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Originally posted by THGR: Opinions are useless without fact backing them up.

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Yep! And that's exactly why your posts and SECOND's are useless. (Oh, and BTW your "facts" need to be backed up by... what is that word, again? Oh yeah: Evidence[/]. Otherwise your "facts" are just opinion.)

But, yanno, time will tell who is right and who is wrong.
I doubt either of you will be man enough to admit that you're wrong bc you haven't been so far.



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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by THGR: Opinions are useless without fact backing them up.

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Yep! And that's exactly why your posts and SECOND's are useless. (Oh, and BTW your "facts" need to be backed up by... what is that word, again? Oh yeah: Evidence. Otherwise your "facts" are just opinion.)

But, yanno, time will tell who is right and who is wrong.
I doubt either of you will be man enough to admit that you're wrong bc you haven't been so far.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh piffle.

Yanno who REALLY influenced the election? Britain's MI6 and ex-intelligence, and the FBI
Seriously, SECOND, out of the hundreds of millions of tweets and hundreds of millions of FB posts about the election, how many can be unambiguously traced to Russia?

You probably don't know. Neither does Mueller. But I bet you'd need a microscope to find that needle in that ginormous haystack.

How stupid do you think we are?

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Originally posted by second:
The other nuclear threat you might have missed from Putin’s speech

Easy to miss in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech to parliament last week was a glancing reference to the possibility of Russia resuming nuclear testing.

In a surprise move, Putin said that Russia was ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the US conducted one first.

While most of the media focus has been on Russia suspending its participation in the New START nuclear arms treaty, this announcement was just as significant, with potentially devastating consequences.

It would signify a further step towards escalation in Ukraine by demonstrating Russia’s intent to use nuclear weapons and could begin another, more devastating, nuclear arms race.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/opinions/russia-nuclear-test-putin-mess
mer/index.html

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NBC Reporter Goes To Crimea, Shocks Viewers By Telling The Truth
Mainstream media correspondents for major US networks rarely, if ever, report from inside Crimea and certainly are nowhere near Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine. However, this week NBC News chief international correspondent Keir Simmons went to Sevastopol, surrounded by a significant Russian military presence given it is home to the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet, and in a live segment admitted that it's not at all realistic Zelensky and Ukrainian forces can ever hope to take Crimea.

This is especially as the "the people there... view themselves as Russian." Simmons noted that "This is the closest that any US news crew has got to the Russian Black Sea Fleet in many many years." He explained that "Vladimir Putin will be determined to defend that port - to not have it take it away from him - he may well do pretty much anything to try to achieve that."

BREAKING: NBC News / MSNBC concedes that Zelensky’s goal of retaking Crimea is unrealistic and dangerous.pic.twitter.com/fb2RCRBHOn
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) March 1, 2023

"It is a very, very dangerous standoff.. it's hard to see how you reach a negotiation over that. There's military absolutely everywhere, it is a military town," he continued, before saying...

"When for example Victoria Nuland talks about that at the very least we [the US] want Crimea to be demilitarized, I find myself standing there and wondering, how on earth does that happen?"

Ukrainian officials and pro-Kyiv media pundits are said to be outraged at the segment, given it repeatedly and bluntly referenced that Crimeans see themselves as Russians. Even a separate write-up filed days earlier from inside Crimea and posted to NBC's website included the following:

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A view from Crimea, the Russian-annexed territory Ukraine is hoping to seize back
By Keir Simmons, Natasha Lebedeva and Tatyana Chistikova NBC

SEVASTOPOL, Crimea —
...
Crimea is a territory teeming with Russian forces.
Nowhere is that truer than in Sevastopol, a city that has long embodied naval might in the Russian imagination.

Fishermen watch as Russia’s Black Sea Fleet docks and sails. “Special Military Operation for the future of Russia,” a billboard declares en route to the port. Sevastopol’s “Victory” cinema now also sports a massive Z. Roads like Lenin Street are lined with red, white and blue Russian Federation flags.

This is not Russia...

But Praskovya Baranova, 73, speaks Russian, feels Russian and lives here.
"This is our land,” she said Monday. “We will all put on uniforms and will go to the border to defend ourselves.”Her comments echoed those of most people NBC News spoke to in Crimea this week. While the government of President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on free speech everywhere,

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including in Crimea, the peninsula’s majority Russian-speaking population was considered more pro-Moscow than in other parts of Ukraine when it was annexed.

...
But Zelenskyy has said Crimea is one of the reasons he wants more powerful weapons from the United States and NATO. “Crimea is our land, our territory,” he said in January. "Give us your weapons — we will return what is ours." And if Ukraine does try to take the peninsula back by force as its leaders have promised, many of the 2.4 million people living here will be caught in the middle.

“He wouldn’t take it,” Ruslan Nalgiev, 36, said. “Even if there is a war here, we would still defend Sevastopol. Because, if we don’t defend our motherland, we would become slaves. No one wants to become a slave.”
...
Doubts persist, however, about whether the U.S. and other allies are willing to give Ukraine the firepower it may need for such an ambitious operation — especially given the Kremlin’s stance that Crimea represents a red line.

“The question of Crimea, and the question of what happens down the road, is something that we will come to,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland recently said that "at the very least, Crimea needs to be demilitarized," though she didn’t say how that could be done.

Sevastopol is steeped in Russian military culture. It even has a Russian army store with toy tanks, Kalashnikovs and artillery for kids. For adults, it stocks clothes with “Victory is ours” emblazoned on them.

With war just a few hundred miles away, there are now makeshift signs for the nearest basement in Sevastopol.

Diana Galastyan, 26, denies that the Russian authorities may be trying to scare people. “No one imposes fear on us. No one is saying to us that it will be scary. Nothing like that. They don’t plant fear in us.”

Still, fear lives here if you look for it.

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;A U.N. committee recently accused Russia

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In the historically Tatar town of Bakhchisarai, Olga, who declined to give her last name, broke down in tears when she talked about the war.

“All mothers are crying. Both Russian and Ukrainian mothers are crying,” she said. “Why did it even start? Can’t we all live in peace? Can’t we just share this piece of bread in two halves?”

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Schrodinger’s Offensive
A ramble about force design, Moldova, and a fortress on the steppe
Big Serge
Mar 1
Winter War on the Steppe

Where is the big Russian offensive? This is, at the moment, the million dollar question that inevitably intrudes on any discussion of the war’s current course. It is probably not surprising (to those of us that are familiar with human nature, at least) that this question becomes a Rorschach test in which everybody sees their own prior assumptions about the Russian military.

The answers to this question do indeed vary widely. On one extreme, there are those who believe that hundreds of thousands of Russian troops are prepared to launch an enormous “big arrow” offensive at any moment. We see this both from commentators like retired US Colonel Douglas MacGregor and from some Ukrainian sources who are likely trying to foment a sense of urgency to extract more aid from the west. On the other extreme, we have those who claim that the Russian military is so depleted that there will be no offensive at any point whatsoever. There are also some in the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda western intelligentsia, like the Nuland Institute for the Study of War or Michael Koffman, who argue that the offensive has already begun but is so lame and weak that nobody noticed.

Okay. So either a giant offensive will happen any minute now (it might have just started while I was typing that), or it will never happen at all, or it already happened, or perhaps it’s in a state of quantum superposition in which it has both succeeded and failed, at least until we open the box.

A thorny issue indeed. There is, at the moment, a great deal of important and intense combat occurring in many different sectors of front - but what relation do these operations have to any big arrow action by the Russians? Is this an underwhelming entrée or an appetizer?

I would like to suggest an alternative to all these theories, because what the world needs most right now is more opinions.

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At the moment, Russia has the initiative across the front. Ukraine’s reserves are in a tenuous state right now (especially given their politically imposed mandate to try and accumulate a force for an offensive against the land bridge to Crimea), and Russia is driving high intensity combat in important sectors right now.

These operations, I would argue, serve three different purposes at once. First and foremost, they are valuable shaping operations in their own right that have important implications for launching future operations. Secondly, they function essentially as spoiling attacks in that they keep the burn rate at the front high and degrade Ukraine’s ability to form reserves. As a sort of metaphor for this, there are already rumors that some of Ukraine’s new Leopard tanks will be sent into combat around Bakhmut rather than held in reserve for a future offensive. Whether the Leopard rumor is true or not, in manpower terms Ukraine continues to pump units into Bakhmut in an unconscionable waste of men. Third and finally, all the combat in the east is occurring under an umbrella where Russia’s supply lines and ISR are robust, creating conditions where Ukraine continues to trade at abysmal loss ratios.

The synthesis of all these points is that Russia is currently driving the attrition of the Ukrainian army and denying Ukraine any chance at regaining operational initiative, while at the same time pursuing important shaping objectives. I believe this is occurring against the backdrop of moderate, but not catastrophic organizational disorder and restructuring in the Russian armed forces, which are delaying its readiness to launch a large scale offensive. In other words, the current pace of Russian operations supports the overall attrition of Ukrainian manpower and implies that there is no need to rush an ambitious operation until organizational issues have been sorted out.

In the remainder of this space, I’d like to examine what these organizational considerations are and examine two of the ongoing Russian operations (the Ugledar and Kreminna axes), looking at them on a fairly granular scale. We’ll also briefly touch on the bizarre rumors of an immanent widening of the war towards Moldova.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by second:
The other nuclear threat you might have missed from Putin’s speech

Easy to miss in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech to parliament last week was a glancing reference to the possibility of Russia resuming nuclear testing.

In a surprise move, Putin said that Russia was ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the US conducted one first.

While most of the media focus has been on Russia suspending its participation in the New START nuclear arms treaty, this announcement was just as significant, with potentially devastating consequences.

It would signify a further step towards escalation in Ukraine by demonstrating Russia’s intent to use nuclear weapons and could begin another, more devastating, nuclear arms race.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/opinions/russia-nuclear-test-putin-mess
mer/index.html

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OMG!!!
Russia might resume nuclear testing if we start testing first!!!

/snicker

Do you realize what a ninny you sound like?

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Big Serge is an infrequent poster but ALWAYS worth reading.
AND with a sense of humor!
MORE AT https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-schrodingers

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Big Serge is an infrequent poster but ALWAYS worth reading.
AND with a sense of humor!
MORE AT https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-schrodingers

SECOND: Eliot Cohen is an infrequent poster with zero sense of humor and is always worth reading. He wrote:

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The Shortest Path to Peace

Supporting and arming Ukraine, and accelerating the collapse of the Russian military, is the most realistic way to end the conflict.

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Hahaha!
He IS funny!
/snark

*****

He stupid.


Altho I WILL say that I did hear about a study that claimed the most durable civil war conflict resolutions leading to the longest peace are ones in which one side is thoroughly trounced. So maybe the real answer is for Russia to obliterate Ukraine.

Not sure if that's correct: Germany was thoroughly trounced in WWI but the terms of peace were so onerous that they led almost immediately (historically speaking) to WWII. OTOH Germany and Japan were destroyed in WWII but forced to rebuild in the American model, with their political and military establishments neutered and THAT'S led to a lasting peace.

Maybe Ukraine needs to be neutered.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Hahaha!
He IS funny!
/snark

*****

He stupid.


Altho I WILL say that I did hear about a study that claimed the most durable civil war conflict resolutions leading to the longest peace are ones in which one side is thoroughly trounced. So maybe the real answer is for Russia to obliterate Ukraine.

Not sure if that's correct: Germany was thoroughly trounced in WWI but the terms of peace were so onerous that it led to WWII. OTOH Germany and Japan were destroyed in WWII but forced to rebuild in the American model, with their political and military establishments neutered and THAT'S led to a lasting peace.

Maybe Ukraine needs to be neutered.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And you* pretend that your* goal isn't to destroy Russia?

OMFG you're such a liar. Nobody can believe a word you post, you contradict yourself (i.e. lie) every post.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Russia has no intention of invading Estonia, unless Estonia seriously prepares to invade Russia first. And that would be so suicidal on Estonia's part that they would have to go nationally nuts to do that.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Russia has no intention of invading Estonia, unless Estonia seriously prepares to invade Russia first. And that would be so suicidal on Estonia's part that they would have to go nationally nuts to do that.

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The Prime Minister of Estonia finds your promises so very reassuring. Actually, the PM doesn't, which is why joined NATO. That is also why Estonia supports Ukraine.

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

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Russia has no intention of invading Estonia, unless Estonia seriously prepares to invade Russia first. And that would be so suicidal on Estonia's part that they would have to go nationally nuts to do that.

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The Prime Minister of Estonia finds your promises so very reassuring. Actually, the PM doesn't, which is why joined NATO. That is also why Estonia supports Ukraine.

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

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That's easy to do. It's not the Estonian men being sent to their death for NATO, just like Ted isn't being sent to his death for NATO.

Maybe they have cute little "Estonia Supports Ukraine" bumper stickers on their cars like the one Ted's been driving around with for a year.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's a good thing that "NATO" troops aren't in Ukraine and "NATO" weapons aren't in Ukraine bc that way there will be no deaths of foreign soldiers and no destroyed foreign equipment.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's a good thing that "NATO" troops aren't in Ukraine and "NATO" weapons aren't in Ukraine bc that way there will be no deaths of foreign soldiers and no destroyed foreign equipment.

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Yeah. And, yanno... That would be starting WWIII if we stop pretending that Ukraine is just defending itself and they made it all official like.

But try explaining that to either of the two inbreeders left in the RWED here that have been bouncing on Ukrainian flagpoles while jerking each other off for the last 365 days.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's a good thing that "NATO" troops aren't in Ukraine and "NATO" weapons aren't in Ukraine bc that way there will be no deaths of foreign soldiers and no destroyed foreign equipment.

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Yeah. And, yanno... That would be starting WWIII if we stop pretending that Ukraine is just defending itself and they made it all official like.

But try explaining that to either of the two inbreeders left in the RWED here that have been bouncing on Ukrainian flagpoles while jerking each other off for the last 365 days.

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The Russians murdered 4,000,000 Ukrainians in the Holodomor, a word derived from 'to kill by starvation' and the Russians are doing it again:

Kherson torture centers were planned by the Russian state, say lawyers

The lawyers said on Thursday they had investigated 20 torture chambers in Kherson and concluded they were part of a “calculated plan to terrorize, subjugate and eliminate Ukrainian resistance and destroy Ukrainian identity”.

“The mass torture chambers, financed by the Russian state, are not random but rather part of a carefully thought-out and financed blueprint with a clear objective to eliminate Ukrainian national and cultural identity,” said the British barrister Wayne Jordash, who is leading the team.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/02/kherson-torture-centres-
were-planned-by-russian-state-say-lawyers

Attorney General Merrick Garland made an unannounced trip to Ukraine on Friday, according to a Justice Department official, his second trip to the country after Russia invaded a little more than a year ago.

On Wednesday, Garland testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he believed the Russian government was committing crimes against humanity and said the Justice Department supports efforts by The Hague to investigate and prosecute those crimes.

The attorney general last went to Ukraine in June. During that trip, Garland announced that he was appointing Eli Rosenbaum, the top US so-called “Nazi hunter,” to lead a Justice Department team to identify and prosecute war criminals.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/03/politics/merrick-garland-ukraine/

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

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I huess this is "later".

I've been trying to figure out how people can get "stuck" on certain ideas. I know that there are probably pathological emotional factors at work- SECOND blames Nixon, and by extension all Republicans, Trump voters ("Trumptards") and anyone who might be a Trump supporter for every evil thing he's done in his life, beginning wth Vietnam. The guy's got some deep twist in his mental makeup. And THUGR, AFAIK, is still trying to prove to "somebody" that he's military-worthy material. . . .

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
For the longest time, I saw everything thru the lens of "efficiency". I assumed that the most "efficient" organism/economy/society would outcompete, survive and evolve. I thought I was looking at something fundamental and inescapable. It wasn't until I realized that pefectly adapated highly efficient systems are fragile and don't survive shock that that assumptiopn fell away. And I go there by looking at nature, which tossed up a multitude of creatures that ALMOST fill the same niche ... diversity and redundancy creates robustness which out-survives efficency.

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Originally posted by second:
I have not done anything evil in my life

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When I see a Trumptard struggling to stay in the middle-class, 6ixStringJack for example, I blame them for their problems.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's what I thought.

Enjoy the weekend because it's back to work on Monday for you, drone.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

It's a good thing that "NATO" troops aren't in Ukraine and "NATO" weapons aren't in Ukraine bc that way there will be no deaths of foreign soldiers and no destroyed foreign equipment.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's what I thought.

Enjoy the weekend because it's back to work on Monday for you, drone.

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Social Security pays me $4,555 on the third Wednesday of each month.

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We've been through this before. No it doesn't.



You're also unmarried and don't have any kids. Not by choice, but because nobody in real life can stomach you either.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I guess this is "later".

I've been trying to figure out how people can get "stuck" on certain ideas. I know that there are probably pathological emotional factors at work- SECOND blames Nixon, and by extension all Republicans, Trump voters ("Trumptards") and anyone who might be a Trump supporter for every evil thing he's done in his life, beginning wth Vietnam. The guy's got some deep twist in his mental makeup. And THUGR, AFAIK, is still trying to prove to "somebody" that he's military-worthy material. . . .

SECOND: Signym, you are confused. I have not done anything evil in my life,

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's what I thought.
Enjoy the weekend because it's back to work on Monday for you, drone.


SECOND: Social Security pays me $4,555 on the third Wednesday of each month.

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The maximum benefit depends on the age you retire. For example, if you retire at full retirement age in 2023, your maximum benefit would be $3,627.

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SECOND: My wife will get the same after her 70th birthday.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM: It's a good thing that "NATO" troops aren't in Ukraine and "NATO" weapons aren't in Ukraine bc that way there will be no deaths of foreign soldiers and no destroyed foreign equipment.


THUGR: Right, there are no NATO troops in Ukraine. As for NATO weapons, there are plenty with more on the way. Try to keep up comrade.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's what I thought.
Enjoy the weekend because it's back to work on Monday for you, drone.


SECOND: Social Security pays me $4,555 on the third Wednesday of each month.

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Not according to Social Security...

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The maximum benefit depends on the age you retire. For example, if you retire at full retirement age in 2023, your maximum benefit would be $3,627.

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https://faq.ssa.gov/en-US/Topic/article/KA-01897

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SECOND: My wife will get the same after her 70th birthday.

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Your fictitious wife gets the same fictitious payment?
I guess "she" goes along with your fictitious children.

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Originally posted by second:

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by THGR: Opinions are useless without fact backing them up.

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Yep! And that's exactly why your posts and SECOND's are useless. (Oh, and BTW your "facts" need to be backed up by... what is that word, again? Oh yeah: Evidence. Otherwise your "facts" are just opinion.)

But, yanno, time will tell who is right and who is wrong.
I doubt either of you will be man enough to admit that you're wrong bc you haven't been so far.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Oh piffle.

Yanno who REALLY influenced the election? Britain's MI6 and ex-intelligence, and the FBI
Seriously, SECOND, out of the hundreds of millions of tweets and hundreds of millions of FB posts about the election, how many can be unambiguously traced to Russia?

You probably don't know. Neither does Mueller. But I bet you'd need a microscope to find that needle in that ginormous haystack.

How stupid do you think we are?

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