

9 6,872,000 Victims: Post-Stalin Period, 1954-1987

Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
Download the free book from http://libgen.is/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B073RQ94KF/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 8:31 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Why do you bring up irrelevant history?

A) Russia is not the Soviet Union
B) Putin is not Stalin. Or Hitler for that matter.

Head out of ass, m'kay?

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, October 28, 2023 6:10 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why do you bring up irrelevant history?

A) Russia is not the Soviet Union
B) Putin is not Stalin. Or Hitler for that matter.

Head out of ass, m'kay?

Are you unaware that the faulty thinking of the Confederates did not die with the surrender of Lee's Army? That was mostly because everyone was pardoned for all their crimes by President Andrew Johnson, who also happened to have owned slaves.

After Reconstruction ended, the Confederates went right back to their old ways, except worse, because they weren't punished. How does that concern Russia?

Nobody important was punished in the Soviet Union for any of their crimes. By the way, Signym, tens of millions of Russians were murdered by big-shot Russians. Nobody important was punished for that 70-year-long murder rampage where at least 100 times more people were killed than during the USA's Civil War. That has left an indelible mark on the soul of Russians. They know that big-shots can murder less famous Russians with complete impunity.

Russian authorities have likely coerced Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) into joining a “volunteer” formation that will fight in Ukraine, which would constitute an apparent violation of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. Russian state media reported on October 27 that the “Bogdan Khmelnitsky” volunteer battalion “recruited” roughly 70 Ukrainian POWs from various Russian penal colonies, has begun training, and will deploy to an unspecified area of the front line upon completion of training.[17] Coercing POWs into combat would be a violation of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, which stipulates that “no prisoner of war may at any time be sent to or detained in areas where he may be exposed to the fire of the combat zone” and shall not “be employed on labor which is of an unhealthy or dangerous nature,” as ISW has previously reported.[18]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-october-27-2023

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, October 28, 2023 6:24 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Speaking of indelible marks on souls... how's yours doing lately?

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, October 28, 2023 12:43 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Speaking of indelible marks on souls... how's yours doing lately?

Per usual, you misunderstand the simplest things. I am literally, not figuratively, surrounded by Trumptards who would fit perfectly into the unethical Confederacy. They have the same racist attitudes, the same overinflated egos, and the same too-lazy-to-do-their-own-work ethics as a Confederate Colonel who owns a couple of dozen slaves. These Trumptards are every bit as likely to cheat in business, break contracts, and finagle as Trump or the Confederates did. They got that way because they weren't punished for rotten behavior. Neither were the Russians who stole Eastern Europe, lost it, and are now in the middle of stealing Ukraine.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, October 28, 2023 12:44 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Desperate for Air Defense, Ukraine Pushes U.S. for ‘Franken’ Weapons
By Lara Jakes

To meet the demand, the U.S. is producing so-called FrankenSAM systems that marry advanced Western weaponry with Soviet-era items still in Ukrainian stockpiles.

Oct. 28, 2023, 5:03 a.m. ET

With winter approaching, Ukrainian officials are desperate for more air defenses to protect their power grids from Russian strikes that could plunge the country into freezing darkness.

So desperate, in fact, that they are willing to experiment with a monster of a weapons system that was the brainchild of Ukraine and is now being pursued by the Pentagon.

Americans officials call it the FrankenSAM program, combining advanced, Western-caliber, surface-to-air missiles with refitted Soviet-era launchers or radars that Ukrainian forces already have on hand. Two variants of these improvised air defenses — one pairing Soviet Buk launchers and American Sea Sparrow missiles, the other marrying Soviet-era radars and American Sidewinder missiles — have been tested over the past several months on military bases in the United States and are set to be delivered to Ukraine this fall, officials said.

A third, the Cold War-era Hawk missile system, was displayed on Ukraine’s battlefield this week for the first time, in an example of what Laura K. Cooper, a senior U.S. defense official, had described this month as a FrankenSAM “in terms of resurrection” — an air defense relic brought back to life.

Together, the FrankenSAMs are “contributing to filling critical gaps in Ukraine’s air defenses, and this is the most important challenge that Ukraine faces today,” said Ms. Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia policy.

Almost since the start of the war, Ukraine has tinkered with commingling offensive weapons — its aging Soviet-era stockpiles and the ones it has gotten from the West — in unexpected but, in many cases, successful ways. American military officials spoke admiringly last year of Ukraine’s ability to “MacGyver” its arsenal, a metaphor for the 1980s TV show in which the title character uses simple, improvised contraptions to get himself out of sticky situations.

The FrankenSAMs project is now trying to do the same for Ukraine’s air defenses.

Over the past 20 months, the West has supplied a range of air defenses to Ukraine, including state-of-the-art Patriot and IRIS-T systems, tanks fitted with antiaircraft guns and more than 2,000 shoulder-fired Stinger missiles.

This past week, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany announced that his government would provide Ukraine with three more batteries of sophisticated air defenses, including another Patriot system, as part of what he called a nearly $1.5 billion “winter package.”

“As winter approaches, we are putting up a protective shield against renewed Russian attacks on energy, water and heating infrastructure,” Mr. Scholz said on Tuesday. “This is because it is becoming apparent that Russia will once again use cold and energy shortages as a weapon against the civilian population.”

The air defenses are part of the close to $100 billion in military aid that Ukraine has received from allies since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The United States, which has already sent more funding for weapons than any other single nation, is considering donating $60 billon more as part of a new Biden administration emergency spending plan.

On Thursday, the administration announced another $150 million in military aid for Ukraine, a package of weapons that included additional munitions for three kinds of air defense systems — including Sidewinder missiles for one of the FrankenSAMS.

Now that it has Western tanks, armored vehicles, air defenses and long-range attack missiles in its arsenal, and with fighter jets on the way, officials said Ukraine largely needs more of the same weapons it has already received as opposed to systems that have yet to be sent.

FrankenSAMs are a mix of both. The program’s origins date to late last year, when Ukrainian officials asked the allies to help them find missiles for around 60 Soviet-era Buk launchers and radars that were sitting idle in Kyiv’s arsenal. Knowing it would be difficult for the West to obtain Russian-manufactured munitions to fit the Buk systems, the Ukrainians instead suggested refitting the launchers to use NATO-caliber antiaircraft missiles donated by the United States.

“We realized we needed to come up with some solutions,” said Oleksandra Ustinova, the chairwoman of a commission in Ukraine’s Parliament that oversees arms transfers from the West. She said Ukrainian officials offered to jury-rig the weapons themselves, in the interest of time, “because for the winter period we need desperately the air defenses, and this is what is going to be used.”

But American engineers insisted on doing the work, and they needed more than seven months to test and approve the mash-up after the Pentagon agreed in January to provide Sea Sparrow missiles for the project. The first few refurbished Buk launchers and missiles arrived in Ukraine only recently, Ms. Ustinova said.

She said Ukraine was prepared to send 17 more Buk launchers to the United States to be refitted, but American engineers had been able to turn around only five each month.

Ukraine has also had to wait for the older Hawk systems to get up and running after they were initially pledged by Spain in October 2022. A month later, the United States said it would pay to refurbish older Hawk missiles for the donated Spanish systems. But at least some of them were delivered to Ukraine without the necessary radar equipment. That took another nine months to arrive.

By Monday night, the Hawks were fully operational, shooting down targets alongside more modern air-defense systems, the commander of Ukraine’s air forces, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, said on Telegram. Hitting 100 percent of the targets “is not easy, but we will get closer to it every day, strengthening our air defense,” General Oleshchuk wrote.

Another creation — an improvised ground launcher that uses Soviet-era radars to fire old American missiles that are usually used on fighter jets — was revealed in tandem with a $200 million security assistance package that the Pentagon announced on Oct. 11.

That FrankenSAM uses American-made supersonic AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles, which were developed in the 1950s and are used on F-16 and F-18 fighter jets. They are now part of the improvised ground-launching system, which Ms. Cooper previewed in Brussels as “a real innovation” that she said would help speed air defenses to Ukraine, “instead of it being, you know, years and years of development time.” It is not clear precisely when it will arrive in Ukraine.

American defense officials and engineers are also still testing what may be the most powerful FrankenSAM yet: a Patriot missile and launching station that operates with Ukraine’s older, domestically made radar systems.

A Pentagon official said on Wednesday that a test flight of the system this month, conducted at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, successfully hit the drone it had targeted. The system is scheduled to be sent to Ukraine this winter, the official said, accompanied by donated missiles and other Patriot parts from multiple allies.

Can Kasapoglu, a defense analyst for the Hudson Institute in Washington, praised the idea of integrating the Soviet-era equipment with more sophisticated Western missiles as a way to help Ukraine “maintain its arsenal for the long war ahead.”

It also “provides an opportunity to put weapons that are collecting dust on NATO capitals’ shelves,” Mr. Kasapoglu said, “into practical use.”

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting from Berlin, and John Ismay from Washington.

Lara Jakes is a foreign correspondent focused on the war in Ukraine. She has been a diplomatic and military correspondent in Washington and a war correspondent in Iraq, and has reported and edited from more than 60 countries over the last 25 years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/us/politics/air-defense-ukraine-fra
nkensam.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, October 28, 2023 2:41 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Speaking of indelible marks on souls... how's yours doing lately?

SECOND: Per usual, you misunderstand the simplest things. I am literally, not figuratively, surrounded by Trumptards who would fit perfectly into the unethical Confederacy. They have the same racist attitudes, the same overinflated egos, and the same too-lazy-to-do-their-own-work ethics as a Confederate Colonel who owns a couple of dozen slaves. These Trumptards are every bit as likely to cheat in business, break contracts, and finagle as Trump or the Confederates did. They got that way because they weren't punished for rotten behavior. Neither were the Russians who stole Eastern Europe, lost it, and are now in the middle of stealing Ukraine.

Avoiding the question I see!

SECOND, you should try living in San Francisco or Detroit or NYC or Chicago or any Democrat stronghold. I guarantee you would be even more disappointed in your fellow residents than you are in Texas. So stop projecting your hick, hidebound attitude across the USA, and the globe. There's a whole ginormous world out there you know nothing about, apparently.

So, back to REAL NEWS which contradicts your ridiculous prejudices: Ukrainian are fighting like you say Russians fight: throwing untrained men, boys, and women by the hundreds of thousands onto the front lines, only to get slaughtered. Meanwhile, Russians are attriting the Ukrainian military using superior force of arms while preserving their troops. Ukraine is an economic ruin, Russia's economy is robust. The west is throwing its resources and weapons down the drain fighting an enemy they don't even see clearly, let alone comprehend.

And Ukraine shells Donetsk City civilians with cluster rounds for the third time in a month. But it looks like Russian progress in Avdiivka will force Ukie artillery to move, and put Donetsk City out of range.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, October 28, 2023 9:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Speaking of indelible marks on souls... how's yours doing lately?

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, October 29, 2023 7:24 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Both inside and outside Russia, scholars and analysts are discerning important throughlines in patterns and practices from tsarist times to the present.

Russia’s Slaughter of Indigenous People in Alaska Tells Us Something Important About Ukraine

Russia once controlled 20 percent of U.S. territory. That legacy helps explain its aggression against Ukraine.

Russia’s colonization of Alaska — and the rampant violence, spiraling massacres and decimation of local Alaska Native populations that came along with it — is hardly well-known among the broader American body politic. Russia’s role in smothering and seizing Alaska stands apart as an overlooked chapter of colonialism on the continent.

It’s also an overlooked aspect of Russian history inside Russia. Official accounts of Russian expansion suggest that Russia simply agglomerated neighboring peoples as part of its defensive acquisition of territory, happily gathering new peoples and new lands into Moscow’s embrace. In Russia’s telling, the word “colonialism” applies to only other empires, not to the Russian one. As Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently claimed, Russia has “not stained itself with the bloody crimes of colonialism.”

Russia’s colonial legacy is not forgotten in Alaska. And given Russia’s renewed lurch toward imperialism in places like Ukraine, that legacy is arguably more resonant now than it’s been in decades.

In Western universities and research institutes, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered a sweeping reassessment of Russia’s relationship with other peoples and nations, including Ukraine. For decades, Western scholars saw the Soviet Union as a fundamentally different country from the Russian Empire that preceded it, and analyzed its system and behaviors primarily through the regime’s communist ideology. As such, when the Soviet Union collapsed, many in the West assumed that once Moscow had shed communism, democracy would naturally follow.

But post-Soviet Russia has turned out differently, and both inside and outside Russia, scholars and analysts are discerning important throughlines in patterns and practices from tsarist times to the present. One of those throughlines is colonialism, which is turning out to be one of the best explanations for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

You cannot argue that Russia needed to conquer Alaska in a search for territorial security, for so-called strategic depth that put distance between tsarist forces and any enemies. There was only wealth to be extracted — furs to be found, pelts to be culled, all as part of the “most important source of imperial revenue” for patrons in St. Petersburg.

Aside from Alaska, the record is clear that Russia engaged in colonial conquest and exploitation from the earliest days of the tsarist empire. For hundreds of years, tsarist forces launched any number of colonial campaigns along its outer reaches, decimating neighboring powers and transforming them into tributaries of wealth for the Russian state, toppling governments, slaughtering local populations, unleashing genocidal violence on those who opposed the expansion of Russian state power.

More about Russians in Alaska at https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/27/russia-colonization-
alaska-ukraine-00123352

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Sunday, October 29, 2023 7:27 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Avoiding the question I see!

SECOND, you should try living in San Francisco or Detroit or NYC or Chicago or any Democrat stronghold. I guarantee you would be even more disappointed in your fellow residents than you are in Texas. So stop projecting your hick, hidebound attitude across the USA, and the globe. There's a whole ginormous world out there you know nothing about, apparently.

Don't be so silly, Signym. The explanation is the Sheep and the Goats parable from the Bible, about separating the good people from the bad. The Sheep and Goats are spread about the country, but it doesn't take a God to tell them apart. The USA has at least 80 million goats, Trumptards, most trying to pass as sheep, including even Trump, but they can't maintain the sheep disguise 100% of the time.

The Sheep and the Goats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_and_the_Goats

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So, back to REAL NEWS which contradicts your ridiculous prejudices: Ukrainian are fighting like you say Russians fight: throwing untrained men, boys, and women by the hundreds of thousands onto the front lines, only to get slaughtered. Meanwhile, Russians are attriting the Ukrainian military using superior force of arms while preserving their troops. Ukraine is an economic ruin, Russia's economy is robust. The west is throwing its resources and weapons down the drain fighting an enemy they don't even see clearly, let alone comprehend.

And Ukraine shells Donetsk City civilians with cluster rounds for the third time in a month. But it looks like Russian progress in Avdiivka will force Ukie artillery to move, and put Donetsk City out of range.

Signym, it is absurd that Russia wasn't able to crush Ukraine in the first 30 days of the invasion but that was because the Russian Generals believed the propaganda about Russians being vastly superior. The Russian Generals learned that they were equals of the Ukrainians. It is on the battlefield where you find out who knows how to hit a target without wasting ammo. Very clearly, Ukraine vs Russia is Dumb vs Dumber. Both sides are grotesquely wasteful and incompetent. I happen to be opposed to the Dumber side because the dumbest Russians, as well as Russia's leaders, regularly threaten to nuke the US. For my entire life, that Russian behavior caused Congress to squander over $10 trillion to build the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) defense. What difference does it make if Congress wastes on Ukraine about 1% of what it already wasted on US nukes to deter the Russians?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, October 29, 2023 8:52 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Avoiding the question I see!

SECOND, you should try living in San Francisco or Detroit or NYC or Chicago or any Democrat stronghold. I guarantee you would be even more disappointed in your fellow residents than you are in Texas. So stop projecting your hick, hidebound attitude across the USA, and the globe. There's a whole ginormous world out there you know nothing about, apparently.
Don't be so silly, Signym. The explanation is the Sheep and the Goats parable from the Bible, about separating the good people from the bad. The Sheep and Goats are spread about the country, but it doesn't take a God to tell them apart. The USA has at least 80 million goats, Trumptards, most trying to pass as sheep, including even Trump, but they can't maintain the sheep disguise 100% of the time.

We've come full circle and Second finally admits what I've known about him from the very beginning.

He's a fucking sheep.

Baaaaaaaaaaaa!

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, October 29, 2023 9:05 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Avoiding the question I see!

SECOND, you should try living in San Francisco or Detroit or NYC or Chicago or any Democrat stronghold. I guarantee you would be even more disappointed in your fellow residents than you are in Texas. So stop projecting your hick, hidebound attitude across the USA, and the globe. There's a whole ginormous world out there you know nothing about, apparently.
Don't be so silly, Signym. The explanation is the Sheep and the Goats parable from the Bible, about separating the good people from the bad. The Sheep and Goats are spread about the country, but it doesn't take a God to tell them apart. The USA has at least 80 million goats, Trumptards, most trying to pass as sheep, including even Trump, but they can't maintain the sheep disguise 100% of the time.

We've come full circle and Second finally admits what I've known about him from the very beginning.

He's a fucking sheep.

Baaaaaaaaaaaa!

I'm a sheep because I never cheated on my taxes or my wife and never killed anybody who didn't richly deserve it. Meanwhile, Trump is a goat because he has cheated on his taxes, and his wives, and he did kill people who didn't deserve it. See his policy on drone strikes:

The newly-revealed Trump rules show how far that administration went in casting aside any meaningful constraint on the United States’ use of lethal force abroad.
https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/trumps-secret-rules-for-dr
one-strikes-and-presidents-unchecked-license-to-kill

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Sunday, October 29, 2023 2:47 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
I'm a sheep because I never cheated on my taxes or my wife and never killed anybody who didn't richly deserve it.

BFD. That's a pretty low bar. I never cheated either, and I never killed anyone, period.

I never did understand that sheep/goats parable. Goats are incredibly useful and intelligent creatures, able to survive where sheep can't. And their kids are amusing as hell to watch. The down side I suppose, is that they don't flock and aren't easily led.

A metaphor for our times: A Donkey Leads a Flock of Sheep

******

BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH UKRAINE?
Seems like you're spending a huge amount of energy dragging the discussion off-topic, BECAUSE RUSSIA IS WINNING.

Don't worry, I'll bring you regular updates of Ukraine's slow and painful defeat.
Feel sorry for the people of Ukraine, who let themselves be turned into America's proxy, whose slaughter is our "good investment".

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Monday, October 30, 2023 6:41 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
I'm a sheep because I never cheated on my taxes or my wife and never killed anybody who didn't richly deserve it.
BFD. That's a pretty low bar. I never cheated either, and I never killed anyone, period.

I never did understand that sheep/goats parable. Goats are incredibly useful and intelligent creatures, able to survive where sheep can't. And their kids are amusing as hell to watch. The down side I suppose, is that they don't flock and aren't easily led.

A metaphor for our times: A Donkey Leads a Flock of Sheep

******

BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH UKRAINE?
Seems like you're spending a huge amount of energy dragging the discussion off-topic, BECAUSE RUSSIA IS WINNING.

Don't worry, I'll bring you regular updates of Ukraine's slow and painful defeat.
Feel sorry for the people of Ukraine, who let themselves be turned into America's proxy, whose slaughter is our "good investment".

Signym, this is a test of your reading comprehension. I will help you by underlining a few words about goats. It is repeated by wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_and_the_Goats :

But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will tell those on his right hand, 'Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?'

The King will answer them, 'Most certainly I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' Then he will say also to those on the left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.'

Then they will also answer, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?

Then he will answer them, saying, 'Most certainly I tell you, because you did not do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.' These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
— Matthew 25:31–46

Signym, by the way, Russia has not won. If you weren't stupid, you'd stop declaring which side is winning. You can't know this soon.

"If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." - Albert Einstein

"If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then they are sorry Trumptards." - second

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Monday, October 30, 2023 6:48 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/10/29/trenches-and-tech-on-ukrai
nes-southern-front

Drone pilots have become increasingly valuable — and are targets for both sides | Oct 29th 2023

THE DRONE might not spot you, but if it does, there is only one thing to do: hide well, and hide quickly. “Major”, a 25-year-old drone pilot operating near the hottest front lines of the south, in Zaporizhia province, says your chances are not good if an enemy pilot has you in his sights. The drone can come from behind your own positions, and masquerade as your own. The cameras are not great. But running at speeds of 150-160 km/h, it will always outpace you. “If your cover is poor, then you are likely a dead man,” he says. Major has survived a pursuit four times, the last time in mid October. Two of his closest comrades have been less fortunate. “God, not physics, decides if you survive,” he says.

In a war increasingly dominated by aerial killing-machines, the hunters are rapidly becoming the hunted. The controllers for most drones leave their own electronic trace, and if a pilot isn’t careful, the enemy can home in on them. “Hummer,” a commander in Ukraine’s 47th brigade, also operational along the Zaporizhia front, says the Russians fire everything they have once they identify a target. They can use their own strike drones, but they also apply high-precision artillery, mines, glide bombs, and even, on occasion, saboteur groups. Major says he has lost 15% of his colleagues over the last few months. Hummer says his figures are lower, but refuses to elaborate.

Ukraine is the pioneer of the first-person-view (FPV) drones: craft that are flown, video-game-like, by goggle-wearing pilots with real-time manoeuvrability. The drones can cost just a few hundred dollars to build, but can deliver explosives capable of destroying or incapacitating equipment with a value of millions. In a day, a single operator can take out a dozen high-value assets, with corresponding human losses. That has made the drone pilot an even more prized kill than a sniper, one front-line commander suggests. “A lot of people want to become drone pilots because they think the work is further back and safer. The reality is that it’s extremely dangerous to be flying battlefield drones.”

The first FPV drones appeared in eastern Ukraine in the spring. They were a response to limited supplies of Western ammunition and the challenge of a much better-equipped adversary. Drones have since played a leading role degrading Russian firepower as part of Ukraine’s southern counter-offensive in the Zaporizhia region. But though Ukraine initially enjoyed total dominance in this new class of drones, Russians are catching up. The first Russian FPV drones appeared by July, and are now harassing Ukrainian units along the front lines. Ukraine is also hampered by the fact its drones are still largely assembled and paid for by volunteers. Command structures are similarly anarchic with freelance drone operators, brigade drones, secret services and others operating in the same areas. Meanwhile Russia has clear superiority when it comes to more expensive classes of drones, such as high-powered reconnaissance drones.

But the small FPV battlefield drones have challenged many accepted rules of war, and doctrine is struggling to adapt. “The future is already with us,” says Genius, a deputy battalion commander in the 47th brigade. In mid-October, a Ukrainian pilot set a 22km record for the distance at which he incapacitated a Russian tank, 18km behind the front line. His commander says the Russians have imposed a 10km no-tank zone behind the front, dramatically decreasing the value of such weapons. Hummer says that his own forces have a 58% success rate in hitting targets. But the traffic is not one-way, and the Ukrainians have many losses too. Russian FPV drones have destroyed several Bradley Fighting Vehicles (each worth some $2m) and even a Leopard tank.

The Russians are learning “from their mistakes…and from ours,” says Hummer. Earlier in the summer, some units began to equip higher-value assets like tanks and artillery with jamming boxes, which create high-energy fields around an object so that signals from around it simply stop working. Attacking such equipment, without video feedback, is a difficult if not impossible task. Ukrainian units by and large don’t yet have the same technology. “FPV drones have completely changed the tactics of armoured infantry battle and we have to adapt better,” says Yuriy Momot, the deputy general director of a company developing technology jamming countermeasures for Ukraine. “Before, only brigades thought about electronic warfare. Now company-level units need equipment that can detect and defend themselves against FPV drones.”

Major, who pilots from positions starting just a few hundred yards from Robotyne, the centrepoint of the Ukrainian counter-offensive effort, says he operates without any electronic protection. “Intuition is the only thing that counts in this wild fight,” he insists. It is a fight that shows no sign of letting up—even as Ukraine’s progress southward has slowed to a snail’s pace. “Left Handed”, an infantryman fighting at the front between Robotyne and Verbove, says Ukrainian losses have increased to alarming levels, in part due to the work of drones. The plains of Zaporizhia have turned their back on life, he says. “It’s hellish. Corpses, the smell of corpses, death, blood and fear. Not a whiff of life, just the stench of death.” Those in units such as his own had more chance of dying than surviving. “Seventy-thirty. Some don’t even see their first battle.”

The rainy season, and a new Russian operation around Avdiivka in the east seem set to place if not a full stop, then a semi-colon on the counter-offensive. Since beginning operations in June, the Ukrainians have moved just 12km from their original positions. They remain a full 17 km away from their most immediate target of Tokmak, a strategic railway hub on the way to the Azov Sea. Minefields and multi-level trench networks mean it would require a miracle for them to reach Tokmak before the winter. For the moment, Ukrainian operations have shifted to widening flanks ahead of a new push at some future juncture. The drone commanders say that the push must begin again as soon as the conditions allow it. “No one is in the mood for waiting,” says Hummer. “We need to see normal life again.” ¦

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, October 30, 2023 10:28 AM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Why do you bring up irrelevant history?

A) Russia is not the Soviet Union
B) Putin is not Stalin. Or Hitler for that matter.

Head out of ass, m'kay?

Poor comrade Signym. First she posts propaganda about Biden, still no evidence to back up her claims, to back up her lies. Then she proclaims background information about Russia is irrelevant.

Comrade Signym, who is always posting shit from the past in a whataboutism attempt to make current happenings seem irrelevant. And even then she twists the facts of history in an attempt to protect the criminally insane leadership globally, authoritarians, that like Trump, she admires.

Sick, she is very sick.

T

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Monday, October 30, 2023 1:22 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
SECOND:;I'm a sheep because I never cheated on my taxes or my wife and never killed anybody who didn't richly deserve it.

SIGNY: BFD. That's a pretty low bar. I never cheated either, and I never killed anyone, period.

I never did understand that sheep/goats parable. Goats are incredibly useful and intelligent creatures, able to survive where sheep can't. And their kids are amusing as hell to watch. The down side I suppose, is that they don't flock and aren't easily led.

A metaphor for our times: A Donkey Leads a Flock of Sheep

******

BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH UKRAINE?
Seems like you're spending a huge amount of energy dragging the discussion off-topic, BECAUSE RUSSIA IS WINNING.

Don't worry, I'll bring you regular updates of Ukraine's slow and painful defeat.
Feel sorry for the people of Ukraine, who let themselves be turned into America's proxy, whose slaughter is our "good investment".

SECOND: Signym, this is a test of your reading comprehension. I will help you by underlining a few words about goats. It is repeated by wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_and_the_Goats :

But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will tell those on his right hand, 'Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.'..blah blah blah ...... The King will answer them, 'Most certainly I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' Then he will say also to those on the left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is ... blah blah blah...

Signym, by the way, Russia has not won. If you weren't stupid, you'd stop declaring which side is winning. You can't know this soon.

"If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." - Albert Einstein

"If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then they are sorry Trumptards." - second

Having been raised Catholic I understood the biblical reference. Bible stories were geared to primitive farmers, herders, olive growers, wandering/ warring tribes, fisherman etc. Presumably they resonated with real life back then. But IMHO in real life goats are still incredibly useful creatures. They can browse areas inaccessible to sheep. They're a little harder to manage and it's harder to become wealthy (if you count your wealth in numbers of sheep, camels, jars of olive oil and wine etc) but that's all.

But why are you quoting the Bible? Neither of us believe it, right?

And furthermore, the part of the Bible that you quote threatens eternal damnation for the "goats"... Which totally undercuts your NEXT quote, about only being good for fear of punishment.

You're fundamentally confused, SECOND. Apparently any particular thought in your brain has never bumped into any other thought bc you frequently contradict yourself.
It's impossible to know what your point is!

*****

AFA Russia winning, Ukraine is running out of everything - planes, shells, rockets, missiles, armored vehicles and -especially- people. They are reduced to drone warfare at the front line. Yes, drones are useful weapons, but they're limited in range and explosive charge, and Russia has better drones. If we're looking at the balance of forces, Russia has more of everything, better logistics, and they're slowly moving the front westward.

Not seeing any big changes in the coming year. So I predict Russia will win. Capisce?

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 5:12 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Russian forces continue to use “Storm-Z” assault units predominantly made up of prisoner recruits in highly attritional infantry-led frontal assaults. Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun stated on October 30 that Russian forces are preparing to conduct “meat assaults” (colloquial jargon for infantry-led frontal assaults) near Avdiivka and are training “Storm-Z” assault units for future assaults without equipment.[21] A Russian milblogger reportedly serving in the Avdiivka direction claimed that “meat assaults” are when Russian infantry forces attack without artillery support to suppress Ukrainian firing positions.[22] The milblogger claimed that when two Russian regiments conduct ”meat assaults” side by side, the seam between the areas of responsibility of both regiments remains unsecured and vulnerable to Ukrainian counterattacks. Another Russian milblogger claimed that “Storm-Z” assault detachments in the Avdiivka direction and on Bakhmut’s southern flank are often destroyed after a few days of active operations and on average lose between 40-70 percent of their personnel.[23] The milblogger criticized the Russian military’s poor training of “Storm-Z” units and the unwillingness of superior officers to consider the proposals of “Storm-Z” commanders when assigning them combat missions. The milblogger stated that “Storm-Z” units are often introduced into battle before conducting reconnaissance or establishing connections with neighboring units and typically struggle to evacuate their wounded without artillery cover, leading to higher losses. Both milbloggers noted the lack of proper artillery support for Russian attacks and counterattacks.[24] One milblogger stated that these factors contribute to “Storm-Z” units being turned into “trash” before achieving any significant results.[25] ISW has frequently reported on the ineffectiveness of “Storm-Z” units.[26]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-october-30-2023

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 5:14 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I predict Russia will win. Capisce?

Bravado? The last time Russians "won" in Ukraine, they killed 4,000,000 Ukrainians in Holodomor. Russians pretend that their murder rampage is a myth, but the Ukrainians and Europeans know it is true and that it will happen again if Russia "wins". Russians should be very concerned about a "win" setting into motion a bigger war with Europeans since they can barely handle this small one with Ukrainians.

Holodomor is one example of Russians slaughtering those they defeat. Russia’s slaughter of indigenous people in Alaska tells us what Russians will do in Ukraine.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/27/russia-colonization-
alaska-ukraine-00123352

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 5:34 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Another story about Russians on a murder rampage. So what's new about that?

Ukrainian family of 9, including two minors brutally slain by Russian soldiers

Volnovakha, Ukraine, Edited By: Moohita Kaur Garg, Updated: Oct 31, 2023, 01:21 PM IST

Trigger warning: Some readers may find the details of this report disturbing. Discretion is advised

In the Russian-occupied eastern Ukrainian town of Volnovakha, a family of nine, including minor children, have been found shot dead in their house. Russian soldiers have been blamed for the gruesome killings.

Ukrainian officials have alleged that the Kapkanets family was killed on 27 October for refusing to give their house to the soldiers.

Arrests and more

As per a BBC report, Russian investigators have detained two male suspects, who they say are Russian soldiers from the Far East.

Photographs of the brutal killings have emerged on social media. They show blood-splattered and bullet-riddled bodies lying in bed. In some heartbreaking images, the slain family could be seen lying locked in an embrace.

Ukraine and Russia have both opened their own investigations into the merciless slaying.

'Bloodied hands'

Taking to Telegram, Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets on Monday said that "Russians' bloodied hands were involved" in the Volnovakha killings.

As per Lubinets' statement, preliminary information has revealed that "the occupiers have killed the whole of the Kapkanets family, who were celebrating a birthday and who had refused to hand their own house over to occupiers from Chechnya."

Citing preliminary information, the prosecutors' office in Ukraine-controlled Donetsk has alleged that attackers in Russian army uniforms shot the entire family after they refused to comply with demands to vacate their family home. It also said that two children, aged around five and nine, were among the victims.

Russia says it was a domestic conflict

On the other hand, Russia's official Investigations Committee has said that as per preliminary information, "the motive for the crime was a domestic conflict."

They said that two men arrested in relation to the crime were Russian soldiers from the country's far East, who had signed contracts with the Russian military.

Astra, a Russian news channel on Telegram quoting the slain family's neighbours, reported that the "killers were in the military". One neighbour told the news outlet: "We're all scared."

Another Russian Telegram channel, Baza, reported that the family had "a conflict with unidentified men wearing military fatigues with no insignia".

https://www.wionews.com/world/ukrainian-family-of-9-including-two-mino
rs-brutally-slain-by-russian-soldiers-653398

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 11:25 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky replaced Colonel General Oleg Makarevich, who was sacked over providing false reports to his superiors, according to Vladimir Rogov, a Kremlin-backed official in the Kherson region.

“The results on the ground did not correspond to the information delivered by the Dnipro group’s [previous] command,” Rogov wrote on the messaging app Telegram.

Rogov linked Teplinsky’s promotion to the increasingly fierce fighting in the Kherson region, which is located north of annexed Crimea.

“The enemy has recently increased combat activity in this part of the southern front, crossing to our side of the Dnipro River and trying to create bridgeheads there for attempts to attack the area of Crimea,” Rogov said.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/10/30/putin-replaces-head-of-russi
an-army-grouping-in-southern-ukraine-tass-a82934

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 1:14 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Having been raised Catholic I understood the biblical reference. Bible stories were geared to primitive farmers, herders, olive growers, wandering/ warring tribes, fisherman etc. Presumably they resonated with real life back then. But IMHO in real life goats are still incredibly useful creatures. They can browse areas inaccessible to sheep. They're a little harder to manage and it's harder to become wealthy (if you count your wealth in numbers of sheep, camels, jars of olive oil and wine etc) but that's all.

But why are you quoting the Bible? Neither of us believe it, right?

And furthermore, the part of the Bible that you quote threatens eternal damnation for the "goats"... Which totally undercuts your NEXT quote, about only being good for fear of punishment.

You're fundamentally confused, SECOND. Apparently any particular thought in your brain has never bumped into any other thought bc you frequently contradict yourself.
It's impossible to know what your point is!

Almost everyone I know believes they do not control their life. Instead, it's God, Satan, the environment, the government, or their family who are really in control. The result for them? Endless misfortunes, absurdities, personal drama, pleading/praying for God's mercy/forgiveness, but very little actual self-control because who needs self-control when larger forces overpower their tiny strength, pulling their puppet strings, pushing them in random directions?

I think the Bible is a guide, very out-of-date, on what people who believe in self-control should do with their lives. My own family followed the Bible, and it worked out pretty well for them. (I was there when they became Jehovah's Witnesses. I saw the change.) I've also seen the fake Christians proclaim they, too, follow the Bible. Transparently, they aren't and it works out very poorly for them because hiding their rottenness doesn't work well. I have confronted a few about the connection between their failures and their personal rottenness, but since they all have excuses for being rotten, they won't see that what happened to them is caused by them. They feel helpless, with no control, a plaything of fate, luck, and doom. I shrug and mutter to myself, "Whatever you want to believe, you fucking idiot."

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 1:29 PM

Until you show us your doctorate in psychology, get fucked.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 4:12 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Most fortunate people believe they got there by their own effort, when in reality MOST people who become very wealthy, like singers or actors who become "stars", are no better than most others in their profession or avocation. Not drinking or overeating or cheating on your taxes or what-have-you is NOT a guarantee of success!

Yes, people have to put in effort to get to a certain point (unless luck hits you with a lottery win) but effort BY ITSELF ALSO isn't generally a springboard to great wealth or success either.

So people have control over themselves (or they should) but NOBODY has complete control over their lives, and thinking that is stupid.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 6:30 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Putin Ally Suggests Russia Will Someday Conquer Germany

Oct 31, 2023 at 5:59 PM EDT

The TV host criticized the German government for increasing the amount of supplies it's giving to Kyiv, noting that Germany at first would only commit to giving medicine and helmets to Ukraine's military.

"After a while, 'We'll supply anything they need,'" Solovyov said, per Gerashchenko's translation. "So we have no other option. We will finish, we will take Berlin once again, and this time we will not leave."

When a guest on his show argued that Russia would not attempt to invade Germany, Solovyov responded by saying, "If Germany continues to be ruled by Nazis, Germany will have the same fate as every time anti-Russian rulers came to power in Germany."

He added: "It always ended with a Russian soldier entering Berlin."

The U.S. State Department has said Solovyov spreads disinformation from the Kremlin and wrote on its website last year in a list identifying well-known figures involved in Russian propaganda that Solovyov "may be the most energetic Kremlin propagandist around today."

During the course of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Solovyov has made such statements as saying Moscow should unleash a nuclear attack on any country that would attempt to detain Putin over the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in March for alleged war crimes.

He also has advocated multiple times for Russia to make use of its nuclear capabilities against the countries that back Ukraine.

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-ally-suggests-russia-someday-concquer-g
ermany-1839743

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 6:33 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Most fortunate people believe they got there by their own effort, when in reality MOST people who become very wealthy, like singers or actors who become "stars", are no better than most others in their profession or avocation. Not drinking or overeating or cheating on your taxes or what-have-you is NOT a guarantee of success!

Yes, people have to put in effort to get to a certain point (unless luck hits you with a lottery win) but effort BY ITSELF ALSO isn't generally a springboard to great wealth or success either.

So people have control over themselves (or they should) but NOBODY has complete control over their lives, and thinking that is stupid.

There is no guarantee of success (if your parents/genetics/dropped-on-your-head-as-a-baby murder your chances) but there is the certainty of failure if you lie down, give up, surrender, poison yourself, whatever description for the billions of roads to failure. 6ix does not seem to be even slightly aware of what he has done to himself. Others who don't sabotage themselves every moment of the day also are unaware of what they do to themselves because their enduring self-sabotage is less intense, but still enough to guarantee failure. There are nations that sabotage themselves. See North Korea and Russia. The only straightforward way to avoid what happens in those places is to leave them. Russia lost its best long ago. North Korea? The best moved to South Korea until North Korea stopped the flow.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023 8:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Most fortunate people believe they got there by their own effort, when in reality MOST people who become very wealthy, like singers or actors who become "stars", are no better than most others in their profession or avocation. Not drinking or overeating or cheating on your taxes or what-have-you is NOT a guarantee of success!

Yes, people have to put in effort to get to a certain point (unless luck hits you with a lottery win) but effort BY ITSELF ALSO isn't generally a springboard to great wealth or success either.

So people have control over themselves (or they should) but NOBODY has complete control over their lives, and thinking that is stupid.
There is no guarantee of success (if your parents/genetics/dropped-on-your-head-as-a-baby murder your chances) but there is the certainty of failure if you lie down, give up, surrender, poison yourself, whatever description for the billions of roads to failure. 6ix does not seem to be even slightly aware of what he has done to himself. Others who don't sabotage themselves every moment of the day also are unaware of what they do to themselves because their enduring self-sabotage is less intense, but still enough to guarantee failure. There are nations that sabotage themselves. See North Korea and Russia. The only straightforward way to avoid what happens in those places is to leave them. Russia lost its best long ago. North Korea? The best moved to South Korea until North Korea stopped the flow.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

You keep saying that, but I'm fine buddy.

Nearly 7 years sober from booze, more than 9 from weed. I've got more money than I'd use in a decade with zero debt.

I answer to no one and I want for nothing.

I don't for a single second aspire to be anything that you've tried and failed to achieve in your life. Your judgement is wasted on me.

You should worry about you.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Wednesday, November 1, 2023 1:25 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The difference between Russia and your hypothetical image is that Russia has learned from its history. It - or the leadership, at least- have learned from the Soviet experience and the "capitalist" experience, and they're trying not to make the same mistakes.

Unlike, say, the USA, which keeps making the same mistakes over and over.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Wednesday, November 1, 2023 5:00 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The difference between Russia and your hypothetical image is that Russia has learned from its history. It - or the leadership, at least- have learned from the Soviet experience and the "capitalist" experience, and they're trying not to make the same mistakes.

Unlike, say, the USA, which keeps making the same mistakes over and over.

Have seen this little trick of Russia's? Eradicating a language is a very old-fashioned way to conquer the natives:

Russian occupation officials continue efforts to eradicate Ukrainian language and culture in occupied Ukraine. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin stated on October 27 that “[he] will not allow the Ukrainian language to reappear as a state or privileged language” in occupied Donetsk Oblast and claimed that no schools in occupied Donetsk Oblast have chosen to teach Ukrainian language.

https://ria-ru.translate.goog/20231027/pushilin-1905627017.html?_x_tr_
sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

https://ria.ru/20231027/pushilin-1905627017.html

Signym, if only Russia had stopped teaching German in East Germany back in 1946 because no schools had "chosen" to teach the German language, maybe Russia would still control Berlin.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, November 1, 2023 5:16 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The difference between Russia and your hypothetical image is that Russia has learned from its history.

Who are you kidding? Every citizen in the Baltic States and Finland knows you are joking:

The Dream of a European Security Order With Russia Is Dead

How the war ends will determine Europe’s future as much as Ukraine’s.

By Kristi Raik, the deputy director of the International Centre for Defence and Security in Tallinn, Estonia.

October 31, 2023, 8:19 AM
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/31/russia-ukraine-war-europe-securit
y-order-nato-peace-negotiation-settlement/

As Russia’s war against Ukraine approaches its third winter, there is still no end in sight. The drip feed of Western military aid is enough for Ukraine to keep fighting but insufficient to liberate all its territory. At the same time, despite continued popular support for Kyiv’s cause in Western countries, there is plenty of talk about Western war fatigue, with increasing behind-the-scenes debate about a possible compromise to end or freeze the war.

A compromise would be premature for a number of familiar reasons. First, neither side is ready for serious negotiations. Regaining control over Ukraine may not be existential for Russia’s survival, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, but it could very well become a matter of life and death for Putin himself. For Ukraine, the fight is existential, and Western leaders have said again and again that it is for Ukraine to decide when to negotiate and on what conditions. That mantra is flawed, however, since we already know that Ukraine wants to keep fighting. By holding back on crucial weapons deliveries, Western countries are partly responsible for Ukraine not advancing as fast as it and its supporters would wish.

Second, violence in Russian-occupied territories will not stop as long as these territories remain under Moscow’s control. Freezing the conflict is therefore a non-starter for the Ukrainians who have seen the horrors perpetrated by Russians in Bucha, Irpin, and countless other towns and villages. This is well understood by Ukraine’s neighbors, which have their own experience of Russian and Soviet occupation. It means living under fear, unfreedom, and the constant threat of violence.

These arguments against seeking a settlement any time soon will be familiar to readers following the war. Less discussed — but much more fundamental for all of Europe — is what a settlement would mean for the future European security order. If the war were frozen, not only would Russia be rewarded for its attack. It would also hold on to its goal of fundamentally revising the European security order and reestablishing its sphere of influence.

It should be very clear that Moscow’s understanding of the principles and norms of European security is incompatible with Western views. As we can see in Ukraine, the Kremlin equates security with control, which has deep roots in Russian history and foreign policy. This is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

The tradition of Russia as a land-hungry empire goes back in a straight line to medieval Muscovy, which transformed into an expansionist state under the rule of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Ivan, also known for his cruelty in torturing and massacring his own people, has been rehabilitated and celebrated under Putin’s rule, while Putin himself has adopted another torture-loving Russian empire builder, Peter the Great, as his role model.

Another key Russian foreign-policy tradition is the idea that the European security order should be based on agreements among the major powers over the heads of smaller ones. Since 2014, the Kremlin has repeatedly made references to the Congress of Vienna, which redrew the map of Europe in the early 1800s, and the Yalta Conference, the British-Soviet-U.S. meeting in February 1945 that divided Europe into two spheres of influence. From the Russian perspective, both agreements laid the foundation for decades-long stability. The price of that stability, however, is painfully known to the countries affected by Russian domination. The Vienna agreement wiped Poland off the map as a sovereign state for a century, and Yalta doomed half of Europe to more than 40 years of Soviet occupation and totalitarian rule.

Europe’s post-Cold War order has brought unprecedented levels of freedom, sovereignty, and prosperity to Russia’s western neighbors. Most of the former Eastern Bloc countries used their sovereignty to make a decisive turn to the West. Among the former Soviet republics, the Baltic states’ Western turn was fast and determined; Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova tried to follow later and are still struggling for the right to choose their future place in Europe, including membership in the European Union. The EU’s decision-making structures underpin a fundamentally different order compared with being part of a Russian-controlled zone: The bloc gives substantial power to smaller states, even as members delegate some aspects of sovereignty to supranational institutions. Staying in the gray zone between Russia and the EU, as Ukraine has done, proved to be the least stable option.

Russia never felt comfortable with post-Cold War developments in European security. It frequently complained about not being treated as an equal by the West—yet Russia’s and Europe’s definitions of equality are very different. For Russia, it means being on par with other great powers, notably the United States, and not with its sovereign neighbors, whose agency it has consistently denied. Because it does not see them as equals, Moscow also has little interest in what Berlin or Paris has to say, let alone Brussels. That clouds every aspect of how Russia views its neighbors. When hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets during the 2004 Orange Revolution to protest against their corrupt and dishonest government—and again during the Maidan Revolution in late 2013 and early 2014—all Moscow could see was a supposed U.S. plot to weaken Russia.

In 2009, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proposed a new European security treaty in an attempt to defend what Russia considered its legitimate security interests, now allegedly being trod on by the West. Using code language such as “indivisibility of security,” what Moscow really seemed to seek was to confine NATO to the Cold War-era West and gain veto right over the alliance’s decisions if Russia considered them contrary to its very different definition of security.

In December 2021, as Russian forces were massing to invade Ukraine, the Kremlin made a renewed attempt to promote its vision of a European security order in two documents addressed to NATO and the United States. This time the ambiguity was gone and the revisionist aims clear: a full restoration of Moscow’s Cold War-era sphere of influence and the pushback of NATO’s presence in Europe to the line before its eastward expansion in the 1990s. These aims remain unchanged and reflect Russia’s long-term strategic thinking. Western efforts since the Cold War to build a common European order with Russia have clearly failed.

If Russia achieves its strategic goal of reestablishing control over Ukraine, even in part, it will ratify Russia’s efforts to impose its vision of order on its European neighbors. But even if Russia is defeated and has to leave all occupied territories in Ukraine, it will not easily give up its centuries-old understanding of itself as an empire and major power entitled to privileged rights in its sphere of influence. Unlike some empires that were wound down in the past—such as Nazi Germany and imperial Japan—Russia will not be totally defeated. It will not be occupied by foreign powers or be forced to go through a profound system change. Russia’s imminent transformation to a status quo power that accepts its post-Cold War place in Europe, let alone further enlargement of the EU and NATO, is therefore unlikely.

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously argued in the 1990s that Russia cannot be an empire without Ukraine. Russian propagandists claim that Russia can only exist as an empire or not exist at all. Rejecting this claim will be an essential precondition for a post-imperial Russia to emerge.

Another precondition will be for Russia to acknowledge its neighbors as sovereign states and not mere puppets doing Washington’s bidding. Where the Kremlin—echoed by so-called realists in the West—is profoundly wrong with regard to its Ukraine war is the idea that world history is written by the major powers. If that were true, the Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and Ukraine would have no reason to exist today as sovereign states. One of the big unintended consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that it has demonstrated and strengthened the agency of Russia’s neighbors. A new power bloc in NATO now stretches from Scandinavia to the Black Sea. Poland and Ukraine are becoming leading military powers in Europe. Their contribution to European defense will be much needed in coming years and decades.

We should not expect a common understanding between the West and Russia on European security to emerge anytime soon—and certainly not as part of a negotiated agreement that would at least partially reward Russia for its dismemberment of Ukraine. It is therefore necessary to envisage a future European security order not with Russia but against it, aimed at deterring further Russian threats and defending European democracies against the Kremlin’s authoritarian, revisionist, and imperialist ambitions.

This would be a dual order similar in some ways to the Cold War era. Then, Western democracies created their own liberal rules-based structures, notably NATO and the EU, while pursuing a containment policy against the Soviet Union and engaging in ideological, economic, military, and technological competition with the Eastern Bloc. Such a new European order would, however, be inherently unstable, not least because the global context has profoundly changed since the Cold War. The United States’ commitment to European security is undermined by both domestic political turbulence and a geostrategic environment where the main U.S. competitor is now China, not Russia. At the same time, the world is no longer bipolar but has multiple competing and interconnected centers of power.

In spite of these changes, the future European order will most likely be characterized by a long-term Russian threat and an antagonistic relationship with Moscow, much as during the Cold War. Russia will continue to reject a new balance of power that shrinks its former Soviet and tsarist sphere of influence, while the West will continue to reject the very principle of spheres of influence. Russia would seek to revise the balance of power as soon as it rebuilds its military capability. In order to make the new order in Europe more sustainable, the West will need to pursue a proactive containment policy, including credible deterrence and defense, full integration of Ukraine and other countries in NATO and the EU, and restrictions on Russia’s ability to restore its military strength.

No matter where one stands on negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the fundamental question of Europe’s future security order cannot be ignored.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, November 1, 2023 12:57 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Ukraine pleads with the U.S. to ramp up support against Russia

At the top of Kyiv’s latest wish list is new air-to-air capability to take down an increase in GPS-guided Russian glide bombs, which can be launched from aircraft far away from the battlefield. This new capability has resulted in heavy casualties for Ukrainian forces in recent weeks.

“You have to take down the bomber,” Tychkivskyy said. “You need fighter jets, you need air-to-air missiles.”

In addition to air defenses, Ukraine says it also needs the long-range, single-warhead version of the ATACMS, the group said. Ukraine has already successfully used the medium-range variant tipped with cluster bombs to hit dispersed, vulnerable targets, including 18 Russian helicopters sitting at two separate airfields this month.

But Ukraine has a limited number of those weapons. And the long-range, single-warhead ATACMS will help Kyiv’s forces to hit better-protected targets — such as aircraft or helicopters in hardened shelters — located deeper into Russian-held territory.

However, Pentagon officials have resisted sending the long-range version, which can hit targets up to roughly 200 miles away, in order to maintain enough munitions in its own stockpiles. The Defense Department no longer uses the version the U.S. sent to Ukraine, called the Anti-Personnel/Anti-Materiel variant, in its war plans.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/31/ukraine-campaign-training-wea
pons-defense-00124530

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, November 1, 2023 1:47 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine pleads with the U.S. to ramp up support against Russia

Fuck Ukraine.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Wednesday, November 1, 2023 8:16 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND: Russian forces continue to use “Storm-Z” assault units predominantly made up of prisoner recruits in highly attritional infantry-led frontal assaults. Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun stated

Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:

Ukrainian family of 9, including two minors brutally slain by Russian soldiers
Volnovakha, Ukraine, Edited By: Moohita Kaur Garg, Updated: Oct 31, 2023, 01:21 PM IST
Trigger warning: Some readers may find the details of this report disturbing. Discretion is advised

In the Russian-occupied eastern Ukrainian town of Volnovakha, a family of nine, including minor children, have been found shot dead in their house. Russian soldiers have been blamed for the gruesome killings.

Ukrainian officials have alleged that the Kapkanets family was killed on 27 October for refusing to give their house to the soldiers.

Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
Russian occupation officials continue efforts to eradicate Ukrainian language and culture in occupied Ukraine. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin stated on October 27 that “[he] will not allow the Ukrainian language to reappear as a state or privileged language” in occupied Donetsk Oblast and claimed that no schools in occupied Donetsk Oblast have chosen to teach Ukrainian language.

Last time I checked, Spanish was NOT a state or sponsored language is SW USA, and yet, it is not 'eradicated' either. Typical SECOND lies...

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Wednesday, November 1, 2023 10:59 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

What politicos say to each other in private:

Quote:
Italian PM discussed fatigue over Ukraine in prank call with Russian comedians
https://news.yahoo.com/italian-pm-discussed-fatigue-over-010226009.htm
l

“There is a lot of tiredness on all sides,” Meloni reportedly stated. “The moment is approaching when everyone will understand that we need a way out...Ukraine’s counteroffensive is not going as expected … It has not changed the fate of the conflict, and everyone understands that [the conflict] could last many years if we don’t find a solution. The Ukrainians are doing what they have to do and we are trying to help them.”

“I have some ideas on how to manage this situation, but I’m waiting for the right moment to put them on the table,” Meloni revealed during the call.

The comedians, according to Italian media, are Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov, jointly known as Vovan and Lexus. One of the men reportedly posed as an "African politician."

Vovan and Lexus are famously pro-Russia and have even been accused of having links to Russian intelligence services. However, no evidence of this connection exists.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Thursday, November 2, 2023 8:30 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi assessed on November 1 that the war in Ukraine has taken on a positional nature and offered a series of recommendations for Ukraine to restore maneuver to the battlespace.[1] In an essay entitled "Modern Positional Warfare and How to Win It" and an interview with The Economist, Zaluzhnyi outlined the current operational environment in Ukraine and noted that, despite several previously successful Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in 2022, the war is now "gradually moving to a positional form."[2] Zaluzhnyi heavily stressed that the current positional nature of the war is largely a result of military parity between Ukrainian and Russian forces, noting that a deep and dramatic Ukrainian penetration of Russian lines will likely not be possible with the relative technological and tactical equilibrium currently between Ukrainian and Russian forces.[3] In his interview with The Economist, Zaluzhnyi acknowledged that technological and tactical parity between opposing forces in Ukraine has resulted in a "stalemate" similar to the case of the First World War.[4] In the more extensive essay on the subject, Zaluzhnyi notably refrained from classifying the situation as a full stalemate and instead framed it as a "positional" war resulting from aspects of this technological-tactical parity.[5] According to Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's ability to overcome this technological-tactical parity will be contingent on Ukraine's ability to secure five main operational components that have become particularly significant since the summer of 2023 — gaining air superiority; breaching Russian mine barriers in depth; increasing the effectiveness of counterbattery combat; creating and training the necessary reserves; and building up electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.

Zaluzhnyi offered a series of specific tactical solutions to the five aforementioned operational components that have created the conditions for positional warfare, which in his view will allow Ukraine to overcome military parity with Russian forces. Regarding the issue of air superiority, Zaluzhnyi argued that Ukrainian forces need to significantly improve drone capabilities to gain air superiority along the frontline.[6] Zaluzhnyi argued that Ukrainian forces need to overload Russian air defenses, neutralize Russian strike drones, and degrade Russian visibility over the front by deploying cheap drones en masse, developing specific drones meant to target Russian strike drones, and employing EW complexes throughout the front.[7] Zaluzhnyi argued that to overcome the challenges of EW use on the frontline, Ukrainian forces need to introduce necessary command and control (C2) processes for EW complexes, increase EW production capabilities, and streamline engagements with volunteer organizations that provide smaller EW complexes to Ukrainian forces.[8] Zaluzhnyi also recommended that Ukrainian forces improve counter-EW measures and develop new drones with EWs in mind.[9] To gain counterbattery superiority, Zaluzhnyi recommended that Ukrainian forces use more reconnaissance and strike drones to improve Ukrainian counterbattery fire and argued that Ukrainian forces need to strengthen GPS support for Ukrainian counterbattery units and increase the number of counterbattery assets.[10] Zaluzhnyi stated that improved sensors, more widespread and varied mine clearing capabilities, and anti-drone equipment will allow Ukrainian forces to more successfully breach Russian mine barriers in depth while under concealment.[11]

Zaluzhnyi also highlighted wider administrative adaptations and domestic developments in addition to his specific tactical battlefield solutions. Zaluzhnyi specifically called on Ukraine to introduce a Unified State Register for draftees, reservists, and those liable for military service to prepare a necessary reserve for Ukrainian forces.[12] Zaluzhnyi more broadly called on Ukrainian officials to incentivize Ukrainian citizens to join the military reserve and expand the number of citizens that Ukrainian forces are allowed to train.[13] Zaluzhnyi also noted that improving Ukrainian C2 and logistics support will be critical to improving operations writ large.[14] Zaluzhnyi stated that the formation of a "single information environment" for C2 through the use of modern information technology will allow Ukrainians to get ahead of Russian forces in terms of situational awareness.[15] Zaluzhnyi particularly highlighted the need for Ukraine to develop its own defense industry to sustain operations, long-range strike capabilities, and an asymmetric munitions arsenal to break out of military parity with Russian forces.[16]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-november-1-2023-0

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, November 2, 2023 8:37 AM

Zelensky: TIME may be on his side, but real time, isn't

Official Ukraine narrative collapses as Zelensky’s inner circle admits to magazine that the war cannot be won militarily.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/zelensky-war-time-magazine/

No. Real time is not on Zelensky's side.

He's a dead man walking.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Thursday, November 2, 2023 8:58 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Last time I checked, Spanish was NOT a state or sponsored language is SW USA, and yet, it is not 'eradicated' either. Typical SECOND lies...

Last time I checked, you denied that Russians killed 64 million Russians over political disputes. The typical Russian response is: "Where are the bodies? You have no proof! Ha! Ha! Ha! You have no proof! Even if you had bodies, how would you prove we did it? It is impossible! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

The Ukrainians are fighting Russians now because 4,000,000 of them were killed way back when.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, November 2, 2023 11:51 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Last time I checked, Spanish was NOT a state or sponsored language is SW USA, and yet, it is not 'eradicated' either. Typical SECOND lies...

SECOND: Last time I checked, you denied that Russians killed 64 million Russians over political disputes.

What does this have to do with your lie that Russia is "eradicting" the Ukrainian language?

Oh, "NOTHING", you say? Just another attempted deflection?

"Eradicating" a language means to make it ILLEGAL to speak, post signs etc. That's not what's happening on the Donbas.
But that's what UKRAINE was doing to Russian speakers. Where was your outrage then, huh?
Even Stalin, who was a tyrant, was dedicated to preserving the many native languages of Russia. He even had written forms created for them so they wouldn't die out. Russian is the common language, but many other languages are in use.

*****

Also, BTW, last time I checked, NO OTHER HISTORIAN agrees with your figures. It's not ME that disputes your figures, SECOND. It's every other source that I checked.
Get fucked.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Thursday, November 2, 2023 12:21 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Zelensky: TIME may be on his side, but real time, isn't

Official Ukraine narrative collapses as Zelensky’s inner circle admits to magazine that the war cannot be won militarily.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/zelensky-war-time-magazine/

No. Real time is not on Zelensky's side.

He's a dead man walking.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

Actually, the article in TIME is cutting. A TIME reporter accompanied Zelensky thru his last (disastrous) visit to Washington, and back to Kiev, and spoke with a number of staffers, politicians and military people.

The word most commonly used to describe Zelensky was "delusional". And there is so much more in the article, this is just a sampling:

Quote:
Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace. On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

. . .

The cold will also make military advances more difficult, locking down the front lines at least until the spring. But Zelensky has refused to accept that. “Freezing the war, to me, means losing it,” he says. Before the winter sets in, his aides warned me to expect major changes in their military strategy and a major shake-up in the President’s team. At least one minister would need to be fired, along with a senior general [Zaluzhny] in charge of the counteroffensive, they said, to ensure accountability for Ukraine’s slow progress at the front. “We’re not moving forward,” says one of Zelensky’s close aides. Some front-line commanders, he continues, have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President. “They just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line,” he says. “But we can’t win a war that way.”

When I raised these claims with a senior military officer, he said that some commanders have little choice in second-guessing orders from the top. At one point in early October, he said, the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”

. . .

Amid all the pressure to root out corruption, I assumed, perhaps naively, that officials in Ukraine would think twice before taking a bribe or pocketing state funds. But when I made this point to a top presidential adviser in early October, he asked me to turn off my audio recorder so he could speak more freely. “Simon, you’re mistaken,” he says. “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”

In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”

https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-interview/

What this reminds me of is the portrayal of Hitler towards the end of WWII: completely deluded about the disaster overtaking his army, issuing crazy orders that nobody follows.

Yes, it's an exaggeration: Ukrainian soldiers are still fighting, and they're doing their best to establish a beachhead on the east side of the Dnieper in Kherson (southern Ukraine). But everywhere else they're being pushed back and suffering losses.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Thursday, November 2, 2023 12:50 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

So I've been watching this from several entirely different (non M$M) viewpoints, pro-Ukrainian, "both sides", and pro-Russian.

Military Summary, despite its bias, is interesting from a tactical POV. Ukraine's attempts at "combined arms" advances have been a disaster, leading to massive losses of armored vehicles. Russian firepower has been targeting Ukrainian planes, air defenses, fuel, munitions, arilltery pieces, armored vehicles, etc. 'Large targets' are fewer and fewer in number, altho Russian bombs and missiles still find munitions and fuel depots, bridges, bunkers, the old Soviet-style apartment buildings that could withstand a tactical nuke, and planes. Ukraine is fighting, or defending, with mines (when they have them), cluster munitions, DRONES, and light infantry in small groups. AFAIK light infantry weapons include mortars, shoulder- or tripod-fired ATGMS, machine guns, RPGS, as well as the usual assault rifles and grenades. Where they have them, Ukrainian are sticking to bunkers and other pre-made fortifications.

I wonder if this leads to an imbalance of weaponry... there's no point firing big artillery shells at 20 men (unless you're using cluster munitions, which Russia is NOT doing). So except for taking out buildings and fortifications, I wonder if all of those artillery shells and tanks that Russia is producing will wind up being useless, especially since drones are so good at taking them out.

To some extent this reminds me a bit of Syria, where Russia committed its air force but not infantry. Once the ISIS fuel convoys were taken out, and Aleppo was taken, the 'big jobs' were done. Maybe some 'bunker buster' bombs needed? Fuel-air bombs? But beyond that...

I saw a video of a USA jet shooting million dollar missiles at a Toyota pickup truck with a 50 cal machine gun mounted in the back. Kind of a waste, no?

FWIW, Russia's MoD announced they were bringing 25,000 "specialists" into the field. Drone operators, perhaps? However, Russia is reluctant to field "light infantry" or "stormtroopers" in order to preserve its soldiers.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Friday, November 3, 2023 8:20 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Also, BTW, last time I checked, NO OTHER HISTORIAN agrees with your figures. It's not ME that disputes your figures, SECOND. It's every other source that I checked.
Get fucked.

Signym, you must have inherited the liar genetics from both Mommy and Daddy. You are very smooth at it, Signym. Use that trait to transform the following into innocuousness.

Murder, torture, rape: Russia’s crimes are a long-running horror show

By Lee Hockstader, Columnist, European Affairs
October 31, 2023 at 1:08 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/31/russian-war-crimes-
ukraine/

The reports pile up like desiccated bones in a mass grave, each brimming with a ghoul’s gallery of horrors, each bearing a dreary title and, often, the imprimatur of the United Nations:

“Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine.”
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil
/coiukraine/23-10-04-OHCHR-36th-periodic-report-ukraine-en.pdf

“Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine.”
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil
/coiukraine/A-78-540-AEV.pdf

“Detention of Civilians in the Context of the Armed Attack by the Russian Federation Against Ukraine.”
https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/OHCHR%20Ukraine%20D
etention%20report%20-%20June%202023%20-%20ENG.pdf

There have been dozens of such reports — fastidious, documented, footnoted — weighing in collectively at who-knows-how-many pages. Their heft alone, along with their repetitive sameness, exerts a numbing effect. Who can absorb such an endless litany of crushing cruelty?

Yet the evidence attesting to Russia atrocities in Ukraine also obscures an essential fact: It represents a small fraction measured against the likely scale of atrocities carried out by President Vladimir Putin’s forces.

We know that because we know this: Notwithstanding the lurid accounts detailing systematic torture, rape, execution and other forms of abuse deployed by Moscow’s troops, independent investigators are denied access to territory seized by Russian forces.

That matters in what has become a static war, with front lines barely budging for months. It means the Kremlin’s commanders have time to eliminate traces of physical evidence as well as civilians who might bear witness to crimes. And it means that testimony gathered so far by international monitors comes mainly from survivors who manage to leave after Russian troops occupied their towns and villages. Those caught behind the lines are beyond reach.

Yet even from a limited sampling, and in the dry lexicon of U.N. commission reports, the abominations perpetrated by Russian security services and soldiers are plain.

In its latest report, released Oct. 20, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, established by the U.N. Human Rights Council, recounted what it called evidence of war crimes. It includes details of electric shocks routinely used to torture detained Ukrainian civilians, a form of torture that Russian forces term “a call to Putin.”
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142617

“Victims reported that perpetrators connected wires or clamps to earlobes, ankles, hands, toes, or genitals,” the report says. “According to victims, in some cases water was poured on them or otherwise used to amplify the effect of electric shocks. A woman who endured the electric shocks stated: ‘It was so painful that I could not stop screaming like crazy, I was crying.’ ”

That report and others include chilling testimony about murders, rapes and other forms of sexual violence, as well as the removal of Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia — nearly 20,000 of them, according to Ukrainian authorities. Based on those abductions, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin. The Kremlin’s response was to use the children for photo ops in Red Square and to continue the kidnappings.
https://childrenofwar.gov.ua/en/

The latest commission report outlines an array of abuses in Kherson Province, a target of Russian invading forces last year. It describes a married couple in their 50s assaulted by three Russian troops, who beat the husband and took turns raping his wife. When the couple filed a report with a Russian commander, the commission found, three different soldiers returned and killed them both, according to neighbors.
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil
/coiukraine/A-78-540-AEV.pdf

Many of the atrocities are acts of terrorism. They occur amid the quotidian backdrop of Russian air and artillery strikes against Ukrainian apartment buildings, cafes and other civilian targets — attacks with no military rationale.

The world was shocked at the outset of Putin’s full-scale invasion by the killing spree in Bucha, near Kyiv, where Russian soldiers murdered several hundred unarmed civilians, shooting them in streets and cellars. To me it looked all too familiar.

Nearly 30 years ago, I covered Russia’s first war in Chechnya, the southern Russian region that fought to free itself of Moscow’s rule. There, torture, rape and indiscriminate killing of noncombatants by Russian forces were routine. So was impunity; virtually no Russian soldiers were prosecuted.

As a reporter in that war zone, I often listened to Chechen civilians recount the abuse they had suffered and the atrocities they had witnessed. Back then, Russian human rights organizations also bore witness — groups now banned and silenced by Putin.

One report by Memorial, a respected human rights group dissolved in 2021, was based on interviews with hundreds of victims in Chechnya in 1995. It featured a man named Iziev, whose agonies are reminiscent of those meted out now in Ukraine. “They attached wires to the detainee’s neck, someone shouted ‘Turn!’ and an electric shock followed,” according to the report. “Once, the wire was placed into his mouth. He lost consciousness several times during the interrogations.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/07/09/ex-detainee
s-cite-abuses-of-human-rights/f35bf4ea-817d-44b3-a48f-e26430ca407d/?itid=lk_inline_manual_30

Russia’s subjugation of Chechnya, a little-known place, got scant attention. But in the military’s viciousness and brutality, it was a prelude to Putin’s current campaign. It’s a further reminder that Ukraine is fighting not only for its right to live as a democratic, pluralist and independent country, free of Russia’s yoke. It is also fighting for its life.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, November 3, 2023 9:30 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Also, BTW, last time I checked, NO OTHER HISTORIAN agrees with your figures. It's not ME that disputes your figures, SECOND. It's every other source that I checked.
Get fucked.
Signym, you must have inherited the liar genetics from both Mommy and Daddy. You are very smooth at it, Signym. Use that trait to transform the following into innocuousness.

Murder, torture, rape: Russia’s crimes are a long-running horror show

By Lee Hockstader, Columnist, European Affairs
October 31, 2023 at 1:08 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/31/russian-war-crimes-
ukraine/

I got this one, Sigs.

That's easy, Second. It came from Washington Post.

It's bullshit. They don't write anything that isn't bullshit.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Friday, November 3, 2023 1:47 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I got this one, Sigs.

That's easy, Second. It came from Washington Post.

It's bullshit. They don't write anything that isn't bullshit.

The eternal question the stupid and 6ix ask themselves privately:

"Why do bad things happen to me?"

The simple answer they can't understand: "Because you are stupid. Yes. Really. It's that simple, and you would know this if only you were not convinced you are a Genius."

The Ukrainians are noticeably stupid.

Ukrainian Marines Almost Wasted Their First Batch Of French AMX-10RC Scout Vehicles. Now They’re Getting A Second Batch.

David Axe | Forbes Staff | I write about ships, planes, tanks, drones, missiles and satellites.

Nov 1, 2023, 07:24pm EDT
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/11/01/ukrainian-marines-alm
ost-wasted-their-first-batch-of-french-amx-10rc-scout-vehicles-now-theyre-getting-a-second-batch/

Ukraine reportedly is getting 40 more AMX-10RC reconnaissance vehicles from France. Which might be surprising. The Ukrainians used the thinly-armored but well-armed scout vehicle all wrong in the early days of their now four-month-old counteroffensive.

They used them as tanks—and promptly lost a bunch of them.

That the Ukrainians wanted another 40 AMX-10RCs might indicate that they’ve really internalized the awful lessons of the counteroffensive’s first week, and have settled on an appropriate role for the wheeled vehicles.

Excitement ran high when, in January, the French government announced it would donate an initial 40 AMX-10RCs to the Ukrainian war effort. The first of the 15-ton, six-wheel vehicles arrived in Ukraine in April.

The speedy AMX-10RC with its 105-millimeter main gun and day-night optics is a “sniper rifle on ... fast wheels,” Oleksii Reznikov, then the Ukrainian minister of defense, crowed after test-driving one of the vehicles.

Reznikov’s praise should have come as no surprise. French firm GIAT specifically designed the AMX-10RC for exactly the attributes the defense minister singled out. Fighting range. Situational awareness. Speed.

An AMX-10RC with its robust wheels, fuel-efficient 280-horsepower diesel engine and reliable suspension can achieve and maintain a high top speed: 53 miles per hour by road. Its F2 rifled main gun, while unstabilized, is pretty accurate—when fired from a halt, of course.

GIAT didn’t design the AMX-10RC to resist enemy fire. It weighs just 15 tons. Its hull is thin aluminum. A four-person AMX-10RC crew is supposed to speed toward the enemy, fire a few rounds in order to draw a response—like kicking an anthill—and then register the enemy’s position and speed away before the return fire gets too heavy.

The Ukrainian defense ministry seemed to appreciate the AMX-10RC’s attributes, at first. After all, it assigned the French vehicles not to the army, but to the marine corps.

Ukrainian marine brigades train and organize for raids and riverine assaults: operations that beg for speed and violence, even if speed and violence come at the cost of protection.

But when the 37th Marine Brigade sent its AMX-10RCs into combat for the first time, on one of the first days of Ukraine’s widely-anticipated counteroffensive in southern Donetsk Oblast, inexperienced junior officers made all the wrong choices.

When the brigade assaulted Russian positions in Velyka Novosilka on June 5, officers placed the AMX-10RCs at the front of assault columns as they attempted a direct assault on Russian fortifications. It was a role the officers should have reserved solely for the marine corps’ T-80 tanks.

What happened next was terrible ... and entirely predictable. At least two, and perhaps as many as five, of the AMX-10RCs were immobilized or destroyed. Russian forces captured one of the immobilized vehicles.

At least one four-person AMX-10RC crew died, a marine major told AFP. “There was artillery shelling and a shell exploded near the vehicle. The fragments pierced the armor and the ammunition set detonated.”

To their credit, the marines seemed immediately to understand their error. “The guns are good, the observation devices are very good,” the major said of the AMX-10RCs. “But unfortunately, there is thin armor and it is impractical to use them in the front-line [attack].”

As the marines finally broke through Velyka Novosilka and fought their way south along the narrow Mokri Yaly River Valley—an effort that continues four months later—they led with T-80s and British- and American-made armored trucks, and held back the AMX-10RCs.

And it soon became clear what the 37th Marine Brigade was doing with its surviving AMX-10RCS. It was using them as mobile fire-support.

A video that appeared online in mid-September depicts a platoon of AMX-10RCs firing their unstabilized main guns from an open field in broad daylight, while a separate video from inside one of the vehicles underscores the crew’s unhurried attitude.

It’s obvious the AMX-10RCs weren’t in much danger from return fire. They were far enough from the Russians—a couple of miles, perhaps—that they could shoot and scoot before anyone shot back.

The combination of precise day-night optics and a reliable main gun means an AMX-10RC crew reliably can hit targets more than a mile away. And that’s while shooting directly.

Elevate the gun and shoot ballistically, and the maximum range is 4.5 miles. Ukrainian AMX-10RC crews apparently use special software, installed on a tablet, for computing ballistic fire solutions.

Don’t expect the same accuracy at that distance, of course. Firing from beyond visual range, an AMX-10RC functions as a kind of improvised, extra-survivable howitzer: aiming at target coordinates registered by drones or forward observers.

In reportedly acquiring another 40 AMX-10RCs, the Ukrainian Marines could more than double their capacity for this particular fire-support capability. Or they could repeat the bloody mistake from early June, and try to deploy the French scout vehicles as tanks.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, November 4, 2023 8:22 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Forgetting about the 4,000,000 Ukrainians killed by Russia
Putin reiterates that Ukraine never existed and he was forced to start the war

Olena Roshchina — Friday, 3 November 2023, 18:35
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/11/3/7427096/

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has once again stated that Ukraine did not exist before Soviet times, that the territories in the south and east of Ukraine historically belonged to Russia, and that Russia had no choice but to "dust off the assault rifle" when Ukraine was implementing its pro-Ukrainian policy.

Source: TASS, a Kremlin-aligned Russian news outlet, quoting Vladimir Putin at a meeting with new members of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation https://t.me/tass_agency/217280

Quote: "All the southern Russian lands were transferred during the formation of Soviet Ukraine, during the creation of the USSR. There was no Ukraine within the empire: there were oblasts, but Ukraine itself, which came [into the Russian empire – ed.] in the 16th century, consisted of three oblasts: the city of Kyiv and the oblasts of Kyiv, Zhytomyr and Chernihiv – that's all. It came from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita), from Poland, voluntarily.

We have a letter in our archives: ‘We, the Orthodox people of Rus, appeal to Moscow, to the tsar, and so on.’ And in an attempt to defend their rights, they also sent appeals to Warsaw: ‘We, the Orthodox people of Rus, ask you to preserve this and that, and demand this.’

Then what happened happened. The Soviet Union was formed and a vast Ukraine was formed, first and foremost, to a significant extent, at the expense of the southern Russian lands - the entire Black Sea region and so on - although all of these cities, as you know, were founded by Catherine the Great after a series of wars with Turkey, the Ottoman Empire."

Details: Putin claimed that modern Russia had "come to terms with" the loss of Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR, but "when they started destroying everything of Russian origin there, that was obviously unacceptable!"

"And they ended up declaring that Russians are not indigenous to these lands – well, this is complete nonsense. And at the same time, they began to exterminate Russians in Donbas," Putin ranted, not specifying who he meant by "Russians".

According to Putin, the Ukrainian authorities had no intention of implementing the Minsk agreements and "started pulling all this territory into NATO", ignoring Russia's protests.

Quote: "This is what is at the centre of the conflict that is happening today. This is the cause of this conflict.

And of course, if we had had normal, modern, friendly relations with fraternal Ukraine – we are brothers as far as ethnicity is concerned! – no one would have thought of taking actions related to Crimea, for example.

If everything had been fine there, if Russian people, the Russian language and Russian culture had been treated normally, and if there had not been those coups d'état, would anyone in Russia have thought of acting the way we did in Crimea [referring to the annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea – ed.]? Of course not! We had to protect people from this Nazi abomination.

They simply put us in a position where we could do nothing else but defend the people living there. The same thing happened later with Donbas and Novorossiya [Ukraine’s south]."

Details: Putin said that before you "dust off the assault rifle", you have to think about whether it is possible to do without it. In the case of Ukraine, this was impossible, he said. He reiterated the propaganda that these were historical territories of Russia and that the people living there were "Russians".

According to Putin, Russia had no choice but to launch the "special operation" because "we had already been attacked". By "us", Putin meant Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Ukraine’s east and south.

"They considered themselves part of Russia from the beginning, but they were attacked in 2014. First they [the Ukrainians - ed.] tried to attack Crimea, and then Donbas. And we spent eight years trying to resolve this situation peacefully. In the end, we were told: ‘We will not use peaceful means.’ They refused publicly and said they wouldn’t do it, that they didn’t like the Minsk agreements... We had to put an end to this," he said. "...put an end to this." That is Putin suddenly remembering the 4,000,000 Ukrainians killed by Russia and is ready to do it again. If you think Putin won't kill them, you will be surprised! But don't worry. Putin and Signym will say it didn't happen after it happened.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, November 4, 2023 2:55 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Boy, you have a real grotch against Stalin, don't you?

Here's a hint to guide you to reality, SECOND:

Stalin is dead.
Putin is not Stalin.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, November 4, 2023 3:10 PM