REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Thursday, October 31, 2024 13:46
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Saturday, March 4, 2023 7:43 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

He cuts and pastes all of his info from Google. He's too stupid and/or inept to even push back at you on that one even though he could have. If he was 70 years old in 2023 AND got the maximum benefits AND waited until he was 70 to retire, it would be $4555. He's not and he doesn't and he didn't, but notice how he went back to ignoring us when he thought he was made an ass of again.



This is all moot for 2 reasons anyhow...

1. We've already debunked Second's Social Security fantasy a few months back and either he's forgotten that happened or he thinks we did.

2. I'll be just fine with my $816 per month social security the second I'm old enough to take it and I'm just as impressed with any rich people getting $4555 per month in retirement as I am anybody making 6 or 7 figures at their jobs right now. Which is to say not at all.


6ix proved he has only gotten to be a bigger asshole as he gets older.

6ix commented, twice, on following, nine years apart:

This Kinda Puts A Kink Into Obama's Muslim Outreach Initiative For NASA http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=57563

1) Wednesday, February 26, 2014 8:16 PM 6IXSTRINGJACK

The Germans are so jealous of Mars. Pretty much everyone in the world is jealous of Mars.

The only reason that Muslims aren't allowed on Mars is because America hasn't conquered it and set up an Embassy.

True.

2) Friday, March 3, 2023 7:34 PM 6IXSTRINGJACK

Could we put them all on a rocket and send it to the sun?

Ew... The sun would smell like curry. You can't ever get that smell out.

The best example of 6ix being an asshole, and using the fewest words, is when he writes "Fuck Ukraine." The worst example is 6ix stealing from his dead grandmother. He is smart enough not to admit in writing to screwing his relatives, but he is doing it. Now I expect him to be all upset about that accusation, just like Russians are about accusations of stealing in Ukraine, but 6ix and Russians can’t prove they are honest. When circumstances allow them to be crooks, Russians and 6ix take advantage because of their poverty.

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=65350&mid=11702
57#1170257


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

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Saturday, March 4, 2023 10:24 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


I'm not upset about your accusation because it's entirely false.

My old man wanted nothing at all from the house or the garage. Ditto on my Uncle and his family, except for my cousin who still needs to go through all the paintings that were hung up in the house before they go to goodwill. My uncle already cleared out anything he wanted from the garage last year except for a white cabinet that was stuffed to the gills. I've laid that all out on the workbench for him to sift through before it goes out, and with a cursory look the other day he said it was all junk. My aunt just went through the two dinette cabinets today and got the fine china and real silverware she wanted and has the rest out on the floor to pack up for goodwill. She just got 7 totes of things she wanted over to her apartment tonight. All she really cared about was the Christmas stuff, an antique music box, some cool stained glass pieces and the family photos.

Aside from a lot of wood that I took for my workshop, all I've got is a solid wood bookcase from back in the days when they didn't use pressed shit, a bench vice and an antique drill press. All of which I asked my uncle if he wanted first.

There's nothing but junk in that house. I started clearing it out with my deceased uncle when I was 11 years old and we're finally finishing the job this month.


My family is grateful to me for doing all of this work over the last year so they don't have to worry about any of it before they put it on the market.

I'm a fuckin' hero right now.




And get my grandma's name out of your fucking mouth, worm.

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

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

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Saturday, March 4, 2023 10:25 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


P.S. Your SS story is still a lie.

And you know it.




P.P.S. Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 3:05 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
He cuts and pastes all of his info from Google. He's too stupid and/or inept to even push back at you on that one even though he could have. If he was 70 years old in 2023 AND got the maximum benefits AND waited until he was 70 to retire, it would be $4555. He's not and he doesn't and he didn't, but notice how he went back to ignoring us when he thought he was made an ass of again.



This is all moot for 2 reasons anyhow...

1. We've already debunked Second's Social Security fantasy a few months back and either he's forgotten that happened or he thinks we did.

2. I'll be just fine with my $816 per month social security the second I'm old enough to take it and I'm just as impressed with any rich people getting $4555 per month in retirement as I am anybody making 6 or 7 figures at their jobs right now. Which is to say not at all.



SECOND: 6ix proved he has only gotten to be a bigger asshole as he gets older.
...The worst example is 6ix stealing from his dead grandmother.

It's amazing how off the mark SECOND can be, innit? I'm surprised he manages to put his shoes on n the AM. Or maybe they don't allow shoes in the psych ward.


Meanwhile ... Bakhmut will be taken by Russia soon. Tens of thousans of Ukie soldiers ahve been killed there. Kiev forces are under pressure across the whole northern front and there is fighting near Ugledar. Rumor is that Russia is preparing an offensive from Zaparhozye, which is (some say) the location that Ukraine was going to attack in their long-discussed "spring offensive". And the Russian conscripts haven't even been fielded. Yet.


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


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Sunday, March 5, 2023 7:26 AM

SECOND

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


Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin by Andrew S. Weiss

When I was thirteen years old, Ronald Reagan became president. All his tough talk about the Soviet Union being the Evil Empire sounded like dangerous fearmongering. And to a rebellious teenager eager to escape Southern California, it was hard to think of anything more exotic than the U.S.S.R. So on my first day of college in 1986, I threw myself into studying Russian language and literature as well as a now-extinct academic discipline known as Sovietology.

The U.S.S.R.’s final leader, a fatally flawed man named Mikhail Gorbachev, had become an international darling for trying to reform the Communist system. What he didn’t appreciate was that brutality, dysfunction, and lies were actually the glue that kept the country together. By the time I arrived at Vladimir Putin’s alma mater in Leningrad as an exchange student in 1989, the mighty U.S.S.R. was starting to fall apart.

I started working at the Pentagon in summer 1991, on the eve of a failed coup by Soviet hard-liners. Just months later, the Soviet Union disappeared, and America’s relationship with Russia was transformed. The Pentagon was hungry for expertise on the twelve brand-new countries that had replaced the U.S.S.R., and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. At one point, the U.S. secretary of defense made a spur-of-the-moment decision to call his Russian counterpart, just to say hello, using a new secure telephone line. No one had made proper preparations, so I was hustled into his office at the last minute to be the translator. By the time I was thirty. I was going in and out of the Oval Office helping the president and his top advisers deal with their Russian counterparts.

Overconfident American officials kept saying the same thing to our new Russian friends: We were going to be partners, not adversaries. Yet Russia’s leaders quickly found that it had been a lot more fun being America’s enemy than our friend. With their country flat on its back, they resented being told to follow our lead. When the Russians did try to push back, they quickly realized how unequal our two countries’ partnership actually was and that they were antagonizing the very people in the West who were paying billions of dollars to keep Russia from collapsing.

The West’s hopes for Russia to make a successful transition to democracy and free markets turned out to be very unrealistic. Still, if you’d told me back then that a former mid-level KGB officer named Vladimir Putin, then forty-six years old, would be plucked from the back rooms of the Kremlin to run the country, I'd have told you to get your head examined. Yet there I was with President Bill Clinton on the August morning in 1999 when the Russians secretly informed him that Putin was going to be the country’s next president. Even then, no one on Clinton’s team could have imagined that Putin would eventually dominate Russia like a modern-day czar, let alone become one of the world’s most feared leaders.

Western experts like me would make plenty more mistakes in the decades that followed.

Even today, it’s not always easy to understand what drives Putin. A lot of what we think we know about him is the product of pop psychology and misreadings of Russia’s thousand-year-long history. Peeling all of that back is made harder by Putin's toughguy theatrics (prancing around bare-chested on horseback, acting like a villain from a James Bond movie, etc.), which have helped him seem more clever—and capable—than he actually is. As the political scientist Thomas Rid once wisely observed, “The Kremlin’s rulers are particularly adept at gaming elements of this new age, or at the very least are good at getting everyone to talk about how good they are, which could be the most important trick of all.” Putin’s resentment and grievances toward the West have never been far from the surface. Time and again, he’s acted like a post-Soviet version of Oscar the Grouch, lecturing U.S. presidents and accusing them of hypocrisy, double standards, and attempts to humiliate Russia. At various points over the years, his finger-wagging has been occasionally punctuated by flashes of pragmatism and cooperation. But on the whole, his behavior has grown more belligerent over time.

Launching an undeclared war against neighboring Ukraine in 2014 would prove to be the most fateful decision of Putin's presidency. His obsession with Ukraine was not new; it had long been out in the open. But until that point, few people realized how far Putin was prepared to go to prevent Ukraine from being, in his phrasing, absorbed by the West, or how much his efforts would disrupt the global status quo.

To counteract Russia’s post-2014 international isolation and to disrupt a U.S.-led pressure campaign, the Kremlin built bridges to far-right and populist Western politicians like Donald Trump. As a presidential candidate, Trump repaid the favor by showering Putin with compliments, including, astonishingly, about his brutal actions in Ukraine. The Kremlin interfered so blatantly on Trump’s behalf in 2016 that Putin even cracked jokes about it before election day.

During Trump’s presidency, Putin seemed to be having the time of his life. He was playing a crummy hand exceptionally well and enjoying something that he’d always craved: the world’s undivided attention. As time went on, Putin’s behavior got more and more brazen, bolstered by his own emotionalism and an undisguised belief in the West's deep, irreversible decline.

It was this same sense of self-confidence and opportunism that led Putin to launch a full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022. Russia’s unjustified invasion of a neighboring country was of course unprecedented—and it triggered an equally unprecedented outpouring of anger from democracies around the world. The fact that the whims of one man had caused this calamity was lost on no one. But conspicuously missing from the resulting conversation about Putin was much awareness that the West's problems with Russia go far beyond its leader’s uncompromising, hard-edged tactics.

To date, there has been far too little discussion of the intense grievances that have piled up on both sides—not to mention the growing risks that these conflicts could potentially spin out of control.

If we’re going to deal effectively with Putin, we need to do better. We need to understand his motivations, along with the heavy burden of history that helped shape them. We need to see the parts of a man who is in many ways ordinary, even if the problems he has created are often extraordinary.

And that’s why I wrote this book.

More at https://bit.ly/3ETFkUv (google books review)

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 7:40 AM

SECOND

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


EU woos outside countries for joint ammo-buying scheme

Yet even if the EU can source €1 billion to help buy new howitzer rounds for Ukraine, it will still be far behind Estonia’s estimate that €4 billion is needed.

By Jacopo Barigazzi

The EU is seeking countries outside the bloc to join its efforts to collectively provide ammunition, with at least Norway already expressing interest, according to one EU official and two diplomats.

The push is part of an EU plan to help provide larger quantities of lower-cost ammunition for Ukraine, while also boosting Europe’s capacity to produce and resupply its own dwindling stocks. Canada could also be included in the scheme, added a second EU official, who, like the other officials and diplomats, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The first step, as POLITICO first reported this week, is to dedicate at least €1 billion specifically to buy 155mm artillery shells — a much-needed munition in Ukraine’s fight against Russia. In theory, the more participating countries that take part, whether they’re in or out of the EU, the easier it will be to find the money and negotiate bigger contracts.

“It makes a lot of sense,” said Kusti Salm, the permanent secretary for Estonia’s Defense Ministry. “We see that these nations are very eager to support Ukraine and join all these types of initiatives.”

Estonia was key in initiating the joint-procurement plan in recent weeks and has been advocating for it since. “Russia shoots more howitzer rounds per day than Europe as a whole can manufacture in a month,” Salm stressed.

The proposal on the table would have countries place their contributions into a collective fund, known as the European Peace Facility. The EU would then negotiate a joint ammunition contract.

The debate about whether to keep the ammo money within EU borders is an issue with “very polarizing views in Brussels,” said Salm, the Estonian official.

It is “a 100 percent legitimate argument that Europe needs to sustain its own manufacturing,” he added, but “we also need to make sure that there is an element that makes European industry to feel that, if they are incapable of doing this, then the money might go elsewhere.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-outside-country-ammunition-howitzer
-artillery-buy-plan-ukraine-war-norway-canada
/

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 7:43 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
blah, blah, blah goes 6ix for hundreds of words.

I'm a fuckin' hero right now.




And get my grandma's name out of your fucking mouth, worm.

Your long denial is typical for all Trumptard I know. You guys have got diarrhea of the mouth as does Trump.

6ix, you went through granny's house looking for cash or valuables hidden in the furniture. If you were a basically honest person you wouldn't have even bothered replying to my accusation, let alone making up a long justification that turns you into the hero, not the looter. Russians do the same thing: create fables where they are heroes liberating oppressed people, not invaders looting Ukraine and destroying what they can't steal because buildings are too heavy to transport back to Russia.

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 8:36 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


lol...

There wasn't any cash. Where do you think I got my money skills from?

My grandma mended socks that had holes in them, because that's what her mother did when she was growing up during the Great Depression, and until she got too sick to do it she clipped coupons from the paper and she and my aunt would go to three different stores to buy groceries. She knew where every penny was.

She took back every one of her kids at one point or another in her life, and I lived there for 5 years myself. If there were any money to steal in the house it would have been stolen by the collective 70 years her kids and I lived in the house as adults.

No. Her money is in the paid for house, the bank account and the insurance policy.

There ain't much between the 3, but her surviving kids are going to get a nice present out of it. Not bad for a lady who didn't work until her mid 40's and retired before 60.

We're a family who can thrive off of almost nothing, and we laugh at any of you making 6 figures and whining that you can't pay for your heat now.






Meanwhile, this is a thread about Russia. Why do you always post about me?

Sorry Second, but no... I will not make out with you.



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

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 9:22 AM

SECOND

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


Andrew Weiss, "Demystifying Vladimir Putin"



Andrew S. Weiss is the James Family Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, where he oversees research on Russia and Eurasia.
https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/824

Andrew S. Weiss on twitter
https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 9:29 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Why don't we talk about your President* and his party and how they're driving Americans off a cliff?

This is rhetorical, of course. You talk about Russia all day long now because there is nothing good to say about the Democratic Party in 2023.

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

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 9:39 AM

THG


I keep hearing we need to learn more about what drives Putin. It's corruption and greed. It isn’t to create and then protect a prosperous and free Russia. It is to rule and steal whatever he can. What is the biggest threat to that? Free and prosperous nations surrounding his poor and backwoods Russia.

That and the problem of more. People like Putin and his corrupt mafia want more. The only way to get it is to take it from others.

T






Quote:

Originally posted by second:

Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin by Andrew S. Weiss

When I was thirteen years old, Ronald Reagan became president. All his tough talk about the Soviet Union being the Evil Empire sounded like dangerous fearmongering. And to a rebellious teenager eager to escape Southern California, it was hard to think of anything more exotic than the U.S.S.R. So on my first day of college in 1986, I threw myself into studying Russian language and literature as well as a now-extinct academic discipline known as Sovietology.

The U.S.S.R.’s final leader, a fatally flawed man named Mikhail Gorbachev, had become an international darling for trying to reform the Communist system. What he didn’t appreciate was that brutality, dysfunction, and lies were actually the glue that kept the country together. By the time I arrived at Vladimir Putin’s alma mater in Leningrad as an exchange student in 1989, the mighty U.S.S.R. was starting to fall apart.

I started working at the Pentagon in summer 1991, on the eve of a failed coup by Soviet hard-liners. Just months later, the Soviet Union disappeared, and America’s relationship with Russia was transformed. The Pentagon was hungry for expertise on the twelve brand-new countries that had replaced the U.S.S.R., and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. At one point, the U.S. secretary of defense made a spur-of-the-moment decision to call his Russian counterpart, just to say hello, using a new secure telephone line. No one had made proper preparations, so I was hustled into his office at the last minute to be the translator. By the time I was thirty. I was going in and out of the Oval Office helping the president and his top advisers deal with their Russian counterparts.

Overconfident American officials kept saying the same thing to our new Russian friends: We were going to be partners, not adversaries. Yet Russia’s leaders quickly found that it had been a lot more fun being America’s enemy than our friend. With their country flat on its back, they resented being told to follow our lead. When the Russians did try to push back, they quickly realized how unequal our two countries’ partnership actually was and that they were antagonizing the very people in the West who were paying billions of dollars to keep Russia from collapsing.

The West’s hopes for Russia to make a successful transition to democracy and free markets turned out to be very unrealistic. Still, if you’d told me back then that a former mid-level KGB officer named Vladimir Putin, then forty-six years old, would be plucked from the back rooms of the Kremlin to run the country, I'd have told you to get your head examined. Yet there I was with President Bill Clinton on the August morning in 1999 when the Russians secretly informed him that Putin was going to be the country’s next president. Even then, no one on Clinton’s team could have imagined that Putin would eventually dominate Russia like a modern-day czar, let alone become one of the world’s most feared leaders.

Western experts like me would make plenty more mistakes in the decades that followed.

Even today, it’s not always easy to understand what drives Putin. A lot of what we think we know about him is the product of pop psychology and misreadings of Russia’s thousand-year-long history. Peeling all of that back is made harder by Putin's toughguy theatrics (prancing around bare-chested on horseback, acting like a villain from a James Bond movie, etc.), which have helped him seem more clever—and capable—than he actually is. As the political scientist Thomas Rid once wisely observed, “The Kremlin’s rulers are particularly adept at gaming elements of this new age, or at the very least are good at getting everyone to talk about how good they are, which could be the most important trick of all.” Putin’s resentment and grievances toward the West have never been far from the surface. Time and again, he’s acted like a post-Soviet version of Oscar the Grouch, lecturing U.S. presidents and accusing them of hypocrisy, double standards, and attempts to humiliate Russia. At various points over the years, his finger-wagging has been occasionally punctuated by flashes of pragmatism and cooperation. But on the whole, his behavior has grown more belligerent over time.

Launching an undeclared war against neighboring Ukraine in 2014 would prove to be the most fateful decision of Putin's presidency. His obsession with Ukraine was not new; it had long been out in the open. But until that point, few people realized how far Putin was prepared to go to prevent Ukraine from being, in his phrasing, absorbed by the West, or how much his efforts would disrupt the global status quo.

To counteract Russia’s post-2014 international isolation and to disrupt a U.S.-led pressure campaign, the Kremlin built bridges to far-right and populist Western politicians like Donald Trump. As a presidential candidate, Trump repaid the favor by showering Putin with compliments, including, astonishingly, about his brutal actions in Ukraine. The Kremlin interfered so blatantly on Trump’s behalf in 2016 that Putin even cracked jokes about it before election day.

During Trump’s presidency, Putin seemed to be having the time of his life. He was playing a crummy hand exceptionally well and enjoying something that he’d always craved: the world’s undivided attention. As time went on, Putin’s behavior got more and more brazen, bolstered by his own emotionalism and an undisguised belief in the West's deep, irreversible decline.

It was this same sense of self-confidence and opportunism that led Putin to launch a full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022. Russia’s unjustified invasion of a neighboring country was of course unprecedented—and it triggered an equally unprecedented outpouring of anger from democracies around the world. The fact that the whims of one man had caused this calamity was lost on no one. But conspicuously missing from the resulting conversation about Putin was much awareness that the West's problems with Russia go far beyond its leader’s uncompromising, hard-edged tactics.

To date, there has been far too little discussion of the intense grievances that have piled up on both sides—not to mention the growing risks that these conflicts could potentially spin out of control.

If we’re going to deal effectively with Putin, we need to do better. We need to understand his motivations, along with the heavy burden of history that helped shape them. We need to see the parts of a man who is in many ways ordinary, even if the problems he has created are often extraordinary.

And that’s why I wrote this book.

More at https://bit.ly/3ETFkUv (google books review)

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






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Sunday, March 5, 2023 9:59 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Why don't we talk about your President* and his party and how they're driving Americans off a cliff?

This is rhetorical, of course. You talk about Russia all day long now because there is nothing good to say about the Democratic Party in 2023.

6ix, none of the things you think are important are actually important. Nothing. You are a zero, 6ix, same as every other whiny little prick who votes for Trump and complains about how hard their life is. Life is easy in America if you are not defective, mentally ill, or an addict, but Trumptards are overburdened with flaws in their character. And thus life is hard for Trumptards. For example, you're an addict, 6ix, a drunken fool for a decade. It is absolutely unsurprising how you ended up at the bottom of American society. But the Trumptards like you, who are angry poor white trash, want to rule America. You can't even run your own lives worth a goddamn.

The same is true of Russians. They could have made something out of life, as the people in the EU have done, but Russians wouldn't do it. Drunkenness was involved in Russia's downfall, the same as with 6ix. The Russians have become the angry poor white trash of Eurasia who want to rule over Europe, the same as Trumptards want to rule over America. But the Russians can't even run their own country worth a goddamn. Luckily for them, the Russians found their equivalent of Trump. They found Putin to conquer Europe. I don't think he will even conquer Ukraine, but time will tell.

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 10:33 AM

SECOND

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


‘Expect Russia to wage war again’: Romney on the danger of leaving Ukraine unsupported

It’s in America’s best interest to support Ukraine and ensure that Russia is less likely to launch future wars

By Mitt Romney
Mar 4, 2023, 10:00pm CST

Doing the right thing for another nation can also be the right thing for America. It is in America’s interest to support Ukraine. If Russia were able to conquer, brutalize and subjugate Ukraine with impunity, expect it to wage war again — and expect those wars to damage our economy and threaten our security.

Russia’s gross domestic product, or GDP, is a fraction of that of China, the EU or the United States. Its population is half of ours and an eighth of China’s — and it is declining. Putin’s oligarch-corrupted economy lags far behind. The late John McCain quipped that “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.”

Putin has aimed to forestall Russia’s decline as a great power by invading Georgia, Crimea and now the rest of Ukraine. These invasions are intended to secure additional population, a larger economy and a more competitive industrial base. Putin cannot restore Russia’s stature simply by capturing Ukraine: he must invade others, possibly a NATO ally, drawing America into war. By helping Ukraine, we make Russia far less likely to launch major new wars.

Ukraine’s vigorous defense is devastating the Russian military. The U.K. estimates that Russia has suffered approximately 200,000 casualties, lost almost half of its tanks, as well as numerous aircraft and guided missiles. Putin’s Russia is not our friend — it has 1,500 nuclear missiles aimed at us — and it is China’s most powerful ally. Weakening an adversary enhances our national security advantage, and it is being done without shedding American blood.

By supporting Ukraine, we not only stand with our European allies, we strengthen our alliance. European NATO members have massively increased their defense budgets, while focusing on the financial stabilization of Ukraine. Our allies have contributed nearly $70 billion in aid. In addition, Europeans have suffered an enormous spike in energy prices as Russian supply has been constricted. Europe has also carried the burden of eight million Ukrainian refugees. We want the EU to do even more. But whether or not the EU has sacrificed enough is irrelevant to our own national interest.

Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was the site of numerous nuclear weapons. In 1994, as an incentive for Ukraine to abandon its nuclear arsenal, the United States signed the Budapest Memorandum, which assured Ukraine’s sovereignty. Were we to abandon Ukraine under siege, we would be saying to the world that America’s commitments are virtually meaningless. It would be a blow to current and future alliances, which are fundamental to our national security advantage — particularly in the context of the escalating China threat. Honoring our word is the right thing to do, and the right thing for America.

It is in America’s interest that China does not invade Taiwan, a source of almost three-fourths of the world’s semiconductors. When Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, former President Donald Trump predicted that China would imminently invade Taiwan. But Ukraine’s vigorous defense and the united action by America and our allies may have forestalled China’s aggression. Without question, China is watching what is happening in Ukraine, and the more Russia’s invasion is blunted, the less likely it is that China will imminently follow suit.

Over the past two years, Congress has appropriated $104 billion in aid, some 40% of which is used by Ukraine to buy military equipment made in America. Our defense budget was more than $740 billion last year — and spending a small portion of that budget to wreak havoc on an adversary, which helps ensure our own safety and national security, is money well-spent.

While transferring our military hardware to Ukraine has depleted some of our own equipment, this process has revealed gaps in our military readiness that we now have the opportunity to fill. Further, much of the type of military equipment required to deter future Chinese aggression — submarines, surface ships, anti-ship missiles — is not impacted by what we send to Ukraine.

The courage and determination of Ukraine’s soldiers, leaders and citizens has far exceeded expectations; but they now face a much larger and wealthier adversary in a war of attrition. The war is theirs to fight. We must walk a fine line, supporting Ukraine as much as possible without ourselves being drawn into conflict.

In some respects, Russia has already been defeated: the weakness and corruption of Putin’s military has diminished the Russian national stature he had hoped to enhance. His abandonment of Russia’s commitment to guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty and his nuclear saber-rattling are signs of duplicity and desperation.

The global competition between dictatorship and democracy is center stage in Ukraine. The world is watching to see whether we have the courage of our convictions. America will not shrink from our support of freedom. Doing what is right is right for America.

Mitt Romney is the junior senator representing Utah.

https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2023/3/4/23623947/romney-us-ukraine-su
pport


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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 11:09 AM

SECOND

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


Clearing a minefield is a slow, complicated, and deliberate process that involves several steps, but Russian tanks appear to drive right through them. Some of the tanks blow up, some retreat, and some are hit with anti-tank guided missiles like the Javelin, and the process just repeats itself when the Ukrainians lay more mines.

"It's just dumb," Edmonds said. "And you just see them do this over and over again."

"I'm not seeing any tactical-level adaptability," he continued. On one hand, there's no display of basic levels of training, like knowing how to react to contact. Additionally, there's no development or innovation from the Russians, which he attributes in part to Russia's style of warfare — a top-down type of leadership as opposed to something like the ground-level "upwelling" of initiative seen in Western militaries.

"You would think at this point maybe you would see the better application of maneuver and combined arms," Edmonds said of the Russian tactics. "But I'm not seeing it."

More at https://www.businessinsider.com/russias-losing-armor-ukraine-because-c
ant-use-its-tanks-properly-2023-3


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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 11:34 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Why don't we talk about your President* and his party and how they're driving Americans off a cliff?

This is rhetorical, of course. You talk about Russia all day long now because there is nothing good to say about the Democratic Party in 2023.

6ix, none of the things you think are important are actually important. Nothing. You are a zero, 6ix, same as every other whiny little prick who votes for Trump and complains about how hard their life is. Life is easy in America if you are not defective, mentally ill, or an addict, but Trumptards are overburdened with flaws in their character. And thus life is hard for Trumptards. For example, you're an addict, 6ix, a drunken fool for a decade. It is absolutely unsurprising how you ended up at the bottom of American society. But the Trumptards like you, who are angry poor white trash, want to rule America. You can't even run your own lives worth a goddamn.



Enjoy today, fool. Savor it.

Back to the salt mines for you tomorrow, wage slave.

Me? I'll be doing whatever the fuck I want to do.

A nice mid-afternoon nap in my paid-for-with-cash house will almost certainly be on the agenda.





What do you think, Pooh?



Yeah, Pooh. Sounds like a plan to me.



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

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 1:29 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Wow, you have really gotten under SECOND'S skin, SIX. He spends an inordinate number of lies on you.
Just like he spends an inordinate number of falsehoods on Putin, Russia and Trump.
I'm impressed!

*****

Meanwhile...

Quote:

The U.S.S.R.’s United States' final leader, a fatally flawed man named Mikhail Gorbachev TO BE DECIDED, didn’t appreciate ... that brutality, dysfunction, and lies were actually the glue that kept the country together.
Yanno, that describes the USA perfectly.

What holds the USA together?
NOTHING.
Not even our borders.

When I ask what are America's interests, why do I get *crickets*?
It's bc people can't even envision an "America" anymore.
They imagine that they're Dems, or Repubs, or women, or blacks or some other intersectional identity.
They conflate America's interests with Ukraine's, or Libya's, or some other place on a map they can't even find.
They fantasize that they"citizens of the world" or some such nonsense, or they create existenrial enemies when there were none
They bray about freedom while trampling freedom at home and killing people abroad

We're not even pacified by prosperity, since the American standard of living has been falling for over 30 years

Meanwhile both the Russian and Chinese standard of living has eusen- dramatically in the past 20 years. Can Americans say the same?

America is a broken concept. It can be mended, but not be people like SECOND (who hates Americans) and THUGR (who can't admit that anything is wrong).


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Sunday, March 5, 2023 2:39 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, you have really gotten under SECOND'S skin, SIX. He spends an inordinate number of lies on you.
Just like he spends an inordinate number of falsehoods on Putin, Russia and Trump.
I'm impressed!



Not bad for a "zero", huh?



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

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 2:42 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

We're not even pacified by prosperity, since the American standard of living has been falling for over 30 years

Meanwhile both the Russian and Chinese standard of living has eusen- dramatically in the past 20 years. Can Americans say the same?

America is a broken concept. It can be mended, but not be people like SECOND (who hates Americans) and THUGR (who can't admit that anything is wrong).


Has America's GDP per capita risen dramatically? Yes, it has, but, unfortunately for angry poor white trash such as 6ix or Signym, it has not. But what else would you expect to happen to Americans who are drunks, jackasses, and fools who defend Trump and proudly announce "Fuck Ukraine"?

From the Economic Research in the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis
Constant GDP per capita for
US NYGDPPCAPKDUSA
Canada NYGDPPCAPKDCAN
Japan NYGDPPCAPKDJPN
Russia NYGDPPCAPKDRUS
China NYGDPPCAPKDCHN

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10NtC


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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 3:00 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Oh that's that whole "per capita" lie, SECOND. You and I both know that for MOST people (yanno, the America that you hate, and that should hate you) living standards have been declining even as SOME people have gotten inordinately rich.

That's an undeniable fact that you're trying to deny. Even you, yourself, have posted about it many times.

Keep on lying, SECOND. You're just ruining your reputation even more, if that was possible.


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


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Sunday, March 5, 2023 3:13 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh that's that whole "per capita" lie, SECOND. You and I both know that for MOST people (yanno, the Americathat you hate, and that should hate you) livung standards have been declared ning even as SOME people have gotten inordinately rich. You, yourself, have posted about it many times.
Keep in lying, SECOND. You're just ruining your reputation even more, if that was possible.

The people I know who still defend Trump are poorer than they were, but it is no coincidence that fools and the crazy don't prosper in America. It will be no coincidence when Trump's fortune shrinks, once the IRS finally forces him to pay, and Putin gets a bayonet up his ass, the same as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, another man who stayed too long in office.

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 3:16 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


EVERYBODY is poorer than they were, except commodities sellers and financiers, SECOND. Just look at the number of homeless people in liberal bastions like California and New York state.

Fuck you, troll.
And fuck Ukraine.


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


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Sunday, March 5, 2023 3:33 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
EVERYBODY is poorer than they were, except commodities sellers and financiers, SECOND. Just look at the number of homeless people in liberal bastions like California and New York state.

Fuck you, troll.
And fuck Ukraine.

Tough luck for homeless people who can't afford $2,500 per month rent in so-called "liberal bastions". It turns out that "liberals" are just about as selfish/uncharitable as Trumptards. Perhaps the poor should live where the rent is less than $2,500? The poor drunken addicts and fools can't stay where they are because most middle-class Americans won't rent out a room and shared bath for $500/month in their house to the homeless.

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 3:52 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
EVERYBODY is poorer than they were, except commodities sellers and financiers, SECOND. Just look at the number of homeless people in liberal bastions like California and New York state.

Fuck you, troll.
And fuck Ukraine.

Tough luck for homeless people who can't afford $2,500 per month rent in so-called "liberal bastions". It turns out that "liberals" are just about as selfish/uncharitable as Trumptards. Perhaps the poor should live where the rent is less than $2,500? The poor drunken addicts and fools can't stay where they are because most middle-class Americans won't rent out a room and shared bath for $500/month in their house to the homeless.

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



Quoted for Posterity.

Every once in a while Second gets it right.

True Charity is a rare thing. Especially when granted to strangers. Most Trumptards that give it are buying their way to Heaven. Most Liberals that do it are virtue signalling for Twitter points. When the rich do it, it's for PR and tax brakes.

Why don't you do something nice for people in your life, Second? You'll feel better about yourself and won't have to spend all day virtue signalling to 7 people on a dead forum.

In the mean time, are you about to put a room up for rent for the homeless in your 4 story mansion since it bothers you so much?

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

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 4:09 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Quoted for Posterity.

Every once in a while Second gets it right.

True Charity is a rare thing. Especially when granted to strangers. Most Trumptards that give it are buying their way to Heaven. Most Liberals that do it are virtue signalling for Twitter points. When the rich do it, it's for PR and tax brakes.

Why don't you do something nice for people in your life, Second? You'll feel better about yourself and won't have to spend all day virtue signalling to 7 people on a dead forum.

In the mean time, are you about to put a room up for rent for the homeless in your 4 story mansion since it bothers you so much?

6ix, I am a perfect fit for the Republican Party, but not the Party of Trump and Bush II. When Bush II was governor of Texas, I knew he was a worthless man. He proved it to more than half the nation while he was President. I knew that Trump was another worthless man because I had looked into Trump's business practices. He was known as a crook a long time ago. I know the kind of people who vote for a Nixon (after he revealed himself to be a crook and a liar), a Reagan (after he revealed himself as a hater of Medicare and a dimwit), a Bush II (after he revealed himself as a drunk and an incompetent commander-in-chief, see the immediate aftermath of 9/11). I have never liked the kind of people who voted for Nixon, Reagan, Bush II, or Trump because those voters were worse people, judging by their everyday dishonesty and sloth than the Presidents they voted for.

Related, Russians reveal who they are by voting for Putin. Putin has a bad record which most Russians ignore when they vote for him. It's their fault that Russia invaded Ukraine. Putin has been telling his voters that he would do it, but they voted for him anyway. Even the Russian politician who is opposed to Putin is no better than Putin as far as invading Ukraine: Why Ukraine is wary of the Russian opposition -- Ukrainians have many reasons to distrust Navalny and his movement.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/3/4/why-ukraine-is-wary-of-the
-russian-opposition


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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 4:39 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
EVERYBODY is poorer than they were, except commodities sellers and financiers, SECOND. Just look at the number of homeless people in liberal bastions like California and New York state.

Fuck you, troll.
And fuck Ukraine.


SECOND: Tough luck for homeless people who can't afford $2,500 per month rent in so-called "liberal bastions". It turns out that "liberals" are just about as selfish/uncharitable as Trumptards.


No shit, Sherlock
And the DNC is just as corrupted by money as the RNC.

Quote:

Perhaps the poor should live where the rent is less than $2,500?
Oh, but then they wouldn't get the free (liberaloid) healthcare and (liberaloid) housing benefits, plus they'd have to put up with snowy winters.

Quote:

The poor drunken addicts and fools can't stay where they are because most middle-class Americans won't rent out a room and shared bath for $500/month in their house to the homeless.
Yeah, why don't you buddy up with a schizo addict? That would make a great addition to your household!
Fuck you, troll.
Oh BTW I noticed you want to post about ANYTHING BUT Ukraine.


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


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Sunday, March 5, 2023 4:54 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Oh BTW I noticed you want to post about ANYTHING BUT Ukraine.

You notice almost nothing. I will quote myself to give you another opportunity to misunderstand the simplest ideas:

Related, Russians reveal who they are by voting for Putin. Putin has a bad record which most Russians ignore when they vote for him. It's their fault that Russia invaded Ukraine. Putin has been telling his voters that he would do it, but they voted for him anyway. Even the Russian politician who is opposed to Putin is no better than Putin as far as invading Ukraine: Why Ukraine is wary of the Russian opposition -- Ukrainians have many reasons to distrust Navalny and his movement.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/3/4/why-ukraine-is-wary-of-the
-russian-opposition


That article goes on to say:
Quote:

Navalny, as Ukrainians and liberal Russians remember well, vehemently supported the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and even used derogatory, dehumanising terms to refer to the Georgian people. Several years later, he would apologise for the terms he used, but never for his support of the Russian war on Georgia.

Navalny was nominally against the Russian aggression in Ukraine, but his “anti-war” position was underpinned by economic, rather than moral, considerations: “Russia can ill afford waging the war”. That position expectedly did not entail any empathy towards the Ukrainian people – something that was also reflected in his use of ethnic slurs against them.

He saw the Russian people as victims of injustice under Putin’s regime, not the Ukrainians. In his view, no wrong had been committed against Ukraine that was worth righting.

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

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Sunday, March 5, 2023 5:27 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Posting your fantasies about Russia is not posting about Ukraine. Yanno what you post about?

RUSSIA! RUSSIA!
PUTIN!
TRUMP!
"TRUMPTARDS"!

I would be hard-pressed to find posts of yours focused on Ukraine, Zelenskiy, or even what's happening on the front.


BBC updates its estimate of Russian dead to appx 16,000.

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


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Sunday, March 5, 2023 9:13 PM

SECOND

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


A Test For Signym

Timothy Snyder wrote on September 6, 2022

On the Sunday before Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, I predicted on American television that Zelensky would remain in Kyiv if Russia invaded. I was mocked for this prediction, just as I was when I predicted the previous Russian invasion, the danger that U.S. President Donald Trump posed to American democracy, and Trump’s coup attempt. Former advisers to Trump and President Barack Obama disagreed with me in a class at Yale University, where I teach. They were doing nothing more than reflecting the American consensus. Americans tend to see the war in Ukraine in the long shadow of the 9/11 attacks and the American moral and military failures that followed. In the Biden administration, officials feared that taking the side of Kyiv risked repeating the fall of Kabul. Among younger people and on the political left, a deeper unease arose from the lack of a national reckoning over the invasion of Iraq, justified at the time with the notion that destroying one regime would create a tabula rasa from which democracy would naturally emerge. The idiocy of this argument made a generation doubt the possibility that war and democracy could have something to do with each other. The unease with another military effort was perhaps understandable, but the resemblance between Iraq and Ukraine was only superficial. Ukrainians weren’t imposing their own vision on another country. They were protecting their right to choose their own leaders against an invasion designed to undo their democracy and eliminate their society.

The Trump administration had spread cynicism from the other direction. First Trump denied Ukraine weapons in order to blackmail Zelensky. Then he showed that a U.S. president would attempt a coup to stay in power after an electoral defeat. To watch fellow citizens die in an attempt to overthrow democracy is the opposite of risking one’s life to protect it. Of course, if democracy is only about larger forces and not about ethics, then Trump’s actions would make perfect sense. If one believes that capitalist selfishness automatically becomes democratic virtue, and that lying about who won an election is just expressing an opinion like any other, then Trump is a normal politician. In fact, he brazenly personifies the Russian idea that there are no values and no truth.

Americans had largely forgotten that democracy is a value for which an elected official—or a citizen, for that matter—might choose to live or die. By taking a risk, Zelensky transformed his role from that of a bit player in a Trump scandal to a hero of democracy. Americans assumed that he would want to flee because they had convinced themselves of the supremacy of impersonal forces: if they bring democracy, so much the better, but when they don’t, people submit.

“I need ammunition, not a ride” was Zelensky’s response to U.S. urgings to leave Kyiv. This was perhaps not as eloquent as the funeral oration of Pericles, but it gets across the same point: there is honor in choosing the right way to die on behalf of a people seeking the right way to live.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/ukraine-war-democracy-nihilism-
timothy-snyder


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

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Monday, March 6, 2023 3:52 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


What is the test? Because your post seems to be all about Russia and Trump. You really cant help yourself, can you?

heh heh heh

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


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Monday, March 6, 2023 6:55 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What is the test? Because your post seems to be all about Russia and Trump. You really cant help yourself, can you?

heh heh heh

It is an analogy to testing if Signym could turn on the lights in a bathroom at night.

1) Signym needs to find the light switch. It has a little LED to illuminate where it is. Remember, this is at night.

2) Signym needs to understand the switch. It is a push-button dimmer rather than an up/down toggle switch.

3) Signym could not find the switch. I can hear Signym knocking over things in the dark bathroom.

4) Signym smeared EVERYTHING in the bathroom. Signym never did find the toilet in the dark. Instead, Signym pooped on the floor.

Signym, here are your test results: You are stupid and/or you like to poop on the floor. It must be a Russian thing about you. Thankfully, I don't have to clean up the mess you have made out of life. Signym, you'll have to live and die in eternal darkness, as will the Russians, unless they leave Putin's Russia.

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

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Monday, March 6, 2023 6:57 AM

SECOND

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


Russia's Wagner chief warns of frontline collapse if forced to retreat from Bakhmut

March 6 (Reuters) - The founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary force said his troops now tightening their grip on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut were being deprived of ammunition and if they were forced to retreat the entire front would collapse.

"If Wagner retreats from Bakhmut now, the whole front will collapse," Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video published over the weekend. "The situation will not be sweet for all military formations protecting Russian interests."

Reuters could not independently verify when and where the video was recorded. The footage was published on a Telegram channel that has been disseminating Prigozhin news and has associated itself with the Wagner Group. The video was not published on Prigozhin's usual press service channel.

Prigozhin on Friday said that his units had "practically surrounded Bakhmut," where fighting has intensified in the past week with Russian forces attacking from nearly all sides.

But on Sunday he complained that most of the ammunition that his forces were promised by Moscow in February had not yet been shipped.

"For now, we are trying to figure out the reason: is it just ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal," Prigozhin said on his usual press service Telegram channel.

The mercenary chief regularly criticizes Russia's defense chiefs and top generals. Last month, he accused Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and others of "treason" for withholding supplies of munitions to his militia.

In a nearly four-minute video published on the Wagner Orchestra Telegram channel on Saturday, Prigozhin said his troops were worried that Moscow wanted to set them up as possible scapegoats if Russia lost the war.

"If we retreat, then we will go down in history forever as people who have taken the main step towards losing the war," Prigozhin said.

"This is exactly the problem with ammunition hunger."

Speaking seemingly from a bunker, Prigozhin said in the video that his troops would wonder whether they were being "set up" for defeat by the country's top brass or maybe even by someone "higher."

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Nick Starkov in Kyiv; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Stephen Coates)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-wagner-chief-warns-of-fr
ontline-collapse-if-forced-to-retreat-from-bakhmut/ar-AA18g80q


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

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Monday, March 6, 2023 7:13 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine Holds the Future
The War Between Democracy and Nihilism
By Timothy Snyder
Published on September 6, 2022

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/ukraine-war-democracy-nihilism-
timothy-snyder


Russia, an aging tyranny, seeks to destroy Ukraine, a defiant democracy. A Ukrainian victory would confirm the principle of self-rule, allow the integration of Europe to proceed, and empower people of goodwill to return reinvigorated to other global challenges. A Russian victory, by contrast, would extend genocidal policies in Ukraine, subordinate Europeans, and render any vision of a geopolitical European Union obsolete.

A Russian victory would strengthen fascists and other tyrants, as well as nihilists who see politics as nothing more than a spectacle designed by oligarchs to distract ordinary citizens from the destruction of the world. This war, in other words, is about establishing principles for the twenty-first century. It is about policies of mass death and about the meaning of life in politics. It is about the possibility of a democratic future.

As it happens, Ukraine’s national symbol is the trident. It can be found among relics of the state that Vikings founded at Kyiv about a thousand years ago. After receiving Christianity from Byzantium, the Greek-speaking eastern Roman Empire, Kyiv’s rulers established secular law. The economy shifted from slavery to agriculture as the people became subject to taxation rather than capture. In subsequent centuries, after the fall of the Kyiv state, Ukrainian peasants were enserfed by Poles and then by Russians. When Ukrainian leaders founded a republic in 1918, they revived the trident as the national symbol. Independence meant not only freedom from bondage but the liberty to use the land as they saw fit. Yet the Ukrainian National Republic was short lived. Like several other young republics established after the end of the Russian empire in 1917, it was destroyed by the Bolsheviks, and its lands were incorporated into the Soviet Union. Seeking to control Ukraine’s fertile soil, Joseph Stalin brought about a political famine that killed about four million inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. Ukrainians were overrepresented in the Soviet concentration camps known as the gulag. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler’s goal was control of Ukrainian agriculture. Ukrainians were again overrepresented among the civilian victims—this time of the German occupiers and the Red Army soldiers who defeated the Germans. After World War II, Soviet Ukraine was nevertheless subjected to a slow process of Russification in which its culture was degraded.

When the Soviet Union came to an end in 1991, Ukrainians again seized on the trident as their national symbol. In the three decades since, Ukraine has moved, haltingly but unmistakably, in the direction of functional democracy. The generation that now runs the country knows the Soviet and pre-Soviet history but understands self-rule as self-evident. At a time when democracy is in decline around the world and threatened in the United States, Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression provides a surprising (to many) affirmation of faith in democracy’s principles and its future. In this sense, Ukraine is a challenge to those in the West who have forgotten the ethical basis of democracy and thereby, wittingly or unwittingly, ceded the field to oligarchy and empire at home and abroad. Ukrainian resistance is a welcome challenge, and a needed one.

THE APPEASEMENT TEST

The history of twentieth-century democracy offers a reminder of what happens when this challenge is not met. Like the period after 1991, the period after 1918 saw the rise and fall of democracy. Today, the turning point (one way or the other) is likely Ukraine; in interwar Europe, it was Czechoslovakia. Like Ukraine in 2022, Czechoslovakia in 1938 was an imperfect multilingual republic in a tough neighborhood. In 1938 and 1939, after European powers chose to appease Nazi Germany at Munich, Hitler’s regime suppressed Czechoslovak democracy through intimidation, unresisted invasion, partition, and annexation. What actually happened in Czechoslovakia was similar to what Russia seems to have planned for Ukraine. Putin’s rhetoric resembles Hitler’s to the point of plagiarism: both claimed that a neighboring democracy was somehow tyrannical, both appealed to imaginary violations of minority rights as a reason to invade, both argued that a neighboring nation did not really exist and that its state was illegitimate.


In 1938, Czechoslovakia had decent armed forces, the best arms industry in Europe, and natural defenses improved by fortifications. Nazi Germany might not have bested Czechoslovakia in an open war and certainly would not have done so quickly and easily. Yet Czechoslovakia’s allies abandoned it, and its leaders fatefully chose exile over resistance. The defeat was, in a crucial sense, a moral one. And it enabled the physical transformation of a continent by war, creating some of the preconditions for the Holocaust of European Jews.

During Germany’s invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940 and during the Battle of Britain later that year, German vehicles were fueled by Soviet oil and German soldiers fed by Soviet grain, almost all of which was extracted from Ukraine.

This sequence of events started with the easy German absorption of Czechoslovakia. World War II, at least in the form that it took, would have been impossible had the Czechoslovaks fought back. No one can know what would have happened had the Germans been bogged down in Bohemia in 1938. But we can be confident that Hitler would not have had the sense of irresistible momentum that gained him allies and frightened his foes. It would certainly have been harder for the Soviet leadership to justify an alliance. Hitler would not have been able to use Czechoslovak arms in his assault on Poland, which would have begun later, if at all. The United Kingdom and France would have had more time to prepare for war and perhaps to help Poland. By 1938, Europe was emerging from the Great Depression, which was the main force attracting people to the political extremes. Had Hitler’s nose been bloodied in his first campaign, the appeal of the far right might have declined.

POSTMODERN TYRANTS

Unlike Czechoslovak leaders, Ukrainian leaders chose to fight and were supported, at least in some measure, by other democracies. In resisting, Ukrainians have staved off a number of very dark scenarios and bought European and North American democracies valuable time to think and prepare. The full significance of the Ukrainian resistance of 2022, as with the appeasement of 1938, can be grasped only when one considers the futures it opens or forecloses. And to do that, one needs the past to make sense of the present.


The classical notion of tyranny and the modern concept of fascism are both helpful in understanding the Putin regime, but neither is sufficient. The basic weaknesses of tyrannies are generic and long known—recorded, for example, by Plato in his Republic. Tyrants resist good advice, become obsessive as they age and fall ill, and wish to leave an undying legacy. All of this is certainly evident in Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Fascism, a specific form of tyranny, also helps to explain today’s Russia, which is characterized by a cult of personality, a de facto single party, mass propaganda, the privileging of will over reason, and a politics of us-versus-them. Because fascism places violence over reason, it can be defeated only by force. Fascism was quite popular—and not just in fascist countries—until the end of World War II. It was discredited only because Germany and Italy lost the war.

Although Russia is fascist at the top, it is not fascist through and through. A specific emptiness lies at the center of Putin’s regime. It is the emptiness in the eyes of Russian officials in photographs as they look into a vacant middle distance, a habit they believe projects masculine imperturbability. Putin’s regime functions not by mobilizing society with the help of a single grand vision, as fascist Germany and Italy did, but by demobilizing individuals, assuring them that there are no certainties and no institutions that can be trusted. This habit of demobilization has been a problem for Russian leaders during the war in Ukraine because they have educated their citizens to watch television rather than take up arms. Even so, the nihilism that undergirds demobilization poses a direct threat to democracy.

The Putin regime is imperialist and oligarchic, dependent for its existence on propaganda that claims that all the world is ever such. While Russia’s support of fascism, white nationalism, and chaos brings it a certain kind of supporter, its bottomless nihilism is what attracts citizens of democracies who are not sure where to find ethical landmarks — who have been taught, on the right, that democracy is a natural consequence of capitalism or, on the left, that all opinions are equally valid. The gift of Russian propagandists has been to take things apart, to peel away the layers of the onion until nothing is left but the tears of others and their own cynical laughter. Russia won the propaganda war the last time it invaded Ukraine, in 2014, targeting vulnerable Europeans and Americans on social media with tales of Ukrainians as Nazis, Jews, feminists, and gays. But much has changed since then: a generation of younger Ukrainians has come to power that communicates better than the older Russians in the Kremlin.

Much more at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/ukraine-war-democracy-nihilism-
timothy-snyder


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

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Monday, March 6, 2023 10:05 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


That little brain is just floating in the propaganda broth.

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

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

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Monday, March 6, 2023 12:05 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What is the test? Because your post seems to be all about Russia and Trump. You really cant help yourself, can you?

heh heh heh

It is an analogy to testing if Signym could turn on the lights in a bathroom at night.

1) Signym needs to find the light switch. It has a little LED to illuminate where it is. Remember, this is at night.

2) Signym needs to understand the switch. It is a push-button dimmer rather than an up/down toggle switch.

3) Signym could not find the switch. I can hear Signym knocking over things in the dark bathroom.

4) Signym smeared EVERYTHING in the bathroom. Signym never did find the toilet in the dark. Instead, Signym pooped on the floor.

Signym, here are your test results: You are stupid and/or you like to poop on the floor. It must be a Russian thing about you. Thankfully, I don't have to clean up the mess you have made out of life. Signym, you'll have to live and die in eternal darkness, as will the Russians, unless they leave Putin's Russia.

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



TBH I didn't even read the post thru. I got as far as the first "Trump" and quit. I guess you wasted a lot of typing-time, huh?

And then you went back to posting walls of gibberish. You're a sad little man.

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


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Monday, March 6, 2023 12:30 PM

THG



Nihilism, it's your word SECOND and it accurately describes an aspect of comrade Signym and Jacks attitudes, beliefs. Well done...

T


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Monday, March 6, 2023 12:44 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by THG:

Nihilism, it's your word SECOND and it accurately describes an aspect of comrade Signym and Jacks attitudes, beliefs. Well done...

T




I'm not a nihilist. I have a life, and I've filled it with purpose. Not just bettering myself and my situation, but being there for friends and family who need a leg up and finally figuring out how wonderful a feeling it is to be needed and appreciated, and how easily and willing those people are to reciprocate the assistance.


Your Party sucks and is destroying society. You'd better make your own personal, meaningful connections because if things keep going the way they're going you're going to need them sooner than later.

Especially with your learning disability, lower than average IQ and utter lack of critical thinking skills.

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

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

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Monday, March 6, 2023 12:46 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

nihilism
ni'?-liz??m, ne'-
noun

*The doctrine that nothing actually exists or that existence or values are meaningless.

*Relentless negativity or cynicism suggesting an absence of values or beliefs.

*Political belief or action that advocates or commits violence or terrorism without discernible constructive goals.



I think the word you're looking for, THUGR, is nationalism. I see myself as a realist, focused on AMERICA'S long term national interests. I don't see us needing to be "global cop" or "global hegemon" or "bringing freedom to the globe" or global anything. Let's just be a nation among nations and make America the best it can be, and then we can be a positive example for others to aspire to.
Instead of overthrowing or invading nations willy-nilly and supporting corrupt regimes everywhere.

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


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Monday, March 6, 2023 1:07 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

ZH Geopolitical Week Ahead: Bracing For Bakhmut Loss, Pentagon Declares City 'Not Important'

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/zh-geopolitical-week-ahead.

One way out of Bakhmut
https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1632699567530561537/mediaView
er


It's easy to forget what the numbers mean until you see vehicles blown to bits and know there were people in them. The only way for Ukraine's soldiers in Bakhmut to leave is either in a body bag, or by individually "evaporating" on foot thru the woods. I hope they choose survival.

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


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Monday, March 6, 2023 2:18 PM

SECOND

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


Speaking on the Russia-1 state television channel, commentator Sergey Mikheyev — described as a political scientist — suggested the Ukraine war could outlast the lifespan of many, including the Kremlin's top figures.

"If we keep proceeding in this manner and at this speed, you and I won't live long enough to see any successes," he told guests, including anchor Vladimir Solovyov, in a clip translated and posted by journalist Julia Davis.

"Let's be honest with ourselves," Mikheyev added. "Our leadership won't live long enough for that either."

"If we move at this speed, this will last for decades," he continued.

https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-wont-live-see-ukraine-war-vict
ory-russia-state-tv-1785695


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

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Monday, March 6, 2023 3:38 PM

THG


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:


nihilism
ni'?-liz??m, ne'-
noun

*The doctrine that nothing actually exists or that existence or values are meaningless.

*Relentless negativity or cynicism suggesting an absence of values or beliefs.

*Political belief or action that advocates or commits violence or terrorism without discernible constructive goals.



I think the word you're looking for, THUGR, is nationalism. I see myself as a realist, focused on AMERICA'S long term national interests. I don't see us needing to be "global cop" or "global hegemon" or "bringing freedom to the globe" or global anything. Let's just be a nation among nations and make America the best it can be, and then we can be a positive example for others to aspire to.
Instead of overthrowing or invading nations willy-nilly and supporting corrupt regimes everywhere.






All the older members who've left, Jack loves taking credit for that by the way, all referred to you as being a Russia Troll. Therefore, your posts are received as if you are. You don't have to admit it.

T


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Monday, March 6, 2023 4:36 PM

SECOND

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


Russians have damaged Ukraine before this war:

What HBO’s “Chernobyl” Got Right, and What It Got Terribly Wrong
Quote:

Summary executions, or even delayed executions on orders of a single apparatchik, were not a feature of Soviet life after the nineteen-thirties. By and large, Soviet people did what they were told without being threatened with guns or any punishment.
Quote:

The Soviet system of propaganda and censorship existed not so much for the purpose of spreading a particular message as for the purpose of making learning impossible, replacing facts with mush, and handing the faceless state a monopoly on defining an ever-shifting reality.
Quote:

The Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy’s 2018 book on Chernobyl reconstructs the sequence of events and assigns blame. In effect, Plokhy argues, it was the Soviet system that created Chernobyl and made the explosion inevitable. Glimmers of this understanding appear in the HBO series, too. In the final episode, Legasov, testifying as a witness, tells a Soviet court that the disaster happened because the tips of the control rods were made of graphite, which sped up the reaction, when the control rod was supposed to slow it down. When asked, by the prosecutor, why the reactor was designed this way, Legasov cites the same reason that other safety precautions are ignored and other corners are cut: “It’s cheaper.” He seems to be damning the whole system.

More often, however, we are given to believe that the three men who were put on trial—and especially one of them, a particularly unattractive villain by the name of Anatoly Dyatlov (Paul Ritter)—are to blame. We see him strong-arming younger, better men into actions that will ultimately lead to catastrophe. All because, it seems, he wants a promotion. In fact, it wasn’t the carrot of a single promotion, or even several promotions, and it wasn’t one nasty and abusive boss. It was the system, made up primarily of pliant men and women, that cut its own corners, ignored its own precautions, and ultimately blew up its own nuclear reactor for no good reason except that this was how things were done. The viewer is invited to fantasize that, if not for Dyatlov, the better men would have done the right thing and the fatal flaw in the reactor, and the system itself, might have remained latent. This is a lie.

It would be harder to show a system digging its own grave instead of an ambitious, evil man causing the disaster. In the same way, it’s harder to see dozens of scientists looking for clues when you can just create a single fantasy character who will have all the good disaster-fighting traits. This is the great-men (and one woman) narrative of history, where it’s a few steps, a few decisions, made by a few men that matter, rather than the mess that humans make and from which they suffer.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230228050136/https://www.newyorker.com/n
ews/our-columnists/what-hbos-chernobyl-got-right-and-what-it-got-terribly-wrong


Serhii Plokhy’s 2018 book on Chernobyl can be downloaded for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.bio/search.php?req=Serhii+Plokhy+Chernobyl

From the preface of Chernobyl: There are numerous marks of the long-gone communist past on the streets of the city. Communist-era slogans are still there, and inside the abandoned movie theater, a portrait of a communist leader. Vita, our guide, says that no one can now tell who is depicted there, but I recognize a familiar face from my days as a young university professor in Ukraine at the time of the catastrophe—the painting is of Viktor Chebrikov, the head of the KGB from 1982 to 1988. It has miraculously survived the past thirty years, undamaged except for a tiny hole near Chebrikov’s nose. Otherwise, the image is perfectly fine. We move on.

It is strange, I think to myself, that Vita, an excellent tour guide, cannot identify Chebrikov. She also seems at a loss to explain the signs saying “meat,” “milk,” and “cheese” hanging from what was once the ceiling of an abandoned Soviet-era supermarket. “How come,” she asks, “they write that in the Soviet Union there were shortages of almost everything?” I explain that Prypiat was in many ways a privileged place because of the nuclear power plant, and that the workers were better supplied with agricultural produce and consumer goods than the general population. Besides, the fact that there were signs saying “meat” or “cheese” did not mean that those products were actually available. It was the Soviet Union, after all, where the gap between the image projected by government propaganda and reality was bridged only by jokes. I retell one of them: “If you want to fill your fridge with food, plug the fridge into the radio outlet.” The radio was telling the story of ever-improving living standards; the empty fridge had its own story to tell.

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

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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 2:46 AM

SECOND

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


Zelensky pledges to ‘find the murderers’ of Ukrainian soldier executed in grisly video

“Today, a video has emerged of the occupiers brutally killing a warrior who bravely said to their faces: ‘Glory to Ukraine!'” Zelensky said in his address. “I want us all to respond to his words together, in unity: ‘Glory to the Hero! Glory to the Heroes! Glory to Ukraine!’ And we will find the murderers.”

“Ukraine will not forget the feat of each and everyone whose lives gave freedom to Ukraine forever,” he added.

“Eternal memory and honor to all those who gave lives for freedom for our people!” he said. “Eternal memory and honor to all Ukrainian heroes of different times who dreamed and fought for freedom for Ukraine! Ukraine will emerge victorious!”

More at https://thehill.com/policy/international/3887113-zelensky-pledges-to-f
ind-the-murderers-of-ukrainian-soldier-executed-in-grisly-video
/

In other news, the response from Trumptards and Putin was "Fake News. Haven't you seen a Hollywood movie? That soldier is still alive."

Trump makes implausible claim that he'd end Ukraine war in a day



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

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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 8:24 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:


nihilism
ni'?-liz??m, ne'-
noun

*The doctrine that nothing actually exists or that existence or values are meaningless.

*Relentless negativity or cynicism suggesting an absence of values or beliefs.

*Political belief or action that advocates or commits violence or terrorism without discernible constructive goals.



I think the word you're looking for, THUGR, is nationalism. I see myself as a realist, focused on AMERICA'S long term national interests. I don't see us needing to be "global cop" or "global hegemon" or "bringing freedom to the globe" or global anything. Let's just be a nation among nations and make America the best it can be, and then we can be a positive example for others to aspire to.
Instead of overthrowing or invading nations willy-nilly and supporting corrupt regimes everywhere.






All the older members who've left, Jack loves taking credit for that by the way, all referred to you as being a Russia Troll. Therefore, your posts are received as if you are. You don't have to admit it.

T




LOL... Wishy and Cap'n Crunch are even worse sources than your news sources, dipshit.



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

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

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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 8:25 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Zelensky pledges to ‘find the murderers’ of Ukrainian soldier executed in grisly video

“Today, a video has emerged of the occupiers brutally killing a warrior who bravely said to their faces: ‘Glory to Ukraine!'” Zelensky said in his address. “I want us all to respond to his words together, in unity: ‘Glory to the Hero! Glory to the Heroes! Glory to Ukraine!’ And we will find the murderers.”

“Ukraine will not forget the feat of each and everyone whose lives gave freedom to Ukraine forever,” he added.

“Eternal memory and honor to all those who gave lives for freedom for our people!” he said. “Eternal memory and honor to all Ukrainian heroes of different times who dreamed and fought for freedom for Ukraine! Ukraine will emerge victorious!”



Fake news. Fake soldier.

Also, 5 minute hate.

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

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

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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 9:24 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Fake news. Fake soldier.

Also, 5 minute hate.

6ix, your verbal nonsense would work with other Trumptards, but people who aren't failures like you would fire you or kick you out of their lives. In that way, they reinforce the judgment that you are a failure. Obviously, 6ix is not comprehending what is a failure. Similarly, Trump insists he will end the Russia/Ukraine War in one day. He promised the same with the war between North Korea and South Korea. Trump was lying then. Trump is lying now. Trump is a bigger failure than his Trumptards:

Trump makes the implausible claim that he'd end the Ukraine war in a day



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

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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 9:42 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Fake news. Fake soldier.

Also, 5 minute hate.

6ix, your verbal nonsense would work with other Trumptards, but people who aren't failures like you would fire you or kick you out of their lives. In that way, they reinforce the judgment that you are a failure.





Quote:

Obviously, 6ix is not comprehending what is a failure. Similarly, Trump insists he will end the Russia/Ukraine War in one day. He promised the same with the war between North Korea and South Korea. Trump was lying then. Trump is lying now. Trump is a bigger failure than his Trumptards:

Trump makes the implausible claim that he'd end the Ukraine war in a day



Trump would end the war in a single day. In fact, it never would have even begun if he were in office now.

Nobody can take your opinion of what is and is not a failure seriously because your "leader" and his party have been failing the American people for over 2 years now and you fail to recognize it.

Have fun with your miserable, unproductive and insignificant life the next few days. I have shit to do and people to help, so you'll have to find a way to manage without me destroying you.

I know you'll be right here when I get back, because you are predictable, pathetic and without any purpose in life.

Toodles, waste of carbon.



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

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

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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 11:26 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Trump would end the war in a single day. In fact, it never would have even begun if he were in office now.

Nobody can take your opinion of what is and is not a failure seriously because your "leader" and his party have been failing the American people for over 2 years now and you fail to recognize it.

6ix, you spent a decade as a falling-down-drunk. It took you that long to realize alcohol was your problem. Your understanding of what was wrong with your life arrived very slowly and erratically. Russians are falling-down-dead in Ukraine because Russians haven't realized that their problem is Putin, not Ukraine. The smartest Russians left Russia soon after Putin took over. The less smart ones have stayed until recently, then they fled to avoid Putin's War. That leaves the dumbest Russians, slow learners such as 6ix, to take about a decade (the same length of time as it took 6ix to figure out that alcohol was his problem) before they will understand Putin is the problem, not Ukraine.

Once a Russian dies in Ukraine, his problems are over, but the smarter Russians back home can achieve enlightenment that Putin is the problem as more and more Russians die in Ukraine. On the other hand, the dumber Russians will never reach any form of enlightenment, not even a glimmer. Only ignominious death will end their problems. The same is true of America's dumbest - the Trumptards.

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

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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 2:20 PM

SECOND

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


Robust Ukrainian and Russian air defenses have rendered both sides’ aircraft, particularly those used for close air support missions, largely “worthless” in the war between the two countries, according to a top American Air Force general.

About 60 Ukrainian aircraft and 70 Russian aircraft have been downed in the year since Russia launched its invasion, according to commander of US Air Forces in Europe and Africa Gen. James Hecker, a feat accomplished by the two countries’ highly capable air defense systems that have left much of the battlefield airspace off limits.

“Both of their integrated air and missile defense, especially when you’re talking about going against aircraft, have been very effective,” Hecker said during a roundtable at the Air and Space Force Association’s Air Warfare Symposium. “And that’s why they’re not flying” in many areas, he added.

The US and other NATO countries have for months kicked around the idea of sending multi-role F-16 Fighting Falcons to Ukraine. So far, the US has been reluctant to take that step with F-16s. Hecker said the F-16 efficacy, especially in close air support roles, could be in doubt due to current Russian air defenses.

More at https://breakingdefense.com/2023/03/in-ukraine-fight-integrated-air-de
fense-has-made-many-aircraft-worthless-us-air-force-general
/

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

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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 9:40 PM

SECOND

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


Russia and Ukraine's deadliest battle is starting to look like Stalingrad 'without the importance,' expert says

Michael Peck Mar 7, 2023, 5:09 PM

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-and-ukraine-bakhmut-battle-look
s-like-stalingrad-expert-says-2023-3


1) Russia and Ukraine both say Bakhmut, a city in Ukraine, is the site of their deadliest fighting.

2) The cost in lives on both sides appears disproportionate to the city's actual strategic value.

3) An expert on Russia's military likened it to Stalingrad, but without the same level of significance.

What if Stalingrad hadn't been named after Josef Stalin?

If that city hadn't been identified with Adolf Hitler's arch-nemesis, then perhaps the fuhrer wouldn't have been quite as obsessed with capturing it — or at least not so obsessed as to lose 300,000 soldiers and any chance Nazi Germany had of winning World War II.

But at least Stalingrad was an industrial city, a major inland port on the Volga River that was a vital transportation artery for Soviet war production and home to a half-million people. Thus capturing or holding Stalingrad had some strategic value.

What exactly is the value of the city of Bakhmut?

It is one of many cities in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. Before Russia's invasion last year it had a population of just 71,000. It has a nice winery, and a couple of highways pass through it.

But is Bakhmut an objective worth 30,000 Russian casualties and thousands of Ukrainian casualties whom Kyiv can ill afford to lose?

Western experts are struggling to understand why both sides are pouring enormous resources — and prestige — into the Battle of Bakhmut.


"Both sides have really been going at it there," Dara Massicot, an expert on Russia's military at the Rand Corporation think tank, said during a recent symposium.

"They've taken a lot of casualties. They've expended a lot of ammunition," Massicot added. "It's becoming like a Stalingrad except for without the importance of Stalingrad."

Capturing Bakhmut would "give the Russians a launch point from which to drive northwest along the E40 highway to Slovyansk, or north to the town of Siversk," according to The Washington Post.

But to what end? "Russian forces have tried and failed to take these cities in the past," The Post said. Ukraine has already dug trench lines behind Bakhmut, so any Russian attempt to exploit the capture of Bakhmut would be hindered or blocked by fresh Ukrainian defenses.

Hitler may have been fixated on capturing the city named after Stalin. The Kremlin may be fixating on Bakhmut because of internal rivalries.


Instead of the regular Russian soldiers whose performance in Ukraine has been disappointing, the siege of Bakhmut has been waged largely by the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization with deep ties to the Putin government.

Much like the Red Army's penal battalions in World War II, Wagner is using convicts as cannon fodder to wear down the Ukrainian defenders with haphazard attacks — launched with the threat of execution for those who retreat or surrender — and then sending in better-trained contract soldiers to finish the job.

For his part, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to hold Bakhmut, warning that capturing it would give Russian forces an "open road" to other Ukrainian cities.

But why that city in particular? Ukraine would not lose the war if Bakhmut falls, as it is likely to now that Russia has captured most of the city and has almost cut the Ukrainian defenders' supply lines. In fact, there are indications that Ukrainian forces may already be withdrawing.

"If the Ukrainians decide to reposition in some of the terrain that's west of Bakhmut, I would not view that as an operational or a strategic setback," Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters Monday. "I think it's more of a symbolic value than it is a strategic and operational value."

War can be like children fighting over a toy: sometimes one side covets an objective simply because the other side wants it.

For Russia, the failure to defeat Ukraine outright was humiliating, and Wagner's leader, Putin confidant Yevgeny Prigozhin, likely sees victory as necessary to triumph in his feud with Russia's military leadership.

For Ukraine, now determined to recover all the land captured or annexed by Russia, denying Bakhmut to the enemy would provide a psychological boost, while ceding any territory could be a political and psychological setback.

Perhaps both sides should the heed the lessons of Stalingrad.

While the battle is remembered as a crushing Nazi defeat, the Germans captured 90% of the city and Soviet troops were left clinging to a narrow sector along the Volga. Without Operation Uranus — the surprise Soviet counteroffensive that encircled Germany's 6th Army in November 1942 — the city would have eventually fallen.

Yet the Soviet Union would have kept fighting had Stalingrad been captured. Nazi Germany lost an entire army at Stalingrad and still had the strength to continue fighting for another two and a half years.

Bakhmut will eventually offer one side victory and the other defeat, but it won't end the war.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds a master's in political science. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.


Battle of Stalingrad
World War II
https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Stalingrad

Hitler, the worst military strategist in WWII, was the key to Russia defeating the German Army:

"Hitler refused to let Paulus fight his way westward at the same time in order to link up with Manstein. That fatal decision doomed Paulus’s forces, since Manstein’s forces then simply lacked the reserves needed to break through the Soviet encirclement single-handedly."

"Hitler exhorted the trapped German forces to fight to the death, going so far as to promote Paulus to field marshal (and reminding Paulus that no German officer of that rank had ever surrendered)."

The Russians should thank God that Hitler was, as far as understanding military strategy, incompetent, but how many demagogues are competent at anything other than persuasion? Close to none. THE IMPACT OF HITLER'S INVOLVEMENT was to throw away Germany's only real chance of outright victory.

Operation Barbarossa And Germany's Failure In The Soviet Union
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/operation-barbarossa-and-germanys-failu
re-in-the-soviet-union


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

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Wednesday, March 8, 2023 8:46 AM

SECOND

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


NATO intelligence meanwhile estimates that for every Ukrainian soldier killed defending Bakhmut, Russian forces have lost at least five, a military official with the alliance told CNN on Monday. The official cautioned the 5-to-1 ratio was an informed estimate based on intelligence.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/07/europe/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-cnn-i
nterview-bakhmut-intl/index.html


Zelenskyy’s national security chief Oleksiy Danilov on Friday said the casualties had been “one to seven in our favour”.
https://www.ft.com/content/439aa6b0-2f3c-4eca-b81f-b7e9c8eb286f

Is it 7-to-1 ratio?
5-to-1?
1-to-1?

That ratio controls who eventually wins. What is the real ratio?

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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