Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Monday, September 14, 2026 14:43
VIEWED: 566143
PAGE 17 of 111
And your incessant virtue signaling is boring.
You have no moral compass, and it shows. Bigly.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And your incessant virtue signaling is boring.
You have no moral compass, and it shows. Bigly.
T
Vladimir Putin's escalation of the war is running into increasing opposition within Russia. Police have arrested more than 1,000 people demonstrating against the call-up of reservists at nationwide protests. And Flights to foreign destinations are also selling out, as many fear it could be their last chance to leave.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I did an independent search for the investigative findings on Bucha, which I linked in a previous post. No mention of torture, even by vehemently anti-Russian The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/09/with-bloodied-gloves-for
ensic-teams-uncover-gruesome-secrets-of-bucha-in-ukraine
One quick search on the Guardian web site says you're a terrible, lazy liar.
While investigators uncover the remains of civilians, heartbroken families wait nearby to reclaim their loved ones
by Bethan McKernan in Bucha, Ukraine
Sat 9 Apr 2022 13.40 EDT
Sometimes the dead have more to say than the living. Those lying beneath the soft, yellow earth in the grounds of the church of Andrew the Apostle, in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, have many terrible stories to tell.
In a deep mass grave, a forearm and hand, the fingertips turning black, lay under a foot at a sickening angle; another man’s arm looked like it was clawing its way out of the disturbed soil in an attempt to escape his fate.
On Friday morning a team of forensic investigators from Kyiv arrived at the site to begin documenting the terror inflicted on civilians by Russian troops during Moscow’s six-week-old invasion. They strapped a door to a municipal digger to create a makeshift gurney, and got to work.
All of the people they uncovered had died violently. One man was missing a large chunk of his skull; another body was so badly burned only his head and half of his torso remained, the whites of his eyes subsumed by charred flesh. One person appeared to have been beheaded.
As each new cadaver was laid in front of him, the lead investigator knelt over it and softly murmured an inventory while a colleague wrote it down: leather jacket, mobile phone, no ID. He checked inside decaying mouths, the range of motion of broken limbs, and documented burns, bullet wounds and injuries caused by shrapnel, before volunteers from the town helped put each corpse into a fresh body bag.
And this one:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/04/why-did-they-do-this-to-
us-buchas-survivors-come-out-of-hiding
‘Why did they do this to us?’: Bucha’s survivors come out of hiding
With the Russians gone, the Ukrainian town’s inhabitants are trying to make sense of the carnage and horror they witnessed
Full report: EU leaders denounce ‘possible genocide’ as Russia issues denials
Kremlin reverts to type in denial of alleged war crimes in Bucha
by Daniel Boffey in Bucha
Mon 4 Apr 2022 16.50 EDT
Those seeking a quiet life, tired of the price and pace of Kyiv, once came to live on Vokzal’na Street in the small town of Bucha, 17 miles north-west of Ukraine’s capital. It was known as “little Switzerland”, so comfortable was the living.
Today, Vokzal’na is burned out, its broken homes and the churned-up military hardware littering the muddy quagmire of what was the road make up some of the defining images of the devastation wrought by Vladimir Putin’s war.
It is barely conceivable that anyone could have survived what was thrown at Vokzal’na from both sides during what was clearly a vicious battle on the road to Kyiv.
There is not a brick unscathed nor a patch of mud that will not have been mixed with blood. But, now that the Russians have gone, Vokzal’na’s residents are emerging from their cellars, tired, tearful and angry.
Serhiy Savenko, 43, who lives with his mother, Larisa, 72, at No 35, had counted the Russian armoured vehicles as they rolled past at 9.10am on 27 February, heading south towards the neighbouring town of Irpin and on towards the capital.
“There was 70 of the armoured vehicles, like tanks, and Russian soldiers walked alongside,” he said. “It took about 40 minutes for them to pass our house. I watched and counted. And then the Ukrainians launched their shells at the Russians.”
The first took out Savenko’s shed in his large back garden. It was the first of many. The horribly exposed armoured vehicles tried to turn around, in panic, as the next, more accurate wave
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Of for gods sake, you stupid sod. All I had to do was look at the date to know that was even BEFORE an investigation. This is gossip, sensationalism, and bullshit. No investigator would ever put their name to it, and never did .
You're stupider than I thought.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're stupider than I thought.
Actually, Zigglette, the reality is we're not as stupid as you wish we were. Your name calling is a tell. "You's so stupid!" It's a tell that you have nothing and you're scrambling, deflecting. We see this all the time when second runs circles around you and makes you look like an idiot. You come out swinging with the insults. You've been exposed as a fraud and your only defense is.... if we get bored. Such goals.
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Quote:One of these mornings I might wake to news that Kyiv has been nuked. Signym will state that it is only logical that the Ukrainians killed themselves in a false flag operation. Russia will deny involvement. Then Signym will say it is stupid to think Russia did it. Where is the proof? More than likely it was America growing tired of the war and wishing to end it quickly because the cost to America was too high to continue. Signym is pure magic. With a few words (presto chango!) the entire meaning of nuking Kyiv is turned upside down.
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're stupider than I thought.
Actually, Zigglette, the reality is we're not as stupid as you wish we were. Your name calling is a tell. "You's so stupid!" It's a tell that you have nothing and you're scrambling, deflecting. We see this all the time when second runs circles around you and makes you look like an idiot. You come out swinging with the insults. You've been exposed as a fraud and your only defense is.... if we get bored. Such goals.
Kyiv urges west to spell out how it would respond to Russian nuclear strike
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/21/kyiv-urges-west-to-spell
-out-how-it-would-respond-to-russian-nuclear-strike
Ukraine asks world leaders to say ‘very firmly’ that nuclear strike would have catastrophic consequences for Russia
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're stupider than I thought.
Actually, Zigglette, the reality is we're not as stupid as you wish we were.
Yes. Yes you are.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:One of these mornings I might wake to news that Kyiv has been nuked. Signym will state that it is only logical that the Ukrainians killed themselves in a false flag operation. Russia will deny involvement. Then Signym will say it is stupid to think Russia did it. Where is the proof? More than likely it was America growing tired of the war and wishing to end it quickly because the cost to America was too high to continue. Signym is pure magic. With a few words (presto chango!) the entire meaning of nuking Kyiv is turned upside down.
Originally posted by SECOND:
Ukraine asks world leaders to say ‘very firmly’ that nuclear strike would have catastrophic consequences for Russia
Tucker Carlson weighs in much the same way Ziggy has:
"Tucker Carlson talked about Putin’s threat of nuclear weapons and said: “And Ukrainians, of course, are also making explicit nuclear threats.”
Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons, you POS scumbag Russian asset.
Also, Turns out Putin has changed his mind, or he was misreported.
@JuliaDavis:
"There was palpable frustration in the Russian media that many in the West misunderstood what Putin said?—he was threatening the West, not Ukraine, with nuclear strikes. And so, droves of propagandists have been sent out to tell the West: push us into a corner and everybody dies. https://pic.twitter.com/quXcMZd7SE "
How do you say you're desperate without saying you're desperate?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-media-wants-rich-russians-to-hel
p-save-vladimir-putins-failing-war-in-ukraine
"Putin's state TV mouthpieces insist that rich Russian oligarchs should pitch in to help save his failing invasion of Ukraine
The Kremlin’s cronies are now demanding that Russians “who are fattened up” help fuel Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war."
@DannyPunton
"Central Asian banned their citizens from fighting in Ukraine as they were needed for regional fighting.
The embassies of #Kyrgyzstan, #Kazakhstan and #Uzbekistan in #Moscow released separate statements, banning their citizens in #Russia from participating in the war in #Ukraine. This was reported by Anadolu Agency."
Not our fcking war, freak!
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Quote:Did you know that Fox News hosts, Russia's defenders, and Trump's defenders keep a "moral compass" in their pocket? I know this is true because they always have an instant answer to which direction is Truly Moral, but I suspect they bend the meaning of moral by keeping a "moral" magnet in their pocket to cheat the "moral compass" so that whatever they want is always "moral". According to Signym:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Tucker Carlson weighs in much the same way Ziggy has:
"Tucker Carlson talked about Putin’s threat of nuclear weapons and said: “And Ukrainians, of course, are also making explicit nuclear threats.”
Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons, you POS scumbag Russian asset.
Quote:Presumably, Signym's enemies are lost without the perfect moral compasses kept in hand by Signym, Putin, Trump, and Tucker Carlson. These people own virtue so they never virtue signal because that would be redundant.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And your incessant virtue signaling is boring.
You have no moral compass, and it shows. Bigly.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:The fact that you focus on ONE SENTENCE but can't answer my point tells me that you're the one scrambling and deflecting.
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're stupider than I thought.
Actually, Zigglette, the reality is we're not as stupid as you wish we were. Your name calling is a tell. "You's so stupid!" It's a tell that you have nothing and you're scrambling, deflecting. We see this all the time when second runs circles around you and makes you look like an idiot. You come out swinging with the insults. You've been exposed as a fraud and your only defense is.... if we get bored. Such goals.
So, let me repeat my post without the objectionable bits and see what you have to say then.
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM: All I had to do was look at the date to know that was even BEFORE an investigation. This is gossip, sensationalism, and bullshit. No investigator would ever put their name to it, and never did .
Now I'm going to add a bit more that should have been pellucidly clear on first reading:
All they were doing was providing gruesome descriptions of bodies as they were first being dug up.
Contorted positions?
Burned?
Blown to bits?
Head caved in?
Died violently?
YOU BET!
But Bucha WAS the site of military fighting. I have seen, and you would have seen (had you bothered to look) the same thing of people in Donetsk killed by Kiev's shelling: Heads caved in by falling masonry. Legs, arms, heads blown off by explosion. Burned in house fires.
It takes a post-mortem to determine HOW someone died, not a eyewitless account of a disinternment.
IN THE END, AFTER THE POST MORTEMS, NOTHING POINTED TO TORTURE, OR MASSACRE. If there was any evidence of that, it would have been in our media for weeks. What they DID find were people killed by flechettes. Of course, our media would never retract their story, the one beginning with "Kiev said...".
So, where is evidence of this torture and/or masscre that you keep going on about?
If you have something CREDIBLE to post, please post it now. I'm moving on.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Again, thinking out loud ...
Was listening to a roundtable yestderday hosted by an American-educated Chilean currently living in Kharkiv (Gonazlo Lira). The participants were- an American living in Thailand (Brian Berlectic), an American former CIA/security expert (Larry Johnson) and a Greek-born American currently posting from Greece, Cypress and other nations from SE Europe.
I only mention this in case you want to hear the video.
Anyway, there was nothing much new in it for me altho it may sound alien to ome of you. But there was one takeaway in it for me: The need for a "galvanizing event" to get the people of Europe and USA involved, another Pearl Harbor or 9-11.
Now, I believe that Russia is doing its damnedest to keep things from going nuclear (literally) and one of the things they might be trying to avoid is that "galvanizing event". Their responses so far have been calibrated to maximize the west's disunity and minimize coalescence. It's not like the M$M hasn't been trying to gin up SOME kind of galvanizing event, either by claiming victories or Russian atrocities, but so far people aren't very interested.
And it's not like the west hasn't been escalating all along, increasing the lethality of donated weapons, NATO intelligence, planning, command/control, and contract specialists. They even tried shelling a nuclear power plant hoping to blackmail Russia with potential nuclear disaster (they even claim tht Russia is shelling ... itself!), but so far they haven't taken the big step of providing long range missiles or actual NATO-enlisted troops.
Russia HAS warned the west against sending long-range missiles into its territory, however. Given the short flight time into Russia and short response time required, since any long-range missile can be tipped with nuclear warheads, I don't think that Moscow is going to wait for the explosion to decide what to do: If they see missiles coming over their border they're going to assume they're nuclear and respond with nukes.
So, what are the west's options now that Russia has the option of formally being at war with NATO (assuming a NATO nation takes the step of attacking or arming an attack on the newly-acquired oblasts) and NATO has been warned against sending missiles ove the border?
Well, I think it's a balancing act. Russia still doesn't want to provide a galvaniign event. So I imagine it will still be a slow grind on the ground, but with the added factor of (more) missile strikes against those ("secret") NATO centers in Ukraine that NATO can't object to bc they're not supposed to be there.
It'll be interesting to see if I'm right, or not.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Originally posted by SIGNYM: The fact that you focus on ONE SENTENCE but can't answer my point tells me that you're the one scrambling and deflecting.
Also Originally posted by SIGNYM: Like SECOND'S posts I get one or two sentences in and I trip over something so egregiously stupid I have to stop.
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're stupider than I thought.
Actually, Zigglette, the reality is we're not as stupid as you wish we were. Your name calling is a tell. "You's so stupid!" It's a tell that you have nothing and you're scrambling, deflecting. We see this all the time when second runs circles around you and makes you look like an idiot. You come out swinging with the insults. You've been exposed as a fraud and your only defense is.... if we get bored. Such goals.
Hey comrade signym, take a swing at this.
T
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Russia is a country with a lot of valuable natural resources and a reasonably well-organized resource extraction sector. Countries like that — including core members like Canada and Norway and more peripheral ones like the UAE — are treated pretty well. Canada does not need a nuclear arsenal to prevent the stronger United States from storming in to take the oil sands and the hydroelectric dams. Russia is not going to get a better deal than that by becoming the junior partner in a Chinese-dominated alliance system. And they’re not going to obtain anything useful by destroying Ukraine or seizing its provinces. Whatever legitimate security interests Russia may have been trying to advance have only been undermined by this war. And the only real way out of the nightmare is for Russians to come to see that and act accordingly. In the meantime, we can tighten the noose on sanctions, keep supplying Ukraine, and continue to improve western energy policy. But there’s a nightmare lurking that only the Russians can avert.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Do you retards do anything productive on any given day, or is this all you've got in your sad, pathetic lives?
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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So, again, thinking out loud.
What are the west's options at this point?
Conventional warfare: the west has emptied its warehouses of junk, and doesn't have any USEFUL weapons (HIMARS, etc) or munitions to spare. Western tanks wouldn't help w/o trained tank crews. Same with aircraft. I doubt that there are thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of mercenaries/paid volunteer infantry at the ready. We're already supplying as much intel and suport as we can. The only things that come to mind are long range missiles and sabotage/terror groups. Escalating to long range missiles might have terrible consequences, but I'm not sure our leadership is sane enough to care. But unless they go into crazy-land with misiles, or sabotage/terrorism I think we're stymied along those lines.
Sanctions: What is there left to sanction? Besides, it seems that sanctions are hurting the EU more than Russia. I suppose "secondary sanctions" ... i.e. applying sanctions to nations that continue to trade with Russia ... might be an avenue to explore. How other nations respond to being strong-armed by the USA prolly depnds on how economically vulnerable they are to the USD. China could be vulnerable to secondary sanctions bc China has a huge amount of USD and Treasury reserves which could be stolen by the USA at any moment. Not sure about India, since China is its biggest trading partner. A nation would have to be pretty tough-minded to withstand secondary sanctions.
A second (or third) front: The USA is adept at creating chaos in multiple arenas. They could crank up trouble in any of the CSTO nations, which would create an extra demand on CSTO's military/security forces, including Russia's. Taiwan. Syria (again, still). Venezuela. Iran. Any of the 'stans.
Regime change in Russia itself: I don't think it would happen, but it still might be tried.
False flag: This would be to create that "galvanizing event" that would persuade western nations (and people) to endure privation for the foreseeable future and provide an excuse for NATO to step in directly. CIA and MI6 are good at setting up false flags, but it would have to be so horrific as to finally engage the public: a major strike on territory outside Ukraine, a nuclear event, biowarfare ... something that would make the western public fearful for their personal safety.
The nuclear option: It's always on the table. Z, Liz Truss, van der Crazy and other western leaders talk about winning a nuclear war. I don't think it's on the top of the list, but I think it's always there.
Repression at home, propaganda 24/7: Of course, western press will continue to spread disinfo and propaganda to anyoen who will listen. The problem is that anyone who was able to be propagandized already is, and anyone who isn't is already dismissing what the western media has to say.And, of course, the (non democratic) EU and individual eurocrats and USA deep staters will do their best to repress/intimidate anyone not following the narrative, keeping people "in line".
Unless there's some brilliant scheme I haven't thought of, seondary sanctions, terrorism in Russian or pro-Russian areas (with plausible deniability), second/third fronts, and repression at home seem like the most likely. It won't change what's going to happen in Ukraine, but Ukraine was never the point anyway: it's all about destroying Russia.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Nuclear War 'Already a Given' Says Russian TV: 'Everyone Will Be Destroyed'
By Gerrard Kaonga On 9/23/22 at 6:30 AM EDT
Russia State TV Warns The West If They Are Pushed Into A Corner Everybody Dies
Russian state TV hosts and guests have warned the West that if they feel Russia has been pushed into a corner they will ensure "everyone will be destroyed."
The rhetoric surrounding the war in Ukraine has been escalated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who gave a speech earlier this week. In the pre-recorded statement on Wednesday, he announced the partial mobilization of Russians to go fight in Ukraine.
In addition, Putin warned the West that Russia wasn't bluffing about the use of nuclear weapons being used if Ukraine continues to receive support.
Military expert Igor Korotchenko and state TV host Olga Skabeeva agreed that Russia would use nuclear weapons if they felt Russia was under threat of being destroyed.
The video has also gone viral with over 160,000 views, after being posted by the Daily Beast's Julia Davis.
Korotchenko said: "The only thing the West fears today is the possibility of Russia using its tactical nuclear weapons.
"In this regard, the words uttered by Vladimir Putin are very valuable nonetheless.
"In the West they're considering them and analyzing what would be the circumstances for Russia to use such an argument in order to avoid any scenarios that Moscow would consider to be unacceptable."
"The West has to understand: if certain weapons exist, taboos and limitations on using them could be lifted in certain circumstances."
The host went on to defend Russia's position regarding Ukraine and said the country was not looking for conflict.
"What do they want? They want a victory over Russia," Skabeeva said.
"It is impossible to defeat Russia without a nuclear explosion. It's out of the question.
"We will not allow the destruction of our country, if you're trying to destroy us, you will be destroyed along with us.
"What are our next actions? [Striking] the decision-making centers? In Kyiv, London, Washington - where?
"What should we do to avoid the nuclear war, or is it already a given? It certainly seems that way.
"If they don't stop, it will become a reality. What is the goal of the collective West?
"The victory of Ukraine and the defeat of Russia. As long as the Russian Federation has nukes, [and we do], its defeat is impossible.
"Push us into the corner- everyone will be destroyed. Is that what they're trying to achieve?
"Putin said it so succinctly, so clearly. We aren't threatening, we don't want war. We're the first in line to stop it.
"We don't want a nuclear winter or nuclear war, But if you declare that we will be destroyed, we will have to destroy you."
Newsweek has contacted Russia's ministry of foreign affairs for comment.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-nuclear-weapons-strike-america-west-wa
rning-nukes-everybody-dies-vladimir-putin-1745649
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
... but Ukraine was never the point anyway: it's all about destroying Russia.
So... the West made Russia invade Ukraine... so the West could destroy Russia...? Eh?
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Nuclear War 'Already a Given' Says Russian TV: 'Everyone Will Be Destroyed'
Russia State TV Warns The West If They Are Pushed Into A Corner Everybody Dies
It would be extremely helpful if they would define "Pushed Into A Corner."
and
I guess we have no choice but to nuke them first. < / snark >
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Quote:Signym did that thing Signym always does with a few magic words -- presto chango! Sigymn magically converts the daily reality that Russia is attacking Ukraine into some future magical fantasy where the world will be attacking Russia at some indeterminate time yet to be revealed:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Nuclear War 'Already a Given' Says Russian TV: 'Everyone Will Be Destroyed'
Russia State TV Warns The West If They Are Pushed Into A Corner Everybody Dies
It would be extremely helpful if they would define "Pushed Into A Corner."
and
I guess we have no choice but to nuke them first. < / snark >
Quote:It is the same old story out of Russia, which can stop the West from attacking Russia by Russia attacking first. To this day I don't think the Russians will ever understand that Russia started two wars with Finland, and lost both, but blaming Finland for being belligerent. https://www.google.com/search?q=russian+war+with+finland
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
CIA and MI6 are good at setting up false flags, but it would have to be so horrific as to finally engage the public: a major strike on territory outside Ukraine, a nuclear event, biowarfare ... something that would make the western public fearful for their personal safety.
The nuclear option: It's always on the table. Z, Liz Truss, van der Crazy and other western leaders talk about winning a nuclear war. I don't think it's on the top of the list, but I think it's always there.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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‘An Army of Zombies Is Leading Us to Hell’
An interview with a Moscow professional who just quit Russia to escape Vladimir Putin’s military draft
By Anna Nemtsova
The Atlantic
SEPTEMBER 23, 2022, 7:30 AM ET
After President Vladimir Putin announced this week that Russia was conscripting some 300,000 reservists and military veterans to reinforce its war effort in Ukraine, international flights out of Russian cities quickly sold out. This latest wave of Russia’s exodus included Anton Shalaev, a 38-year-old senior manager at an IT company, and 15 colleagues.
On less than a day’s notice, these men of military age all left their relatively comfortable lives in downtown Moscow to fly to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Because of Putin’s war, Shalaev tossed a book, an iPad, and a laptop in a backpack and got out of Dodge.
Shalaev and his co-workers are true tech geeks, producers of high-value computer games. They represent their country’s brightest and best, members of a tech elite that was the economic foundation of Russia’s new middle class. In a last selfie from Moscow, Shalaev brandished a coffee mug that bore the slogan not today, satan.
Anna Nemtsova: Why didn’t you want to be drafted to fight in Ukraine?
Anton Shalaev: On the day Putin declared the war, I knew I would never fight on behalf of this new Nazi Reich. They are my personal enemies: mercenaries who steal my country from me, occupy foreign territories, and kill innocent people. Putin’s army commanders have had plenty of time to turn down their contracts; instead, they are recruiting more cannon fodder now.
So I chose to help Ukrainians suffering from this horror—pay for shelters in Kyiv with cryptocurrency and write antiwar posts on social media. To encourage Russians at home, I said: “Guys, look, I am writing this from Moscow.”
Nemtsova: What was your escape like?
Shalaev: Unlike state-owned companies such as Yandex or the Mail.ru Group, which are making their employees stay, we were independent of government funding, so we made an immediate decision to relocate.
The atmosphere at passport control in the airport was quiet but tense; men waiting for the flight around me were exchanging alerted glances. I had bought my ticket right before the announcement—we were already hearing rumors of the mobilization—so it cost me only about $300. But my colleagues got their tickets the next day, and they cost more than $1,000.
The departure was super stressful. The border guards took each of my friends aside into a small room, interrogated them, asked if they had ever served in the military, and if not, why not. And you know that type of sly border official making their little jokes: “Aha, you are leaving on the day of conscription.” Of course, they checked whether our names were in the database for the mobilization.
Nemtsova: Did you do military service, in fact, when you turned 18?
Shalaev: No, I entered the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, which had a military department, so that released me from the service obligation. I studied political science, and dreamed of becoming a Russian diplomat—Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was a graduate there. For a long time, I considered myself a Russian patriot, ready to serve.
When I enrolled in college, in 2001, there was some ideological diversity: We had a neo-Stalinist who taught us about how “Josef” ruled with an iron fist, but the next class would be with a professor telling us about liberal values. Today, the school recruits students for the secret services. And lately, I heard that the dean has urged students to call for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to surrender.
Nemtsova: What do you think of the Kremlin’s decision making?
Shalaev: A few old men and an army of zombies are leading us to hell. I say that because people around me in Russia behaved as if they had been bitten by a zombie, dragging my entire country into a dreadful war. All I saw was Russian loser husbands beating their wives, while the entire rotting house of the state system has turn
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Speaking of repression "at home"
Edited for readability
Quote:
EU Commission President [Ursula von der Leyen, an unelected eurocrat] Threatens Italy On Eve Of Election, Says Brussels Has 'Tools' If Wrong Parties Wins
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is being accused of election interference after threatening to use “tools” if the wrong election result is achieved in Italy’s national elections, set to take place this Sunday, Sept. 25.
Von der Leyen added that those same tools are already being used against Hungary and Poland.
“We will see the result of the vote in Italy,” said von der Leyen. “If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.”
Giorgia Meloni’s electric performances at political rallies have made her a virtual shoo-in to become Italy’s first female prime minister in Sunday’s ballot. She’ll also be the first to campaign with the flame symbol, evoking the former fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.
The prospect of a charismatic nationalist taking power with almost no government experience has investors and officials on edge. Italy, of course, is wrestling with the fallout from the most serious conflict in Europe since WWII. But the country has been adrift for years, struggling to hit on a formula which can unlock its potential while staying true to its identity. - Bloomberg
https://global-macro-monitor.com/2022/09/23/the-great-reset-saluta-la-
signora-mussolini-il-nuovo-pm-ditalia/
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:A history of "Democracy" in Italy:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Speaking of repression "at home"
Edited for readabilityQuote:
EU Commission President [Ursula von der Leyen, an unelected eurocrat] Threatens Italy On Eve Of Election, Says Brussels Has 'Tools' If Wrong Parties Wins
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is being accused of election interference after threatening to use “tools” if the wrong election result is achieved in Italy’s national elections, set to take place this Sunday, Sept. 25.
Von der Leyen added that those same tools are already being used against Hungary and Poland.
“We will see the result of the vote in Italy,” said von der Leyen. “If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.”
Giorgia Meloni’s electric performances at political rallies have made her a virtual shoo-in to become Italy’s first female prime minister in Sunday’s ballot. She’ll also be the first to campaign with the flame symbol, evoking the former fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.
The prospect of a charismatic nationalist taking power with almost no government experience has investors and officials on edge. Italy, of course, is wrestling with the fallout from the most serious conflict in Europe since WWII. But the country has been adrift for years, struggling to hit on a formula which can unlock its potential while staying true to its identity. - Bloomberg
https://global-macro-monitor.com/2022/09/23/the-great-reset-saluta-la-
signora-mussolini-il-nuovo-pm-ditalia/
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
General elections were held in Italy on 6 April 1924 to elect the members of the Chamber of Deputies.[1] They were held under the Acerbo Law, which stated that the party with the largest share of the votes would automatically receive two-thirds of the seats in Parliament as long as they received over 25% of the vote.[2] The National List of Benito Mussolini (an alliance of Catholic, liberal and conservative political parties) used intimidation tactics against voters,[2] resulting in a landslide victory and a subsequent two-thirds majority. This was the last multi-party election in Italy until 1946.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1924_Italian_general_election
The people Democratically elected the best man -- Mussolini. Once he was in, the only way to be rid of him was violence, but a decade too late, long after he had wrecked Italy. That is Italian-flavored Democracy. Since the 1940's, individual Italian voters have given no indication that they actually understand their personal responsibilities for how screwed up their Democracy is. Instead, they watch it happen without comprehending what they are doing wrong. The voters have picked one stupid ass government after another for 75 years.
The longest-serving prime minister in the history of Italy was Benito Mussolini, who ruled the country from 1922 until 1943; the longest-serving prime minister, but only because he couldn't be removed except by force. The Italians had a bad government, but at least the government clearly knew what its goals were.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Former opposition MP Dmitry Gudkov left Moscow well before the war, saying he was warned to go - or go to jail. Today, all prominent Russian opposition figures are either in custody, dead, or in exile.
So at a recent gathering in Vilnius, a slogan on stage called on those abroad to "be brave, like Ukraine", but the mood was subdued with a hint of helplessness.
Many are actually now looking to Ukraine to do what they could not achieve peacefully inside Russia: defeat Putin.
"I think the West should ramp up military assistance to Ukraine, that's the only option," Mr Gudkov says.
Alexei Navalny's team agrees but goes further. Since the opposition politician was imprisoned, dozens of his team have moved to Vilnius to escape prosecution as "extremists" themselves.
"Putin committed his gravest mistake when he invaded Ukraine. I believe he dramatically decreased the duration of his reign," Mr Navalny's right-hand man, Leonid Volkov, tells me.
This week's call-up has confirmed that belief, as videos of men saying tearful goodbyes to their families pops up all over the country.
"No one attacked Russia, no one needed these separations and these deaths," Mr Volkov wrote on Twitter. "But on 24 February, a maniac led his country down a dead-end."
Mr Navalny's team has been trying to undermine support for the war via YouTube. The audience for their shows, made in Vilnius, has doubled since the invasion.
They are also pushing for more Western sanctions - not visa bans against a whole nation.
They want Ukraine's allies to look beyond President Putin's near-circle and sanction those whom Mr Volkov calls "war enablers" - a list of over 6,000 names, from judges to state journalists.
"Our call to Western governments is to sanction all those people and present them with an exit strategy: tell them what they have to do to get off the list," Mr Volkov says.
"This will create splits. Many will start to jump ship, and Putin's system can't work without them," he adds.
Russian troops have since been forced into retreat from large areas of Ukraine and President Putin has responded as usual: by escalating.
As well as the call-up, there is his threat of annexing more Ukrainian land and another nuclear warning for the West.
Russia's president has staked a huge amount on this campaign and things could well get much worse.
That leaves activist Anastasia Shevchenko struggling with a sense of guilt that she could not do more to stop him.
"I blame myself and it's not a good feeling, believe me," she admits.
But her decision to leave Russia was sealed when her son had to write a letter at his primary school to the soldiers, wishing them victory.
Instead, he told them they had no right to fight their neighbours.
"I think all we can do now as Russians is say sorry - and protest against Vladimir Putin," Anastasia says. "Because Putin personally is the reason for what's going on. Why so many people are dying."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63000034
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're stupider than I thought.
Actually, Zigglette, the reality is we're not as stupid as you wish we were. Your name calling is a tell. "You's so stupid!" It's a tell that you have nothing and you're scrambling, deflecting. We see this all the time when second runs circles around you and makes you look like an idiot. You come out swinging with the insults. You've been exposed as a fraud and your only defense is.... if we get bored. Such goals.
Putin is a dead man walking.
T
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Quote:
Putin is a dead man walking.
And one of these days, he will die.
But then, one of these days your clock will stop ticking too.
Tick tock
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Shortly after dawn on the morning of Saturday, December 22, 1849, the twenty-eight-year-old Dostoevsky stood on a black-draped scaffold erected on the drilling ground at Semyonovsky Square in his native St. Petersburg, and prepared to die at the hands of a firing squad. It was a cold, overcast, Russian winter day, with flakes of snow falling at the condemned man’s feet. Dostoevsky was bound to a stake between two other men, a biblical trinity he would have recognized, with nine more prisoners awaiting their turn in the wings. All of them had been convicted of what the presiding court called a “conspiracy of ideas” to undermine the tsarist regime. On the frozen ground behind the scaffold stood a row of carts laden with twelve empty coffins.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Putin is a dead man walking.
And one of these days, he will die.
But then, one of these days your clock will stop ticking too.
Tick tock
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
A black-robed priest mounted the scaffold and faced the first group of prisoners at the stake. He quoted Romans 6: “The wages of sin is death.” Yet by acknowledging their sins, the condemned could still hope to inherit eternal life. All three of the bound men silently kissed the priest’s cross when it was offered to them. It’s said that Dostoevsky remained calm, remarking to the man next to him on the scaffold that he had recently read Le dernier jour d’un condamné, Victor Hugo’s novel about a criminal facing the guillotine who believes that in the end Christ’s law will replace that of man. Perhaps it was one of those timeless moments, when eternity intrudes into the world and we catch a glimpse of what the life of man was meant to be and, by the grace of God, may yet be.
There was a drumroll. No fewer than forty-five soldiers, in three rows of fifteen, shuffled into position in front of the scaffold, their rifles cocked. Their commanding officer raised his sword as a signal for them to take aim. And at that precise moment, with the condemned men suspended between life and death, a carriage turned the corner and raced onto the cobbled square, a uniformed arm frantically waving a white cloth from the window. The firing squad held its position as a deep-chested man in military braid leapt down from the coach and ran to the presiding officer with a sealed envelope. It contained a slip of paper bearing the news that the condemned men had been reprieved by gracious order of the tsar. They would instead merely be sent into internal exile. It later became known that the whole spectacle at Semyonovsky Square had been a piece of macabre theater. The mock execution was in fact part of the men’s punishment. One of the three individuals who had been tied to the stake that morning went permanently insane. One was never heard from again. The third went on to write Crime and Punishment.
https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-use-and-abuse-of-history/article
s/to-the-depths-and-back
Ask yourself what kind of ruler would play such games? See any connections to Putin and his threatening to drop nukes? What interested Dostoevsky is the morality of crime, and how people can come to rationalize even the most depraved homicidal frenzy. Again, Putin with his rationalizations.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ask yourself what kind of ruler would play such games? See any connections to Putin and his threatening to drop nukes? What interested Dostoevsky is the morality of crime, and how people can come to rationalize even the most depraved homicidal frenzy. Again, Putin with his rationalizations.
Hell of a read.
The irony of what Putin is doing now to Russia, (set aside Ukraine and global implications) is his ego is saying he wants to return Russia to "greatness" - (gee, where have we heard that before??), but since the start, little by little, he's actually destroying it. Some Russians left when the Special op started, and now, with the call up thousands more are fleeing. Borders and airports are crowded with those with the money and the will to flee. The ones left, mostly low income with few resources, will be sent to maybe/probably die in the mud in another country. The evil stupid is amazing. Old men who crave the past and are selfish and willing to kill thousands to try and relive it. Hard to believe anyone who isn't afraid for their life, would support that sht.
Another good read:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-cri
mes-united-nations.html
U.N. experts find that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine.
By Nick Cumming-Bruce
Sept. 23, 2022
GENEVA — Russian soldiers have raped and tortured children in Ukraine, a United Nations-appointed panel of independent legal experts said in a damning statement on Friday that concluded war crimes had been committed in the conflict.
A three-person Commission of Inquiry set up in April to investigate the conduct of hostilities in four areas of Ukraine laid out the graphic allegations in an unusually hard-hitting, 11-minute statement to the U.N Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“The commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined,” the panel’s chairman, Erik Mose, told the council.
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Quote:
President Zelensky Suggests Ukraine May Pursue Nuclear Weapons To Counter Russia, Putin Responds
https://www.dailywire.com/news/president-zelensky-suggests-ukraine-may
-pursue-nuclear-weapons-to-counter-russia-putin-responds
Quote:
Cheers as Liz Truss says she's ready to press nuclear button and unleash 'global annihilation'
https://news.yahoo.com/audience-liz-truss-ready-press-nuclear-button-u
nleash-global-annihilation-103552126.html
Quote:
In its aggressive anti-Russian policy, the West has crossed every line. We constantly hear threats against our country, our people. Some irresponsible politicians in the West not only talk about plans to organize the supply of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine – systems that will allow strikes against the Crimea and other regions of Russia.
Such terrorist strikes, including with the use of Western weapons, are already being carried out on the border settlements of the Belgorod and Kursk regions. In real time, using modern systems, aircraft, ships, satellites, strategic drones, NATO carries out reconnaissance throughout southern Russia.
In Washington, London, Brussels, they are directly pushing Kyiv to transfer military operations to our territory. No longer hiding, they say that Russia should be defeated by all means on the battlefield, followed by the deprivation of political, economic, cultural, in general, any sovereignty, with the complete plunder of our country.
Nuclear blackmail was also launched. We are talking not only about the shelling of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which is encouraged by the West, which threatens a nuclear catastrophe, but also about the statements of some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO states about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction against Russia – nuclear weapons.
For those who allow themselves to make such statements about Russia, I would like to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and for some components more modern than those of the NATO countries.
And if the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/09/text-of-putin-speech-announcin
g-partial-mobilization.html
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Another good read:
htt p s://www .nytimes.com/
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Die for Putin and you shall receive an eternal reward in heaven was the sermon preached by Putin's personal friend, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-orthodox-church-argues-th
at-sacrificing-life-in-war-against-ukraine-washes-away-sins/ar-AA12eAS2
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Putin is taking a maddening risk which could result in the collapse of his regime, but – just as likely – could lead to Russia drowning Ukraine in a sea of blood and by extension defeating the US-led West in this conflict.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/9/25/putins-suicidal-gamble
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Dangers of Desperation
RUSSIA/ UKRAINE
The once-vaunted, now-demoralized Russian military could be on the brink of collapse – a retired British Air Marshal put the odds at 35 percent in a recent interview with Sky News.
By now, seven months after the invasion of Ukraine, this mighty military was to have overthrown the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and “cleanse the country of Nazis.” But the Russians’ lightning-quick strike on the capital of Kyiv failed in what the Associated Press described as a “defeat for the ages,” and they scaled back the invasion to focus on the south and east.
After withdrawing from Kyiv, the military held firm for a while in eastern Ukraine where they had previously established separatist regions or puppet states years ago, as Politico wrote, even as Ukraine managed to reclaim a large swathe of territory in Russia’s supposed strongholds in the east, National Public Radio reported.
As a consequence, four separatist regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – began holding referendums over the weekend to join Russia, sometimes forcing voters at gunpoint to go to the polls, to give Russia the excuse that it is defending its own territory, the Washington Post reported. The outcomes of the votes are a foregone conclusion, as is the switching of tactics the sign of a desperate dictator, the newspaper added.
“These are the hypocritical, backpedaling words of a dictator who badly miscalculated by seeking to destroy Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and who finds himself in need of a new rationale for war,” it wrote, referring to a speech Wednesday by Russian President Vladimir Putin, explaining the referendums, the instituting of a partial draft and the penalties for avoiding military service.
Putin has boxed himself into a corner; he needs more soldiers and equipment, but asking for them highlights his failure to protect the ones he has already deployed. Meanwhile, military experts doubt it will make a difference in the war.
It did, however, make a difference to the imposed peace within Russia itself, the Canadian Broadcasting Company wrote, noting the draft’s unpopularity among ordinary Russians. As men began receiving call-up orders, protests erupted around the country on Wednesday and again over the weekend with more than 2,000 people being arrested because protests are illegal. Meanwhile, Russians scrambled to find flights out of the country as tickets quickly sold out, and “how to leave Russia” searches began spiking on Google, Business Insider reported.
Meanwhile, it’s no secret to many Russians what the 300,000 being called up will face.
Letters left behind by Russian soldiers detailed their demoralization and sorrow, the Washington Post wrote, explaining also why some soldiers are refusing to fight after “humiliating losses on the battlefield,” according to the Daily Beast. This could explain the fast pace of Ukrainians’ advances against Russian troops, added the Kyiv Post, a Ukraine-based English-language newspaper.
Meanwhile, at the United Nations this week, Zelenskyy mocked Putin and demanded a peace plan on Ukraine’s terms, maybe following a script that bloodying the bully’s nose reduces his menacing aura. “A crime has been committed against Ukraine, and we demand punishment,” Zelenskyy told delegates at the UN in a virtual address in his trademark combat fatigues, CNN reported.
Zelenskyy also called for the UN to strip Russia of its veto power in the Security Council, a move that would pave the way for significant action in the council that presumably only China could stop. China is the only non-Western, veto-wielding Security Council member. The other three veto-power countries are the US, Britain and France.
But Chinese leaders are reportedly not very happy with Russia, either. As Newsweek wrote, Chinese President Xi Jinping is not sending weapons nor making public proclamations in support of the war, a stunning silence for two ostensible allies. And Xi has recently expressed concerns over the war. Putin acknow
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Author of "Putin's Wars" says the Russian president is doomed — but the West's anti-Russian rhetoric is dangerous
After the debacle in Ukraine, what comes next for Russia and its president? I recently spoke with Mark Galeotti, one of the world's leading experts on Russia, transnational crime and military affairs. He is the author of many books, including "The Weaponisation of Everything," "A Short History of Russia" and "We Need to Talk About Putin." His forthcoming book, to be published in November, is "Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine."
In this conversation, Galeotti explains how Vladimir Putin has put himself inside an information echo chamber that encourages his worst impulses.
Galeotti also offers his analysis of why the Russian military has failed in Ukraine and why so many military experts were so deeply wrong in their initial assessments. He shares his thoughts on the early lessons to be taken from the war in Ukraine about the future of conventional warfare and other high-intensity conflicts. Although victory appears to be in sight for the Ukrainians, Galeotti cautions that the U.S. and Western allies cannot take such an outcome as a given. He argues that the Ukrainians must receive more support and not less in order to ensure a final victory.
In the end, Galeotti warns that the endgame of the Ukraine conflict will be critical for global security and peace. If the Russian people feel humiliated by the U.S. and the West that may lead to even more aggressive nationalist forces taking control of their county in the future.
Q: Given the war in Ukraine and all of the other global crises, how are you feeling? How do you make sense of all this?
On a personal level, I'm deeply depressed by what happened. As of June, I was actually banned from entry indefinitely by the Russian government. I like Russia as a place to visit. I have friends and colleagues there. Putin has obviously been terrible for 40 million or so Ukrainians. He has been pretty terrible for the Russians too. But for those of us who study Russia, he has been very good for business. There is a sense at times of being some type of hyena, feasting on the entrails of the global body politic. But I try to put such feelings aside. I'm very busy and am just trying to keep some perspective amidst all this extraordinary madness.
Q: How do you maintain perspective? Pundits and commentators are often rewarded for sensationalism and "hot takes." But most such claims will mostly be disproved by history — and may even be disproven in the present by more serious and careful thinkers. Do such people simply not care? Is it all about making an impact and getting paid, and only secondarily the truth?
This is one of the problems caused by Twitter and other forms of social media and 21st-century media more generally. People can make a name for themselves by delivering "hot takes" that are a bit more exciting, a bit more strident and frankly a bit more lunatic than even the ones that came before. It would be nice to believe that there was some kind of grand karma at work, where at the end such people who are playing that game would be found out.
It's a very depressing aspect of modern society because we now get to curate our own individual information bubbles, an echo chamber where we just hear the same things that confirm our beliefs. That means delusions can be maintained quite successfully, independent of reality on the ground. I predate the real internet age. I started studying Russia when it was still the Soviet Union. So from the phenomenal upwelling of optimism of the Gorbachev years, I saw the system collapse amidst chaos and recrimination. There was the gangster 1990s, and then the period in which Putin did seem to be, in his own brutal and ugly way, doing good for Russia and the world. He brought stability to that chaos.
Q: How are the Russian people going to deal with this national humiliation?
Most Russians don't really
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lol
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:
Congress Stuffs $12BN In Ukraine Aid Into Stopgap Funding Bill
How about spending some of that money here, Nancy and Joe*?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Ukraine Confirms Receipt Of Longer-Range Missiles It's Long Sought From US
Tuesday, Sep 27, 2022 - 02:00 AM
Despite this past week which has seen US officials echo growing concerns over Moscow's ratcheting nuclear rhetoric - which Ukraine too has said it is taking seriously - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is now boasting his country has received a new, advanced US missile system.
He confirmed in a fresh interview with CBS’s "Face the Nation" that the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) has been long sought after by Kyiv, but previously in the war repeatedly denied:
* Zelensky thanked the U.S. for the system as well as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems it’s received, but added that his troops "absolutely need the United States to show leadership and give Ukraine" additional air defense systems it has requested.
MORE AT https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-confirms-receipt-longer
-range-missiles-its-long-sought-us
Kiev talks a lot of smack. But if our government is hiding this, it's only hiding this from us, citizens of the USA. I'm sure the Kremlin knows all about it.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Putin is a dead man walking.
And one of these days, he will die.
But then, one of these days your clock will stop ticking too.
Tick tock
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60433
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Putin is a dead man walking.
SIGNY: And one of these days, he will die.
But then, one of these days your clock will stop ticking too.
Tick tock
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60433
I thought that was rather funny!
Also, true.
Life isn't a reward for paying your taxes or being virtuous, and death isn't a punishment for being a sociopath.
We all die some day.
Tick tock
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Referendums: Early Turnout Numbers on Joining Russia Revealed
September 25, 2022 By NEWS WIRE Leave a Comment
Preliminary results on the third of five voting days reveal that the required threshold of voter participation for a viable referendum been reached in Donbass and Zaporozhye, and nearly met in Kherson.
Despite the high turnout, Ukraine and its Western allies are claiming that the referendums have ‘no legal force’ and that the votes are nothing more than ‘an illegitimate attempt by Moscow to seize Ukrainian territory’.
MORE AT
https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/09/25/referendums-early-turnout-numbe
rs-on-joining-russia-revealed/
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Putin is a dead man walking.
SIGNY: And one of these days, he will die.
But then, one of these days your clock will stop ticking too.
Tick tock
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60433
I thought that was rather funny!
Also, true.
Life isn't a reward for paying your taxes or being virtuous, and death isn't a punishment for being a sociopath.
We all die some day.
The link to your thread about Hillary being a war monger isn't funny. It's a sad reminder of your incessant shilling for Putin and your trying to contribute to America's downfall.
I give you a failing grade on not just that but for all your posts suggesting Russia was a superpower. They are currently being dismantled by Ukraine with America's support. The world is watching gleefully.
T
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Quote:The votes are in! The RIA state news agency reported votes of 98.19 percent in favor in Zaporizhzhia and 96.97 percent in Kherson in the south, and 97.91 percent in Donetsk and 97.82 percent in Luhansk in the east.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:MORE AT
Referendums: Early Turnout Numbers on Joining Russia Revealed
September 25, 2022 By NEWS WIRE Leave a Comment
Preliminary results on the third of five voting days reveal that the required threshold of voter participation for a viable referendum been reached in Donbass and Zaporozhye, and nearly met in Kherson.
Despite the high turnout, Ukraine and its Western allies are claiming that the referendums have ‘no legal force’ and that the votes are nothing more than ‘an illegitimate attempt by Moscow to seize Ukrainian territory’.
https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/09/25/referendums-early-turnout-numbe
rs-on-joining-russia-revealed/
What's up with Kherson? Less than 97% in favor of joining the motherland? What kind of unpatriotic bastards are these guys? (Sorry to inform you, but it is all fake results from Russia.)
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/moscows-proxies-occupied-ukraine-
regions-report-big-votes-join-russia-2022-09-27/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO – Moscow’s answer to NATO – includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.
How are things going for the “Russian NATO”?
Well, four of its members are at war, without getting much support from the others. Two of them have even started fighting each other: two weeks ago Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan escalated a long-standing border dispute into clashes that have killed more than 100 and left thousands of civilians displaced. Armenia, another member, has been invaded by non-member Azerbaijan, which has simply decided to ignore – or in some cases even attack – the Russian soldiers tasked with carrying out Moscow’s will in the region. Kazakhstan has been publicly denying rumors that it plans to withdraw from the organization, but is quick to add that it won’t “bow to Moscow” because of the alliance. Belarus, after being used as a launching point for Putin’s failed attempt to capture Kyiv, shows few signs of actually wanting to get any more involved in the war in Ukraine than it must, to placate Moscow.
And of course Russia itself is increasingly on its own globally, its military ambitions plagued by Ukrainian soldiers equipped with NATO weaponry.
Suffice to say, if you take the actual “collective security” part out of CSTO, you’re left with just a meaningless piece of paper and an organizational chart with a fancy logo. So it probably isn’t surprising that there are Armenians who have begun asking: What good is the CSTO if it doesn’t provide any security?
In Armenia, plenty of suffering has been endured before: death marches, ethnic cleansing and concentration camps were all part of the Armenian Genocide just over a century ago, shortly before the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the wake of World War I. Some researchers estimate that between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were slain from 1915-1917.
As Armenians face an unrestrained Azerbaijan with a superior military – and as Azeri antiwar protesters are rounded up by the authoritarian state’s security services – one can, perhaps, forgive those who actually live in Russia’s “sphere of influence” if they look toward the uncertain future not with hope, but with apprehension.
If things continue to fall apart for the Kremlin, instability will only spread throughout Russia’s satellites, proxies and client states. While Putin’s enemies may be eager to cheer that on, power vacuums lead to chaos, conflict, bloodshed and widespread misery – the prominent features of most geopolitical collapses.
More at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/ukraine-invasi
on-putin-russia-offensive-1234600578/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Referenda vote observed by people from
Germany, Mozambique, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), France, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the Central African Republic.
It seems that if the west really believed this was going to be a sham vote and wanted to discredit it, they would have flooded the area with observers. Obviously, chose to avoid the referenda and criticize from afar/ without evidence bc they were afraid to give the vote credibility.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Referenda vote observed by people from
Germany, Mozambique, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), France, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the Central African Republic.
It seems that if the west really believed this was going to be a sham vote and wanted to discredit it, they would have flooded the area with observers. Obviously, chose to avoid the referenda and criticize from afar/ without evidence bc they were afraid to give the vote credibility.
Comrade signym makes this claim even though everyone knows it's bullshit. Too funny...
Comrade, can_you_see_me_lauhing?
T
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-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy, speaking in Kyiv after Putin, announced that Ukraine was formally applying for fast-track membership of the NATO military alliance, something Moscow fiercely opposes.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Referenda vote observed by people from
Germany, Mozambique, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), France, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the Central African Republic.
It seems that if the west really believed this was going to be a sham vote and wanted to discredit it, they would have flooded the area with observers. Obviously, chose to avoid the referenda and criticize from afar/ without evidence bc they were afraid to give the vote credibility.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
The Russian president proclaimed Russian rule over 15% of Ukraine - the biggest annexation in Europe since World War Two.
It comes as Russian forces in one of the four regions being annexed face being encircled by Ukrainian troops after Putin ordered a massive mobilisation drive to get hundreds of thousands of Russian men to the front.
https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-host-kremlin-ceremony-annexing-par
ts-ukraine-2022-09-29/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Of course, YouTube censors any content it doesn't like. No wonder so many Americans are in the dark about... well, pretty much anything.
Well, YouTube can't censor this: A brief history of the Donbas
Quote:
The ethnic Russian people in Ukraine feared being canceled People in [eastern and southern] Ukraine protested and a some in the east took up arms. They twice defeated the Ukrainian army and volunteer formations sent against them. The Minsk I and II agreements that followed required Ukraine to give those Donbas oblasts significant autonomy. The United Nations Security Council acknowledged and supported the agreements. But any attempts to implement them were sabotaged by the U.S. via the armed right wing movements that had control over the government in Kiev.
For eight long years the people in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics defended their borders against constant Ukrainian ... violence. While the people in those republics had voted ... to become a part of Russia, the Kremlin did not want to accept that. It wanted that those republics stay within Ukraine and insisted on the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
On February 17 the Ukrainian army launched artillery preparations for an all out attack on the Donbas republics. Over the next days the shelling increased from some 40 artillery explosions per day to over 2,000 per day Russia had to act. On February 22 it recognized the independence of the Donbas republics and signed defense agreements with them. On February 24 it send its troops to defeat the Ukrainian army and to make any future attacks on the Donbas impossible.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/09/ukraine-four-oblasts-join-russia
.html#more
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:You censored this gem that shows Putin to be a Drama Queen: Putin accused the West of fueling the hostilities as part of what he said is a plan to turn Russia into a “colony” and a “crowds of slaves.”
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Of course, YouTube censors any content it doesn't like.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/09/ukraine-four-oblasts-join-russia
.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Of course, YouTube censors any content it doesn't like. No wonder so many Americans are in the dark about... well, pretty much anything.
Well, YouTube can't censor this: A brief history of the Donbas
But I can. Russia's done comrade.
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Of course, YouTube censors any content it doesn't like. No wonder so many Americans are in the dark about... well, pretty much anything.
Well, YouTube can't censor this: A brief history of the Donbas
But I can. Russia's done comrade.
T
Hear what CNN reporter noticed about crowd watching Putin's speech
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Ukraine Submits Application to Join NATO
“We are taking our decisive step by signing Ukraine’s application for accelerated accession to NATO,” Mr. Zelensky said in a statement posted on the presidential website. He said Ukraine was already cooperating closely with NATO and argued that Ukraine’s army has already helped secure alliance members in Europe against Russian aggression by inflicting battlefield defeats on the Russian army in Ukraine.
“It is in Ukraine that the fate of democracy in the confrontation with tyranny is being decided,” he said. “It is here, with the firmness of our state borders, that we can secure the firmness of the borders of all European states. Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine’s application could be fast-tracked similarly to the applications of Sweden and Finland.
https://president.gov.ua/en/news/mi-robimo-svij-viznachalnij-krok-pidp
isuyuchi-zayavku-ukrayi-78173
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Self-generated imperial authoritarianism is the real curse of Russia and the cause of all its troubles. Opportunities to get rid of it are provided by history.
Russia had its last chance of this kind after the end of the U.S.S.R., but both the democratic public inside the country and Western leaders at the time made the monstrous mistake of agreeing to the model — proposed by Boris Yeltsin’s team — of a presidential republic with enormous powers for the leader. Giving plenty of power to a good guy seemed logical at the time.
Yet the inevitable soon happened: The good guy went bad. To begin with, he started a war (the Chechen war) himself, and then, without normal elections and fair procedures, he handed over power to the cynical and corrupt Soviet imperialists led by Putin. They have caused several wars and countless international provocations, and are now tormenting a neighboring nation, committing horrible crimes for which neither many generations of Ukrainians nor our own children will forgive us.
In the 31 years since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., we have witnessed a clear pattern: The countries that chose the parliamentary republic model (the Baltic states) are thriving and have successfully joined Europe. Those that chose the presidential-parliamentary model (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia) have faced persistent instability and made little progress. Those that chose strong presidential power (Russia, Belarus and the Central Asian republics) have succumbed to rigid authoritarianism, most of them permanently engaged in military conflicts with their neighbors, daydreaming about their own little empires.
In short, strategic victory means bringing Russia back to this key historical juncture and letting the Russian people make the right choice.
The future model for Russia is not “strong power” and a “firm hand,” but harmony, agreement and consideration of the interests of the whole society. Russia needs a parliamentary republic. That is the only way to stop the endless cycle of imperial authoritarianism.
https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2022/09/30/alexei-navalny-this-is-wha
t-a-post-putin-russia-should-look-like/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Russia's withdrawal from Lyman comes a day after Putin said he was annexing the region.
Moscow's withdrawal from Lyman prompted immediate criticism from some Russian officials.
The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, blamed the retreat, without evidence, on one general being "covered up for by higher-up leaders in the General Staff." He called for "more drastic measures."
Meanwhile, on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, the governor of the city of Sevastopol announced an emergency situation at an airfield there. Explosions and huge billows of smoke could be seen from a distance by beachgoers in the Russian-held resort. Authorities said a plane rolled off the runway at the Belbek airfield and ammunition that was reportedly on board caught fire.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/01/1126404515/russia-withdraws-troops-ukra
ine-city-lyman
In Washington, President Joe Biden signed a bill Friday that provides another infusion — more than $12.3 billion — in military and economic aid linked to the war Ukraine. The bill passed the House by a vote of 230-201. Republicans overwhelmingly opposed the measure.
https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/national/biden-signs-bill-to-avert-
government-shutdown-aid-ukraine/article_2d91d9cf-b67b-51e3-9d1f-606307ce65c6.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
If they can cut off bank accounts to an entire nation, the Freedom Convoy never stood a chance.
The New World Order is in control now.
Look back fondly on 2019 and before it. Because the life we used to know will never be again.
Russia, China, and Iran are the New Axis powers. Between them they have everything they need (armies, nukes, oil revenues) to take over half the world, especially when the weak and woke West is "too civilized" to do a damn thing about it.
During 1945 when Russia was invading Germany from the East and then sacking Berlin, the Russian Army was actually encouraged by their officers to terrorize the civilian population. As many as 3 million German women and girls were brutalized and raped, often gang-raped. I wonder how CNN and the rest of their oh-so-progressive ilk will live with that reality playing out in front of their smug self-righteous retarded faces.
You're a fucking moron Jongsstraw. Comrade signym, can_you_see_me_laughing?
T
Old uniform and boots that don't fit. After Vladimir Putin announced the mobilization in Russia, more and more conscripts complain that all military uniforms are completely unusable. According to the recruits, not only are they forced to go to war, but they also have to buy the equipment with their own money. Another problem of the Russian army is the strikingly low level of providing soldiers with weapons. Many have weapons that date back to the Soviet era. In several military units, the Russian command has handed out rusty Kalashnikov assault rifles, which were used during the first Chechen war.
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Alexei Navalny: This is what a post-Putin Russia should look like
By Alexei Navalny, September 30, 2022 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is serving a nine-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony. This essay was conveyed to The Post by his legal team.
If we examine the primary things said by Western leaders on this score, the bottom line remains: Russia (Putin) must not win this war. Ukraine must remain an independent democratic state capable of defending itself.
This is correct, but it is a tactic. The strategy should be to ensure that Russia and its government naturally, without coercion, do not want to start wars and do not find them attractive. This is undoubtedly possible. Right now the urge for aggression is coming from a minority in Russian society.
In my opinion, the problem with the West’s current tactics lies not just in the vagueness of their aim, but in the fact that they ignore the question: What does Russia look like after the tactical goals have been achieved? Even if success is achieved, where is the guarantee that the world will not find itself confronting an even more aggressive regime, tormented by resentment and imperial ideas that have little to do with reality? With a sanctions-stricken but still big economy in a state of permanent military mobilization? And with nuclear weapons that guarantee impunity for all manner of international provocations and adventures?
It is easy to predict that even in the case of a painful military defeat, Putin will still declare that he lost not to Ukraine but to the “collective West and NATO,” whose aggression was unleashed to destroy Russia.
And then, resorting to his usual postmodern repertoire of national symbols — from icons to red flags, from Dostoevsky to ballet — he will vow to create an army so strong and weapons of such unprecedented power that the West will rue the day it defied us, and the honor of our great ancestors will be avenged.
And then we will see a fresh cycle of hybrid warfare and provocations, eventually escalating into new wars.
To avoid this, the issue of postwar Russia should become the central issue — and not just one element among others — of those who are striving for peace. No long-term goals can be achieved without a plan to ensure that the source of the problems stops creating them. Russia must cease to be an instigator of aggression and instability. That is possible, and that is what should be seen as a strategic victory in this war.
There are several important things happening to Russia that need to be understood:
First, jealousy of Ukraine and its possible successes is an innate feature of post-Soviet power in Russia; it was also characteristic of the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. But since the beginning of Putin’s rule, and especially after the Orange Revolution that began in 2004, hatred of Ukraine’s European choice, and the desire to turn it into a failed state, have become a lasting obsession not only for Putin but also for all politicians of his generation.
Control over Ukraine is the most important article of faith for all Russians with imperial views, from officials to ordinary people. In their opinion, Russia combined with a subordinate Ukraine amounts to a “reborn U.S.S.R. and empire.” Without Ukraine, in this view, Russia is just a country with no chance of world domination. Everything that Ukraine acquires is something taken away from Russia.
Second, the view of war not as a catastrophe but as an amazing means of solving all problems is not just a philosophy of Putin’s top brass, but a practice confirmed by life and evolution. Since the Second Chechen War, which made the little-known Putin the country’s most popular politician, through the war in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and the war in Syria, the Russian elite over the past 23 years has learned rules that have never failed: War is not that expensive, it solves all domestic political problems, it raises public approval sky-high, it does not particularly
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Great article - visionary. It seems to be one of the great hurdles mankind faces at the moment, trying to advance (evolve) past the current glut of sociopathic dictator/ authoritarian dinosaurs. These fcking old men and their old ideas.
My only disagreement is with the author's suggestion that the West needs to push for >blank< a specific type of government after Putin. That's a sure way to fire up even more anti-Western feelings. "Are we going to let them dictate to us who we are?!?!"
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Quote:
Originally posted by CAPTAINCRUNCH:
Great article - visionary. It seems to be one of the great hurdles mankind faces at the moment, trying to advance (evolve) past the current glut of sociopathic dictator/ authoritarian dinosaurs. These fcking old men and their old ideas.
My only disagreement is with the author's suggestion that the West needs to push for >blank< a specific type of government after Putin. That's a sure way to fire up even more anti-Western feelings. "Are we going to let them dictate to us who we are?!?!"
Yeah. "Let's shape Russia into current year America."
Doesn't seem like a great sales pitch. It never has been, no matter when or where we've forced it and no matter which members of which political party held the reins of the government at the time, because it's always ended up in corruption and failure.
I still have to admit that Cap'n somehow has maintained the ability for critical thinking despite the last 3 years. That center of the brain isn't always working for him, of course, but at least there is evidence that it does exist, and that means there's still hope.
Without critical thinking skills you are just an easily programmable automaton. Most of the time when I'm posting here it feels like I'm having conversations with AI bots.
Thanks Cap'n.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:The article put the blame here: "monstrous mistake of agreeing to the model — proposed by Boris Yeltsin’s team — of a presidential republic with enormous powers for the leader. Giving plenty of power to a good guy seemed logical at the time.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by CAPTAINCRUNCH:
Great article - visionary. It seems to be one of the great hurdles mankind faces at the moment, trying to advance (evolve) past the current glut of sociopathic dictator/ authoritarian dinosaurs. These fcking old men and their old ideas.
My only disagreement is with the author's suggestion that the West needs to push for >blank< a specific type of government after Putin. That's a sure way to fire up even more anti-Western feelings. "Are we going to let them dictate to us who we are?!?!"
Yeah. "Let's shape Russia into current year America."
Doesn't seem like a great sales pitch. It never has been, no matter when or where we've forced it and no matter which members of which political party held the reins of the government at the time, because it's always ended up in corruption and failure.
I still have to admit that Cap'n somehow has maintained the ability for critical thinking despite the last 3 years. That center of the brain isn't always working for him, of course, but at least there is evidence that it does exist, and that means there's still hope.
Without critical thinking skills you are just an easily programmable automaton. Most of the time when I'm posting here it feels like I'm having conversations with AI bots.
Thanks Cap'n.
Yet the inevitable soon happened: The good guy went bad. To begin with, he (Boris Yeltsin) started a war (the Chechen war) himself, and then, without normal elections and fair procedures, he handed over power to the cynical and corrupt Soviet imperialists led by Putin. "
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Russia's flagging fortunes have led to a shift in mood on state media, where talkshow hosts have been acknowledging setbacks and searching for scapegoats. The commander of Russia's western military district, which borders Ukraine, has lost his job, Russian media reported, the latest top official to be fired after defeats.
"For a certain period of time, things won't be easy for us. We shouldn't be expecting good news right now," said Vladimir Solovyov, the most prominent presenter on state television.
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-forces-break-through-russian-def
ences-south-advance-east-2022-10-03/
I shall make a prediction: Putin can fire every commander, blow up every natural gas pipeline, sink LNG carriers crossing the Atlantic to Europe, and drop some nukes, but I expect Russia won't be better off for having done everything it can, until Russia gets rid of Putin, which would turn the situation completely around.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russia's flagging fortunes have led to a shift in mood on state media, where talkshow hosts have been acknowledging setbacks and searching for scapegoats. The commander of Russia's western military district, which borders Ukraine, has lost his job, Russian media reported, the latest top official to be fired after defeats.
"For a certain period of time, things won't be easy for us. We shouldn't be expecting good news right now," said Vladimir Solovyov, the most prominent presenter on state television.
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-forces-break-through-russian-def
ences-south-advance-east-2022-10-03/
I shall make a prediction: Putin can fire every commander, blow up every natural gas pipeline, sink LNG carriers crossing the Atlantic to Europe, and drop some nukes, but I expect Russia won't be better off for having done everything it can, until Russia gets rid of Putin, which would turn the situation completely around.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Russia didn't blow up that pipeline, moron.
I know that Democrats were willing to work with the Chinese and destroy the world economy after two years of bad policy for a non-lethal virus that they unleashed and ultimately allowed them to cheat a Presidental election, but I'm kind of surprised they're going straight to threatening WWIII for a mid-term. I would have thought they'd save that for 2024.
The faster we get you fucks out of office for good the better for everyone in the world.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Russia’s elites are starting to admit the possibility of defeat
Tatiana Stanovaya writes Oct 3, 2022:
When Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine back in February, many believed a Rubicon had been crossed after which the Russian president’s relationship with his elites would never be the same. It was then that Putin began to be seen as a desperate leader, no longer capable of normal interaction with the outside world.
Nonetheless, the feelings of despondency and doom that prevailed among the elites didn’t stop them from continuing to demonstrate loyalty to the president or from feeling collective anger at the West. It helped Putin’s case that many senior officials sincerely held Washington and Brussels responsible for the conflict, blaming them for pushing Russia so far that it had no choice but to take action.
In recent weeks, however, this fragile faith has been rocked by the humiliating Russian retreat from Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the announcement of a partial mobilization that looks likely to become a full mobilization, and growing doubts over whether Russia can actually win this war. This raises the question of whether the Russian elites are prepared to stick with Putin until the bitter end, particularly amid growing threats to use nuclear weapons.
Until recently, it looked like despite their informal mutterings and grim expectations, the elites would not desert their president, no matter what the price of victory. The inter-elite consensus was based upon a well-established set of beliefs subscribed to not just by the siloviki, or security service officials, but by the pragmatist technocrats too: that the West will do everything it can to bring Russia to its knees; that since Russia has begun this war, it must win it; and that any compromises Russia makes will be used against it, and are therefore not an option.
But now, with the chaotic implementation of the mobilization and the sorry state of affairs on the front, the idea that Russia will inevitably prevail has started to be overshadowed by doubt over what price Russia is prepared to pay in order to bring Ukraine to heel. The longer the conflict rages and the more resources the Russian regime throws into the furnace of war, the more divided Russia’s elites may become, and the more serious those divides.
For a start, there are no signs that the Russian elite sees Ukraine as an existential problem for Russia. For Putin, it is an extremely emotional and personal topic. He is fixated on ideas of historical justice, Russian ancestral lands, and the desire to “liberate” the fraternal Ukrainian people from anti-Russian “occupiers” sponsored by the West. But this viewpoint is not shared even by many hawks, never mind the technocrats, for whom it is incomparably more important to end this war without being defeated, which would cover a far broader spectrum of outcomes than outright “victory.”
There is also a profound lack of understanding of Russia’s end goal in this war. For Putin, judging by his public statements, that goal is not limited to annexing certain regions, but also includes establishing a pro-Russian regime in the rest of Ukraine, with the understanding that the western part of the country may break away. For now, Putin continues to hope that time is on Russia’s side, and that Kyiv will fall sooner or later. But many more pragmatic representatives of the elites would be satisfied with far more modest “achievements,” such as the annexation only of southeastern Ukraine.
Right now, following the annexation of four more Ukrainian regions, there is informal talk among parts of the Russian leadership of there being “light at the end of the tunnel,” reflecting hopes for the post-annexation freezing of the conflict and de-escalation. But Putin’s penchant for keeping his plans to himself only exacerbates the lack of understanding and gulf in expectations. There is no official position or inter-elite unanimity on what can be considered a definitive victory.
More at https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88072
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Quote:
Originally posted by CAPTAINCRUNCH:
Great article - visionary. It seems to be one of the great hurdles mankind faces at the moment, trying to advance (evolve) past the current glut of sociopathic dictator/ authoritarian dinosaurs. These fcking old men and their old ideas.
My only disagreement is with the author's suggestion that the West needs to push for >blank< a specific type of government after Putin. That's a sure way to fire up even more anti-Western feelings. "Are we going to let them dictate to us who we are?!?!"
I think when all is said and done, we need to leave them to themselves.
T
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Ukraine needs weapons. It’s particularly vital to increase the supply of weapons capable of taking out distant command and logistical centers.
Now is not the time for the West to soften its resolve in the fight against Putin — it’s time to step it up. There is no “escape ramp” to offer him; no elegant way of enabling him to declare victory. Those pushing such “solutions” don’t understand Putin — or worse, they’re advocating a policy of appeasement against a fascist dictator to try to reduce their gas bill.
Instead, by far the most efficient way to put an end to Putin’s energy blackmail and nuclear threats would be a further rout of his invasion force.
-- Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former political prisoner and CEO of Yukos Oil company, is the author of “The Russia Conundrum: How the West Fell for Putin’s Power Gambit – and How to Fix It.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-the-critical-moment-has-arrive
d/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Did you know that Russia is the biggest supplier of heavy weapons to Ukraine? The Russians really are that stupid. They blew up their own pipeline as a tactic of economic war against the EU:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Russia didn't blow up that pipeline, moron.
Combined with weapons taken during Russia’s retreat from Kyiv and other parts of northern Ukraine in April, these recent gains have turned Moscow into by far the largest supplier of heavy weapons for Ukraine, well ahead of the U.S. or other allies in sheer numbers.
One Ukrainian battalion, the Carpathian Sich, seized 10 modern T-80 tanks and five 2S5 Giatsint 152-mm self-propelled howitzers after it entered the town of Izyum last month, said its deputy chief of staff, Ruslan Andriyko.
“We’ve got so many trophies that we don’t even know what to do with them,” he said. “We started off as an infantry battalion, and now we are sort of becoming a mechanized battalion.”
The chief of staff of a Ukrainian artillery battalion on the Kharkiv front said his unit now operates four recently captured Russian 2S19 Msta 152-mm self-propelled howitzers, alongside American-made guns, and now has abundant Soviet-caliber ammunition.
“The Russians no longer have a firepower advantage. We smashed up all their artillery units before launching the offensive, and then we started to move ahead so fast that they didn’t even have time to fuel up and load their tanks,” said the officer. “They just fled and left everything behind.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-s-new-offensive-is-fueled
-by-captured-russian-weapons/ar-AA12CIDc
It takes less than a hour to blow up an ammo dump. By not doing that, the Russians let Ukraine have all those shiny weapons and shells. Damn Russians are stupid.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Did you know that Russia is the biggest supplier of heavy weapons to Ukraine? The Russians really are that stupid. They blew up their own pipeline as a tactic of economic war against the EU:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Russia didn't blow up that pipeline, moron.
No they didn't.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:6ix, there is nothing about your past history or present occupation that makes you even minimally competent to give an educated guess at what the Russians are doing. But your mental illnesses, which you helpfully have written about many times, have convinced you you know. Don't you know that about yourself? All the Trumptards I know think they're hot shit, just like you do. Almost forgot: Trump will be fine, same as Putin.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Did you know that Russia is the biggest supplier of heavy weapons to Ukraine? The Russians really are that stupid. They blew up their own pipeline as a tactic of economic war against the EU:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Russia didn't blow up that pipeline, moron.
No they didn't.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:So many things the Russians didn't do because they were too proud, too confident, and too lazy:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
No they didn't.
Putin is losing the war in all four Ukrainian regions he claims to have ‘annexed’ | October 5, 2022
Michael Weiss and James Rushton report:
To hear pro-Russian military analysts tell it, in the last 72 hours Ukraine has managed to simultaneously recapture about 1,000 square kilometers of terrain in the northeast of the country and 2,200 square kilometers in the south.
Although it is difficult to independently confirm these figures, the very fact that they’re coming from cheerleaders of Vladimir Putin’s war highlights just how disastrously things have gone for the Russian president in a month that has seen him resort to a chaotic mobilization to replenish manpower shortages, and a heralded “annexation” of Ukrainian territory that is slipping through his fingers by the hour. And he is losing ground not just in one of the oblasts he has illegally claimed as his own, but in all four.
Rumors of deep Ukrainian advances into Russian-controlled areas of Kherson, directly north of the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea, have been confirmed by pictures of victorious Ukrainian soldiers hoisting the Ukrainian flag above liberated villages. The Ukrainians have been advancing down the west bank of the Dnipro River, using the natural barrier of the waterway to secure their left flank, while threatening to encircle the Russian troops to their east. And their progress has been so rapid that pro-Russian voices on Telegram, a global messaging service, are in a state of total panic, begging any of their readers with a well-placed contact in the Russian military to immediately send air support, although none appears forthcoming. “We need aviation more than ever!” begged one Russian Telegram channel. “If anyone has access to command, send it to us!!!”
According to a conversation said to be between Russian soldiers intercepted by the SBU, Ukraine’s domestic security service, the use of U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) has been as devastating in the south as they have been elsewhere along the frontline. One Russian soldier is allegedly recorded saying, “Here the legs are shaking. [The HIMARS] hits, the earth is shaking. Here, ours are all trembling.” In another intercept, a Russian soldier calls his father back home encouraging him to avoid mobilization. Eight of his comrades, the soldier said, recently left a hospital in Kherson without arms and legs. And Ukrainian advances on the west bank of the Dnipro have now brought the majority of the Kherson Oblast within range of Ukraine’s supremely accurate Western-supplied artillery, giving them a host of new Russian targets to destroy.
The Russian troops on the west bank have been increasingly poorly supplied due to Ukrainian strikes against the bridges crossing the Dnipro, massively complicating Russian logistics. In addition to Western artillery platforms, the Russians have been subjected to countless harassment attacks from small Ukrainian drones, many of them repurposed civilian models, which have been dropping grenades and mortars onto unsuspecting targets, often under cover of darkness. Kyiv’s combined arms approach has contributed to the steady degradation of the Russians’ capability in Kherson, where many Russian troops have been fighting since the beginning of March without interruption.
According to Joel Rayburn, a retired U.S. Army colonel and Washington’s former special envoy for Syria, “The Russians won’t be able to support anything on the right bank of the Dnipro. Those guys will be trapped and will run out of ammo. I’m discounting Russian cross-river fire support, including aviation, because they don’t appear to be able to use it. A hasty defense is very vulnerable to armored forces. The Russians apparently didn’t prepare any fallback defensive lines, and now it’s too late. They’re not dug in.”
Russia’s defensive c
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:Quote:So many things the Russians didn't do because they were too proud, too confident, and too lazy:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
No they didn't.
Stay on topic cunt.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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The CIA Thought Putin Would Quickly Conquer Ukraine. Why Did They Get It So Wrong?
Short answer: High-tech surveillance blinded the U.S. to how corruption has weakened the Russian military.
The Central Intelligence Agency was so pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances that officials told President Joe Biden and other policymakers that the best they could expect was that the remnants of Ukraine’s defeated forces would mount an insurgency, a guerrilla war against the Russian occupiers.
U.S. intelligence reports at the time predicted that Kyiv would fall quickly, perhaps in a week or two at the most.
The U.S. intelligence community’s stunning failure at the beginning of the war to recognize the fundamental weaknesses in the Russian system mirrors its blindness to the military and economic weaknesses of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when Washington failed to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
U.S. intelligence did not recognize the significance of rampant corruption and incompetence in the Putin regime, particularly in both the Russian army and Moscow’s defense industries, the current and former intelligence officials said. U.S. intelligence missed the impact of corrupt insider dealing and deceit among Putin loyalists in Moscow’s defense establishment, which has left the Russian army a brittle and hollow shell.
“There was no reporting on the corruption in the Russian system,” said the former senior intelligence official. “They missed it, and ignored any evidence of it.”
Following a string of Russian defeats, even prominent Russian analysts have begun to openly blame the corruption and deceit that plagues the Russian system. On Russian television last weekend, Andrey Gurulyov, the former deputy commander of Russia’s southern military district and now a member of the Russian Duma, blamed his country’s losses on a system of lies, “top to bottom.”
Additionally, Putin imposed an invasion plan on the Russian military that was impossible to achieve, one current U.S. official argued. “You can’t really separate out the issue of Russian military competency from the fact that they were shackled to an impossible plan, which led to poor military preparation,” the official said.
The inability of the U.S. intelligence community to recognize the significance of Russian corruption appears to be the result of an over-reliance on technical intelligence. Before the war, high-tech satellites and surveillance systems allowed the U.S. to track the deployment of Russian troops, tanks, and planes, and to eavesdrop on Russian military officials, enabling U.S. intelligence to accurately predict the timing of the invasion. But it would have needed more human spies inside Russia to see that the Russian army and defense industries were deeply corrupt.
Since the war began, a long list of weaknesses in the Russian military and its defense industries have been exposed, symbolized by the so-called jack-in-the-box flaw in Russian tanks. Ukrainian forces quickly learned that one well-placed shot could blow off a Russian tank turret, sending it sky high and killing the entire crew. It became clear that Russian tanks had been designed and built cheaply — with ammunition stored openly in a ring inside the turret that can explode when the turret is hit — and that crew safety had not been prioritized. In July, Adm. Tony Radakin, Britain’s military chief, said that Russia had lost almost 1,700 tanks in Ukraine.
One of the biggest mysteries for U.S. analysts has been Russia’s failure to gain control of Ukraine’s skies, despite having a far larger air force. Aircraft design flaws, poor pilot training, and gaps in aircraft maintenance have left Russian aircraft vulnerable to Ukraine’s air defenses, which have been bolstered with Stinger missiles and other Western air defense systems.
The failure of U.S. intelligence to see the dysfunction in the Russian army and defense industries means that it also didn’t foresee Russia’s ongoing battlefield defeats, which are
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https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-does-the-russo-ukrainian-war
How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end?
Timothy Snyder
18-23 minutes
At first, no one could imagine that the Russo-Ukrainian war could begin. And yet it began. And now, no one can imagine how it will end. And yet end it will.
War is ultimately about politics. That Ukraine is winning on the battlefield matters because Ukraine is exerting pressure on Russian politics. Tyrants such as Putin exert a certain fascination, because they give the impression that they can do what they like. This is not true, of course; and their regimes are deceptively brittle. The war ends when Ukrainian military victories alter Russian political realities, a process which I believe has begun.
The Ukrainians, let's face it, have turned out to be stunningly good warriors. They have carried out a series of defensive and now offensive operations that one would like to call "textbook," but the truth is that those textbooks have not yet been written; and when they are written, the Ukrainian campaign will provide the examples. The have done so with admirable calm and sang-froid, even as their enemy perpetrates horrible crimes and openly campaigns for their destruction as a nation.
Right now, though, we have a certain difficulty seeing how Ukraine gets to victory, even as the Ukrainians advance. This is because many of our imaginations are trapped by a single and rather unlikely variant of how the war ends: with a nuclear detonation. I think we are drawn to this scenario, in part, because we seem to lack other variants, and it feels like an ending.
Using the mushroom cloud for narrative closure, though, generates anxiety and hinders clear thinking. Focusing on that scenario rather than on the more probable ones prevents us from seeing what is actually happening, and from preparing for the more likely possible futures. Indeed, we should never lose sight of how much a Ukrainian victory will improve the world we live in.
But how do we get there? The war could end in a number of ways. Here I would like to suggest just one plausible scenario that could emerge in the next few weeks and months. Of course there are others. It is important, though, to start directing our thoughts towards some of the more probable variants. The scenario that I will propose here is that a Russian conventional defeat in Ukraine is merging imperceptibly into a Russian power struggle, which in turn will require a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine. This is, historically speaking, a very familiar chain of events.
Before I lay this out, we will first have to clear away the nuclear static. Speaking of nuclear war in a broad, general way, we imagine that the Russo-Ukrainian War is all about us. We feel like the victims. We talk about our fears and anxieties. We write click-bait headlines about the end of the world. But this war is almost certainly not going to end with an exchange of nuclear weapons. States with nuclear weapons have been fighting and losing wars since 1945, without using them. Nuclear powers lose humiliating wars in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan and do not use nuclear weapons.
To be sure, there is a certain temptation to concede mentally to nuclear blackmail. Once the subject of nuclear war is raised, it seems overwhelmingly important, and we become depressed and obsessed. That is just where Putin is trying to lead us with his vague allusions to nuclear weapons. Once we take his cue, we imagine threats that Russia is not actually making. We start talking about a Ukrainian surrender, just to relieve the psychological pressure we feel.
This, though, is doing Putin's work for him, bailing him out of a disaster of his own creation. He is losing the conventional war that he started. His hope is that references to nuclear weapons will deter the democracies from delivering weapons to Ukraine, and buy him enough time to get Russian reserves to the battlefield to slow the Ukrainian offensive. He's probably wrong that this w
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Putin has repeatedly signaled that he could resort to nuclear weapons to protect the Russian gains in Ukraine — a harrowing threat that shatters the claims of stability he has repeated throughout his 22-year rule.
“This is really a hard moment for him, but he can’t accuse anyone else. He did it himself,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. “And he is going straight ahead to big, big problems.”
By unleashing the disastrous war in Ukraine, Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II, Putin has broken an unwritten social contract in which Russians tacitly agreed to forgo post-Soviet political freedoms in exchange for relative prosperity and internal stability.
Mikhail Zygar, a journalist who has had extensive contacts among the Kremlin elite and published a bestselling book about Putin and his entourage, noted that the invasion came as a complete surprise, not only for the public but for Putin’s closest associates.
“All of them are in shock,” Zygar said. “None of them wanted to see the developments unfold in such a way just because they are going to lose everything. Now they are all stained by blood, and they all understand they have nowhere to run.”
Stanislav Belkovsky, a longtime political consultant with extensive contacts among the ruling class, described the invasion as a mechanism of “self-destruction for Putin, his regime and the Russian Federation.”
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/10/07/putins-path-pledges-of-
stability-nuclear-threats.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Nah.
Election day is a month away. This will all cool off then.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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If we're going to see a nuke it going to be now. Happy Birthday Putin...
T
"This bridge was a pillar to Vladimir Putin's regime. Annexing Crimea was something his regime was built on in the last eight years."
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When the US actually did move ‘heaven and earth’
Brian Finch, opinion contributor
6-7 minutes
Forty-nine years ago this month, Israel’s survival was in serious doubt. A coalition of Arab nations, led by Egypt and Syria, had surprised the Israeli military with a coordinated, all-out assault on the Jewish nation as it observed the holiest day of its year, Yom Kippur. Armed with the latest in Soviet weaponry, Arab forces quickly destroyed Israeli warplanes and tanks in numbers so shockingly large that a complete conquest of Israel — previously unthinkable — suddenly seemed all too possible.
In desperate need of rearmament, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir sent multiple appeals to the United States for military aid. Some of President Richard Nixon’s military advisors counseled against such a move, as they feared it would rapidly spiral into open warfare between America and the Soviet Union.
Nixon, after huddling with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, ordered a decisive response that few if any expected: a full-on emergency mobilization of the American military to immediately bring the Israeli military back to its pre-invasion strength.
Launched just six days after the first Egyptian and Syrian attacks, “Operation Nickel Grass” constituted a resupply campaign that surpassed anything ever seen before — or since — in American history. U.S. military transports filled to the brim with weapons and supplies immediately took off for Israeli airbases, shadowed by American fighters with orders to shoot down any plane that appeared even remotely hostile.
Quickly restocked with fresh American equipment, Israeli forces rapidly regained control of the battlefield and, by the time a cease fire took hold four weeks later, once again had little to fear from its enemies.
The success of Nickel Grass, driven in no small part by Nixon’s order to use “everything that can fly” to resupply Israel, is more than an interesting historical anecdote: It makes one wonder why the Biden administration’s pledge to move “heaven and earth” for Ukraine’s military hasn’t been fulfilled with similar urgency.
Since the moment Russian forces crossed into his territory last winter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — much like Golda Meir — has repeatedly beseeched America and its allies to replenish his rapidly attritted weapons stockpiles. Zelensky’s pleas have become increasingly urgent even as Ukrainian troops retake swaths of captured territory, thanks to fears that Russia’s newly announced mobilization of 300,000 plus troops will allow it to regain the battlefield initiative.
The Biden administration can of course rightly point out that it has committed over $17 billion in military aid to Ukraine, and that U.S.-supplied weapons like the highly touted “HIMARS” rocket artillery systems have played a vital role in some of Kyiv’s recent military victories.
Still, when compared to the pace and scale of Operation Nickel Grass, the Pentagon’s efforts to resupply Ukraine seem far more half-hearted.
Consider the kinds of weapons delivered through Nickel Grass. The Nixon administration immediately transferred its most advanced fighter jets to Israel’s inventory. Some, previously earmarked for the U.S. Air Force, were instead flown straight from the Boeing factory in St. Louis to Israeli airbases. Others were flown from Air Force squadrons in America and Europe to Israel. In more than a few cases, American pilots landed their jets at Israeli airbases and watched an hour or two later as Israeli pilots took off in them for combat missions, some with still hastily painted Star of David emblems still drying over the U.S. Stars and Stripes.
Hundreds of America’s latest battle tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces, along with tens of thousands of tons of critical ammunition also went straight to frontline Israeli troops. Those transfers played a key role in turning the tide of the war: One U.S. intelligence study concluded that the majority of the nearly 2,000 Arab tanks lost in the Yom Kippur War were destr
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Russia appoints notorious general to lead Ukraine offensive
Russia has appointed a notorious general who opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s as its first overall commander for the war in Ukraine, as the Kremlin struggles to halt a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has left its forces in disarray.
The appointment of Gen Sergei Surovikin came on the same day as Vladimir Putin was dealt a humiliating blow after an explosion on the Kerch bridge sank a section of the motorway into the Kerch Strait and caused a major fire on the railway.
Surovikin is a veteran commander who led the Russian military expedition in Syria in 2017, where he was accused of using “controversial” tactics including indiscriminate bombing against anti-government fighters.
His appointment is the first of an overall battlefield commander for Russian troops in Ukraine. It may indicate that Moscow now understands that its military is in danger of collapse in Ukraine, with Kyiv’s forces advancing in all four of the regions that Putin claims to have “annexed”.
A former head of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Surovikin was installed in the summer as head of the southern military grouping, replacing Gen Alexander Dvornikov, who lasted just months in the position.
He is seen as having improved the effectiveness of Russian forces fighting in east Ukraine, where poor communication and cooperation has plagued the Russian invasion force.
Yet Surovikin also has a checkered history that includes two stints in jail for allegedly selling weapons and for leading a military column against protesters during the 1991 coup. He has also previously served in Tajikistan and Chechnya.
“For over 30 years, Surovikin’s career has been dogged with allegations of corruption and brutality,” wrote British intelligence officials in a recent report on Surovikin’s likely promotion to lead the southern military group.
During the 1991 coup d’état attempt launched by Soviet hardliners, Surovikin, then a captain, led a rifle division that drove through barricades erected by pro-democracy protesters. Three men were killed in the clash, including one who was crushed.
“It is highly symbolic that Sergei Surovikin, the only officer who ordered to shoot on revolutionaries in August 1991 and actually killed three people, is now in charge of this last-ditch effort to restore Soviet Union,” wrote Grigory Yudin, a Russian political scientist and sociologist. “These people knew what they were doing, and they know now.”
With the appointment, the Kremlin may also be seeking to combat criticism from nationalists who have accused the army of mismanaging the war in Ukraine and of failing to use harsh tactics to try to force the Kyiv government to submit.
Among Russians who welcomed the appointment of Surovikin was Yevgeny Prigozhin, the notorious founder of the Wagner private military company and a vocal critic of the military leadership.
“Surovikin is the most able commander in the Russian army,” Prigozhin said, according to a statement put out by Concord, a company he is associated with. He is a “legendary figure, he was born to serve his motherland faithfully.”
“Having received an order [in 1991], Surovikin was that officer who without hesitation got in his tank and went forward to save his country.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/08/russia-appoints-notoriou
s-general-sergei-surovikin-ukraine
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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A pipeline with valves that Russia can open and close, and pumps that Russia can turn on and off, gives Russia leverage. A pipeline that is mostly kaput and that would take months to repair removes that leverage.
OTOH the USA benefits from detroying the pipeline by removing for the forseeable future negotiation between Russia and Germany.
SECOND literally can't see what's in front of his face.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:If you sell LNG to the EU, the price the EU will pay has risen by 1,000% as the EU gets panicky. The cost for sellers of LNG has increased by 0%. I detect inflated profits for LNG sellers! The most motivated people in the world to destroy those pipelines would be sellers of LNG. The next most motivated are people who have still operating pipelines running into the EU, e.g. Russia. With natural gas sales, Putin is extorting the EU.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
A pipeline with valves that Russia can open and close, and pumps that Russia can turn on and off, gives Russia leverage. A pipeline that is mostly kaput and that would take months to repair removes that leverage.
OTOH the USA benefits from detroying the pipeline by removing for the forseeable future negotiation between Russia and Germany.
SECOND literally can't see what's in front of his face.
October 9, 2022 • 5:59pm ET
Ukraine and Moldova move to disarm Vladimir Putin’s energy weapon
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-and-moldova
-move-to-disarm-vladimir-putins-energy-weapon/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The big sellers of LNG to the EU would be USA-based. There is also a geopolitical angle that you havent taken into account. USA is still implicated.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Since the U.S. government can't keep a secret, blowing up two Nord Stream pipelines will become known to the EU. Maybe not immediately, but surely by the end of the year. For Biden to command the pipelines be targets for the Navy would be a disaster on the order of JFK okaying the "replacement" of Ngo Dinh Diem. With that, JFK lost the Vietnam War for certain. It merely took another decade for everything to come crashing down into defeat, but defeat was inevitable. If Biden gave the order to destroy those pipelines, he guaranteed Russia wins the war with Ukraine. On the other hand, if Putin did it, he guaranteed large profits (because the EU is panicking and foolishly paying super-inflated prices) from the sale of Russian natural gas in the pipelines still operating.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The big sellers of LNG to the EU would be USA-based. There is also a geopolitical angle that you havent taken into account. USA is still implicated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_assassination_of_Ngo_Dinh_Die
m#US_reaction
Signym, don't ever go into the natural gas business because you do not understand how it works. You will miss out on all the lovely profits. Perhaps you would even go bankrupt.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Biden* admin is stupid enough to do exactly what would be the stupidest thing to do. We have a couple of years of examples already.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Today I got a newsletter from Brian Babin, D.D.S., and U.S. Congressman: "Biden's Foolishness Continues". Babin is an ultra-partisan. Too bad for you if he was your dentist. He will say anything, which is whatever the angry poor white trash of Texas want to hear, to get reelected rather than go back to being a dentist.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The Biden* admin is stupid enough to do exactly what would be the stupidest thing to do. We have a couple of years of examples already.
https://babin.house.gov/forms/form/?ID=33&utm_campaign=2548-387
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Igor Girkin made severely pessimistic predictions about the invasion following the setback in Kharkiv, predicting that Russian forces would ultimately fail in Ukraine.
"The war in Ukraine will continue until the complete defeat of Russia," Girkin posted to Telegram in the wake of the counteroffensive. "We have already lost, the rest is just a matter of time."
Girkin previously served in the Russian military as a Federal Security Service officer, playing a part in the operations that led to the annexation of Crimea. He also later served as the de facto leader for separatist forces in the Donbas.
https://www.newsweek.com/russias-ukraine-offensive-absolutely-senseles
s-ex-military-leader-1750215
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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‘Ukraine is going to win’: Estonia’s departing spy chief opens up on Putin’s war
“Ukraine is going to win,” Marran says without hesitation. “They have to win because for Ukraine, it’s an independence war. It’s not just a regional conflict, and that’s why they are highly motivated.” Though he is less certain of when, exactly, that victory will come.
By running raw manpower into the meat grinder of war, Putin can prolong the fighting. “My father was fond of the expression Nado, Fedya, nado,” Marran says, quoting a line from the hit 1965 Soviet comedy “Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures.” Literally it means “it’s necessary, Fedya, it’s necessary,” but it connotes a sense of implacable stubbornness in the face of extreme adversity.
“The Russians are like this, and we shouldn’t underestimate their ability to press on when others would give up. The first conscripts who will arrive, or have already arrived, at the war zone are the easiest targets for Ukrainians, but it’ll likely be a kind of a Darwinist cycle of events. The ones that survive the first months will learn how to do the job and they’ll become better soldiers because Nado, Fedya, nado.”
https://news.yahoo.com/mikk-marran-estonia-ukraine-183016285.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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lol
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Exaggerate Much?
Not everyone is as receptive to the idea of an indefinite war against Ukraine. Behind the scenes, many are anxious for the armed conflict to be over. In light of this rapidly growing trend, state TV propagandists have been tasked with convincing the public that unless Russia wins, its citizens would be locked “in concentration camps,” enslaved by the West or killed.
Mardan invited his guest, political commentator Evgeny Norin, to specify what Russia’s defeat would look like. Norin ushered in the historical memories of Russia’s distant past. He opined: “Russia’s defeat would resemble the Mongol yoke, with a modern technological twist… Crimea, Donbas and other contested regions would be taken away, just to put us in our place. From the standpoint of national humiliation, we would be forced to give up Sevastopol. Remember the fate of Serbia and Yugoslavia, who had to give up all of their military and political elites. Of course, many people here would say, ‘So they’ll cut off their heads, no big deal.’ Our soft pacifists say exactly that… Naturally, we’d also be forced to pay an enormous amount of reparations, huge amounts would be taken.”
Mardan and Norin concurred that Russian oligarchs and major companies would find a way not to pay and the cost of reparations would land on everyday citizens. Norin mused that Russia would not be allowed to manufacture anything that is more sophisticated than a foot stool and Western companies would lure away all of the specialists — much as they’re already doing. He predicted: “After the capitulation, we would be unable to offer them anything aside from the joy of standing by your Motherland.”
Norin darkly predicted that Russia’s capitulation “would be like Yugoslavia on steroids,” with decolonization as “a cherry on top.” He said Russia would be forced to break up into at least 10 separate parts, with Sharia law being instituted in at least some of them.
During the same show, State Duma member Alexander Kazakov offered a cheerful imperialistic prediction of what will happen if Russia perseveres and prevails: “If we win, we’ll take back what’s ours and whatever is theirs as well.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-state-tv-host-sergey-mardan-says
-ukraine-has-been-underestimated
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The Biden* admin is stupid enough to do exactly what would be the stupidest thing to do. We have a couple of years of examples already.
UN to take up Russian annexations in Ukraine
The UN General Assembly on Monday will open debate on a draft resolution condemning Russia's annexation of four Ukrainian regions, as Western powers seek to underscore Moscow's international isolation.
The decision to bring the matter before the General Assembly, where the 193 UN members have one vote each -- and no one wields veto power -- was taken after Russia used its veto in a Security Council meeting September 30 to block a similar proposal.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/un-to-take-up-russian-annexations
-in-ukraine/ar-AA12Mpbt?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=d86b3c8588cd44aea95b6c766e2d0ff5
T
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Quote:
Russia Launches Large-Scale Strikes On Some 20 Ukrainian Cities In Response To "Terrorist" Crimea Bridge Blast
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/large-scale-strikes-many-cities
-across-ukraine-response-terrorist-crimea-bridge-blast
I don't think Russia gives a fuck what the UN says, because the UN never follows its own laws. Kiev has been shelling civilians in Donetsk for YEARS and the UN didn't give a fuck.
I would tar OSCE, OPCW and many "democracy" NGOs with the same nasty brush. Too many incidents of fake news, rewritten reports, and phoney accusations
Assad gassed his own people.
Navalny "poisoning"
Skripal "poisoning".
Qaddafi massacred his own people.
Milosevic committed "genocide"
Xinjiang "concentratiom camps"
and too much other bullshit to believe much of what comes out of western-dominated do-gooder organizations
Russia has been holding back, and you were too stupid to see that. Instead, you were celebrating meaningless Kiev "victories" and slavering over the downfall of Russia.
which, if you were honest, you would admit was your REAL agenda all along. Had nothing to do with "democracy in Ukraine" bc Kiev has alwys been a corrupt, dysfunctional, semi-Nazi predatory administration anyway.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Professor Sachs: "Ukraine Needs To Stop Bombing Nuclear Power Plant And Blaming It On Russia"
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/professor-sachs-ukraine-needs-s
top-bombing-nuclear-power-plant-and-blaming-it-russia
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Biden Should "Back Off" Armageddon Language, Quickly Get Russians To Negotiating Table: Adm. Mullen
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-should-back-armageddon-la
nguage-quickly-get-russians-negotiating-table-adm
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Do you believe what you wrote is true? You took the side of every dictator on Earth, living or dead, except for Kim Jong-un. Why did you do that?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Russia Launches Large-Scale Strikes On Some 20 Ukrainian Cities In Response To "Terrorist" Crimea Bridge Blast
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/large-scale-strikes-many-cities
-across-ukraine-response-terrorist-crimea-bridge-blast
I don't think Russia gives a fuck what the UN says, because the UN never follows its own laws. Kiev has been shelling civilians in Donetsk for YEARS and the UN didn't give a fuck.
I would tar OSCE, OPCW and many "democracy" NGOs with the same nasty brush. Too many incidents of fake news, rewritten reports, and phoney accusations
Assad gassed his own people.
Navalny "poisoning"
Skripal "poisoning".
Qaddafi massacred his own people.
Milosevic committed "genocide"
Xinjiang "concentratiom camps"
and too much other bullshit to believe much of what comes out of western-dominated do-gooder organizations
Russia has been holding back, and you were too stupid to see that. Instead, you were celebrating meaningless Kiev "victories" and slavering over the downfall of Russia.
which, if you were honest, you would admit was your REAL agenda all along. Had nothing to do with "democracy in Ukraine" bc Kiev has alwys been a corrupt, dysfunctional, semi-Nazi predatory administration anyway.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Russian President Vladimir Putin is incapable of accepting defeat in Ukraine, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said on Monday at a joint press conference in Oslo with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Biden Should "Back Off" Armageddon Language, Quickly Get Russians To Negotiating Table: Adm. Mullen
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-should-back-armageddon-la
nguage-quickly-get-russians-negotiating-table-adm
Both Nordic leaders condemned deadly strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine on Monday. “This is an unacceptable attack on civilians and a breach on all principles key to humanitarian law and international rules and regulations,” the Norwegian Prime Minister said.
“Nuclear threats, mobilization and sham referenda and annexation of territory under occupation is simply unacceptable and it has to be rebuffed by the democracies of Europe in a very consistent way,” he added.
Niinistö said: “What has happened now in Ukraine, well, it is indiscriminate bombing targeting civilians, targeting also infrastructure which is most important for civilians. Of course it’s terror [in] people’s minds. Unfortunately, it seems that, in the war, there is a new pace opening or starting and that is a kind of escalation in the situation.”
https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-10-10-22#
h_41294d04001fdcae771da5132a3028cd
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Do you believe what you wrote is true? You took the side of every dictator on Earth, living or dead, except for Kim Jong-un. Why did you do that?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Russia Launches Large-Scale Strikes On Some 20 Ukrainian Cities In Response To "Terrorist" Crimea Bridge Blast
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/large-scale-strikes-many-cities
-across-ukraine-response-terrorist-crimea-bridge-blast
I don't think Russia gives a fuck what the UN says, because the UN never follows its own laws. Kiev has been shelling civilians in Donetsk for YEARS and the UN didn't give a fuck.
I would tar OSCE, OPCW and many "democracy" NGOs with the same nasty brush. Too many incidents of fake news, rewritten reports, and phoney accusations
Assad gassed his own people.
Navalny "poisoning"
Skripal "poisoning".
Qaddafi massacred his own people.
Milosevic committed "genocide"
Xinjiang "concentratiom camps"
and too much other bullshit to believe much of what comes out of western-dominated do-gooder organizations
Russia has been holding back, and you were too stupid to see that. Instead, you were celebrating meaningless Kiev "victories" and slavering over the downfall of Russia.
which, if you were honest, you would admit was your REAL agenda all along. Had nothing to do with "democracy in Ukraine" bc Kiev has alwys been a corrupt, dysfunctional, semi-Nazi predatory administration anyway.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
It is who she is TWO. It is who she has always been. I've been saying, this is who she is since I started posting here. Putin deliberately kills children; she is good with that. It is who she is. She, as does Putin, represent the worst of the worst.
T
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Quote:The worst of the worst is the Russian Military (top notch at targeting kindergartners on a playground and maternity hospitals, but not so great at winning wars ):
Originally posted by THG:
It is who she is TWO. It is who she has always been. I've been saying, this is who she is since I started posting here. Putin deliberately kills children; she is good with that. It is who she is. She, as does Putin, represent the worst of the worst.
T
Putin will fail because he has 'a terrible army' and not even 'George Patton' could fix it
While Surovikin has a well earned reputation as a hardliner, Anderson was skeptical he could turn things around given the current state of Russia's military.
"I don't think there's going to be a new approach because he's incapable of doing a new approach as long as the Russian army is what it is, which is a terrible army," he said.
Anderson elaborated on why new leadership won't be nearly enough to fix what's broken in the Russian military.
"It's not like the soldiers are going to jump into a phone booth and come out as Superman," he said. "They have a terrible army. They're ten years away from having a good army that can take on the Ukrainians and achieve the military objectives they wanted. They have a low morale... They're incapable of executing the military operations that Vladimir Putin wants. George Patton couldn't make this a success for Putin."
https://www.rawstory.com/putin-russia-ukraine-war-2658419189/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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In related news, Joe Biden* and his Democrats are a cancer on the world.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Boy, it sure is a good thing Russia ran out of missiles! Otherwise, just think what they might have done!
Quote:
Russia, Having 'Run Out Of Missiles', Launches Barrage On Ukraine
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/10/russia-having-run-out-of-missile
s-launches-barrage-on-ukraine.html#more
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
"We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it seems that everything is heading towards this."
America does NOT support Ukraine.
Fuck Crossdresser, kid-fucker Z.
And fuck Joe Biden* for giving him billions while inflation is killing poor people here.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:According to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Russia launched 75 missiles, 41 of which were shot down by Ukraine’s air defenses, with almost all confirmed impact targets being civilian, not military, in nature.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Boy, it sure is a good thing Russia ran out of missiles! Otherwise, just think what they might have done!Quote:
Russia, Having 'Run Out Of Missiles', Launches Barrage On Ukraine
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/10/russia-having-run-out-of-missile
s-launches-barrage-on-ukraine.html#more
Ukraine’s National Police said at least five people were killed in Kyiv, with 12 more injured, although the final toll for fatalities and casualties is likely to be much higher.
https://news.yahoo.com/russia-launches-missile-strikes-across-ukraine-
hitting-mostly-civilian-targets-162249496.html
Signym, if Russia is going to win, it needs to fire 75 missiles every hour, of every day, until Kyiv surrenders. Does Russia have that many thousands of missiles?
Fortunately there are only 75 days until Xmas, a day of peace and surrendering, which makes it easy to calculate how many missiles Putin needs: 75 * 75 * 24 = 135,000
135,000 might be more missiles than Putin has. Firing 75 missiles per hour might be too much for Russia.
What if Putin fires just 75 missiles per day until Xmas?
75 * 75 = 5,625
5,625 might also be more than Putin can handle.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Fortunately there are only 75 days until Xmas, a day of peace and surrendering, which makes it easy to calculate how many missiles Putin needs: 75 * 75 * 24 = 135,000
28 days until November 8th. 28 * 75 * 24 = 50,400
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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