Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 15, 2026 11:41
VIEWED: 568250
PAGE 18 of 111
Quote:HAHAHAHA!
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK: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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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Former CIA and security consultant Larry Johnson must be a Putin puppet. As are the 324 commentors (so far)
Americans Better Wake Up and Realize the Russians Are genuinely Pissed Off
6 October 2022 by Larry Johnson 324 Comments
Quote:
What a difference a decade makes. There was a time when the United States would talk to Russia with at least the pretense of respect. Remember this exchange between then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama?
That was then. Mr. Medvedev is singing quite a different tune now. He made this public statement yesterday:
It is useless and unnecessary to appeal to the prudence of our enemies in the West, the enemies must be forced to ask for mercy in the lost economic battle and end it with their complete and unconditional surrender
https://t.me/intelslava/38460
I do not believe that Dimitry Medvedev was drunk or insane when he said this. I believe he is serious and reflects a view that is widely shared among the Russian leadership. The last seven months has been an eye opener for Medvedev and his colleagues in terms of discovering that the Americans and Europe see Russia as a piece of meat to be carved up and consumed. There is no solution based on compromise or negotiation with the west. Medvedev laid it out starkly and concisely–“complete and unconditional surrender.”
I have seen zero media coverage of this. That is alarming. The American people need to understand that Russia ain’t playing and is not going to roll over and submit like a beaten dog just because the United States insists it will continue to funnel arms and money to Ukraine.
Put yourself in the shoes of the Russian leaders and people. Here is what they have seen over the last 8 years since the democratically elected President of Ukraine was ousted by a western backed coup:
* While professing a deep commitment to democracy, America and Europe ignored the voters of Ukraine and helped orchestrate the unlawful removal of President Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych on the 22 of February 2014.
* In the aftermath of that coup, the newly installed Ukrainian government embarked on a war against Russian speaking Ukrainians. Ukraine wantonly killed civilians and the west remained silent.
* Despite repeated warnings from Russia that it would not tolerate western efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO, the United States and Europe conducted annual military exercises with Ukraine and provided military training and assistance.
* Russia’s attempt to negotiate in December 2021 with the United States over the status of Ukraine was rebuffed.
* In response to Russia’s Special Military Operation, the United States and Europe imposed “draconian” sanctions and embarked on a full scale attempt to punish not just the political leaders of Russia, but all Russians, including denouncing Russia’s rich cultural heritage.
* Russia’s effort to negotiate a peace with Ukraine was shutdown by the U.K.’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
* The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and leading U.S. officials are calling for “decolonizing Russia”–i.e., breaking up Russia into geographic regions.
* Russia’s Nordstream gas pipelines were sabotaged.
Now there is something more ominous. Ukraine and Poland are rattling nuclear sabers. Let us start with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who called for the international community to take “preventive action” to deter the potential use of nuclear weapons by Russia in the ongoing war in Ukraine by attacking Russia:
In an address to the Lowy Institute, a nonpartisan international policy think tank in Australia, Zelensky underscored the importance of “preventive strikes, preventive action” so that Russia can get a better picture of the potential consequences if they move to use nuclear weapons.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/3677256-zelensky-calls-for-pr
eventive-action-to-deter-russian-nuclear-strikes/
Poland made mattes worse by clai
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:HAHAHAHA!
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK: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
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:29 in 100 chance Democrats win both chambers
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
HAHAHAHA!
33 in 100 chance Republicans win both chambers
37 in 100 chance Democrats win the Senate, Republicans win the House
< 1 in 100 chance Republicans win the Senate, Democrats win the House
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/
I don't know what the chances are that Ukraine wins to decide who owns what.
But in 2 years Ukraine and Russia can have another contest.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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In terms of the operational art of war, what has Russia done wrong?
The Russians did not adopt a model of leadership and organization based on decentralization and empowering junior leaders. Their model is very officer-centric and centralized. Russia also did not develop an effective NCO [non-commissioned officer] corps. A modern military needs to empower its soldiers to take the initiative and by doing so accomplish great things.
Putin is exercising a great amount of operational control, down to the tactical level. There should be multiple levels of trusted individuals who are then allowed to go out and execute the operation. The other error Russia made was that when they invaded Ukraine they lacked a clear objective, so they did not prioritize the force that was going to achieve it. In the battle for Kyiv, the Russians attacked seven different areas at once. Any reasonably intelligent person who knows about these things would tell you that if your objective is regime change then you have to take the capital and rapidly cut off the heads of government.
The Russian leadership was not stable. They switched out different senior officers in response to their failures. As a practical matter, they also lost a lot of senior officers, including some generals, to Ukrainian attacks, friendly fire and other things. The Russians have really lost the core of their leadership. There is also the much-discussed aspect of the Russian military's failures in terms of logistics, supplies and equipment. Putin did not have the force that he thought he did. Putin does not have Stalin's army, a massive force that can overcome their qualitative deficiencies. Putin does not have the Red Army of old, with its ability to apply mass and force across a wide front. Yet he is still trying to apply that doctrine to the small and now completely eroded and corroded force that he sent to Ukraine.
https://www.salon.com/2022/10/11/ukraines-victory-almost-a-done-deal-m
ilitary-expert-on-how-invasion-imploded/
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:29 in 100 chance Democrats win both chambers
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
HAHAHAHA!
33 in 100 chance Republicans win both chambers
37 in 100 chance Democrats win the Senate, Republicans win the House
< 1 in 100 chance Republicans win the Senate, Democrats win the House
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/
Why do you keep looking at 538 predictions? Nate Silver shouldn't even be employed anymore. Weathermen are more accurate than he is.
Quote:
I don't know what the chances are that Ukraine wins to decide who owns what.
But in 2 years Ukraine and Russia can have another contest.
No. They can't when Democrats aren't funding a proxy war using Ukrainian civilians as their meat shields.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Russia’s airstrikes, intended to show force, reveal a shortage of missiles
No matter how many times Russia fires at Ukraine, pro-war Russian nationalists want more.
“It has to be done constantly, not just once but for two to five weeks to totally disable all their infrastructure, all thermal power stations, all heating and power stations, all power plants, all traction substations, all power lines, all railway hubs,” said Bogdan Bezpalko, a member of the Kremlin’s Council on Interethnic Relations.
“Then, Ukraine will descend into cold and darkness,” Bezpalko said on state television. “They won’t be able to bring in ammunition and fuel and then the Ukrainian army will turn into a crowd of armed [men] with chunks of iron.”
But the hawks, who are demanding publicly on TV broadcasts and on Telegram to know why Russia does not hit more high-value targets, won’t like the answer: The Russian military appears to lack sufficient accurate missiles to sustain airstrikes at Monday’s tempo, according to Western military analysts.
“They are low on precision-guided missiles,” said Konrad Muzyka, founder of Gdansk, Poland-based Rochan Consulting said, offering his assessment of Russia’s sporadic air attacks. “That is essentially the only explanation that I have.”
Even as NATO allies on Thursday said they would rush additional air defenses to Ukraine, the experts said the reason Russia had yet to knock out electricity and water service across the country was simple: it can’t.
Since May, Russia’s use of precision guided missiles (PGMs) has declined sharply, with analysts suggesting then that Russian stocks of such missiles may be low.
Tuesday’s attacks mainly used air-launched cruise missiles, which are slower than Iskander guided missiles and easier for Ukraine to shoot down, according to Muzyka. In March, the Pentagon reported that Russia’s air-launched cruise missiles have a failure rate of 20 to 60 percent.
“If Russia had a limitless supply of PGMs, I think that they would still strike civilian targets, because that’s what the Russian way of warfare is,” Muzyka said. He said analysts did not have confirmed information about Russian missile stocks or production levels, and judgments were based on the decline in usage of PGMs and Moscow’s greater reliance on less accurate missiles.
Putin faces limits of his military power as Ukraine recaptures land
But a clue lies in Russia’s failure to destroy the kinds of targets that Ukraine is able to hit using U.S.-supplied HIMARS artillery.
“If we take a look at what HIMARS has done to Russian supply routes, and essentially their ability to sustain war, they’ve done massive damage to ... Russia’s posture in this war,” Muzyka said. “So technically, you know, if the Russians had access to a large stock of PGMS, they could probably inflict similar damage to Ukrainian armed forces, but they haven’t.”
“They actually failed to,” he continued. “They even failed to interdict the main Ukrainian supply roads. They failed to destroy bridges, railways, railway intersections, and so on and so forth.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-airstrikes-intended-to-s
how-force-reveal-another-weakness/ar-AA12WCXa
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
With enough Western weapons, Ukraine will continue breaking through Russian defenses. It will use long-range rockets to destroy command posts, depots, and supply lines, making it impossible for Russia to properly reinforce its battered troops. It will shoot down Russian aircraft, preventing the Russian air force from defending its positions. It will keep sinking Russian naval craft. And it will be helped along the way by the Russian military’s many deficiencies: its intense centralization, its emphasis on punishing its forces for mistakes rather than learning from them, and its highly inefficient style of combat. In the face of mounting setbacks, Russian morale will eventually collapse. The country’s soldiers will be forced back home.
Ukraine’s liberation of Crimea and the parts of the Donbas that Russian proxies seized in 2014 will come next. And after Ukraine’s victories elsewhere, these operations are unlikely to be all that taxing. By the time Ukrainian forces get to those regions, the Russian military will most likely be too exhausted to seriously defend them. Many of the male residents of the Russian-controlled Donbas will already have been killed on the frontlines. The survivors (which will likely include most of the region’s remaining male population) are unlikely to be loyal to the Kremlin, given what Putin has put them through. Some Western observers may consider Crimea to be a special case and encourage Ukraine to not press forward there, but although it has been under Russian control longer, its annexation remains every bit as illegal today as it was in 2014. International law should know no compromises or double standards.
The liberation of Crimea and the Donbas should, however, include a reintegration campaign. Because the periods of Russian occupation, with their attendant aggressive propaganda, have lasted so long, residents will need to receive social, legal, and economic assistance from Ukraine as part of reconciliation efforts. These efforts will make for a more delicate operation. As the Ukrainian government restores its governance, it will need to show residents that, unlike Moscow, Kyiv can provide stability and the rule of law.
Meanwhile, the world must prepare for what Ukrainian wins in these long-occupied regions will mean for Putin. Annexing Crimea and creating puppet states in the Donbas were two of his signature achievements, and his regime may not survive losing them. The world may want to prepare even before Ukraine moves into Crimea; Putin’s regime will be endangered if Ukraine retakes just the areas Russia seized after February 24. Losing almost all the land it just annexed would be a humiliating failure for Moscow, one that may get Russia’s elites to finally realize that their president’s obsession with war is deeply unproductive and to rise up against him. It would not be the first time in Russian history that a leader has been pushed out of power.
Once Putin is gone, the world must focus on making Russia pay restitution. Moscow should be held fully responsible for the damage it has done to Ukraine, providing reparations to the country and to the Ukrainian people. Ideally, after regime change, Russia will do this of its own volition. But if it doesn’t, the West can redirect hundreds of billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine as collateral. Russia must release all prisoners of war and all Ukrainian civilians it has detained or forcibly moved to Russia. It especially needs to return the thousands of children it kidnapped during the invasion and occupation. Finally, Ukraine and its partners must demand that Moscow hand Putin, other senior Russian leaders, and any figures involved in wartime atrocities over to a globally recognized criminal tribunal. The West should refuse to lift any sanctions on Moscow until these demands are met. They must demonstrate that extreme aggression, genocide, and terror are not acceptable.
This program of penance and justice may seem frightening to international leaders, who believe it could cause instabilit
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Russia orders evacuation in Kherson amid Ukrainian advances
by Chloe Folmar - 10/14/22 8:36 AM ET
Correction: An earlier version of this story contained incorrect information on the evacuation efforts
Russian authorities on Friday said they would help civilians evacuate the southern city of Kherson, Ukraine, as Ukrainian troops continue to make gains in the area just north of Crimea.
The Ukrainian military has had repeated successes in the south of the country and previously said that it hopes to retake Kherson, one of the provinces annexed by Russia last month, by the end of the year.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin announced a military-aided evacuation from Kherson, which has been occupied by Russia since early March, after Vladimir Saldo, the Russian leader of the Kherson region, called on the Kremlin to aid in protecting residents from the strife between the Ukrainian and Russian troops.
“We suggested that all residents of the Kherson region, if there is such a wish, to protect themselves from the consequences of missile strikes, should go to other regions” of Russia, Saldo said, according to CNN.
A Russian proxy leader in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, contested Saldo’s characterization of the events, saying: “There is no evacuation in the Kherson region and there cannot be any.”
“We urge the residents of the Kherson region to remain calm and to not panic,” he said.
“Nobody is going to withdraw Russian troops from the Kherson region. This is not an evacuation, this is an opportunity to save lives.” (Somebody is a used car salesman.)
Updated at 1:00 p.m.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/3688009-russia-orders-evacuat
ion-in-kherson-amid-ukrainian-advances/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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So Kiev is going to fire missiles into civilian areas of Kherson city, same as they fire missiles into the civilian areas of Donetsk city.
What else is new?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:By evacuating Kherson, Russia is luring the Ukrainians into a diabolical trap where the Ukrainian fools, Nazis, torturers, and murderers shall be utterly destroyed. A celebratory victory will be Russia's! All as a Thanksgiving for the great people of Russia who never wavered in their loyalty to Putin's dream of a reunified Greater Russia!
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So Kiev is going to fire missiles into civilian areas of Kherson city, same as they fire missiles into the civilian areas of Donetsk city.
What else is new?
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:Quote:
Americans Better Wake Up and Realize the Russians Are genuinely Pissed Off
Oh no comrade, say it ain't so.
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So Kiev is going to fire missiles into civilian areas of Kherson city, same as they fire missiles into the civilian areas of Donetsk city.
What else is new?
Brilliant really. If Ukraine army kills all Ukraine people there will be no more war.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
“I hate them,” Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, wrote on social media in early June. “They are bastards and scum,” he went on. “As long as I live, I will do everything to make them disappear."
Ah, a favorite M$M technique: The Snippet. And one that SECOND likes to exploit endlessly.
"Them"?
Who (or what) "them"?
Ukrainian women and children?
Western neocons and warhawks?
Fleas?
Bad shoes?
It's not clear who Medvedev is talking about, or even if he's talking about anything living. But the media just loves them some out-of-context phrases that they can interpret endlessly, and SECOND can quote them endlessly for his propaganda war.
At least Medvedev didn't say he was willing to genocide the entire globe "down to the last 100". Now THAT would have been truly horrific.
A glum Putin is given stern dressing down from President of Tajikistan
Vladimir Putin was given a stern dressing down by the president of Tajikistan in another indicator that the Russian dictator has lost respect and influence in his own backyard. Fellow longstanding dictator Emomali Rahmon, ruler of the Central Asian state of 9 million since 1994, seized upon Putin's woes back home and in Ukraine to give him a piece of his mind and tell him how he really feels during a summit in the Kazakh capital of Astana.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-glum-putin-is-given-stern-dress
ing-down-from-president-of-tajikistan/ss-AA12ZKGx?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=4c31a46535aa45c4ac68e7f3de72817d#image=1
Yep, it's over for Putin. Hey comrade signym. I told you so.
T
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A story from 2018: Don’t Fear the Russian Military
The week-long exercises, which kicked off yesterday, are intended as a show of might. But the country is in no position to wage a real conflict.
Russia, like an animal puffing out its fur and baring its teeth when faced with a predator, wants to look as formidable as possible. As an authoritarian nation, it spends more than it should on its military — more than a third of the total federal budget goes toward security, broadly defined.
Putin is aware that the objective indicators do not help him make his case that Russia, with an economy smaller than that of Texas, should be treated as one of the great world powers. Instead, he relies on bluff and bluster, theater and shadow play. He wants to project an image of a dangerous yet confident country, one that should be placated, not challenged. Hence, the pictures we’ll soon see of tanks rumbling across the steppe as rockets, drones, and gunships roar overhead are part and parcel of a campaign to make Russia (look) great again. That campaign also includes Putin’s claims that Russia will soon deploy nuclear-powered cruise missiles. (Prototypes have been tested four times in the past year and have crashed every time.) It’s good to be strong, but it’s more important to be seen as strong.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/don-t-fear-the-russian-military
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Putin tried for years to stop his military from using Western parts — and mostly failed
By Alberto Nardelli, Bloomberg
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/10/15/world/russia-weapons-west
ern-parts/?utm_source=ground.news&utm_medium=referral
Oct 15, 2022
Even before sanctions cut off access to vital components and technologies for President Vladimir Putin’s defense industry, an internal Russian government review found years of attempts to reduce reliance on imports had largely failed.
Previously unreported assessments show a program with specific targets was put in place from 2019 to slash Russia’s dependence on Western parts for its arsenal by 2025 — everything from radar to advanced submarines to anti-missile defense systems. But an internal review of the plan 10 months before Putin invaded Ukraine found it was falling short on almost every metric.
Conversations with European officials including those familiar with the audit report highlight the protracted struggle by Russian companies and the trade ministry to move away from parts supplied by NATO member states and Ukraine. One of the Russian assessments explicitly warned the state’s defense procurement program could fail under a tougher sanctions regime, a European official said, asking not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.
Information on Russia’s challenges in sourcing components has been shared among a number of Western governments and fed into the discussions on trade penalties imposed since late February.
Shortages of modern weapons have forced Russia to rely on models dating to the Soviet era, many of which are less accurate and reliable, according to U.S. and European officials. They said the Kremlin is unlikely to be able to sustain the kinds of massive assaults on Ukrainian infrastructure seen this week, despite Putin’s threats to continue escalating.
Russia is already struggling to resupply its troops on the ground, has suffered heavy losses of tanks and aircraft, and is burning through its missile arsenal, those officials say. In Russia, senior officials have repeatedly said they are able to resupply their forces in Ukraine and Putin on Friday said he had no regrets about the invasion.
Since the war broke out the U.S., the European Union and others have also hit Moscow with hefty sanctions, including penalties designed to cut off access to semiconductors and other key components used in high-tech weaponry.
“The costs to Russia — in people and equipment — are staggering,” Sir Jeremy Fleming, the director of Britain’s signals intelligence agency, said this week of the war in Ukraine. “We know — and Russian commanders on the ground know — that their supplies and munitions are running out.”
The import substitution program was set up in 2014 in the aftermath of Russia’s previous invasion of Ukraine, and accelerated with detailed targets set in 2019. But what has been described to Bloomberg as a 20-page audit by the office of Russia’s prosecutor general in April 2021 — covering a mammoth 177,058 components used in 278 types of military equipment — found widespread shortcomings. In 2020 alone, Russia had hoped for 18,047 substitutions covering 43 types of equipment but only managed 3,148 replacements across five items, the people said.
Kremlin officials have repeatedly said the import-replacement efforts across the economy have missed targets: Putin remarked in 2019 that, “in a number of cases as practice shows, obvious mistakes were made in the planning and organization of work on import substitution.”
The trade minister was recently made a deputy prime minister, according to Russian state media, with greater powers to work on import substitution. The shortcomings have been discussed at meetings where public comments were made afterward.
Still, officials have said the efforts to limit reliance on foreign components allowed the industry to withstand the impact of sanctions imposed after the start of the war. “For some sectors, 100% import replacement isn’t that significant or necessary. But here w
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Warmongering Democrats are the worst Democrats.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:After Putin finishes Ukraine, there are more countries to conquer. We wouldn't want him to stop with just one when he could have them all! Russia once owned half of Germany. Why not take back what is Russia's and a little more to make Russia's efforts worthwhile?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Warmongering Democrats are the worst Democrats.
As Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine continues to escalate, many are asking what the Russian dictator ultimately hopes to achieve.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/inside-vladimir-put
ins-criminal-plan-to-purge-and-partition-ukraine/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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1989 TWO. Russia occupied half of Germany as little as 30 years ago. I would have thought because of that they would have made helping Ukraine their number one priorty. They haven't and that's sad.
T
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Quote:Seriously, Germany placed its fate into Putin's hands when Germany signed long-term natural gas contracts with Gazprom. I assume the Germans are thinking that, once this is all over, the selling and buying between Germany and Russia can go back to almost normal, but only if Germany doesn't extravagantly offend Putin by really trying hard to help Ukraine rather than Germany mostly pretending to help. It is no secret to Putin exactly what Germany has done for Ukraine. So far, not so much.
Originally posted by THG:
1989 TWO. Russia occupied half of Germany as little as 30 years ago. I would have thought because of that they would have made helping Ukraine their number one priorty. They haven't and that's sad.
T
On the Ukraine War, Germany Has a Leadership Problem. Here’s Why.
https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/ukraine-war-germany-has-leadership-proble
m-heres-why
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Yet another "oopsie" Russian suicide:
One of Vladimir Putin’s mobilisation chiefs has been found dead in “suspicious” circumstances prompting a murder investigation.
The body of Lt-Col Roman Malyk, 49, was discovered near the fence of his home as the Russian tyrant announced his chaotic mobilisation was being called off.
The war veteran was allegedly found hanging near a fence in his home
His death comes after a spate of attacks on mobilisation offices across Russia
Last month, Putin ordered the mobilisation of 300,000 extra soldiers to the frontline as his disastrous war continues to falter with Moscow losing ground on the battlefield.
Police investigating the death of Malyk have opened a murder probe but have not ruled out suicide.
Some reports said Putin's enlistment chief died from hanging.
His “suspicious” death comes after a spate of attacks on mobilisation offices across Russia.
Putin has said the mobilisation will end in two weeks after 220,000 men have been enlisted, still 80,000 short of the target set at its beginning.
As many as 70 offices have been hit with Molotov cocktails as anger grows over enlistment.
There is rising fury over mobilisation officials forcibly recruiting men with little or no training in apparent violation of the rules, amid heavy military losses for Russia.
Armed conscript-snatching teams of enlistment officers backed by police have been operating in Russian cities, grabbing men on underground trains, on the street, and in offices.
Russia has put in place extra security for mobilisation teams and enlistment offices.
They are to be protected by national guardsmen, said MP Alexander Khinshtein.
The mobilisation has led to hundreds and thousands of men fleeing abroad, voting with their feet against Putin.
Married father-of-two Malyk was a veteran of Russia’s war in Chechnya and friends and family strongly denied he killed himself.
He was in charge of enlistment in Partizan district and surrounding areas in Primorsky region.
He was described by friends as a “strong and courageous man” who was “not broken under the weight of harsh military events and great losses” in Chechnya.
“He was a man of his word and deed, known and respected in the city for his honesty and integrity,” he said.
Earlier this month in neighbouring Khabarovsk region Yury Laiko, 41, a military enlistment commissioner, was dismissed amid mayhem over the forced mobilisation of local men.
He was blamed for “errors” in manically conscripting thousands of reservists in vast Khabarovsk region, half of whom were found to be “unfit for service”.
Governor Mikhail Degtyaryov said “several thousand of our countrymen received summonses and arrived at the military registration and enlistment offices.
“Half of them we returned home as not fulfilling the selection criteria for enlistment into military service…[so] military commissar Yury Laiko was dismissed”.
On Friday, Putin promised the messy mobilisation would be called off in the next two weeks - perhaps in a effort to regain support for his war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, thousands of protesters have been arrested in Russia following a series of rallies across the country against Putin's mobilisation orders.
This comes as humiliating pictures of Putin's "Daddy Army" have emerged showing old-looking men clutching shiny new weapons and getting ready to head to the frontline amid the military debacle.
Drunken newly conscripts were also filmed staggering, fighting and falling asleep as they were packed into school buses to be taken to training camp as another video filmed inside a bus showed the mobilised men drinking vodka from huge bottles.
At the time, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky described Putin's decision to mobilise 300,000 reservists as a "frank admission that their regular army, which has been prepared for decades to take over a foreign country, did not withstand and crumbled".
https://www.the-sun.com/news/6450417/putin-mobilisation-c
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Looking at the detaled military maps from the militry summary channel
OCT 1, 2022
OCT 15, 2022
it looks like the front line is essentially static, despite Kiev victory claims
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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“To understand Russia now – and what might happen in the future – you have to understand what happened back then. For it is out of that rage, the violence, the desperation and the overwhelming corruption that Vladimir Putin emerged.”- filmmaker Adam Curtis, who also made The Century of the Self.
Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone
What It Felt Like To Live Through the Collapse of Communism . . . and Democracy
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/other/adam-curtis-astonishing-
autopsy-of-the-fall-of-russia-will-leave-you-wide-eyed/ar-AA12U7PL
A few places to see the 7 part TV show:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0d3hwl1/russia-19851999-trauma
zone
https://comment.rlsbb.ru/russia-1985-1999-traumazone-s01-1080p-ip-web-
dl-h264-playweb/
https://tpb25.ukpass.co/search.php?q=TraumaZone
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Police and military officers swooped down on a Moscow business center this week unannounced. They were looking for men to fight in Ukraine — and they seized nearly every one they saw. Some musicians, rehearsing. A courier there to deliver a parcel. A man from a Moscow service agency, very drunk, in his mid-50s, with a walking disability.
“I have no idea why they took him,” said Alexei, who, like dozens of others in the office complex, was rounded up and taken to the nearest military enlistment office, part of a harsh new phase in the Russian drive.
In cities and towns across Russia, men of fighting age are going into hiding to avoid the officials who are seizing them and sending them to fight in Ukraine.
Police and military press-gangs in recent days have snatched men off the streets and outside Metro stations. They’ve lurked in apartment building lobbies to hand out military summonses. They’ve raided office blocks and hostels. They’ve invaded cafes and restaurants, blocking the exits.
At a predawn sweep on the Mipstroy1 construction company dormitories on Thursday, they took more than 200 men. On Oct. 9, they rounded up dozens at a Moscow shelter for the homeless.
The press-gangs appear to descend at random. It is terrifying — and, at times, comically haphazard.
' ' ' An official barged into Alexei’s office on Tuesday. Two police officers and several plainclothes military officials arrived and demanded his identification. They ordered him to go with them quietly “or we will use force,” he said.
“I was panicking,” he said. “I’d never been detained before. Everyone knows that if you are detained by the police in Russia, it’s very bad.”
Suffering massive military casualties and repeated defeats in Ukraine, Russia has begun cannibalizing its male population. The hard-eyed pundits on state television are demanding more Ukrainian blood and more sacrifice from Russian men who they say have grown too used to soft living.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/16/russia-mobilization-me
n/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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If Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, then it will likely move on to attack other former Soviet states, according to a former Russian diplomat who argues that Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned his country into a "fascist state."
In an essay published by Foreign Affairs on Monday, Boris Bondarev described a feeling of dread waking up to the news in February that Russia had invaded Ukraine. The 20-year diplomat resigned his post at the Russian Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva soon after Russian forces attacked the former Soviet republic. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/sources-russia-misco
nduct-boris-bondarev
"The invasion of Ukraine made it impossible to deny just how brutal and repressive Russia had become," Bondarev wrote. "It was an unspeakable act of cruelty, designed to subjugate a neighbor and erase its ethnic identity."
"The war," he continued, "shows that Russia is no longer just dictatorial and aggressive; it has become a fascist state."
Bondarev recounts taking part in negotiations with the United States in January 2022, when Russia was building up troops and equipment on Ukraine's borders while making demands of the US and NATO that were simply non-starters. The negotiations, he recalls, convinced him that the Kremlin was "laying the groundwork for war or had no idea how the United States or Europe worked — or both."
His office was bewildered as well. "No one could understand how we would go to the United States with a document that demanded, among other things, that NATO permanently close its door to new members," he wrote.
'Warped by its own propaganda'
Fascist states exploit two undeniable themes found in Putin's Russia: a national sense of victimhood and perceived former greatness, both of which are often addressed by way of aggression. Putin's strongest play at home is appealing to nostalgia for a Russian empire. Without it, Bondarev maintains, he has nothing — and Western policy toward Ukraine should reflect this.
"To justify his rule, Putin wants the great victory he promised and believes he can obtain," Bondarev wrote. "If he agrees to a cease-fire, it will only be to give Russian troops a rest before continuing to fight."
And if he wins, "Putin will likely move to attack another post-Soviet state, such as Moldova, where Moscow already props up a breakaway region," Bondarev wrote, referencing Transnistria, which Insider visited soon after the invasion of Ukraine.
There is "only one way to stop Russia's dictator," according to Bondarev, and that is defeat. "With broad support from NATO, Ukraine is capable of eventually beating Russia in the east and the south, just as it has done in the north," he wrote.
A defeated Putin will have to answer to Russians now living under sanctions in a pariah state.
Fascist states have a tendency to implode as dictators surround themselves with sycophants, frank counsel replaced with pleasant lies. With Ukraine, for instance, there are indications that Russian leadership was misled on anticipated Ukrainian resistance and Russia's ability to wage war.
Bondarev describes this as Moscow being "slowly warped by its own propaganda." Sanctions against Russia over its 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea, for example, had a devastating impact even as they were publicly derided as a minor irritant — a denial that those at the highest levels of power appeared to buy into themselves.
As a diplomat working on export and arms control issues, Bondarev saw how Russia's vaunted military-industrial complex was dependent on Western companies for everything from radiation-proof electronics used in satellites to the cloth used in their aircraft.
"The sanctions suddenly cut off our access to these products and left our military weaker than the West understood," Bondarev wrote. "But although it was clear to my team how thes
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The Sources of Russian Misconduct
A Diplomat Defects From the Kremlin
By Boris Bondarev
November/December 2022
For three years, my workdays began the same way. At 7:30 a.m., I woke up, checked the news, and drove to work at the Russian mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva. The routine was easy and predictable, two of the hallmarks of life as a Russian diplomat.
(Read in Russian) https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/kak-rossiya-stala-fa
shistskoy
February 24 was different. When I checked my phone, I saw startling and mortifying news: the Russian air force was bombing Ukraine. Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Odessa were under attack. Russian troops were surging out of Crimea and toward the southern city of Kherson. Russian missiles had reduced buildings to rubble and sent residents fleeing. I watched videos of the blasts, complete with air-raid sirens, and saw people run around in panic.
As someone born in the Soviet Union, I found the attack almost unimaginable, even though I had heard Western news reports that an invasion might be imminent. Ukrainians were supposed to be our close friends, and we had much in common, including a history of fighting Germany as part of the same country. I thought about the lyrics of a famous patriotic song from World War II, one that many residents of the former Soviet Union know well: “On June 22, exactly at 4:00 a.m., Kyiv was bombed, and we were told that the war had started.” Russian President Vladimir Putin described the invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” intended to “de-Nazify” Russia’s neighbor. But in Ukraine, it was Russia that had taken the Nazis’ place.
“That is the beginning of the end,” I told my wife. We decided I had to quit.
Resigning meant throwing away a twenty-year career as a Russian diplomat and, with it, many of my friendships. But the decision was a long time coming. When I joined the ministry in 2002, it was during a period of relative openness, when we diplomats could work cordially with our counterparts from other countries. Still, it was apparent from my earliest days that Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was deeply flawed. Even then, it discouraged critical thinking, and over the course of my tenure, it became increasingly belligerent. I stayed on anyway, managing the cognitive dissonance by hoping that I could use whatever power I had to moderate my country’s international behavior. But certain events can make a person accept things they didn’t dare to before.
The invasion of Ukraine made it impossible to deny just how brutal and repressive Russia had become. It was an unspeakable act of cruelty, designed to subjugate a neighbor and erase its ethnic identity. It gave Moscow an excuse to crush any domestic opposition. Now, the government is sending thousands upon thousands of drafted men to go kill Ukrainians. The war shows that Russia is no longer just dictatorial and aggressive; it has become a fascist state.
But for me, one of the invasion’s central lessons had to do with something I had witnessed over the preceding two decades: what happens when a government is slowly warped by its own propaganda. For years, Russian diplomats were made to confront Washington and defend the country’s meddling abroad with lies and non sequiturs. We were taught to embrace bombastic rhetoric and to uncritically parrot to other states what the Kremlin said to us. But eventually, the target audience for this propaganda was not just foreign countries; it was our own leadership. In cables and statements, we were made to tell the Kremlin that we had sold the world on Russian greatness and demolished the West’s arguments. We had to withhold any criticism about the president’s dangerous plans. This performance took place even at the ministry’s highest levels. My colleagues in the Kremlin repeatedly told me that Putin likes his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, because he is “comfortable” to work with, always saying yes to the president and telling him what he wants to hear. Small wonder, then, that Putin thought he would ha
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I wonder if after living in Russia for a good period of time now, Edward Snowden realizes how important collecting information and keeping secrets is to the security of the planet? I'm betting not.
I wonder if he realizes how stupid he actually is. Probably not. I wonder what he thinks when he hears the leader of his new adopted country talk about using Nukes. I wonder what he thinks of the way his new country, invaded a neighboring country, in order to steal land, and conquer with the intent of completely destroying that nation. And while doing so kills and rapes women and children without conscience or forethought.
I wish someone would ask him. I'm betting he would not voice his narcissistic opinion answering these questions. Nope, I think not. He lives in Russia now. If he were truthful, he'd be executed. Or at the very least, sent to the front.
T
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Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and the Midterm Candidates Peddling Russian Propaganda
by Laura Thornton
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/13/musk-carlson-trump-midterm-electi
ons-russia-propaganda-war-ukraine-candidates/
Laura Thornton is a senior fellow and the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. Twitter: @LauraLThornton https://twitter.com/LauraLThornton
When Tesla chief executive Elon Musk tweeted his support for Russia’s dismemberment of Ukraine, he used some highly revealing language. Crimea should be Russian, he tweeted, because of “Krushchev’s mistake” — a reference to Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev’s redrawing of internal Soviet borders. That particular wording has never been part of the U.S. debate about Ukraine, but it is the standard language used by the Kremlin for its claims on Ukrainian land. It’s not the only talking point Musk has embraced that will be familiar to anyone following Kremlin propaganda.
Musk’s tweets are a prominent example of a worrisome trend: Kremlin talking points are creeping back into the U.S. debate. Few issues have united Democrats and Republicans again after years of intense polarization as much as supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion. In the U.S. Congress, there has been strong bipartisan backing for weapons deliveries and other aid to Kyiv, as well as for fortifying NATO’s eastern frontier. Until recently, voices supporting the Kremlin were few and far between, most prominently, Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former President Donald Trump. Carlson openly declared he was on Russia’s side, and Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for his cleverness for invading Ukraine. As noisy as they were, these voices were overpowered by a consensus about the war and how the United States should respond.
Now, there are cracks in this consensus, with Musk the latest example of Russian propaganda slipping back into the public conversation. With campaigning for next month’s U.S. midterm elections heating up, Putin’s talking points are increasingly being spread by candidates running for office, as we document with the Midterms Monitor, a joint social-media tracking project of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshal Fund and the Brennan Center for Justice. The monitor has captured more than 2,300 tweets by U.S. candidates for Congress or high state office dealing with Ukraine since Aug. 1. Many of these posts are critical of Russia and back U.S. policy on the war. Some criticize the high cost of aid. But a noisy minority — most, but not all, Republicans — are also parroting the most egregious Kremlin propaganda. Should these candidates be elected, especially to Congress, they could push for a shift in U.S. policy on Ukraine.
Some of these candidates have taken their cues from Fox News, the most influential source of pro-Russian disinformation in the United States. As catalogued by The Bulwark, the network’s hosts have labeled Ukraine as parasitic, called Ukrainians’ defense of their country an attack on Russia, and called the war “another Russia hoax” as part of a plot led by Democrats. In a bizarre twist of reality that directly repeats Russian propaganda, the Conservative Political Action Conference called Ukraine’s own territories claimed by Russia “Ukrainian-occupied” in a tweet last month. Showing a Russian flag waving in the background, the tweet also demanded an end to U.S. “gift-giving” to Ukraine. (The tweet was later deleted but can be read here in full.)
Republican candidates — and some Democrats — are joining in. Many anti-Ukraine messages center on keeping money at home. J.D. Vance, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, is campaigning on an end to aid for Ukraine and just called for “negotiations” with Putin, who of course continues to insist on Ukraine’s dismemberment. Mayra Flores, a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives from Texas, tweeted: “Congress just voted to send another $12,300,000,000 to Ukraine! … Why aren’t we put
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and the Midterm Candidates Peddling Russian Propaganda
RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!
Fuck you dude.
Quote:
by Laura Thornton
And fuck you too, Laura. You're just mad you're losing your biggest propaganda machine Twitter.
But hey, you still have Chinese owned Tik Tok to brainwash the kids with.
Quote:
But candidates are also repeating Kremlin narratives almost verbatim. This includes calling Ukrainians “Nazis,” accusing Kyiv of war crimes, saying the United States started the war, and blaming Washington for the Nord Stream pipeline explosions.
Nobody is calling Ukranians Nazis. There are ACTUAL Nazis in Ukraine. And besides, you fucking goofballs spent 4 years calling everyone you disagreed with a Nazi. I've got dozens of examples of Ted calling me a Nazi. I've got hundreds of your alter-ego Reaverfan doing so.
The US did start the war. Washington is responsible for the Nord Stream pipeline explosions.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Cites
T
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Quote:You wouldn't need them if you had been paying the slightest attention at any time during the last EIGHT FUCKING YEARS!
Originally posted by THG: Cites
Nazi torchlight parade
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Meanwhile, parts of Kherson are being evacuated in prep for the anticipated Kiev offensive in the region.
Overall command has been given to General Surovikin. 
He gave an interview in which he laid out Russia's overall plan for the SMO in Ukraine. They will focus on using standoff weapons to "grind down" the Kiev army, and preserving civilian and infantry lives. That explains the absence of large numbers of Russian infantry on the frontline. In addition, they're degrading Kiev's military by striking military targets and electrical generation far behind the front lines. Gaining or defending territory is not the top of priorities.
Meanwhile Kiev is fighting a different war, using "human waves" to claim territory, and sabotage to demoralize Russians. So large number of soldiers are being sent into Russian artillery, air force and tank fire.
So the question is whether Russian standoff weapons can degrade Kiev's military capability faster than Kiev can throw people at it.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Great piece of Putin fan fiction, Signym. You make Russians sound heroic and turned the Ukrainians into aliens from Tom Cruise's movie "Edge of Tomorrow" (2014) or the rumored sequel "Live Die Repeat and Repeat". The aliens keep coming in wave after wave after wave. Cruise needs endless ammo if he is going to win.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Meanwhile Kiev is fighting a different war, using "human waves" to claim territory, and sabotage to demoralize Russians. So large number of soldiers are being sent into Russian artillery, air force and tank fire.
So the question is whether Russian standoff weapons can degrade Kiev's military capability faster than Kiev can throw people at it.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1631867/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5617712/
This is NOT Putin fan fiction:
Over the past year, it has become evident that there are key weaknesses at the core of seemingly strong authoritarian states. By Francis Fukuyama
The weaknesses of strong states have been on glaring display in Russia. President Vladimir Putin is the sole decision maker; even the former Soviet Union had a politburo where the party secretary had to vet policy ideas. We saw images of Putin sitting at the end of a long table with his defense and foreign ministers because of his fear of COVID; he was so isolated that he had no idea how strong Ukrainian national identity had become in recent years or how fierce a resistance his invasion would provoke. He similarly got no word of how deeply corruption and incompetence had taken root within his own military, how abysmally the modern weapons he had developed were working, or how poorly trained his own officer corps was.
The shallowness of his regime’s support was made evident by the rush to the borders of young Russian men when he announced his “partial” mobilization on September 21. Some 700,000 Russians have left for Georgia, Kazakhstan, Finland, and any other country that would take them, a far greater number than has actually been mobilized. Those who have been caught up by the conscription are being thrown directly into battle without adequate training or equipment, and are already showing up on the front as POWs or casualties. Putin’s legitimacy was based on a social contract that promised citizens stability and a modicum of prosperity in return for political passivity, but the regime has broken that deal and is feeling the consequences.
Putin’s bad decision making and shallow support have produced one of the biggest strategic blunders in living memory. Far from demonstrating its greatness and recovering its empire, Russia has become a global object of ridicule, and will endure further humiliations at the hands of Ukraine in the coming weeks. The entire Russian military position in the south of Ukraine is likely to collapse, and the Ukrainians have a real chance of liberating the Crimean Peninsula for the first time since 2014. These reversals have triggered a huge amount of finger-pointing in Moscow; the Kremlin is cracking down even harder on dissent. Whether Putin himself will be able to survive a Russian military defeat is an open question.
Politicians such as Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour in France, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Matteo Salvini in Italy, and of course Trump in the U.S. have all expressed sympathy for Putin. They see in him a model for the kind of strongman rule they would like to exercise in their own country. He, in turn, is hoping that their rise will weaken Western support for Ukraine and save his flailing “special military operation.”
Liberal democracy will not make a comeback unless people are willing to struggle on its behalf. The problem is that many who grow up living in peaceful, prosperous liberal democracies begin to take their form of government for granted. Because they have never experienced an actual tyranny, they imagine that the democratically elected governments under which they live are themselves evil dictatorships conniving to take away their rights, wh
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Lots of words, no evidence.
For example, yu would have thought the Finns would have reported on the total number of military-age men crossing their border. While they reported an increase (approx double the number seeking visas) how many Russian travel to Finland each month anyway? Was that an increase of, say, 500 to 1000?
Georgia, no friend of Russia, would hav no issue reporting the number of military-age Russians crossing their border, both legally and illegally. Number of bus tickets? Airline tickets? Visas applied for? Border interceptions? This is an article of assertion without actual investigation.
I'm sure there are military-age men leaving Russia but like the number of Russian KIA in Ukraine, the number is greatly exaggerated.
And we both know that the western press doesn't hesitate to publish lies that would cause a mortal human being to blush.
Quote:
Kyiv has claimed that while over 9,000 of its troops have perished in the fighting, nearly 55,000 Russian soldiers have been killed.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/finland-shuts-borders-russia-conscriptio
n-age-men-flee-putin-order
Like the USA military, there are weaknesses in the Russian military. But Russians are great at counting missiles, shells, tanks and rockets, and they seem to have plenty of those.
*****
My civilian intepretation is that the ease with which the LDNR took Kherson early on, and the overall acceptance of the general population, led to complaisance - much like in Kharkov. General Surovikin looked at defensive preparations, and said "What? No minefields? No tank traps? No fortified counter-batteries? No anti-air radar? No trenches?????" and has started to remedy to situation. Meanwhile, Kiev is (apparently) attempting to blow the Novaya-Kharkova dam to flood the areas downstream.
What I'm reading is that Kiev is directing its military to keep up a steady stream of attacks along the Kherson line of contact- anywhere from a couple of hundred to a thousand men in each attempt- but that so far the attacks have been repulsed with heavy losses for Kiev. Some people have explained these attacks as "reconnaissance in force" - my imterpretation is that means sending in a group large enough to activate Russian artillery so that western intelligence can locate them before the BIG offensive takes place. Which is still expected, bc Biden* and western neocons and NATO need SOMEthing before the mid-terms/various governments fall apart. The BIG attack is yet to be launched.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Trump's yearslong crusade against Ukraine has finally come home to roost as Republicans call for abandoning Kyiv
A far-right faction of the GOP has increasingly pushed against continued assistance to Ukraine, saying the billions the US has provided to Kyiv are too costly and not worth the risk of sparking a wider conflict with Russia.
The GOP's gradual shift away from Ukraine and toward Russia has been years in the making, but right-wing hostility toward Ukraine hit a pivotal point during Donald Trump's presidency.
In addition to peddling the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election, Trump was impeached in 2019 for withholding hundreds of millions in vital aid to Ukraine as it fought a war against Kremlin-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region.
While withholding the aid, Trump and his allies pressured Zelenskyy, a political neophyte who won the 2019 election in a landslide victory, to launch an investigation targeting the Bidens ahead of the 2020 US election.
Foreign policy experts said Trump's actions — dangling security assistance in exchange for political favors — were a threat to the US's national security and bipartisan support for Ukraine. But the vast majority of congressional Republicans rallied to Trump's defense, and ultimately, just one Senate Republican, Mitt Romney, voted to convict the former president over his actions.
In the years since, Trump has continued to take a controversial stance on Ukraine, praising Russian President Vladimir Putin's justifications for invading as "genius" and "savvy." The former president has often lauded the Russian leader, going out of his way to avoid criticizing Putin amid a historically contentious period in US-Russia relations.
Anti-Ukraine sentiment doesn't just come from the top of the GOP. Putin has long been seen as a hero by the alt-right and white nationalists, and since Russia invaded Ukraine, many prominent right-wing politicians and media figures have moved in lockstep with the Kremlin, creating a feedback loop where each side amplifies and recycles the other's propaganda.
On Fox News, for instance, the far-right host Tucker Carlson has repeatedly echoed a nonsense conspiracy theory, which originated in Moscow before taking root in the US, suggesting that Ukraine houses US-funded bioweapons labs.
Russian state-sponsored media outlets in turn frequently feature Carlson's segments, and in March, Mother Jones reported that the Russian government instructed state media that it was "essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson" to spread negative information about Ukraine, the US, and NATO.
"When we see Fox News commentators, from our perspective, promote isolationist positions — that looks like support for Russia," Mykola Kniazhytskyi, a member of Ukraine's parliament, recently told NPR.
Some GOP opposition to continuing aid to Ukraine is tied to Trump's "America First" policy vis-a-vis foreign affairs. Trump embraced a non-interventionist stance and was often critical of US spending abroad, particularly when it came to NATO and European security.
Congressional Republicans like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have echoed these sentiments in their criticism of US assistance to Ukraine.
It's a remarkable shift for the Republican Party, which for years touted a hawkish position on foreign policy, especially as it related to leading adversaries like Russia. But under Trump's stewardship, the party has become increasingly isolationist, and its growing opposition to aiding Ukraine is the latest and clearest sign of that.
https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-midterms-win-could-threaten-ukrain
e-help-putin-2022-10
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Kherson Flooding Would be Like Dropping 'Atomic Bomb' if Putin Strikes Dam
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Meanwhile, Kiev is (apparently) attempting to blow the Novaya-Kharkova dam to flood the areas downstream.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S. think tank, assessed this week that Russian forces may be preparing to carry out a false-flag attack on the Kakhovka HPP where Kyiv is conducting extensive military action to take back its territory.
The ISW in its assessment on Wednesday cited Vladimir Saldo, head of Kherson's Russian-installed administration, as claiming this week that Ukraine intends to destroy the strategic facility.
The new commander of Putin's army in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, also claimed on Wednesday that he had received information that Kyiv intends to strike the dam at the Kakhovka HPP, which he alleged would cause destructive flooding in Kherson.
The ISW said Russian authorities likely intend these warnings about a purported Ukrainian strike on the Kakhovka HPP to set an information environment for Russian forces to damage the dam themselves, and blame Ukraine for the subsequent damage and loss of life, all while using the resulting floods to cover their own retreat further south into the Kherson region.
https://www.newsweek.com/kherson-flooding-atomic-bomb-putin-kakhovka-d
am-1753506
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The flight of Russian men shows Russian propaganda failures
As in any autocracy, it is difficult to know in Russia why people claim to support the “special military operation” in surveys and refrain from protesting. Is it because they agree with the government — or because they fear the consequences of opposing it?
For this reason, the response to the military call-up last month was revealing. Tens of thousands of fighting-age men rushed to Russia’s borders to exit the country; those who could afford last-minute plane tickets flew wherever they could. Ordinary citizens attacked military recruiting offices and held demonstrations in regions where they were previously rare.
If people actually believed the official rationale for the war and the Kremlin’s repeated claims of battlefield successes, we would expect that eligible draftees would voluntarily, even enthusiastically, sign up for the cause — as Ukrainians did after the invasion, or as so many Americans did after 9/11. But we saw the opposite. People with skin in the game revealed they did not buy the claim that Russia was fighting an existential battle against the West.
Why are Russians skeptical?
People might be skeptical of Kremlin propaganda for several reasons. First, while state television is the most common way people get their news, Russians, especially youths, are also active on social media, which is not censored as thoroughly.
Second, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war, according to the U.S. government. Military recruiters have sought new troops most aggressively in the parts of Russia that have already lost the most young men. Seeing relatives and neighbors return in body bags can be a reality check against televised propaganda about the war.
Third, Russians have been exposed to baseless claims for years — which may have numbed them to it. The West has been portrayed as an enemy for so long that the war rhetoric may have lacked the urgency it might have had otherwise. People may have accurately discerned Putin’s resolve while discounting his rationale for the invasion.
Incendiary rhetoric may lose its persuasive power while still being intimidating
Many Russians may still support the war, whether or not they believe Putin’s rhetoric. Others may go along with the regime simply because they feel that is the safest attitude.
But as Russian casualties mount and ordinary people are asked to sacrifice for the war, the propagandists’ job becomes more difficult. The Kremlin will need to rely increasingly on policing and surveillance to maintain stability.
To alert people to the fact that dissent will be punished, Putin may further intensify his rhetoric, even as it rings ever more hollow. His recent speech accusing the West of “Satanism” and issuing nuclear threats was probably intended not only to signal his resolve to the West, but also to deliver a warning to Russian citizens.
Once a regime loses its ability to persuade, ruling becomes more costly. But the Kremlin apparently hopes that as long as it can instill fear, including through strident rhetoric, it will be able to deter massive resistance — even as the consequences of its invasion hit closer to home.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/21/russia-public-opini
on-ukraine/
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:
The flight of Russian men shows Russian propaganda failures
As in any autocracy, it is difficult to know in Russia why people claim to support the “special military operation” in surveys and refrain from protesting. Is it because they agree with the government — or because they fear the consequences of opposing it?
For this reason, the response to the military call-up last month was revealing. Tens of thousands of fighting-age men rushed to Russia’s borders to exit the country; those who could afford last-minute plane tickets flew wherever they could. Ordinary citizens attacked military recruiting offices and held demonstrations in regions where they were previously rare.
If people actually believed the official rationale for the war and the Kremlin’s repeated claims of battlefield successes, we would expect that eligible draftees would voluntarily, even enthusiastically, sign up for the cause — as Ukrainians did after the invasion, or as so many Americans did after 9/11. But we saw the opposite. People with skin in the game revealed they did not buy the claim that Russia was fighting an existential battle against the West.
Why are Russians skeptical?
People might be skeptical of Kremlin propaganda for several reasons. First, while state television is the most common way people get their news, Russians, especially youths, are also active on social media, which is not censored as thoroughly.
Second, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war, according to the U.S. government. Military recruiters have sought new troops most aggressively in the parts of Russia that have already lost the most young men. Seeing relatives and neighbors return in body bags can be a reality check against televised propaganda about the war.
Third, Russians have been exposed to baseless claims for years — which may have numbed them to it. The West has been portrayed as an enemy for so long that the war rhetoric may have lacked the urgency it might have had otherwise. People may have accurately discerned Putin’s resolve while discounting his rationale for the invasion.
Incendiary rhetoric may lose its persuasive power while still being intimidating
Many Russians may still support the war, whether or not they believe Putin’s rhetoric. Others may go along with the regime simply because they feel that is the safest attitude.
But as Russian casualties mount and ordinary people are asked to sacrifice for the war, the propagandists’ job becomes more difficult. The Kremlin will need to rely increasingly on policing and surveillance to maintain stability.
To alert people to the fact that dissent will be punished, Putin may further intensify his rhetoric, even as it rings ever more hollow. His recent speech accusing the West of “Satanism” and issuing nuclear threats was probably intended not only to signal his resolve to the West, but also to deliver a warning to Russian citizens.
Once a regime loses its ability to persuade, ruling becomes more costly. But the Kremlin apparently hopes that as long as it can instill fear, including through strident rhetoric, it will be able to deter massive resistance — even as the consequences of its invasion hit closer to home.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/21/russia-public-opini
on-ukraine/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
The closest Scott Radnitz has ever been to war was a multi-player HALO match while he was being rawdawged by one of his soy-filled college roommates.
I'd ask why you idiot Leftists talk about Russians as if they're some sort of homogeneous blob, but because you're part of a hive-mind yourself it's not a question worth asking. And if I did bother asking several of you, you'd all give me the same answer because you are soulless NPCs.
How the hell are any of you going to function after all of your social media and news sites die off now that the unlimit
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Quote:Russia has an economy smaller than Canada's because Russians are lazy, stupid, and belligerent. It is no surprise when Russian assholes brag endlessly despite doing poorly in this world and lash out at people who are doing far better. The same dynamic happens between North Korea and South Korea. In case you don't know, 6ix, South Korea has an economy about 57 times larger than North Korea, despite South Korea having zero H-bombs. To hear North Koreans and Russians tell their "success" stories, H-bombs are the very foundation of a successful country. Evidence proves that is a lie. North Koreans brag continuously, just like Russians do, about their superiority while at the same time claiming their opposition is vastly inferior and will be conquered, one of these days. Republican angry poor white trash learned how to behave from the belligerent braggarts of North Korea and Russia.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The closest Scott Radnitz has ever been to war was a multi-player HALO match while he was being rawdawged by one of his soy-filled college roommates.
I'd ask why you idiot Leftists talk about Russians as if they're some sort of homogeneous blob, but because you're part of a hive-mind yourself it's not a question worth asking. And if I did bother asking several of you, you'd all give me the same answer because you are soulless NPCs.
How the hell are any of you going to function after all of your social media and news sites die off now that the unlimited venture capital has dried up?
GDP between South Korea and North Korea from 2010 to 2021
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1035390/south-korea-gdp-comparison
-with-north-korea/
Putin’s Last Hope to Win in Ukraine Is a GOP Victory in November
VLAD’S ALLIES: Just when Russia is on the ropes, Republican leaders are already signaling they’ll cut aid to Ukraine if they win control of Congress.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-last-hope-to-win-in-ukraine-is-a-
gop-victory-in-november
Putin and the Republican Party are supportive because they are like-minded.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Still waiting for Kiev's Big Offensive in Kherson. Or anywhere, for that matter.
It doesn't matter how many lies are published in western press. They can (and do) tell us endless fairy tales, but in the end reality trumps fiction.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:The Russians have achieved impressive numbers which R.J. Rummel compiled for easy reference:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Still waiting for Kiev's Big Offensive in Kherson. Or anywhere, for that matter.
It doesn't matter how many lies are published in western press. They can (and do) tell us endless fairy tales, but in the end reality trumps fiction.
Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B074VDV6V9/
Contents
1 61,911,000 Victims: Utopianism Empowered, 1917-1987 1
Appendix 1.1 16
Appendix 1.2 24
2 3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period, 1917-1922 33
Appendix 2.1 49
3 2,200,000 Victims: The NEP Period 1923-1928 61
Appendix 3.1 73
4 11,440,000 Victims: The Collectivization Period, 1929-1935 81
Appendix 4.1 103
5 4,345,000 Victims: The Great Terror Period 1936-1938 109
Appendix 5.1 117
6 5,104,000 Victims: Pre-World War II Period 1939-June 1941 127
Appendix 6.1 138
7 13,053,000 Victims: World War II Period, June 1941-1945 151
Appendix 7.1 168
8 15,613,000 Victims: Postwar and Stalin’s Twilight Period, 1945-1953 191
Appendix 8.1 201
9 6,872,000 Victims: Post-Stalin Period, 1954-1987 217
Appendix 9.1 226
Download R. J. Rummel’s books for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.nz/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:But what does this have to do with ... anything?
Originally posted by second:Quote:The Russians have achieved impressive numbers which R.J. Rummel compiled for easy reference:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Still waiting for Kiev's Big Offensive in Kherson. Or anywhere, for that matter.
It doesn't matter how many lies are published in western press. They can (and do) tell us endless fairy tales, but in the end reality trumps fiction.
Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B074VDV6V9/
Contents
1 61,911,000 Victims: Utopianism Empowered, 1917-1987 1
Appendix 1.1 16
Appendix 1.2 24
2 3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period, 1917-1922 33
Appendix 2.1 49
3 2,200,000 Victims: The NEP Period 1923-1928 61
Appendix 3.1 73
4 11,440,000 Victims: The Collectivization Period, 1929-1935 81
Appendix 4.1 103
5 4,345,000 Victims: The Great Terror Period 1936-1938 109
Appendix 5.1 117
6 5,104,000 Victims: Pre-World War II Period 1939-June 1941 127
Appendix 6.1 138
7 13,053,000 Victims: World War II Period, June 1941-1945 151
Appendix 7.1 168
8 15,613,000 Victims: Postwar and Stalin’s Twilight Period, 1945-1953 191
Appendix 8.1 201
9 6,872,000 Victims: Post-Stalin Period, 1954-1987 217
Appendix 9.1 226
Download R. J. Rummel’s books for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.nz/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Yanno, you used to blame the Soviets for waging war "inefficiently".
This is just more crap-splatter from you.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:You might not have noticed, but Russia has a seat now at the UN Security Council only because the Soviet Union, before it killed itself, previously held that seat. https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/current-members
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But what does this have to do with ... anything?
Yanno, you used to blame the Soviets for waging war "inefficiently".
This is just more crap-splatter from you.
Signym, whether you can understand or not, there is continuity between the dead Soviet Union and sickly Russia. Russia took up where the Soviet Union left off in killing people. Some call it genocide. I call it Russian stupidity, ignorance, and mindless belligerence. Russians don't know when to stop killing or who to target because Russians have mental problems, possibly alcoholism-related. Just see Russian history of murdering people in Ukraine, which goes back for centuries. But Signym being Signym, unless the drunken murder happened in front of Signym, it did not happen.
Contrast Russian history with, oh, Canadian history. The Canadians have a bigger economy than Russia, despite having only a quarter of the population. The big difference? Canadians aren't drunkenly murdering their neighbors or each other or committing suicide. A country like Russia could achieve as much as Canada has done if Russia gets sober, stops wasting its time on war and stops preparing for war. I think Putin drinks too much because Russia is poor compared to Canada. Putin keeps wanting to kill himself and the world over Russian poverty. Every week Putin makes the same suicidal threat to use nukes. Very sad situation. Drinking less would probably fix it.
https://www.worlddata.info/country-comparison.php?country1=CAN&cou
ntry2=RUS
Putin worried about alcohol addiction of Russia's top leadership
Thursday, 15 September 2022, 11:40
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/09/15/7367562/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The dratted dbl
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SECOND, you have accused Putin of being the equivalent of Hilter, Stalin, and Ivan the Terrible all rolled into one, and accused Russians of being brutal, backward, lazy, genocidal, authority -loving cannibals, not any different than they were under the tsars or Stalin.
And you think the Russians don't know what people like you think am of them?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Russia has an economy smaller than Canada's because Russians are lazy, stupid, and belligerent
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The closest Scott Radnitz has ever been to war was a multi-player HALO match while he was being rawdawged by one of his soy-filled college roommates.
I'd ask why you idiot Leftists talk about Russians as if they're some sort of homogeneous blob, but because you're part of a hive-mind yourself it's not a question worth asking. And if I did bother asking several of you, you'd all give me the same answer because you are soulless NPCs.
How the hell are any of you going to function after all of your social media and news sites die off now that the unlimited venture capital has dried up?
You've never met a Russian in your entire worthless fucking life.
Only racist Democrats could label the people of an entire huge country as worthless and without any individualism with every ounce of hate they can muster and not consider themselves the bad guys.
You are a garbage human being.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you have accused Putin of being the equivalent of Hilter, Stalin, and Ivan the Terrible all rolled into one, and accused Russians of being brutal, backward, lazy, genocidal, authority -loving cannibals, not any different than they were under the tsars or Stalin.
And it's all true, so what's your point comrade?
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Still waiting for Kiev's Big Offensive in Kherson. Or anywhere, for that matter.
It doesn't matter how many lies are published in western press. They can (and do) tell us endless fairy tales, but in the end reality trumps fiction.
Russia’s military leadership has withdrawn its officers in the Russian-annexed city of Kherson across the Dnieper River in anticipation of an advance of Ukrainian troops, the Institute for the Study of War think tank said Sunday.
To delay the Ukrainian counteroffensive as the Russians complete their retreat, Moscow has left newly mobilized, inexperienced forces on the other side of the wide river, it added.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/military-think-tank-russia-withdr
aws-officers-from-kherson/ar-AA13hcKr?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=3780be71a87e4b71cc96a6f0ad7a7044
More cannon fodder. It's coming soon enough. Are you in a hurry to see more dead Russians? Hey signym, have I ever told you I told you so?
T
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Quote:Is this the best defense you can make of what Russians have accomplished since WWII? The Russians would have achieved so much more if only the world understood the true meaning of being Russian? The true meaning is found in the 7 part series Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone by filmmaker Adam Curtis, who also made The Century of the Self.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you have accused Putin of being the equivalent of Hilter, Stalin, and Ivan the Terrible all rolled into one, and accused Russians of being brutal, backward, lazy, genocidal, authority -loving cannibals, not any different than they were under the tsars or Stalin.
And you think the Russians don't know what people like you think am of them?
What It Felt Like To Live Through the Collapse of Communism . . . and Democracy
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/other/adam-curtis-astonishing-
autopsy-of-the-fall-of-russia-will-leave-you-wide-eyed/ar-AA12U7PL
“To understand Russia now – and what might happen in the future – you have to understand what happened back then. For it is out of that rage, the violence, the desperation and the overwhelming corruption that Vladimir Putin emerged.”- filmmaker Adam Curtis, who also made The Century of the Self.
A few places to see the 7 part TV show:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0d3hwl1/russia-19851999-trauma
zone
https://comment.rlsbb.ru/russia-1985-1999-traumazone-s01-1080p-ip-web-
dl-h264-playweb/
https://tpb25.ukpass.co/search.php?q=TraumaZone
TraumaZone: Russia 1985-1999 S01E06 (1994 to 1998}
TraumaZone: Russia 1985-1999 S01E07 (1995 to 1999)
Signym, the TraumaZone is what happens when an entire country gets delusions of grandeur. Rather than rising to the level of Canadian prosperity, Russia has fallen to the level of North Korean prosperity because the Russians, deep into their delusions about themselves, made too many plans that were too high-flying to execute successfully.
I'm certain that if Kim Jong-un of North Korea decided to follow Putin's example with Ukraine by invading South Korea, South Korea would be at least as heavily damaged as Ukraine has been damaged. Unfortunately, North Korea would not be more prosperous for having invaded, just as Russia is not more prosperous for invading Ukraine, but with Delusions of Grandeur, physical and economic reality doesn't matter to North Koreans or Russians, since only their easily bruised feelings are real.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Ted and Second are just too stupid to even have a conversation with. They've been propagandized and conditioned to the point that their brains have leaked out of their ears.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Let me point out the last paragraph I wrote: I'm certain that if Kim Jong-un of North Korea decided to follow Putin's example with Ukraine by invading South Korea, South Korea would be at least as heavily damaged as Ukraine has been damaged. Unfortunately, North Korea would not be more prosperous for having invaded, just as Russia is not more prosperous for invading Ukraine, but with Delusions of Grandeur, physical and economic reality doesn't matter to North Koreans or Russians, since only their easily bruised feelings are real.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Ted and Second are just too stupid to even have a conversation with. They've been propagandized and conditioned to the point that their brains have leaked out of their ears.
6ix, Trumptards have the exact same problem of easily bruised feelings being the only reality for them. Trumptards may be ex-alcoholics who had all their teeth pulled out and are unemployed by their own decisions and at high risk of falling out of the middle-class, but they will always have their over-weaned pride in themselves when Trump returns to the Presidency in 2025.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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This is an amusing change from Russia, as usual, threatening every day to nuke the world. Now it is the Ukrainians who Russia says threaten to nuke the world. I disbelieve Russia:
Oct 23 (Reuters) - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told his French counterpart in a telephone call on Sunday that the situation in Ukraine was rapidly deteriorating and trending towards "uncontrolled escalation".
In a phone call with French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu published by the Russian side, Shoigu said Moscow had concerns Ukraine could use a "dirty bomb" in the conflict, without providing evidence to support the suggestion that Ukraine might use such a weapon.
"They discussed the situation in Ukraine which is rapidly deteriorating," the defense ministry said in a readout of the call. "It is trending towards further uncontrolled escalation."
A so-called dirty bomb uses conventional explosives laced with radioactive material.
The defense ministry did not provide any further information on its statement.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-shoigu-warns-uncontrolled
-escalation-ukraine-conflict-2022-10-23/
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:
6ix, Trumptards have the exact same problem of easily bruised feelings being the only reality for them.
You want to see easily bruised feelings. Just hop on Twitter and look at your Leftist hive mind whine day and night about everything. Do it quick too, because we're not going to take anything they say seriously anymore.
Quote:
Trumptards may be ex-alcoholics who had all their teeth pulled out and are unemployed by their own decisions and at high risk of falling out of the middle-class, but they will always have their over-weaned pride in themselves when Trump returns to the Presidency in 2025.
I still have 10 teeth left. The dentures are paid for. I haven't had a drink in just shy of 6 years. No self-help books. No religious conversion. No support group. I'm doing fine.
Meanwhile, I haven't had to kiss the boots of a boss for 2 1/2 years... Not that I ever did while I was working anyhow.
While you've been posting all your rah rah Ukraine bullshit from you're mom's basement all summer, I've been spending mine doing what I love and getting a ton accomplished.
Trump destroying Biden in November 2024 will just be sprinkles on a cake that I baked and put the icing on myself.
I'm going to enjoy watching you and Ted cry every day about it for 4 years after I flourished for 4 years under President* Biden* because politics isn't my life and whatever party is in power doesn't distract me or shut me down from completing my own life's goals.
Instead of worrying so much about me and my long-solved dental issues and my alcohol problems that ended nearly 15% of my life ago, might I suggest that you do some serious soul searching and figure out how to improve your own sad situation.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:You haven't stopped smoking, which will probably shorten your life by 20 years. Those drunk years are not the total years you lose.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Instead of worrying so much about me and my long-solved dental issues and my alcohol problems that ended nearly 15% of my life ago, might I suggest that you do some serious soul searching and figure out how to improve your own sad situation.
The Russians have got a drinking problem, a suicide problem, and an economic problem. Their solution? Blame NATO! It must be a CIA-devised conspiracy that keeps mighty Russia economically weaker than Canada. It couldn't possibly be because Russians are belligerent, stupid jerks who destroy adjacent countries for sport and loot. Similarly, America's angry poor white trash blame their problems on Democrats rather than the CIA. It couldn't be because Trumptards are very much like Trump: cheating on their taxes, cheating on their spouses, being lazy on the job, obese and drunk because their appetites are out of control, etc. Funny how Russians are very similar to Trumptards: Putin worried about alcohol addiction of Russia's top leadership
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/09/15/7367562/
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:You haven't stopped smoking, which will probably shorten your life by 20 years. Those drunk years are not the total years you lose.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Instead of worrying so much about me and my long-solved dental issues and my alcohol problems that ended nearly 15% of my life ago, might I suggest that you do some serious soul searching and figure out how to improve your own sad situation.
Also, none of your fucking business.
My last doctor checkup went great, with 98% oxygen absorption. I get compliments on my physique all the time, and I'm not even working out. I'm just a productive human being unlike your fat, lazy ass that does nothing but complain about your life all day.
Quote:
The Russians have got a drinking problem, a suicide problem, and an economic problem. Their solution? Blame NATO! It must be a CIA-devised conspiracy that keeps mighty Russia economically weaker than Canada. It couldn't possibly be because Russians are belligerent, stupid jerks who destroy adjacent countries for sport and loot. Similarly, America's angry poor white trash blame their problems on Democrats rather than the CIA. It couldn't be because Trumptards are very much like Trump: cheating on their taxes, cheating on their spouses, being lazy on the job, obese and drunk because their appetites are out of control, etc. Funny how Russians are very similar to Trumptards: Putin worried about alcohol addiction of Russia's top leadership.
Russians are not a hive mind, you racist, mindless dipshit.
And everybody that doesn't agree with your politics isn't evil either.
You are a moron. You will always be a worthless moron. You are incapable of self-reflection and thus you are doomed to spend the rest of your days blaming everybody else for your own problems instead of fixing things for yourself.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Speaking of easily-bruised feelings, SECOND
Back in the global climate change thread .... one of the few threads where we hd a reltively non-toxic discussion (except where you injected it)... there was a conversation that went like this...
Quote:
SIGNY: What we COULD do is replace our dark asphalt-based rooftops with white ones and increase the albedo of our cities. Planting urban trees would also make cities more liveable by reducing temperatures and AC usage.
SIX: Lets' just make sure we're not doing it with soft maple garbage trees this time, m-kay?
SIGNY: Hahaha!!!
YOUR response?
Quote:
SECOND: Did anybody today tell Signym and 6ix they are worthless?
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=58012&p=8
Well. Why, yes, son, just about every time you post!
I mean, WTH was THAT all about? Seems like YOUR feelings get bruised all the time, and not from anything WE post but just bc you're a conflicted, vindictive prick who feels the need to diss and harass anyone who AGREES with you! You despise yourself so terribly you project that onto everybody else?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Meanswhile, instead of turning this into (yetanother) thread about SECOND (dragging, as he does, every thread he posts into about how much he despises everyone who isn't him)...
Quote:
Massive New Strikes' Leave 1.5 Million Ukrainians Without Power, Phased Blackouts In Kiev
Sunday, Oct 23, 2022 - 09:00 AM
Now much of Western Ukraine, which lies far away from the front lines of fighting with Russia in the east, is without power due to fresh weekend airstrikes across the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a Saturday night address said new "massive" strikes targeted Dnipropetrovsk, Khmelnytsky, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Rivne, Volyn and Zaporizhia regions.
"We continue eliminating the aftermath of today’s terrorist attacks on our infrastructure," Zelensky said. "The geography of this new massive strike is very wide."...
On Saturday the national power utility operator Ukrenergo said that damage from the latest round of Russian strikes set a new record. The Saturday air offensive by Russia was bigger than an initial major wave of strikes from earlier this month:
Over 1.4 million Ukrainian households have lost electricity after a morning of repeated Russian air raids, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office says.
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that 40 cruise missiles and 16 allegedly Iranian-made drones hit Ukraine throughout the day.
Oleksandr Kharchenko, a Ukrainian energy official, said in an interview with US media that national infrastructure vital for the people is facing "really huge trouble".
"When you don't have electricity in a city, it means you have no water, you have no supply of gas, you have nothing," Kharchenko said. Days prior to the stepped-up Saturday assault the government said one-third of all power stations had been hit or damaged in Russian strikes.
It's a darn good thing that Russia has run out of missiles. Otherwise, just imagine the damage they could do!
Not sure why focus on Kiev's electrical infrastrucure. I suppose that this is one way to degrade not only Kiev's military capability w/o killing too many civilins (Their trains - used to transport troops and weaponry and munitions- are all electrical. Another disadvantage of all-electric transportation, since it depends on a functioning power grid) but also Kiev's air defenses. It also lowers morale since the troops wil be worried about the folks back home.
But I guess I'm puzzled by this tactic. One possible explanation is that a fair portion of the power grid is owned and controlled by one of Kiev's pro-war oligarchs... Ahkmetov (?)... and that Ukraine actually exported electricity until recently bc the Soviets built overcapacity/redundancy into the system, and with Ukraine's ongoing de-industrialization and depopulation Ukraine's overcapacity was estimated to be as high as 50%. The closest analogy I can think of is how Russia attacked ISIS' oil tanker convoys into Turkey, depriving both ISIS and Erdogan of a large source of income and making the war less profitable for both.
Anyway, I wonder about this approach and what comes next.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
about h
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Stoltenberg (NATO), Ursula van der Crazy (EU) and British politicians have repeatedly bannered that the war in Ukraine is "existential" for them.
Well, that's just plainly wrong. Ukraine isn't a member of either NATO or the EU (or Great Britain!) and they would continue with or without Ukraine. The only reason this is such a cause for them is because they said so, with their statments. Talk about "painting yourself into a corner"!
So, what will they do when they lose? (And they WILL lose any conventional war.)
Well, maybe this...
Quote:
"Russia Warns Of 'Dirty Bomb' False Flag Plot In Flurry Of Rare Calls To Western Leaders
"*
Sunday, Oct 23, 2022 - 08:45 PM
Update(1645ET): A major new and sensational charge of a Ukrainian false flag plot in the making issued by Russia's defense chief has set off a string of tit-for-tat accusations and statements Sunday.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed in rare phone calls that included his counterparts from the United States, Britain, France, and Turkey that Ukrainian forces are preparing a "provocation" with a radioactive device. A Kremlin statement cited that he conveyed a warning over "possible Ukrainian provocations involving a 'dirty bomb'".
Shoigu's office said in follow-up that he conveyed the warning to all the above-named countries' defense chiefs. As for his conversation with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, it was the second phone call in merely three days. The Pentagon in the hours after said Austin told Shoigu he "rejected any pretext for Russian escalation" - which strongly suggests the US perceives that Moscow is about to heighten attacks on Ukrainian cities further:
*Russian authorities repeatedly have made allegations that Ukraine could detonate a dirty bomb in a false flag attack and blame it on Moscow. Ukrainian authorities, in turn, have accused the Kremlin of hatching such a plan.*
The Kremlin is further charging that this low-intensity nuclear provocation is being prepared with the help of Great Britain; however, the Western allies have said no evidence whatsoever was presented in the phone calls alongside the accusations.
The UK defense ministry said in its statement following Shoigu's phone call with Secretary Ben Wallace that the Russian side "alleged that Ukraine was planning actions facilitated by Western countries, including the UK, to escalate the conflict in Ukraine."
* "The Defense Secretary refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation," the ministry said.*
Russia is saying that such a 'dirty bomb' detonation, which would spread radioactive waste and potentially contaminate large urban areas, would then be blamed on Moscow in order to justify greater Western intervention.
Ukraine, for its part, blasted what the presidency's office called an "absolute and quite predictable absurdity" and blatant "lie". France too agreed with Ukraine's assessment, and a statement from the French Foreign Ministry has ominously warned that the crisis is "trending towards uncontrollable escalation." But Macron on Sunday admitted that "peace is possible" - yet it depends on when the Ukrainians "decide it".
* Who exactly endowed this person with the authority to decide when the US must launch World War III on his behalf https://t.co/GYc98QnH89
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 23, 2022*
Meanwhile, Zelensky's own rhetoric urging Western military intervention has escalated as well, all of which strongly suggests the war will soon grow hotter.
* * *
earlier
Now much of Western Ukraine, which lies far away from the front lines of fighting with Russia in the east, is without power due to fresh weekend airstrikes across the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a Saturday night address said new "massive" strikes targe
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Quote:There are limits on people and even nations. I've been to enough hospitals visiting Trumptards who recognized no limits on their behavior, whether eating, drinking, smoking, or speeding, no limits other than what was physically possible. The Trumptards shortened their lives by decades because their ideas of freedom don't include limits other than the absolute hardest ones that stop you dead today, like drinking until your blood alcohol level causes you to go to sleep in a snowdrift and freeze. There are lesser amounts of alcohol, over longer times, that will shorten your life, by driving drunk or by cirrhosis. Nations also go to excess. Eventually, despite believing the nation is free to do as it pleases, nations end up in the hospital. Russia and America, for decades, have been very ill because both have overexercised their freedom to invade.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Also, none of your fucking business.
Russians are not a hive mind, you racist, mindless dipshit.
And everybody that doesn't agree with your politics isn't evil either.
You are a moron. You will always be a worthless moron. You are incapable of self-reflection and thus you are doomed to spend the rest of your days blaming everybody else for your own problems instead of fixing things for yourself.
Doomed to failure: Russia failed to heed lessons from history before invading Ukraine
Eight years in Vietnam. (a reference to America in the original opinion)
Nine years in Afghanistan. (a reference to Russia)
Twenty years in Afghanistan. (a reference to America)
Eight years in Iraq. (another American reference)
Eight months and counting in Ukraine. (Russia)
How long does it take for a great power to develop military amnesia?
Russia and America, the two former Cold War superpowers, should be better positioned than any other nations to understand the high costs – in money, equipment, reputation, and worst of all lives – of fighting an extended war in which too many locals see you as murderous occupiers.
Lessons Russia should have learned
Among all nations, Russia should understand the danger of unpopular foreign intervention: For almost three years, from June 1941 to December 1944, Hitler’s Nazi army laid waste to large swaths of the Soviet Union during what Russians still call the Great Patriot War.
Historians’ analyses of why Hitler’s Russia invasion failed carry eerie echoes of current experts’ analyses of the mistakes Vladimir Putin has made in invading Ukraine: There was poor strategic planning. The Germans had no long-range plans for the invasion’s aftermath. Hitler believed that the Russians would capitulate quickly after the shock of initial losses. Most important, he failed to understand the primordial power of one word – “??????” or Motherland – for Russians: They were determined to defend their Motherland at all costs.
No one knows when it will happen, but the history of great powers’ military occupations suggests that Russian troops will eventually leave Ukraine in defeat. There are different scenarios of what will happen on the road to defeat, from Putin dying or being overthrown to him declaring a false victory and withdrawing to still more months of bombing and killing.
Following his nation’s monumental sacrifices, there is no chance that Zelenskyy will accept a negotiated peace that leaves the Kremlin in control of the territories it has seized. Putin’s veiled threat of using tactical nuclear weapons is the empty bluff of a poker player holding a weak hand.
The Kremlin’s final failure is in the cards for one simple but powerful reason: Russia’s will to conquer is weaker than Ukraine’s will to save its homeland.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2022/10/23/russia-ukraine-war-i
gnores-lessons-history/10486631002/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Let's see... America's 28 years v Russia's eight.
6IXSTRINGJACK:
Also, none of your fucking business.
Russians are not a hive mind, you racist, mindless dipshit.
And everybody that doesn't agree with your politics isn't evil either.
You are a moron. You will always be a worthless moron. You are incapable of self-reflection and thus you are doomed to spend the rest of your days blaming everybody else for your own problems instead of fixing things for yourself.
SECOND; blah blah blah ... Nations also go to excess. Eventually, despite believing the nation is free to do as it pleases, nations end up in the hospital. Russia and America, for decades, have been very ill because both have overexercised their freedom to invade.
Doomed to failure: Russia failed to heed lessons from history before invading Ukraine
Eight years in Vietnam. (a reference to America in the original opinion)
Nine years in Afghanistan. (a reference to Russia)
Twenty years in Afghanistan. (a reference to America)
Eight years in Iraq. (another American reference)
Eight months and counting in Ukraine. (Russia)
How long does it take for a great power to develop military amnesia?
I'll bet, if you add up ALL of our invasions and nation-destruction since 1950 and compare it to Russia's, "We're number 1!"
I'll also bet that you'll delete this from your memory and contradict it some time in the next three posts.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Where Most Aid To Ukraine Comes From
(HINT: The American taxpayer)
click on link to see chart
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28489.jpeg
https://www.statista.com/chart/28489/ukrainian-military-humanitarian-a
nd-financial-aid-donors/
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Where Most Aid To Ukraine Comes From
(HINT: The American taxpayer)
click on link to see chart
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28489.jpeg
https://www.statista.com/chart/28489/ukrainian-military-humanitarian-a
nd-financial-aid-donors/
It's almost over.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:You are not different than one of Putin's or Trump's typical supporters. It is completely predictable that Putin supporters in Russia and Trump supporters in America will struggle to stay middle-class because they lack the attributes that they must have to prosper. Also predictable that they will blame everybody but themselves for their difficulties. In Russia, they blame America. In America, they blame Democrats. Wouldn't want them to blame themselves because that would be disheartening.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Let's see... America's 28 years v Russia's eight.
I'll bet, if you add up ALL of our invasions and nation-destruction since 1950 and compare it to Russia's, "We're number 1!"
I'll also bet that you'll delete this from your memory and contradict it some time in the next three posts.
Why Russia’s strategic defeat is in the cards
Alexander J. Motyl, Opinion Contributor
5-7 minutes
Bloomberg commentator Leonid Bershidsky recently argued that “a strategic Russian defeat” is a “wishful theory.” As Bershidsky argues:
“The flaw in the ‘strategic defeat’ logic is that, while Russia’s nuclear capability is seen as the joker in [Vladimir] Putin’s hand, there are no practical means for the West to render Russia small and pliant. To achieve the maximum goals, the West would need to ignore Putin’s nuclear leverage and put boots on the ground. Because, again in this perspective, unless Russia is similarly subjugated, it cannot be ‘de-Nazified’ the way Germany and Japan shed their imperialism thanks to decades of occupation, forced demilitarization and externally imposed political structures.”
Since the West will not engage Russia in a war, “any prospect for a new world order in which Russia becomes a meek, contrite, post-imperial state now rests on the shoulders of Ukrainians,” who may or may not win and, even if they do, “they have no interest in conquering and ‘de-Nazifying’ Russia: They just want their own country back, and they have a lot of rebuilding to do.” (Actually, many serious Ukrainians do believe that they will be safe from another war with Russia only if it is “de-Nazified.”)
The argument, while persuasive at first glance, is fatally flawed. Bershidsky ignores internal Russian developments and focuses only on what the West, and Ukraine, might do vis-à-vis Russia. The oversight is typical for scholars and analysts in the “neorealist” school of though; the University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer is perhaps the most prominent example.
Naturally, if one takes Russia as strong and stable and pretty much impermeable to outside influence, then it easily follows that Russia will be able to resist Western attempts to defeat it strategically. To be sure, the embarrassingly poor performance of the Russian armed forces — despite general Western expectations that the second most powerful army in the world would overrun Ukraine in a few days — might have given supporters of this view pause. After all, the army’s sad state was a product not of Western influence but of domestic Russian corruption and inefficiency.
The reality is that Russia — as a state and as a regime — is profoundly weak. The economy, one of the world’s least impressive performers, is in a tailspin. The much-vaunted army has proven to be a paper tiger. The society is increasingly dissatisfied with declining living conditions, growing numbers of body bags, and the regime’s indifference to the fact that at least 65,000 Russian soldiers reportedly have died and at least as many are out of commission. Up to a million men have fled mobilization and certain death in Ukraine. Generals and secret policemen are at each other’s throats, hoping to shift the blame for the disastrous war from themselves.
Political and economic elites are also unhappy with the current state of affairs and talk of alternatives to Putin’s leadership has become commonplace. Putin, the linchpin of the state and regime, is manifestly weak and his legitimacy is
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You are not different than one of Putin's or Trump's typical supporters. It is completely predictable that Putin supporters in Russia and Trump supporters in America will struggle to stay middle-class because they lack the attributes that they must have to prosper. Also predictable that they will blame everybody but themselves for their difficulties. In Russia, they blame America. In America, they blame Democrats. Wouldn't want them to blame themselves because that would be disheartening.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Let's see... America's 28 years v Russia's eight.
I'll bet, if you add up ALL of our invasions and nation-destruction since 1950 and compare it to Russia's, "We're number 1!"
I'll also bet that you'll delete this from your memory and contradict it some time in the next three posts.
We literally have years worth of posts in the RWED showing that this paragraph that you just wrote is equal and opposite from the truth.
Get fucked, idiot.
You're done. Democrats are done. Ukraine is done.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Wow. you're so compulsive I predict what you're going to do and you STILL do it anyway!
Originally posted by second:Quote:You are not different than one of Putin's or Trump's typical supporters.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Let's see... America's 28 years v Russia's eight.
I'll bet, if you add up ALL of our invasions and nation-destruction since 1950 and compare it to Russia's, "We're number 1!"
I'll also bet that you'll delete this from your memory and contradict it some time in the next three posts.
I was just using the article that YOU posted, SECOND, whuch makes my point about US not remembering the costs of aggression.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Remember the Vietnam War? The US Army fought in the most goddamn stupid way imaginable, but I don't recall anybody pointing out the stupidity of it all. They were instead concerned with loss of life, the immorality of it, the cost, the suffering, democracy, communism, everything other than the main characteristic. They should have just looked only at the stupidity of it. The US Army was the stupidest thing I've seen in a long life and international career in construction. But Russian Army of 2022 might be just as stupid as the US Army of the 70's. I haven't seen the Russians up close and personal to know.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow. you're so compulsive I predict what you're going to do and you STILL do it anyway!
I was just using the article that YOU posted, SECOND, whuch makes my point about US not remembering the costs of aggression.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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A guest on Russian state TV has said in a rare admission that Russia "miscalculated its strength" when President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine in February.
The comments came from Victor Olevich, lead expert at the Center for Actual Politics, during a segment of the program Myesta Vstrechi (The Meeting Place), after host Andrey Norkin asked him to weigh in on Russia's claims that Kyiv is preparing to use a "dirty bomb" in Ukraine.
"Here is approximately how this all looks," responded Olevich. "Russia initiated a special military operation, miscalculated its strength, and for eight straight months can't win."
Olevich added that at the same time, Russian officials are "complaining and getting upset" that Moscow's opponents, "the same countries who want to neutralize Russia, to dismember and destroy it" don't believe and support Russia, and "aren't listening."
Norkin appeared to be taken aback at Olevich's assessment of the conflict, and said: "We aren't complaining, we're outraged, I would say."
"We can be outraged and angry until we turn blue, but it will in no way solve our problems," Olevich hit back.
The state TV host asked the expert again if he believes Russia can "prevent a nuclear provocation."
"The best way to prevent any provocation is to expose it and not only in telephone conversations with some foreign leaders, especially with leaders of adversary countries. But if there is real information, real evidence, as to where this dirty bomb is located, where are they planning to use it? Where are the documents? Show the documents — these provocations don't happen without orders," challenged Olevich. He added: "If Russia's military intelligence has all this data, it's time to reveal it."
The West has rejected Russia's "dirty bomb" claims as false. "The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation," the foreign ministers of France, Britain and the U.S. said in a joint-statement.
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-tv-ukraine-war-dirty-bomb-putin
-1754428
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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This letter to Biden from some members of the progressive caucus is a big mistake, assuming the progressives want to save lives and prevent a genocidal Russian takeover of Ukraine.
https://progressives.house.gov/_cache/files/5/5/5523c5cc-4028-4c46-8ee
1-b56c7101c764/B7B3674EFB12D933EA4A2B97C7405DD4.10-24-22-cpc-letter-for-diplomacy-on-russia-ukraine-conflict.pdf
Putin is losing his war and may lose his grip on power and his life; his strategy is to drag the war out and hope that a cold winter in Europe and (especially) a Republican victory in the United States mid-term election reduces support for Ukraine while he rebuilds his battered army. He is also trying to deter weapons deliveries to Ukraine by threatening nuclear escalation.
If Putin wanted to negotiate in good faith it would not be hard for him to find willing partners, including the United States. The problem is that he does not have much reason to negotiate; at most he will agree to a cease-fire to buy time to rebuild his army and consolidate his territorial gains. This would be unacceptable to Ukraine and should be unacceptable to us, given the genocide that would follow and the precedent that would be set. On the other hand, why would Putin agree to withdraw his troops prior to negotiations?
In this context the progressive letter is counterproductive because it signals a lack of resolve. It suggests that Americans are getting tired of the war. Having the United States push Ukraine to settle rather than sending them weapons is Putin’s only path to an outcome that is not a clear defeat.
The better approach is to authorize substantial economic and military aid to Ukraine during the lame-duck session of Congress. Given Biden’s commitment to Ukraine, this will signal U.S. resolve to Putin. The biggest threat to Ukraine for months has been the pro-Putin faction of the Republican party. So far support for the war has remained relatively bipartisan but this could easily change.
My theory of the case: the revolution devours its parents
I think the congressional progressives know everything I just said. My theory is that they are pandering to the utopian blame-America-first segment of the democratic base. This is the problem with utopian know-it-all politics of the Jacobin sort. It sets up unrealistic expectations and creates an electorate that can never be satisfied. Couple that with our two-party political system and open primaries and even solid progressives need to worry about being outflanked on the “left”.
Much more at https://angrybearblog.com/2022/10/how-does-the-war-in-ukraine-end-2
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Genocidal talk on Russian state media
A couple of days ago a speaker on Russian state television went on a pro-genocide rant. (If you haven’t seen the clip, it’s worth taking a look.)
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1584054018145685504
The segment was translated by Julia Davis and went viral; it was so bad that the speaker has apparently been fired. But the genocidal talk on Russian television continues.
This is worrying on multiple levels. It no doubt encourages war crimes by the Russian army. It may box Putin in and make a negotiated settlement more difficult. Even worse, it may reflect or influence Putin’s actual beliefs. If this is true, the risk of a purely vindictive nuclear attack on Ukraine by a humiliated Putin/Russia rises. If you hate Ukrainians, and you are going to lose, why not take them down with you?
https://angrybearblog.com/2022/10/how-does-the-war-in-ukraine-end-2
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 stupidest wars are the ones you should never be in.
Originally posted by second:Quote:Remember the Vietnam War? The US Army fought in the most goddamn stupid way imaginable, but I don't recall anybody pointing out the stupidity of it all. They were instead concerned with loss of life, the immorality of it, the cost, the suffering, democracy, communism, everything other than the main characteristic. They should have just looked only at the stupidity of it. The US Army was the stupidest thing I've seen in a long life and international career in construction. But Russian Army of 2022 might be just as stupid as the US Army of the 70's. I haven't seen the Russians up close and personal to know.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow. you're so compulsive I predict what you're going to do and you STILL do it anyway!
I was just using the article that YOU posted, SECOND, whuch makes my point about US not remembering the costs of aggression.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
One thing the nuns in grammar schoool drilled into us was world geography and resources. What did Vietnam have that we needed so much?
Tin?
Like, there are no other sources of tin in the world?
What did all of SE Asia have?
The whole region could have "gone communist" and it wouldn't have affected ... well, anything. Not even shipping.
For a long time, we fought or funded and armed pointless genocidal wars in faraway places under the banner of "anti-Communism", where all we did was replace socialist reformers with military dicatorships and what did WE get out of it?
After that, the banner was "Global War on Terror", where we enaged in terror to ostensibly fight terrorism.
More stupidity,
After that was "Responsibity to Protect", where we destroyed entire regions under the guise of "freedom".
Even MORE stupidity!
Now, it's just sheer Russophobia.
Do I need to spell out how stupid THAT is?
In all of those wars and regime changes since WWII I can only think of a few where we benefitted or potentially could have benefitted:
Chile: THE source of copper at the time.
Panama: We couldn't let Noriega control this major shipping point.
Iraq: We MIGHT have gotten hold of the oil, but we didn't. We also temporarily protected the petrodollar.
Libya: we protected the petrodollar by preventing Qaddafi from setting up a gold-based African dinar. And SOMEbody stole all of that gold. France, maybe.
Everything else, from Indonesia to Nicaragua (and every nation in central and south America) to Afghanistan (and most of the ME) to Vietnam (and neighboring Cambodia and Laos, secretly) to Somalia (and anyplace in Africa) .... the only ones benefitting were the military-industrial-Congressional complex.
In practical terms, we - the USA- got nothing from it.
Now THAT'S stupid.
I predict you will forget you ever posted about our stupid wars and go back to thumping for MOAR STUPID WARS.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:There remain hardliners like Pavel Gubarev, Russia’s puppet leader in Donetsk, who voiced his real intention toward Ukrainians: “We aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.” That quote is from Putin is trying to distract us from the blindingly obvious
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
In practical terms, we - the USA- got nothing from it.
Now THAT'S stupid.
I predict you will forget you ever posted about our stupid wars and go back to thumping for MOAR STUPID WARS.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/putin-prolonge-war-ukraine-win
ter-andelman/index.html
Signym, about the South Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese never said they'd "exterminate all of you". I don't think the Russians are sane in these land disputes. Just saying.
Signym, don't say the Russians would never exterminate the Ukrainians. There are scholars totalling all the occasions when the Russians exterminated tens of millions over political differences.
Signym, you have repeatedly wrote that all the mass murdering that Russians have done is as nothing. Wrong of you, Signym:
Quote:Sigynm: All of Russian past is prologue for what Russia would do to the Ukrainians in this 2022 political dispute about who owns the land that Ukraine sits on.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:But what does this have to do with ... anything?
Originally posted by second:Quote:The Russians have achieved impressive numbers which R.J. Rummel compiled for easy reference:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Still waiting for Kiev's Big Offensive in Kherson. Or anywhere, for that matter.
It doesn't matter how many lies are published in western press. They can (and do) tell us endless fairy tales, but in the end reality trumps fiction.
Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B074VDV6V9/
Contents
1 61,911,000 Victims: Utopianism Empowered, 1917-1987 1
Appendix 1.1 16
Appendix 1.2 24
2 3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period, 1917-1922 33
Appendix 2.1 49
3 2,200,000 Victims: The NEP Period 1923-1928 61
Appendix 3.1 73
4 11,440,000 Victims: The Collectivization Period, 1929-1935 81
Appendix 4.1 103
5 4,345,000 Victims: The Great Terror Period 1936-1938 109
Appendix 5.1 117
6 5,104,000 Victims: Pre-World War II Period 1939-June 1941 127
Appendix 6.1 138
7 13,053,000 Victims: World War II Period, June 1941-1945 151
Appendix 7.1 168
8 15,613,000 Victims: Postwar and Stalin’s Twilight Period, 1945-1953 191
Appendix 8.1 201
9 6,872,000 Victims: Post-Stalin Period, 1954-1987 217
Appendix 9.1 226
Download R. J. Rummel’s books for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.nz/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Yanno, you used to blame the Soviets for waging war "inefficiently".
This is just more crap-splatter from you.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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SECOND, you are so full of bullshit it's splattering onto the board.
You're not really concerned about genocide. If you were, you'd be looking at OUR history as well.
Please dispose of your crap someplace else.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:They coined the word "Whataboutism" to describe a Soviet, and later, a Russian tactic of changing the subject when the subject was Soviets, and later, Russians, murdering people by the millions. Russians and Soviets have murdered millions of Ukrainians in the past. Present-day Ukrainians know about those murders, Signym. Why don't you?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you are so full of bullshit it's splattering onto the board.
You're not really concerned about genocide. If you were, you'd be looking at OUR history as well.
Please dispose of your crap someplace else.
By the way, it was only last week that Putin said he'd murder millions by nuking them if he doesn't get what he wants in Ukraine.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
By the way, it was only last week that Putin said he'd murder millions by nuking them if he doesn't get what he wants in Ukraine.
No he didn't.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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SECOND specializes in false narratives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Ukrainian forces advance against Russian fighters in Kherson and Bakhmut
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND specializes in false narratives.
By Mary Ilyushina and Emily Rauhala
Updated October 25, 2022 at 5:36 p.m. EDT
Ukrainian forces continued their advance against the Russian military in the southern Kherson region Tuesday, pushed back Russian mercenaries from Bakhmut in eastern Donetsk, and gained new momentum in Luhansk, where they seized a key highway between the towns of Kreminna and Svatove.
On a day of heavy fighting and fast-moving developments across multiple combat zones, the Ukrainians appeared to extend their recent successes in recapturing occupied territories and pushing Moscow’s troops into retreat in areas that President Vladimir Putin has claimed now belong to Russia.
Away from the battlefield, the Kremlin continued to push a claim, asserted repeatedly without evidence, that Kyiv was preparing to use a “dirty bomb,” a weapon that combines conventional explosives with radioactive material — an accusation that was dismissed by the United States and other Western nations.
U.S. officials said that Moscow’s allegations raised a risk that Russia itself was planning to carry out a radiation attack, potentially as a pretext to justify further escalation of the war amid its continuing territorial setbacks.
In a statement Tuesday, Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator, Energoatom, issued a similar warning, citing the Russian military’s control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar. “Energoatom assumes that such actions of the occupiers may indicate that they are preparing a terrorist act using nuclear materials and radioactive waste stored at the ZNPP site,” the statement said.
The renewed fears of some kind of radiation attack added to the ominous sense that Putin’s war in Ukraine is growing even more deadly and dangerous as each side seeks to redraw facts on the ground before winter.
Ukraine has been pushing hard for further territorial gains, while Russia this month began a relentless bombing campaign against Ukraine’s energy system, using missiles and attack drones in an apparent bid to plunge the country into cold and darkness, and potentially compensate for battlefield losses.
As Ukraine continued to make gains, pro-Kremlin military bloggers and analysts confirmed new setbacks for Russia’s forces Tuesday, including in Luhansk, the easternmost occupied region of Ukraine, where Russia has had its firmest grip.
“The Ukrainian army has resumed its counteroffensive in the Luhansk direction,” the pro-Russian WarGonzo project said in its daily military update, adding that Ukrainian forces took control of a key highway between the Luhansk towns of Svatove and Kreminna.
“The Russian artillery is actively working on the left bank of Zherebets river and is trying to stop the transfer of reinforcements to the enemy but the situation is very difficult,” WarGonzo said.
In the Donetsk region, the Wagner paramilitary force, controlled by St. Petersburg businessman Yevgeniy Prigozhin, appeared to be getting pushed back from Bakhmut, where the mercenaries had spent weeks pummeling the city but making small gains. Military experts said there was little strategic value in seizing Bakhmut, but Prigozhin seems to see a chance to claim a political prize, while regular Russian military units lose ground in other combat zones.
Ukrainian forces have recaptured a concrete factory on Bakhmut’s eastern outskirts, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported Monday. On Sunday, Prigozhin acknowledged the slow pace of Wagner’s effort, saying the mercenaries were gaining only “100-200 meters a day.”
“Our units are constantly meeting with the most fierce enemy resistance, and I note that the enemy is well prepared, motivated, and works confidently and harmoniously,” Prigozhin said in a statement published by his catering company’s press service. “This does not prevent our fighters from moving forward, but I cannot comment on how long it will take.
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Quote:Ford described the super torpedo as a crude weapon in the interview with Government Matters TV and said that he was unsure what it actually added to Russia's warfighting capabilities over other conventional or nuclear weapon platforms.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
By the way, it was only last week that Putin said he'd murder millions by nuking them if he doesn't get what he wants in Ukraine.
No he didn't.
"It's a terror weapon," said Ford. "It's designed to kill or traumatize the inhabitants of American coastal cities."
The Poseidon's other capabilities
Dimitry Litovkin, editor-in-chief of the TASS military magazine, boasted that the Belgorod and other vessels of its class could "deliver up to 12 such devices to the coast of the United States."
He also claimed that the Poseidon had underwater loitering munition capabilities, and could lay dormant on the ocean floor for years before activation. He also said it was impossible to detect the drone at such depths.
The weapon was first announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin alongside platforms like the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, which can also carry a nuclear warhead.
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-718938
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:Ford described the super torpedo as a crude weapon in the interview with Government Matters TV and said that he was unsure what it actually added to Russia's warfighting capabilities over other conventional or nuclear weapon platforms.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
By the way, it was only last week that Putin said he'd murder millions by nuking them if he doesn't get what he wants in Ukraine.
No he didn't.
"It's a terror weapon," said Ford. "It's designed to kill or traumatize the inhabitants of American coastal cities."
The Poseidon's other capabilities
Dimitry Litovkin, editor-in-chief of the TASS military magazine, boasted that the Belgorod and other vessels of its class could "deliver up to 12 such devices to the coast of the United States."
He also claimed that the Poseidon had underwater loitering munition capabilities, and could lay dormant on the ocean floor for years before activation. He also said it was impossible to detect the drone at such depths.
The weapon was first announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin alongside platforms like the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, which can also carry a nuclear warhead.
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-718938
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
And?
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Putin built the Poseidon torpedoes as a weapon of terror. Putin needs a very weird life philosophy to justify building such a horrifying gadget. Where did Putin get his philosophy? It just so happens that Russians have been using terror to govern, and murder, millions of Ukrainians for centuries. The Ukrainians know that history and know Putin's life philosophy because they have experienced Russian life philosophy for all those centuries. If you want, you could know history and philosophy, too! Once you know both, Putin is revealed as just one more in a long line of Russians who murder Ukrainians because it makes Russians feel good about themselves. Makes them feel strong, important, patriotic rather than aimless and insignificant.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And?
A youtube video from a bald, nearsighted lamebrain who thinks he is a philosopher.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
What is Russia's Poseidon nuclear torpedo drone, and can it cause a nuclear tsunami?
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-718938
From Popular Mechanics Magazine: Is Russia About to Launch Its Nuclear ‘Apocalypse’ Torpedo?
https://web.archive.org/web/20221022060930/https://www.popularmechanic
s.com/military/weapons/a37093942/russia-test-nuclear-apocalypse-torpedo-poseidon/
Poseidon Intercontinental Nuclear-Powered Nuclear-Armed Autonomous Torpedo drawing:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221021011934im_/https://hips.hearstapps.
com/hmg-prod/images/ru-poseidon-updatedfeb2019-2100x1100-1664999005.jpeg
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Russia might have to pay for what it has done, if the EU's lawyers decide it is legal.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND specializes in false narratives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
Raid Russia’s ‘huge pot of gold’? Europe grapples over confiscating frozen assets to pay for rebuilding Ukraine
BY Christiaan Hetzner
October 25, 2022 at 11:48 AM CDT
Can Brussels raid the tens of billions of euros in Russian assets frozen by the European Union to pay for Ukraine’s recovery?
This thorny legal question is currently under examination by the EU Commission as the cash-strapped bloc looks for potentially €18 billion ($18 billion) next year to keep Ukraine afloat as it fends off Moscow’s invasion.
Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission’s president, told reporters on Tuesday in Berlin that she had set up a task force to map what assets exist as well as the preconditions that must be met to seize them.
“The will is there, but legally it is not trivial. There is a lot of work still in it to reach that goal,” she said during a press briefing on the sidelines of an international conference of experts for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
“Always to keep in mind we insist on the rule of law, and therefore we abide by the rule of law, and therefore this process has to be legally sound.”
Importantly, it’s unclear whether this may eventually include the wealth of the Russian state or just illicit funds from Russian oligarchs, which is potentially easier to seize if illicitly gained.
Ukraine believes there is anywhere between $300 billion to $500 billion in Russian assets for the taking, which would go far in helping it rebuild, Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Tuesday. He said critical economic infrastructure equivalent to 45% of its annual output has been destroyed since the war started and it expects its budget deficit next year to therefor amount to €38 billion.
“It’s the biggest investment project on the European continent ever,” Shmyhal said of the current reconstruction effort.
‘Unprecedented’
While Canada has already enacted legislation to seize Russian assets, EU member states are divided as the issue could have repercussions that extend far beyond its borders and affect the future for a long time to come. Some €23 billion in Russian assets are estimated to be located in the EU.
On the one hand you have supporters like Poland, whose prime minister left no doubt as to where his country—a staunch ally of Ukraine in its war against Russia—stood on the issue of war reparations.
“There is a huge pot of gold to be taken and dedicated for Ukraine’s reconstruction, which are the assets of Russian Federation and Russian oligarchs,” Mateusz Morawiecki said on Tuesday in Berlin.
He argued that simply freezing them means little, especially as assets have a way of growing in value over time. They need to be confiscated, in Warsaw’s view.
“We must make sure the offender pays,” he said. “Too many times over the course of history we saw that the aggressors avoided the consequences.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who himself is facing demands from Morawiecki for €1.3 trillion in reparations for World War II, was more hesitant about the issue.
More at https://fortune.com/2022/10/25/ukraine-russia-assets-confiscation-seiz
e-assets-frozen-reparations-reconstruction-europe-commission/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Signym, is theft a reliable way to supply a major component to the factory building Russian weaponry? Any opinions?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND specializes in false narratives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
Rotax Engine Found In Iranian Mohajer-6 Drone Downed Over Ukraine
Reports of Austrian Rotax engines being used in Iranian drones aren’t new, but hard proof they are being used in those acquired by Russia is.
by Emma Helfrich | PUBLISHED Oct 24, 2022 9:53 PM
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/rotax-engine-found-in-iranian-mo
hajer-6-drone-downed-over-ukraine
Same Type Of Rotax Engines Used In Iranian Drones Targeted In Bizarre Theft Wave
After Ukraine displayed an Iranian drone with a Rotax 912 motor, the global targeting of those engines by criminals is even more intriguing.
by Howard Altman | PUBLISHED Oct 25, 2022 6:21 PM
The Austrian-made Rotax light aircraft engine recently found in a Russian-operated, Iranian-made Mohajar-6 drone recovered by Ukrainian forces is a model that has been at the center of a puzzling and prolonged theft campaign around the globe, but especially in Europe. Sophisticated criminals who know how to circumvent airport security measures and find engines that often have low operating hours and surgically remove them have been the hallmark of the widespread thefts.
So many have been stolen just in the U.K. alone that Operation Opal - a national intelligence team focused on organized crime - was called in to investigate the matter, according to the British Microlight Aircraft Association (BMAA), which along with the Light Aircraft Association (LAA) is collating information about the thefts in the U.K. These facts certainly point to the possibility that Tehran has been getting at least some of its drone engines by having operatives systemically literally rip them out of aircraft in foreign countries.
“Over the years, many Rotax engines have been stolen from light aircraft in the UK,” Jerry Parr, LAA’s head of airworthiness told The War Zone Tuesday in an email. “To the best of my knowledge, there has never been any proof as to where the engines end up or for what purpose.”
Investigators in Norway are also looking into what is being considered sophisticated thefts of Rotax 912 engines.
Ukrainian authorities recently discovered a Rotax 912 four-stroke piston engine in an Iranian Mohajer-6 medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle downed over the Black Sea earlier this month. You can read much more about that here.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/bizarre-theft-wave-targets-same-
rotax-engines-used-in-iranian-drones
When Iran has no more stolen aircraft engines, Russia will have no more drones in Ukraine.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Russia might have to pay for what it has done, if the EU's lawyers decide it is legal.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND specializes in false narratives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
Raid Russia’s ‘huge pot of gold’? Europe grapples over confiscating frozen assets to pay for rebuilding Ukraine
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Germany does NOT want Russia to pay for the damage it does to Ukraine because Germany does NOT want to fully pay for the damage it did during WWII. Germans are a forgetful people. Forgetfulness is why Germans followed Hitler down the toilet. When what Hitler predicted previously did not happen, Germans only remembered Hitler's most recent glowing rhetoric. Putin has that same relationship with his followers because they don't remember the past so well, but are easily conned by glowing rhetoric in the present. Trump and his Trumptards have the same memory problems which Trump solves with the same glowing rhetoric as Putin would use. Trump kept a copy of Hitler's glowing speeches on his bedside table.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kep
t-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8
Quote:Holocaust Restitution: German Reparations -- Israeli Lawyers persisted until Germans had a slight inkling that they owed somebody for something that Germans had forgot all about.
Ivana Trump told a friend that her husband's cousin, John Walter "clicks his heels and says, 'Heil Hitler," when visiting Trump's office.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/german-holocaust-reparations
Under the agreement, West Germany undertook to pay a total of $845 million: $100 million earmarked for allocation by the Claims Conference and the remainder to Israel. Direct compensation would be paid in annual installments over a period of 14 years (between April 1, 1953, and March 31, 1966). The money to Israel was split - 30 percent was to pay for Israel’s crude oil purchases in the United Kingdom and with the balance of 70 percent Israel was to buy ferrous and nonferrous metals, steel, chemical, industrial, and agricultural products from Germany.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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There's like 5 Ukraine flags left up on Twitter on October 26th of 2022.
Nobody gives a shit. Nobody ever really did. They've all moved on.
You and Ted are alone.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Ukrainians know that Russians will kill them and steal their land. Russians have stolen other lands, starting before WWII, but the Russians lost what was stolen when the Soviet Union fell apart. People who aren't as stupid as 6ixStringJack know that Putin is planning on stealing the same lands a second time and killing the people living there. That simple plan worked for Stalin and Putin believes it can work for himself:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
There's like 5 Ukraine flags left up on Twitter on October 26th of 2022.
Nobody gives a shit. Nobody ever really did. They've all moved on.
You and Ted are alone.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
History Stokes Putin’s Dream of a ‘Greater Russia’
Putin published “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” an essay that denies the historical reality of any Ukrainian statehood separate from a greater Russia.
These imperial ideas are of course not new. They were originally propagated by Russia’s ruling elite and intelligentsia in the 19th century, and Putin revived them privately among his inner circle as early as his coming to power. Since then, these concepts have gained popularity across the political spectrum.
https://newlinesmag.com/argument/history-stokes-putins-dream-of-a-grea
ter-russia/
Putin built the Poseidon Nuclear Torpedo because he won't stop stealing land at the old borders of the Soviet Union. Putin will go beyond the piddling small dreams of Joseph Stalin all the way to America.
What is Russia's Poseidon nuclear torpedo drone, and can it cause a nuclear tsunami?
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-718938
Is Russia About to Launch Its Nuclear ‘Apocalypse’ Torpedo?
https://web.archive.org/web/20221022060930/https://www.popularmechanic
s.com/military/weapons/a37093942/russia-test-nuclear-apocalypse-torpedo-poseidon/
Poseidon Intercontinental Nuclear-Powered Nuclear-Armed Autonomous Torpedo drawing:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221021011934im_/https://hips.hearstapps.
com/hmg-prod/images/ru-poseidon-updatedfeb2019-2100x1100-1664999005.jpeg
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I see SECOND is splattering the board with yet MORE false narratives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:How about this narrative? The invasion of Ukraine is driven by an imperial nostalgia that haunts Russia’s elite classes and those who remember the Soviet Union. But the majority of the population is basically an exhausted people. They just want to go on with their lives. The imperial vision is working with an older generation in Russia. But younger people are not buying it.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I see SECOND is splattering the board with yet MORE false narratives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
Ultimately, Putin’s Russia refuses to properly define itself as a modern nation. Its current identity relies on historical claims on lands that lie outside Russia’s borders. One of Putin’s (and Russia’s) greatest lies is to speak of the former empire as if it was the Russian national state. But Ukraine only threatens Russian imperial control, not Russians.
https://newlinesmag.com/argument/history-stokes-putins-dream-of-a-grea
ter-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 second:Quote:How about this narrative?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I see SECOND is splattering the board with yet MORE false narratives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
Any narrative that you are in agreement with isn't worth the time to read, let alone debate.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:
Why Ukraine is always winning the war
October 25, 2022
by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker blog
In the United States media editorial policy has not wavered on one subject this year: Ukraine is always winning the war.
From the first week, when the Ukrainian air force and navy were smashed, to last week’s smashing of the electrical grid – this is what “victory” looks like in the Ukrainian language, apparently. The Russians can electorally incorporate territory after territory, but to suggest that Ukrainian victory hasn’t already arrived is verboten in American public spaces.
What is the point of reading American coverage of the unrest in Ukraine when it’s so very absurd?
The point is: to learn what America is thinking, of course. If it’s deluded then – like it or not – that’s the story, and the story always writes itself in honest journalism.
I was talking with a Polish cab driver whom I found extremely intelligent, and not only because he has an Iranian brother-in-law and thus knew and respected Iranian culture. This longtime immigrant cabbie was very pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian, which is his right and not unexpected, and he was a typical Pole in that he was ardently pro-American. However, he volunteered to me that he found Americans to be the most effectively propagandised people in the world – he said they, invariably, merely mouthed whatever they heard on TV news.
It is one thing to dismiss the criticism of your enemies, but the criticisms of your friends merit some refection.
[Winning] is happy news for Americans to talk about, after all: “Hey, did you hear? The Ukrainians are winning the war! Still!” However, it is my role in the US to be a wet blanket whenever discussions turn political, I lament.
When the subject of Ukraine comes up I start with the fact that I have lived in France for over the past decade and – because France is usually at the heart of European diplomacy – I have been reporting on the Ukraine unrest since 2014. At the mention of the idea that Ukraine existed before February 2022 a glaze goes over their eyes.
...
The US was always winning the war in Iraq, as well. Shock and awe prevailed from start to finish, with the finish being a total shock at how few positives the US-led war created for either the Iraqis or the Americans. The indisputable fact of the American victory, however: totally awesome, of course.
The Balkanised disaster which is Libya? Another victory. Assad still standing in Syria? Still a victory, though don’t ask for explanations. Cold wars in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Nicaragua and any other revolutionary country? Victory is so close the US media can see it, they insist.
These foolish political mis-notions cannot be blamed on the average American: all these places are so far away and so far removed from the totally precarious daily rat race/shooting gallery which is American life, and the information they can find is so incredibly one-sided.
...
The crime committed by the average American is neither malice nor negligence but the fault of naiveté – their expectation that a media dominated by private and not public ownership will ever consistently produce journalism which benefits the people and not the rich owners Call it Western Liberal Democracy or the American Way or neoliberalism: history shows that it has always failed, is failing and will only fail for the 99%.
The US media and politicians know which levers to pull to produce naiveté: note how it’s always the “Ukrainian people” against “Putin” – there are no Russian people. Putin, of course, is not an actual person either – he’s a monster.
Which side could a busy soccer mom possibly be expected to take, especially when trying to have pleasant chit-chat with other busy soccer moms? Why, the only American thing to do is to buy that $25 pro-Ukraine scented candle and display it proudly for others to envy….
In the United Stat
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Quote:The secret is that Russia is ALWAYS WINNING despite the superficial appearance it is losing:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why Ukraine is always winning the war
Edited for brevity
Abandoned Russian base holds secrets of retreat in Ukraine
Reuters reports:
The Russian soldiers had fled weeks before. But they left their traces everywhere.
Concrete steps led into the basement of their hastily abandoned headquarters in this small riverside town in eastern Ukraine. A bunker smelling of damp lay behind a steel door marked “Command Group.” Papers, some charred, were stuffed into a furnace. Others were scattered across the floor.
In a floral notebook, an unnamed staff officer left a sketch of a cartoon soldier and mused about going home. The book’s 91 handwritten pages contained other information, too: coordinates of Russian intelligence units, records of calls from commanders, details of battles, men killed and equipment destroyed. And accounts of a breakdown in morale and discipline.
In all, the bunker yielded thousands of pages of documents. Reuters reviewed more than a thousand of them. They detail the inner workings of the Russian military and shed new light on events leading up to one of President Vladimir Putin’s most stinging battlefield defeats: Russia’s chaotic retreat from Ukraine’s northeast in September.
In the weeks before that defeat, Russian forces were struggling with surveillance and electronic warfare. They were using off-the-shelf drones flown by barely trained soldiers. Their equipment for jamming Ukrainian communications was often out of action. By the end of August, the documents show, the force was depleted, hit by death, desertions and combat stress. Two units – accounting for about a sixth of the total force – were operating at 20% of their full strength.
The documents also reveal the increasing effectiveness of Ukraine’s forces and offer clues to how the eight-month-old war might unfold, with Russia now under intense pressure on the southern front around the Black Sea coast. In the weeks before their retreat, Russian forces around Balakliia, a town 90 kilometres south of Kharkiv, came under heavy bombardment from HIMARS rocket launchers, recently supplied by the United States. The precision missiles repeatedly hit command posts.
More at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-rus
sia-base/
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 military Keynesianism
The Kremlin’s strategy to redistribute wealth through the war effort may boost its legitimacy.
by Volodymyr Ishchenko
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/10/26/russias-military-keynesi
anism
. . . More repression is not the only option for Putin and is not the only basis of his regime. To understand the other direction he could take, it is important to look at the political economy dimension of recent developments.
When declaring the “partial” mobilisation, Putin emphasised that drafted Russian soldiers would be paid the same as the contract soldiers who have been the backbone of the Russian forces in Ukraine so far. This means they should be paid at least $3,000 per month, depending on military rank, bonuses, insurance and a generous welfare package. This is about five to six times higher than the median wage in Russia. Drafting 300,000, let alone more than one million soldiers – as some media reports have claimed may be the real target – would necessitate the redistribution of billions of dollars from the Russian state budget.
There were reports of chaos in the payment arrangements in the first weeks since the start of mobilisation. However, at an October 19 meeting of Russia’s Security Council, Putin ordered that all problems with military wages be resolved, showing that the high remuneration for mobilised soldiers and support for their families is an important part of his strategy.
Add to that the money flowing to the reconstruction of the ruined Mariupol and other heavily destroyed Ukrainian cities in the newly annexed regions of southeastern Ukraine. Currently, workers from across Russia are recruited for the reconstruction effort and are offered double the amount they would make at home. Even a non-qualified construction worker receives more than $1,000 a month.
Recently, Russian deputy prime minister Marat Khusnullin said more than 30,000 Russian workers are employed in the reconstruction of occupied Ukrainian territories, and that the government plans to increase the number to 50,000-60,000.
In the next three years, the Russian budget is expected to allocate at least $6bn for the reconstruction of the newly annexed Ukrainian territories. How much of it will not be lost to Russian crony capitalism remains to be seen.
There are also a lot of funds flowing into the military-industrial complex. As demand for weapons and munitions has increased significantly, the number of workers, as well as wages, has grown. At least partially, the growth in the military-industrial complex compensates for the decline of production in the industries dependent on Western components and suffering from sanctions. In other sectors, employees who have been drafted into the army have left jobs to be filled by new workers, which decreases unemployment.
All in all, the state expenditure for “national defence” has already increased 43 percent from last year to this year and reached $74bn. A planned cut for 2023 has been scrapped and instead Moscow plans to spend some $80bn. The “national security and law enforcement” expenses are also expected to increase by 46 percent to $70bn next year.
Looking at all these developments, we see something like military Keynesianism taking shape in Russia. Millions of Russians who are either mobilised to fight in Ukraine, employed in reconstruction or in the military industry, or participating in the suppression of unrest in the occupied territories and at home, or are family members, have turned into direct beneficiaries of the war.
Among other things, this means the emergence of a positive feedback loop that did not really exist before. The Russian ruling elite started the war to pursue its own interests and it managed to get only ritual and passive support from the Russian population.
However, this redistribution of state wealth through the military effort is creating a new basis for more active and conscious support within a significant section of Russian society, which now has a material stake in the
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Fuck Ukraine.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Cross-posted from here
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=65340
THIS IS HOW I KNOW WE'RE LOSING IN UKRAINE (AND ELSEWHERE): PENTAGON’S STRATEGY WON’T RULE OUT NUCLEAR USE AGAINST NON-NUCLEAR THREATS
Since Bloomberg is behind a paywall, here is Zerohedge's version which links to Bloomberg BTW)
Quote:
In Stunning Strategy Reversal, Pentagon Will No Longer Rule Out Use Of Nuclear Weapons Against Non-Nuclear Threat
Thursday, Oct 27, 2022 - 09:05 AM
Well, we're finally there: stocks are officially trading off nuclear war headlines.
Moments ago, as part of his closely-watched speech, Vladimir Putin appeared to talk down the likelihood of a nuclear attack in Ukraine:
*PUTIN: NO POLITICAL, MILITARY REASON IN NUKE STRIKE IN UKRAINE
Which, however, is more than can be said about the US.
As Bloomberg just reported, the Pentagon's new National Defense Strategy rejects limits on using nuclear weapons long championed by arms control advocates (and, in the not too distant past, by Joe Biden) citing burgeoning threats from Russia and China.
“By the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries,” the Defense Department said in the long-awaited document issued Thursday. In response, the US will “maintain a very high bar for nuclear employment” without ruling out using the weapons in retaliation to a non-nuclear strategic threat to the homeland, US forces abroad or allies.
In yet another stark reversal for the senile occupant of the White House basement, in his 2020 presidential campaign Biden had pledged to declare that the US nuclear arsenal should be used only to deter or retaliate against a nuclear attack, a position blessed by progressive Democrats and reviled by defense hawks. But, like with every other position held by the pathological liar who even trumps Trump in the untruth department, this one has just been reversed as well as "the threat environment has changed dramatically since then" and the Pentagon strategy was forged in cooperation with the flip-flopping White House.
In a stunning move that should - or rather "should" - spark outrage among the so-called progressives but will at best prompt some very sternly retracted letters, the nuclear report that’s part of the broader strategy said the Biden administration reviewed its nuclear policy and concluded that “No First Use” and “Sole Purpose” policies “would result in an unacceptable level of risk in light of the range of non-nuclear capabilities being developed and fielded by competitors that could inflict strategic-level damage” to the US and allies.
The nuclear strategy document doesn’t spell out what non-nuclear threats could produce a US nuclear response, but current threats include hypersonic weapons possessed by Russia and China for which the US doesn’t yet have a proven defense.
It does spell out, however, in the strongest terms, what would happen to another nuclear power, North Korea, if it launched a nuclear attack on the US, South Korea or Japan. That action “will result in the end of that regime,” it says. US nuclear weapons continue to play a role in deterring North Korean attacks.
So, the brilliant neocon minds behind the report concluded, it is better to instill the fear of a disproportionate nuclear retaliation, thus making an outright nuclear attack far more likely (if the US will nuke you anyway, may as well go all out).
In the document, which was framed well before the invasion, the Pentagon says Russia continues to “brandish its nuclear weapons in support of its revisionist
I think they mean "revanchist"*, but as that word is hardly known to the USA public, they found a replacment word that doesn'
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Quote:An example of a non-nuclear threat:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Cross-posted from here
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=65340
THIS IS HOW I KNOW WE'RE LOSING IN UKRAINE (AND ELSEWHERE): PENTAGON’S STRATEGY WON’T RULE OUT NUCLEAR USE AGAINST NON-NUCLEAR THREATS
Russia warns West: We can target your commercial satellites
https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-says-wests-commercial-satellites-
could-be-targets-2022-10-27/
More non-nuclear examples: sinking Liquefied Natural Gas tankers going to the EU. It doesn't have to be LNG. It could be any old kind of ocean transport or even airplanes with passengers. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-court-announce-ruling-mh17-
murder-trial-nov-17-2022-08-15/
One more example that is my favorite: Russia releases the same amount of natural gas into the atmosphere that Europe was buying from Russia before Russia refused to deliver the gas. Putin could say that he has an excess of gas he has to release and it is none of your business what Putin does to the climate of Siberia. If Putin wants Siberia warmer, that is Russia's right.
In his speech today, Putin reminded the West that he holds it responsible for every problem Russia has. The Russians are NOT at fault in any way, shape, or form. Putin quoted a 1978 Harvard lecture by Russian dissident and novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who launched a frontal assault on Western civilisation, decrying the hollow materialism and "the blindness of superiority" of the West. "Power over the world is what the so-called West has put on the line in its game - but the game is dangerous, bloody and I would say dirty," said Putin. "The sower of the wind, as they say, will reap the storm."
https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-says-west-is-playing-dangerous-blo
ody-dirty-game-2022-10-27/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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And you think those are worth a nuclear response?
Well, I always knew you were an America-hating dick. Now it look like you hate all of humanity.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And you think those are worth a nuclear response?
Well, I always knew you were a dick.
That's putting it lightly.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Cross-posted from here
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=65340
Quote:
THIS IS HOW I KNOW WE'RE LOSING IN UKRAINE (AND ELSEWHERE): PENTAGON’S STRATEGY WON’T RULE OUT NUCLEAR USE AGAINST NON-NUCLEAR THREATS
What our neocons have done so far
Sanctions war (failed to implode Russia's economy and cause regime change in Moscow).
Cross-border military support (Insufficient. And the Pentagon knew it.)
Monetary support (going to end soon).
Intelligence sharing
"Volunteers" and military intel officers in Ukraine
"Dirty bomb" false flag planning
Been posting for MONTHS that the combined USA/NATO conventional forces were insufficient.
Gonna hand out "I told you so's" from time to time.
The reason you guys fucked up?
?-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:The possibility of a strongly worded United Nations resolution condemning Russia for destroying every commercial satellite system, except for Russian satellites, would absolutely deter Russia. The pen is mightier than the sword. Putin is terrified of displeasing the UN more than being nuked.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And you think those are worth a nuclear response?
Well, I always knew you were an America-hating dick. Now it look like you hate all of humanity.
Russia’s Anti-Satellite Weapons
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-03/features/russias-anti-satellit
e-weapons-asymmetric-response-us-aerospace-superiority
Russia threatens a retaliatory strike against US commercial satellites
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/russia-threatens-a-retaliatory
-strike-against-us-commercial-satellites/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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SECOND, Russia has had the capability of destroying our satellites for a decade now. The fact that they have not utterly destroyed us is due to their restraint, not our strength.
Grow the fuck up.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Just yesterday, Russia threatened to destroy SpaceX satellites because Ukraine was connected to those satellites. Just before Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia demonstrated how it could destroy SpaceX satellites or anybody who displeased Putin. Perhaps a stern warning from the UN would work better than nukes, but I'm unsure if Putin reads warning labels before he acts. Some forms of communication that don't use words work far better with people, such as Putin, who don't understand written words. Possibly Putin has a severe learning disorder.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, . . .
Grow the fuck up.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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