REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Thursday, April 25, 2024 19:19
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 96631
PAGE 62 of 127

Sunday, February 19, 2023 5:00 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Uh huh.

Sorry I don't do Telegram.
I would not want you to know directly from Russians about what Russians are doing. Maybe the watered-down version of reality from The Christian Science Monitor, without all the dead bodies, is acceptable to you?

US determines Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine

Russia’s response was that it was Ukraine that committed "crimes-against-humanity", not Russia. If anyone dares to accuse Russia of further crimes, that nation has crossed one of many Russian red lines protecting Russia’s sterling reputation as the finest law-abiding nation, unlike the criminally run US (although it must be noted that the US under Pres. Trump was very lawful and respectful toward Russia.) [/end sarcasm]

by Karl Ritter, Geir Moulson

The United States has determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday, insisting that “justice must be served” to the perpetrators.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Ms. Harris said the international community has both a moral and a strategic interest in pursuing those crimes, pointing to a danger of other authoritarian governments taking advantage if international rules are undermined.

“Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population – gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation,” Ms. Harris said. She also cited “execution-style killings, beatings, and electrocution.”

The Biden administration formally determined last March that Russian troops had committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders. A determination of crimes against humanity goes a step further, indicating that attacks against civilians are being carried out in a widespread and systematic manner.

“Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people, from Ukraine to Russia, including children,” Ms. Harris said. “They have cruelly separated children from their families.”

She also pointed to the attack in mid-March on a theater in the strategic port city of Mariupol where civilians had been sheltering, which killed hundreds, and to the images of civilians’ bodies left on the streets of Bucha after the Russian pullback from the Kyiv area last spring.

Ms. Harris said that, as a former prosecutor and former head of California’s Department of Justice, she knows “the importance of gathering facts and holding them up against the law.”

“In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt,” she said. “These are crimes against humanity.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who also was attending the Munich conference, said in a statement issued as Harris spoke that “we reserve crimes against humanity determinations for the most egregious crimes.”

The new determination underlines the “staggering extent” of suffering inflicted on Ukrainian civilians and “also reflects the deep commitment of the United States to holding members of Russia’s forces and other Russian officials accountable for their atrocities,” he said.

Russia’s nearly yearlong invasion of Ukraine, has dominated discussions at the Munich conference, an annual gathering of security and defense officials from around the world. Ms. Harris told the assembled participants: “Let us all agree — on behalf of all the victims, both known and unknown, justice must be served.”

“Such is our moral interest,” she said. “We also have a significant strategic interest.”

“No nation is safe in a world where one country can violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another, where crimes against humanity are committed with impunity, where a country with imperialist ambitions can go unchecked,” Ms. Harris added.

If Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeds in attacking international rules and norms, “other nations could feel emboldened to follow his violent example,” she said. “Other authoritarian powers could seek to bend the world to their will, through coercion, disinformation, and even brute force.”

Ms. Harris’ audience Saturday didn’t include any Russian officials. Conference organizers decided not to invite them this year.

Amid the Western officials defending arms supplies to Ukraine, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, stood out by calling for an end to the war through peace talks, saying Beijing was “deeply worried about the expansion and long-term effect of this war.”

China has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or to impose sanctions on Moscow like Western nations have done. Without naming any countries, Mr. Wang said “there may be forces” that don’t want the war to stop anytime soon.

“What they care about is not the life and death of the Ukrainian people, nor the increasing damage to Europe. They probably have bigger strategic goals than Ukraine,” he said.

Mr. Wang said Beijing planned to present a “position paper on the political settlement of the Ukraine issue” that would reiterate proposals made by President Xi Jinping.

Asked on the sidelines of the event about the U.S. determination of crimes against humanity, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba replied that “Russia waged a genocidal war against Ukrainians because they do not recognize our identity and they do not think we deserve to exist as a sovereign nation.”

“Everything that stems from that is crimes against humanity, war crimes, and various other atrocities committed by the Russian army in the territory of Ukraine,” he said. “Let lawyers sort out specifically which act belongs where in terms of legal qualification.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Western allies in a video address to the Munich conference on Friday to quicken their military support for Ukraine, declaring that “it’s speed that life depends on.”

Mr. Kuleba voiced confidence that Ukraine would eventually receive fighter jets from its partners, despite their current reluctance. He noted that they initially pushed back on providing other heavy weapons that were later delivered or promised, “so the only outstanding type of weapon is planes.”

In Munich on Friday, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, called for cluster munitions and phosphorous bombs, German media reported. Cluster munitions are banned by an international treaty.

Asked whether he supported calling for such weapons, Mr. Kuleba said Ukraine has evidence that Russia uses them.

“We are not party to the convention on the prohibition of cluster ammunition, so legally there are no obstacles for that,” he said. “And if we receive one, we will be using it exclusively against military forces of the Russian Federation.”

This story was reported by The Associated Press. Geir Moulson contributed to this report from Berlin.

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2023/0218/US-determines-Russia-
has-committed-crimes-against-humanity-in-Ukraine

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 8:27 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


More bullshit from SECOND.

Dood... your media circus has claimed that there was a pilot that shot down six... no 25... no, MORE... Russian fighter jets, ALL BY HIMSELF! (fake news)

That soldiers defended Snake Island to the last man. (no, they surrendered)

That Russian soldiers went on a rape orgy (lurid, but fake, news)

That 97pct of the Russian army is in Ukraine.

That 100,000 ... no, 140,000!... Russian soldiers have been killed

That Russia lost half of its army

That Russians were shelling .... THEMSELVES... at Zaparozhye Nuclear Power Plant

That "Russia is running out of missiles", any day now!

*****

Why should I believe anything you post?

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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 11:08 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Why should I believe anything you post?
You told me everything I need to know about yourself when you wrote:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Uh huh.

Sorry I don't do Telegram.
What did I write to cause you to tell me that there something seriously wrong with you, Signym? This:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Is it possible that this so-called video is just a ... lie???
Video here: https://t.me/razgruzka_vagnera/10
Google Translate:
Quote:
Every day we lose hundreds of our comrades. There could have been half as many of them if the military functionaries had supplied us with weapons, ammunition and everything that was needed on time. Stop messing around, let us fight, let us defend our country, our homeland. There are hundreds of our guys here. Send your children, sons-in-law, who shoot tik-toks, to this war.
Following a video posted on February 16 of Wagner Group troops stating that they have been cut off from artillery supplies Wagner fighters released another video on February 17 showing a room full of bodies of deceased Wagner fighters.[17] The fighter in the video claims that Wagner is losing hundreds of personnel a day because the Russian MoD is not providing them with the weapons, ammunition, and other supplies that they need.[18] Several Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels also amplified a #GiveShellstoWagner post that explicitly tags the Russian MoD and claims (falsely) that Wagner is the only formation currently advancing in Ukraine and that Wagner elements therefore need immediate support.[19] The escalation of Wagner’s direct accusations against the Russian MoD represents a new informational counteroffensive by Prigozhin that seeks to continue to undermine the Russian MoD and obscure Wagner’s attrition-based operational model by blaming the Russian MoD for its failures.

More at https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-17-2023

When dealing with people who are crazy, such as Russians or Trumptards in East Texas, there always comes a point where the crazy people have to be (listed in order of severity of response)

1) avoided
2) fired
3) sued
4) jailed
5) conventional warfare
6) nuclear warfare

The crazy people of Russia are at stage 5. I don't think Russians understand how much trouble they are in. That is probably because the Russians think they could have beaten the Germans in WWII all alone, but the truth is Russia would have lost if the US hadn't attacked Germany. It is the US that could have beaten the Germans all alone. If the US Army joins this fight on Ukraine's side, Russia will be as defeated as Germany. I don't expect the Russians to understand how puny they are. They keep thinking their H-bombs will protect them from the US. The Russians are wrong. Instead, the Russians better put their faith in President Trump to save them. The Russians better do everything they can to get Trump reelected.


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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 12:03 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Wagner Group does a few things that make their statements problematic:

They make everything sound harder than it is
They take all of the credit for any gains, and
They blame the Russian MoD for any failures

Basically, they're advertising their services. They don't look particularly poorly-supplied. They look well-fed and well-rested. I think there's some bad blood between Wagner and the MoD.

*****

And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.



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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 12:04 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


You are clueless about how racist you sound.

People are individuals. But Democrats don't understand that because all they want to do is throw everyone in intersectional boxes.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 12:26 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You are clueless about how racist you sound.

People are individuals. But Democrats don't understand that because all they want to do is throw everyone in intersectional boxes.
6ix, what country do you live in? You are not an individual in America. You are very much the same as every other Trumptard. I suppose zebras can tell each other apart, and Trumptards can tell each other apart, but if you are not a zebra or a Trumptard, you all look the same.

6ix, you have shown over and over that something is wrong with you, but don't feel bad because the same is wrong with many Trumptards: 1) No teeth because you neglected them. 2) A lost decade from drunkenness. 3) An inability to hold a job. 4) Women walk out of your life, forever, because of your scintillating personality. 5) Incompetence on the job, but a sincere conviction that the boss needs you. 6) Bitterness and estrangement. 7) A feeling of generalized purposelessness and meaninglessness. Trump fills that hole in your psyche. If you were Russian, Putin fills that same hole in your soul. North Korean? Then Kim plugs the place where your spirit leaks out.

That matches up well with the Trumptards I know.

Back to war and how predictably stupid Russians are when under pressure, much the same as Trumptards mentally collapse when under the slightest pressure:

For the current war, the Russians seem to have deployed to Ukraine the majority of their roughly 50 TOS-1As. The Ukrainians have destroyed at least one of the 45-ton launchers and captured four others—and have fired at least one captured launcher back at the Russians.

It’s unclear exactly how many TOS-1As the Russians have left. Regardless, they were willing to risk at least one of the precious vehicles, which can cost up to $7 million to build, escalating their assault on Vuhledar.

After losing scores of tanks and fighting vehicles and potentially hundreds of troops trying to cross that minefield and break the Ukrainian defenses around Vuhledar, the Russians clearly are getting desperate. And maybe a bit sloppy.

The TOS-1A is a powerful weapon, but a vulnerable one. Its unwieldy rockets range just two miles, meaning a launcher must close to within range of enemy tank guns before it can open fire. It’s a dangerous proposition for the launcher’s three-person crew.

In Soviet doctrine, a TOS-1 deployed with tanks as escorts. “Doctrinally, the TOS-1 was envisioned to decimate a large area, by charging ahead, while under the protection of tanks, launching its rockets in rapid succession (all [24 or] 30 rockets in 7.5 seconds), and then returning to the rear for rearmament and redeployment,” Grau and Charles Bartles explained in their definitive The Russian Way of War.

It’s not clear the Russians are sticking to that doctrine. It seems there were no escorting tanks in sight when the Ukrainians blew up that TOS-1A outside Vuhledar. Which, of course, might be why the Ukrainians were able to hit the thermobaric launcher.

More at https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/02/18/when-russian-troops-g
ot-stuck-in-a-minefield-near-vuhledar-they-deployed-a-flamethrower-rocket-launcher-the-ukrainians-blew-it-up/

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 1:33 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You are clueless about how racist you sound.

People are individuals. But Democrats don't understand that because all they want to do is throw everyone in intersectional boxes.
6ix, what country do you live in? You are not an individual in America.


Get fucked, you brainwashed little monkey.

You and your ilk on the verge of becoming completely irrelevant.

Enjoy the next 2 years. They'll be your last.



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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 1:54 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wagner Group does a few things that make their statements problematic:

They make everything sound harder than it is
They take all of the credit for any gains, and
They blame the Russian MoD for any failures

Basically, they're advertising their services. They don't look particularly poorly-supplied. They look well-fed and well-rested. I think there's some bad blood between Wagner and the MoD.

*****

And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.



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



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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 2:41 PM

SECOND

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


On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine and unleashed the full force of his propagandists on his own population. He had little doubt about his prospects. For years, he had been regarded in the world press as a singularly cunning strategist; at the same time, he methodically crushed civil society in his country and sidelined any dissenting voices in the Kremlin.

So who was going to stop him on the road to Kyiv? Hadn’t Donald Trump, during his Presidency, exposed and deepened the fissures in the NATO alliance? Under Joe Biden, the United States seemed finished with foreign adventures—humiliated by its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and distracted by its internal divisions. And what of Ukraine itself? It was a pseudo-nation, hopelessly corrupt and led by Volodymyr Zelensky, a former sitcom actor with an approval rating south of thirty per cent. Putin’s serene presumption was that, within a week, his forces would overrun Kyiv, arrest Zelensky and his advisers, and install a cast of collaborators. Putin was counting on historians to celebrate his rightful restoration of Imperial Russia.

To set the stage for this full-scale invasion—it should be recalled that the first act of aggression came in 2014, when Russian soldiers took Crimea and infiltrated the Donbas––he issued a long, historically perverse manifesto that asserted what he had been telling foreign leaders for years: that there is no such thing as Ukrainian nationhood.

Russian propagandists (much like the propagandists of the G.O.P.) refer to President Biden as a doddering hack, incapable of making it through a coherent sentence, let alone putting up an effective resistance to the Russian armed forces. Yet, in the past year, Biden has conducted a foreign policy of competence and moral clarity, skillfully balancing strength, diplomacy, and restraint. The opposition in Congress to supporting the Ukrainian cause has so far been limited mainly to the right wing of the Republican Party, with an assist from its attendant media outlets.

One of the top-selling books of the past year in Russia has been George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.” Not long after the invasion, police in the city of Ivanovo arrested two people who were handing out free copies on the street. Sales are so high, and the implications so obvious, that Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the foreign ministry, felt compelled to reject the notion that the novel resembles Putin’s rule in any way. “In school, we were drilled that Orwell was describing the horrors of totalitarianism,” she said. “This is one of those global fakes.” Instead, the novel “depicted how liberalism would lead humanity to a dead end.”

Putin told Ukraine that it is not a nation. Ukraine has given its response. As Orwell wrote in his novel, “There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20230219192314/https://www.newyorker.com/m
agazine/2023/02/27/as-ukraine-marks-a-grim-anniversary-what-has-vladimir-putin-achieved

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 3:17 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Enjoy the next 2 years. They'll be your last.
A review of Lenin’s Tomb

Joel Eissenberg writes: Just finished “Lenin’s Tomb” by David Remnick. The book’s subtitle is “The last days of the Soviet empire.” At ca. 550 pages, it might seem a lot of text to devote to a few days or weeks, but that’s not what the book is really about. Remnick shows us how the history of the Soviet Union as codified by the Bolsheviks and Stalin became the foundational myth that drove that society. . . .

The final act of the Soviet Union was the failed coup of August 1991. Remnick does a great job here of conveying the fog of uncertainty. While Gorbachev was cut off from the outside at his Crimean dacha, the putschists clumsily tried to wield the flabby levers of crumbling Soviet power. The military and KGB proved unwilling to shed Russian blood and the coup leadership collapsed in incompetence and alcohol. Their collapse was aided by the steadfastness of Yeltsin and his supporters in the Russian White House. In retrospect, the coup looks like folly from the start, but as Remnick shows us, its failure didn’t seem assured to most people on the ground at the time. I found these fifty pages to be the most riveting and heart pounding in the entire book. Gorbachev resigned on Christmas 1991, beginning the Yeltsin era. Lenin’s Tomb ends in 1995. In an afterword, Reminck is pessimistic about a democratic future in Russia and points to political currents strongly favoring some form of autocracy.

A few days before my first visit to Moscow in the summer of 1998, the ruble collapsed, losing 50% of its value in a single day. By the second day of my visits, all the cash machines were shut down. Restaurant prices fluctuated hourly. But the subways ran, the stations were clean and a band played ragtime music in the Arbat. Lenin’s tomb was still in Red Square. The statue of Yuri Gagarin still towered over Leninsky Prospekt, a few blocks from the Hotel Sputnik where I was staying. The Kremlin grounds still hosted “the largest bell that never rang” and “the largest cannon that never fired.”

In 2000, Putin succeeded Yeltsin. The Yeltsin years were characterized by an explosion of criminal enterprises and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few oligarchs. This has continued under Putin, with Putin believed to be among the richest persons on the planet. Putin clearly yearns for the international stature of the Soviet Union, or some amalgam of it and the Russian Empire of the Tsars. Now that he is 70 years old and the war in Ukraine has exposed the Russian military as a paper tiger, it is unclear whether he can maintain his grip on power and if not, who and what will follow.

Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “banality of evil” to describe the infamous Nazi Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, but it just as well describes many of the totemic evil figures of the Soviet Union—Stalin, Beria, Molotov—and ultimately the state they superintended. Today, we have the spectacle of Putin justifying his invasion of Ukraine to neutralize a ‘Nazi state’ lead by a Jewish president. Has the Russia of Putin returned to the Stalinist brand of banal evil, with its indifference to human suffering and death? Will the Russian people accept autocratic government under the guise of “free enterprise?”

The challenge of writing history for a lay reader is conveying the drama of events as they happened, even though we know the outcome already. Remnick was a reporter for the Washington Post at the time this book was written (he’s now the editor of The New Yorker). He has an ear for a good anecdote and can tell a gripping story. This is history written by a reporter, not an academic historian; he goes beyond the abstractions of economics, politics and the immensity of the Soviet carceral state, introducing us to people, places and personal narratives. This is great history and great history writing.

More at https://angrybearblog.com/2023/02/lenins-tomb

Download a free copy of David Remnick’s “Lenin’s Tomb: The last days of the Soviet empire” from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.bio/search.php?req=David+Remnick+Tomb

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 7:18 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wagner Group does a few things that make their statements problematic:

They make everything sound harder than it is
They take all of the credit for any gains, and
They blame the Russian MoD for any failures

Basically, they're advertising their services. They don't look particularly poorly-supplied. They look well-fed and well-rested. I think there's some bad blood between Wagner and the MoD.

*****

And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.



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



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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 7:42 PM

SECOND

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


Ukraine has a realistic chance to liberate Russian-occupied Crimea by the end of the summer if it gets long-range missiles, retired U.S. General Ben Hodges, who commanded U.S. troops in Europe, told Ukrainian publication Ukrinform on Feb. 18.

"We will do everything possible for Ukraine to win this year," he said.

In his words, the prerequisite for such a speedy liberation of the peninsula, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014, would require all partners to provide all needed weapons, especially precision-guided long-range missiles. Hodges believes that the battle for Crimea will be "decisive."

Ukraine has repeatedly asked for long-range missiles such as the U.S. ATACMS, which can strike up to 300 kilometers away. This would give Ukraine the ability to destroy Russian supplies, command posts and other critical assets parked deep behind enemy lines, which would inflict severe damage on Russia's ability to fight, Phillips O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at St. Andrew’s University, told the Kyiv Independent.

Western allies have balked at giving Ukraine missiles with ranges that long, concerned that Ukraine would be able to fire them into Russian territory.

https://kyivindependent.com/news-feed/retired-us-general-hodges-with-l
ong-range-missiles-ukraine-can-liberate-crimea-by-end-of-summer

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, February 19, 2023 8:49 PM

SECOND

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


The war with Ukraine will be over unless the EU finds a way in weeks to speed up the provision of ammunition to Ukraine, Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, warned on the final day of the Munich security conference.

He said a special meeting of EU defence ministers slated for 8-9 March will provide a chance for countries to offer ammunition from their existing stocks, adding it is taking up to 10 months for European armies to order and receive a single bullet.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/19/ukraine-war-over-unless-
eu-boosts-military-support-says-top-diplomat

The cheese-eating French surrender monkeys can't deliver the bullets to Ukraine but all the baguettes Ukrainians need are baked and ready to eat today. C'est délicieux!

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 7:43 AM

SECOND

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


Download the documentary Ukraine from Above: Secrets From the Frontline 2023

A year on from Russia’s invasion, a look at how the war has played out from the air and how Ukraine use drones, satellites and smart tech to thwart the enemy. Featuring drone photography of key locations from before and after the war. 47 minutes.

https://comment.rlsbb.ru/ukraine-from-above-secrets-from-the-frontline
-2023-1080p-hdtv-h264-darkflix/

Review
Ukraine from Above: Secrets From the Frontline

This one-off documentary is brought to you by the production company that made Europe from Above, Hidden Britain by Drone, and The Emirates from Above. It specialises in using aerial photography to find new perspectives, in other words – but Ukraine from Above: Secrets from the Frontline (Channel 4) is not like the others.

Almost a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, pictures taken from the air illustrate a story of destruction on a hideous scale. Before and after photographs show Ukrainian apartment blocks that used to teem with happy everyday life, now with every window blown out; previously magnificent theatres with craters in the roof; and pictures of whole cities which, when overlaid on a map, show the systematic razing of civilian buildings such as schools and health centres. Modern drone technology enables those images to be taken closeup, a development that has turned this theatre of war into a heavily surveilled crucible where atrocities are hard to conceal. When the Russians massacred surrendering civilians on the road out of Kyiv, a drone was in the air above them, clearly filming a man with his hands raised being shot dead.

A documentary rounding up such images would be fine and worthy, but Ukraine from Above is not just about the filth of conflict, as captured by drone cameras. It concerns a kind of asymmetric warfare in which the drone camera is a weapon. We see how – at least in the early phases of the invasion, before much heavyweight western hardware had made it across the border – the mighty Russian conquest machine was repeatedly banjaxed by hobbyists using kit you could’ve bought in the Kharkiv branch of Currys.

More at https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/feb/19/ukraine-from-abov
e-secrets-from-the-frontline-review-the-startling-tale-of-how-a-child-destroyed-russian-tanks

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 8:33 AM

SECOND

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


Russian State TV Says U.S. Has Declared War

In the video translated by TheKremlinYap, an account that tracks Kremlin propaganda, Russian journalist Igor Korotchenko hit out at the U.S.

"After the U.S. crossed every imaginable and unimaginable red line, today the U.S. State Department actually announced that it was going to war with Russia."

"I assume that this is how we should interpret Nuland's statement. There is no need for halftones. The U.S. is an enemy of Russia, a military adversary."

"If it expects massive missile strikes on Russian territory to be carried out with their help, but as if by someone else's hands, then perhaps we can regard this as a casus belli (cause for war) and react accordingly."

Korotchenko said he wanted Russian officials to "give adequate, conceptual, doctrinal, and military responses to this audacious statement of the United States, and appropriate measures should be taken. What kind of measures? We shall see."

Michael Clarke, professor in the War Studies department at King's College London, told Newsweek: "In order to justify the fact that Russians are now well aware that the SMO (special military operation) is, in reality, a nasty little war that is getting worse, the sacrifices the Russian public will now have to make can only be justified if the Russian homeland itself is under threat. Hence the steady ramping up of Kremlin rhetoric to justify the sacrifices required."

More at https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-tv-says-us-has-declared-war-aft
er-crimea-comments-1782239

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 8:36 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine has a realistic chance to liberate Russian-occupied Crimea by the end of the summer if it gets long-range missiles, retired U.S. General Ben Hodges, who commanded U.S. troops in Europe, told Ukrainian publication Ukrinform on Feb. 18.

"We will do everything possible for Ukraine to win this year," he said.

In his words, the prerequisite for such a speedy liberation of the peninsula, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014, would require all partners to provide all needed weapons, especially precision-guided long-range missiles. Hodges believes that the battle for Crimea will be "decisive."


Fuck Ukraine.

Quote:
Ukraine has repeatedly asked for long-range missiles such as the U.S. ATACMS, which can strike up to 300 kilometers away. This would give Ukraine the ability to destroy Russian supplies, command posts and other critical assets parked deep behind enemy lines, which would inflict severe damage on Russia's ability to fight, Phillips O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at St. Andrew’s University, told the Kyiv Independent.


That's an act of war. Putin would and should treat it as such.

Quote:
Western allies have balked at giving Ukraine missiles with ranges that long, concerned that Ukraine would be able to fire them into Russian territory.


Good. Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 9:05 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Fuck Ukraine.

Quote:
Ukraine has repeatedly asked for long-range missiles such as the U.S. ATACMS, which can strike up to 300 kilometers away. This would give Ukraine the ability to destroy Russian supplies, command posts and other critical assets parked deep behind enemy lines, which would inflict severe damage on Russia's ability to fight, Phillips O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at St. Andrew’s University, told the Kyiv Independent.


That's an act of war. Putin would and should treat it as such.

Quote:
Western allies have balked at giving Ukraine missiles with ranges that long, concerned that Ukraine would be able to fire them into Russian territory.


Good. Fuck Ukraine.
“There are four new regions of Russia,” Putin said in a televised ceremony from the Kremlin. Those new regions are inside Ukraine. When Ukrainian troops entered those regions, Russia was being invaded. In the "logical" mind of a Russian, that means the US has invaded Russia. The next "logical" step is for Russia to bomb 6ixStringJoker's house in Indiana. Those Russians are so very logical that it is almost indistinguishable from crazy.

Putin declares ‘four new regions of Russia’ as Moscow illegally annexes parts of Ukraine
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/30/putin-declares-four-new-regions-of-rus
sia-as-moscow-annexes-parts-of-ukraine.html

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 9:20 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Fuck Ukraine.

Quote:
Ukraine has repeatedly asked for long-range missiles such as the U.S. ATACMS, which can strike up to 300 kilometers away. This would give Ukraine the ability to destroy Russian supplies, command posts and other critical assets parked deep behind enemy lines, which would inflict severe damage on Russia's ability to fight, Phillips O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at St. Andrew’s University, told the Kyiv Independent.


That's an act of war. Putin would and should treat it as such.

Quote:
Western allies have balked at giving Ukraine missiles with ranges that long, concerned that Ukraine would be able to fire them into Russian territory.


Good. Fuck Ukraine.
“There are four new regions of Russia,” Putin said in a televised ceremony from the Kremlin. Those new regions are inside Ukraine. When Ukrainian troops entered those regions, Russia was being invaded. In the "logical" mind of a Russian, that means the US has invaded Russia. The next "logical" step is for Russia to bomb 6ixStringJoker's house in Indiana. Those Russians are so very logical that it is almost indistinguishable from crazy.


The US and NATO are at war with Russia and are using Ukrainian men as cannon fodder. Joe Biden* just pledged even more money to child rapist Zelensky to ensure more Ukrainian men will die for the US and for NATO.

If we give them any missile tech that allows them to fire missiles into important Russian targets, we might as well have fired them ourselves.

Putin won't be firing a missile at Indiana, or Chicago for that matter. He'll start with blowing off chunks of California into the ocean like Lex Luthor should have done back in the early 80's.




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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 9:30 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

The US and NATO are at war with Russia and are using Ukrainian men as cannon fodder. Joe Biden* just pledged even more money to child rapist Zelensky to ensure more Ukrainian men will die for the US and for NATO.

If we give them any missile tech that allows them to fire missiles into important Russian targets, we might as well have fired them ourselves.

Putin won't be firing a missile at Indiana, or Chicago for that matter. He'll start with blowing off chunks of California into the ocean like Lex Luthor should have done back in the early 80's.
Brilliant minds think alike. 6ix, did you know you have everything in common with Putin? All you wrote are Putin talking points except for "blowing off chunks of California." The Russians said it would be the UK, not California.

Moscow could wipe Britain off the map with a nuclear tsunami in retaliation for supporting Ukraine
https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/05/04/what-is-russia-s-poseidon-nuc
lear-drone-and-could-it-wipe-out-the-uk-in-a-radioactive-tsun

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 1:50 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

The US and NATO are at war with Russia and are using Ukrainian men as cannon fodder. Joe Biden* just pledged even more money to child rapist Zelensky to ensure more Ukrainian men will die for the US and for NATO.

If we give them any missile tech that allows them to fire missiles into important Russian targets, we might as well have fired them ourselves.

Putin won't be firing a missile at Indiana, or Chicago for that matter. He'll start with blowing off chunks of California into the ocean like Lex Luthor should have done back in the early 80's.
Brilliant minds think alike. 6ix, did you know you have everything in common with Putin? All you wrote are Putin talking points except for "blowing off chunks of California." The Russians said it would be the UK, not California.

Moscow could wipe Britain off the map with a nuclear tsunami in retaliation for supporting Ukraine


Makes sense. It's closer than California.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 2:13 PM

SECOND

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


Putin, czar with no empire, needs military victory for his own survival

by Robyn Dixon, Catherine Belton

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin likes to portray himself as a new czar like Peter the Great or Ivan III, the 15th-century grand prince known as the “gatherer of the Russian lands.” But Putin’s year-long war in Ukraine has failed so far to secure the lands he aims to seize, and in Russia, there is fear that he is leading his nation into a dark period of strife and stagnation — or worse.

Some in the elite also say the Russian leader now desperately needs a military victory to ensure his own survival. “In Russia, loyalty does not exist,” one Russian billionaire said.

Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began with hubris and a zeal to reshape the world order. But even as he suffered repeated military defeats — diminishing his stature globally and staining him with allegations of atrocities being committed by his troops — Putin has tightened his authoritarian grip at home, using the war to destroy any opposition and to engineer a closed, paranoid society hostile to liberals, hipsters, LGBTQ people, and, especially, Western-style freedom and democracy.

The Russian president’s squadrons of cheerleaders swear he “simply cannot lose” in Ukraine, thanks to Russia’s vast energy wealth, nuclear weapons and sheer number of soldiers it can throw onto the battlefield. These supporters see Putin rising supreme from Ukraine’s ashes to lead a swaggering nation defined by its repudiation of the West — a bigger, more powerful version of Iran.

But business executives and state officials say Putin’s own position at the top could prove precarious as doubts over his tactics grow among the elite. For many of them, Putin’s gambit has unwound 30 years of progress made since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin’s vision of Russia horrifies many oligarchs and state officials, who confide that the war has been a catastrophic error that has failed in every goal. But they remain paralyzed, fearful and publicly silent.

“Among the elite, though they understand it was a mistake, they still fear to do anything themselves,” said the only Russian diplomat to publicly quit office over the war, Boris Bondarev, formerly based at Russia’s U.N. mission in Geneva. “Because they have gotten used to Putin deciding everything.”

Some are sure that Putin can maintain his hold on power without a victory, as long as he keeps the war going and wears down Western resolve and weapons supplies. For anyone in the elite to act, Bondarev said, “there needs to be an understanding that Putin is leading the country to total collapse. While Putin is still bombing and attacking, people think the situation is not so bad. There needs to be a full military loss, and only then will people understand they need to do something.”

What all camps seem to agree on is that Putin shows no willingness to give up. As Russia’s battlefield position deteriorated in recent months, he escalated repeatedly, shuffling his commanders, unleashing brutal airstrikes on civilian infrastructure and threatening to use nuclear weapons.

Now, with his troops reinforced by conscripts and convicts and poised to launch new offensives, the 70-year-old Russian leader needs a win to maintain his own credibility. “Putin needs some success to demonstrate to society that he is still very successful,” a senior Ukrainian security official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss politically sensitive issues.

Moscow’s glittering indifference

As the casualties mount in Ukraine, filling graveyards across Russia’s provinces, Moscow’s glittering facade conveys a hedonistic, indifferent city. Its restaurants and cafes are crammed with glamorous young patrons sporting European designer wear, taking selfies on the latest iPhones, and ordering truffle pizza or duck confit to be washed down with trendy cocktails.

But beneath, Putin is creating a militarized, nationalistic society, fed on propaganda and obsessed with an “existential” forever war against the United States and NATO. So far, no one in officialdom has had the nerve to object — not publicly, at least.

“Whatever he says, it’s taken like this,” the editor in chief of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Konstantin Remchukov, said with a loud snap of his fingers.

Since Putin rose to the presidency in 2000, his legitimacy has been based on his popularity and stature among the elite, buttressed by his ability to instill fear by stripping some of their assets and throwing others into prison. The defeats in Ukraine have dented him.

The president seems forever haunted by the moment when as a young KGB officer serving in Dresden, the Soviet Union “gave up its position in Europe” as the Berlin Wall collapsed. And his pursuit of the empire lost with the subsequent Soviet collapse is throwing his country back into a gray, repressive and isolated past. For Putin, his efforts are a quest to right what he has perceived as historical wrongs. In his near-maniacal revisionist view, Ukraine has always belonged to Russia.

But even if Putin somehow forces Ukraine into capitulating and ceding occupied territory, those in the elite who lean toward a more liberal society stand to lose the most. Punitive Western economic sanctions are likely to remain in place, and some oligarchs undoubtedly would be pressed to pay to rebuild Russia’s new lands. Some analysts predict a sweeping purge of oligarchs and others deemed insufficiently patriotic.

Already, there are shocking glimpses of Putin’s new Russia: A couple in a Krasnodar restaurant were arrested, handcuffed and forced to the floor after being denounced to the police by an eavesdropper who heard them quietly bemoaning the war.

An older woman on a bus was dragged from her seat, thrown to the floor and roughly pushed out the door by passengers because she called Russia an empire that sends men to fight in cheap rubber boots.

Videos purportedly show members of the Kremlin-approved but technically illegal mercenary Wagner Group executing “traitors” in beatings with a sledgehammer.

Former central bank official Alexandra Prokopenko described an atmosphere in which officials fear prison amid intimidation by the security services.

“It is a concern for every member of the Russian elite,” said Prokopenko, who is in exile in the West. “It’s a question of survival for high-ranked, mid-ranked officials who all remained in Russia. People are quite terrified about their safety now.” She said former colleagues still at the bank told her they saw “no good exit for Russia right now.”

Two-pronged backlash

Increasingly isolated, Putin faces growing resentment from hawkish nationalists who say he should have acted more radically to seize Kyiv and from a liberal-leaning faction that thinks the war is a grave error. He has tightened his inner circle to a few hard-liners and sycophants, ruthlessly eliminated opposition rivals and set up a formidable security apparatus to safeguard against any threat.

Pro-Kremlin analysts see escalation — pumping in more soldiers and ramping up military production — as the path to victory. That appears to fit Putin’s character.

But no one really knows the current military goal or what Putin might consider a victory. Some say he will settle for seizing all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where Russia began fomenting separatist war in 2014. Others say he has not given up his designs on taking Kyiv and toppling the government.

In September, Ukraine’s first big successful counteroffensive shone a harsh spotlight on Putin’s instincts in a crisis: a bullish doubling-down designed to sever any path to compromise. His illegal claim to annex four Ukrainian territories, despite not controlling them militarily, was a burn-all-bridges tactic meant to draw sharp new red lines on the map of Ukraine.

His speech on the occasion of the supposed annexations, in the Grand Kremlin Palace’s St. George Hall, reached a new hysterical pitch over what he called the West’s “outright Satanism” and its desire to gobble Russia up and destroy its values.

“They do not want us to be free; they want us to be a colony,” he said. “They do not want equal cooperation; they want to loot. They do not want to see us a free society, but a mass of soulless slaves.” He has repeatedly described a quest to establish a multipolar world in which Russia regains its rightful place among the great powers.

Sometimes, Putin sharply rebukes one of his officials about failures, leaving others fearful of public humiliation. He elevates and rewards thuggish figures, such as Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the Wagner founder, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, but swiftly curbs them if they step out of line.

At times, Putin seems oddly out of touch with the realities of his war. Days after pro-war bloggers reported last week that dozens of Russian tanks and many soldiers were lost in a failed attack on Vuhledar involving Russia’s elite 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, Putin boasted to journalists that the “marine infantry is working as it should — right now — fighting heroically.”

Meanwhile, a profound pessimism has settled on the country. Those who believe the war is lost run the gamut from liberals to hard-liners. “It seems it is impossible to win a political or military victory,” one state official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment. “The economy is under huge stress and can’t be long under such a situation.”

Patriotic death cult

Publicly, Putin has voiced no concern about Russia’s brutal killings of civilians in cities including Bucha, Mariupol and Izyum, while his propaganda machine dismisses news of such atrocities as “fakes.” The International Criminal Court is investigating war crimes in Ukraine, and the European Parliament has called for a special court on Russia’s crime of aggression, the invasion of Ukraine.

But pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov said talk of war crimes prosecutions only stiffened Putin’s resolve.

“What will Putin’s response be? Fighting — and it doesn’t matter what the price will be,” Markov said.

Kremlin image makers convey Putin’s power in staged events where he looks the archetypal dictator — often a lone figure in the distance placing flowers at monuments to past military heroes. His staged appearances with purported ordinary Russians seem scripted and artificial, with participants simpering in nervous awe. The same faces keep appearing in different settings — dressed as soldiers, fishers or churchgoers, raising questions about how many real people the president ever meets.

As the war casualties pile up, Putin and top propagandists extol a fatalistic cult of death, arguing that it is better to die in Russia’s war than in a car accident, from alcoholism or from cancer.

“One day we will all leave this world,” Putin told a group of carefully selected women portrayed as mothers of mobilized soldiers in November, many of them actually pro-Kremlin activists or relatives of officials. “The question is how we lived. With some people, it is unclear whether they live or not. It is unclear why they die, because of vodka or something else. When they are gone, it is hard to say whether they lived or not. Their lives passed without notice.”

But a man who died in war “did not leave his life for nothing,” he said. “His life was important.”

Venerable rights organizations such as Memorial and the Sakharov Center have been forced to close, while respected political analysts, musicians, journalists and former Soviet political prisoners have been declared “foreign agents,” Many have fled or been jailed.

As sanctions slowly bite, prices soar and businesses struggle to adapt, economists and business executives predict a long economic decline amid isolation from Western technology, ideas and value chains.

“The economy has entered a long period of Argentinization,” a second Russian billionaire said. “It will be a long slow degradation. There will be less of everything.”

Through the war, Putin has profoundly changed Russia, clamping down harder on liberties, prompting hundreds of thousands of Russians to emigrate. In the future, pro-democracy liberals will not be tolerated, analysts say.

“The pro-West opposition will be gone,” Markov said.

“Whoever doesn’t support the special military operation is not part of the people,” he said, using Putin’s term for the war.

But the second Russian billionaire said he was convinced that one day, somehow, the country would become “a normal European nonimperial country” and that his children, who have U.S. passports, would return. “I want them to return to a free Russia, of course,” he said. “To a free and democratic Russia.”

Dixon reported from Moscow and Belton from London.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 3:47 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.



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



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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 3:56 PM

SECOND

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


Signym posted the same thing 4 times on this page. But is the following true?
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.
I am beginning to think Signym confuses Truth and Fiction. Here is the fiction Russia has been selling, yesterday and the day before and the month before, and the year before:

Russia accuses Kyiv of planning to stage nuclear incident

Since the start of its invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago, Russia has repeatedly accused Kyiv of planning "false flag" operations with non-conventional weapons.

Published: FEBRUARY 19, 2023 19:04

Russia said on Sunday that Ukraine was planning to stage a nuclear incident on its territory to pin the blame on Moscow ahead of a United Nations meeting, without providing evidence for the accusation.

Since the start of its invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago, Russia has repeatedly accused Kyiv of planning "false flag" operations with non-conventional weapons, using biological or radioactive materials. No such attack has materialized.

More at https://www.jpost.com/international/article-732067

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 4:21 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Signym posted the same thing 4 times on this page. But is the following true?
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.
I am beginning to think Signym confuses Truth and Fiction.

Are you saying you HAVEN'T been complaining about Russia threatening nukes?
Are you saying you HAVEN'T threatened nukes?

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.





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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 4:30 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Signym posted the same thing 4 times on this page. But is the following true?
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.
I am beginning to think Signym confuses Truth and Fiction.

Are you saying you HAVEN'T been complaining about Russia threatening nukes?
Are you saying you HAVEN'T threatened nukes?

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.
Now you have posted the same old things 5 and 6 times on the same page. Does OCPD plague your life, Signym?

What is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD)? Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is a mental health condition that causes an extensive preoccupation with perfectionism, organization and control. These behaviors and thought patterns interfere with completing tasks and maintaining relationships. Dec 13, 2022

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24526-obsessive-compuls
ive-personality-disorder-ocpd

If you are getting the feeling I'm calling Signym, 6ix, and Russians nuts, you would be correct.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 7:17 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Signym posted the same thing 4 times on this page. But is the following true?
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.
I am beginning to think Signym confuses Truth and Fiction.

Are you saying you HAVEN'T been complaining about Russia threatening nukes?
Are you saying you HAVEN'T threatened nukes?

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.
Now you have posted the same old things 5 and 6 times on the same page. Does OCPD plague your life, Signym?


Trolls like you don't deserve thoughtful responses.

And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.

*****


Quote:
It’s the end of the world as we know it — and Munich feels nervous

https://www.politico.eu/article/munich-security-conference-ukraine-rus
sia-war-china-wang-yi-nato/


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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 10:33 PM

SECOND

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


Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized American aid to Ukraine as an "open-ended blank check" and questioned whether the United States should be engaged in the Russian conflict at all.

"I don't think it's in our interest to be getting into a proxy war with China, getting involved over things like the borderlands or over Crimea," DeSantis told Fox & Friends on Monday, referring to the Ukraine territories that Russia has seized through military force.

The remarks, made on the occasion of Biden's surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, were some of DeSantis' most direct comments about the US involvement in the war since the conflict started a year ago.

Asked "what a win looks like" for the US, DeSantis downplayed Moscow's military actions to date and said Russia was "really wounded" and had suffered "tremendous, tremendous loses" without acknowledging the role that US weapons, military intelligence and aid have played in shaping the conflict.

DeSantis insisted Russia is not a threat "on the same level as China."

"The fear of Russia going into NATO countries and all that, and steamrolling, that has not even come close to happening," DeSantis said. "I think they have shown themselves to be a third-rate military power."

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-2-20-23/h
_892b2023e3f2e4b6dfcc6f15f5fe47c7

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, February 20, 2023 11:32 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Ukraine sounds like Vietnam 2.0.

Mistake then.
Mistake now.

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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 5:42 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ukraine sounds like Vietnam 2.0.

Mistake then.
Mistake now.
That would only be a good analogy if China had invaded North Vietnam and the U.S. sent weapons to South Vietnam which feared being overrun by China. This hypothetical Sino-Vietnamese War was actually fought from February 17, 1979 – March 16, 1979. China lost, but claimed victory anyway.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230220171416/https://foreignpolicy.com/2
023/02/20/ukraine-deterrence-failed-putin-invasion/

U.S. Deterrence Failed in Ukraine

Washington’s prewar efforts were weak and inadequate.

February 20, 2023, 7:00 AM

By Liam Collins, a senior fellow at New America and retired U.S. special forces colonel. , and Frank Sobchak, the chair of irregular warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and a retired U.S. special forces colonel.

A great deal of praise has been heaped on Europe and the United States for their sustained and determined response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with much of the congratulatory talk centered on the damage being done to Russia. Kyiv’s Western allies have provided the fledgling Ukrainian military with Javelin and Stinger missiles, rocket artillery, and, most recently, modern tanks. Yet, until Feb. 24, 2022, the United States made little effort to deter Russia, despite ample evidence that it intended to invade.

From President George W. Bush’s tepid response to the 2008 invasion of Georgia to the Biden administration’s antebellum halfhearted gestures of support for Ukraine, U.S. policies left the perception that the United States was not willing to make a renewed assault painful for Russia. The result was yet another war and a tremendously costly one at that.

It is often difficult to determine when deterrence works because, almost by definition, it is the proverbial dog that does not bark. Absent being in the room when leaders remark that they are not carrying out an action due to a threat, it is difficult to assign the cause to deterrence.

When it comes to war, realist scholars such as John Mearsheimer have noted that for deterrence to succeed, the state seeking war should perceive that the chances of success would be low and the costs high. Part of altering a state’s calculus is simple numbers: how many tanks, missiles, aircraft, and other weapons the defending state possesses. In his seminal work Arms and Influence, Thomas Schelling artfully puts it, “The power to hurt is bargaining power.”

This created the central failure of U.S. policy. Refusing to send sophisticated weapons to Ukraine failed to signal to Russian leaders that an invasion of Ukraine would hurt—and potentially even fail.

In the run-up to the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin thought that his forces would march into Kyiv in a matter of days with few losses. After all, the international community did little when he annexed Crimea in 2014. Washington’s muted reaction to previous Russian provocations signaled an unwillingness to incur any costs to prevent Russia from doing what it wanted. U.S. intransigence toward providing lethal aid seemed to confirm that Ukraine lacked the capacity to resist, further reinforcing the Russian belief that the invasion would likely be easy and quick. The recent war in Ukraine is, therefore, a direct result of the West’s lack of resolve and failure to credibly deter Russia. Moscow thought it could get away with murder—as it had in the past.

Recall the aftermath of the 2008 invasion of Georgia. The Bush administration airlifted Georgian soldiers serving in Iraq back to Georgia to fight, provided a humanitarian aid package, and offered tersely worded denouncements and demarches. But it categorically rejected providing Georgia with serious military assistance in the form of anti-tank missiles and air defense missiles and even refrained from implementing punishing economic sanctions against Russia. The United States’ lack of resolve to punish Russia for its gross violation of international law was underscored when U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley’s remark “Are we prepared to go to war with Russia over Georgia?”—made during a National Security Council meeting after the war started—was later released to the media.

When the Obama administration took office, his team sought to reset relations with Russia. In short order, the United States abandoned Bush administration plans to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, canceled sanctions against Russian arms sector, and reduced the U.S. presence in Europe. By 2013, there were no U.S. tanks on German soil, a historic end to a deterrent force that had been in place for nearly seven decades. U.S. Army troops across Europe shrunk to a historic low of 30,000, just one-tenth of the commitment during the Cold War.

The United States did little to prevent or respond to the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rejecting calls from within the administration and a bipartisan coalition in Congress, the Obama White House outright refused to provide any form of lethal aid to embattled Ukrainian defenders.

President Barack Obama, encouraged by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was worried that providing even defensive weapons could result in an uncontrollable escalation. Ukraine also suffered from significant corruption, and there was fear that the weapons might fall into the wrong hands—a consideration that hadn’t come into play in far more corrupt states like Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, Ukrainian pleas for Javelin anti-tank missiles, Apache attack helicopters, and other weapons were ignored. Instead, the administration rapidly provided $120 million in security assistance and another $75 million in military equipment such as night vision goggles, medical supplies, Humvees, and unarmed unmanned aerial systems. During Obama’s tenure, total military assistance amounted to $600 million—but never included weapons.

For its primary response to the 2014 invasion, the administration banked on punishing sanctions to alter Russian behavior. These amounted to travel bans levied on senior Russian political, military, and economic leaders; frozen assets; and economic restrictions. Key business leaders and cronies of Putin were targeted, and entire industries were banned from doing business with the United States. Many allies followed suit.

Such actions were seen as “smart sanctions” that focused, like precision-guided munitions, on hitting critical industries or individuals involved in the conduct of the war. The hope was to minimize the damage to common Russians. But without making the public pay a price for war, the economic pain was inherently limited. Russia simply devalued the ruble and cashed out the reserves it had built up in its central bank from a decade of high energy prices to weather the sanctions-induced recession—a cost it felt worth paying in return for the seizure of Crimea.

The shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014 by Russian-controlled separatists was also met with a muted response from Washington. The U.S. response was limited to assisting the investigation and calling on Russia to end the war against Ukraine. While some additional sanctions were levied against Russia, particularly by Europe, the attack actually served to harden Obama’s resolve against providing weapons to Ukraine, reflecting his worries about further escalation.

Instead, to improve deterrence against Russia, the administration pushed for NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence. The new defense posture consisted of four multinational battalion-sized units deployed to areas—the Baltic states and Poland—most likely to be attacked. However, these measures were meant to deter Russian aggression only against NATO states and had no bearing on the danger of future conflict in Ukraine.

Next, the Obama administration established the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine in 2015 with the mission of training, equipping, training center development, and doctrinal assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces. The group included hundreds of trainers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Lithuania. Notably, U.S. trainers were limited to providing only “nonlethal training” to the Ukrainians, producing a muddled and incoherent set of rules. For example, U.S. trainers could train Ukrainians on small unit tactics that involved “shooting, moving, and communicating” but were prohibited from teaching sniper skills because these were considered “lethal.” That lack of commitment signaled, yet again, that the United States was not willing to give Ukraine the training or firepower it would need to repel Russia.

The Trump administration aimed to make a clean break with its predecessor and demonstrate strength. But in reality, President Donald Trump’s approach differed little from the previous two administrations. He reversed the prohibition on providing lethal aid to Ukraine and agreed to ship the much-desired Javelin missiles. Still, only 210 were delivered along with a paltry 37 launchers. More importantly, they were banned from being used in combat and instead were required to be locked up in a storage facility to serve as a “strategic deterrent.”

The amount of security assistance saw similar cosmetic changes, with a modest bump up to $350 million in the administration’s first year. But those unexceptional annual increases came with caveats and considerable drama. In 2019, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Trump for more Javelins, he demurred and blocked the delivery of nearly $400 million in assistance unless Zelensky agreed to investigate former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden—his opponent in the 2020 election—and his son. Trump held up the assistance for 55 days, only releasing it when his actions became public, eventually leading to Trump’s first impeachment.

Even though Trump begrudgingly allowed the Javelins and more aid, his administration was unwilling to send a general officer to serve as the senior defense official in Ukraine. The Obama administration had appointed retired Gen. John Abizaid to be the senior defense advisor to Ukraine, but he was only a part-time consultant and no longer on active duty. Abizaid supported assigning an active-duty general to Ukraine to coordinate the U.S. effort and made this known to U.S. European Command and the Defense Department. The response was that the U.S. military did not have a general it could dedicate to the mission.

Previously, when the priority was great enough, the U.S. military has assigned generals or admirals to serve in the U.S. embassies in Israel, the U.K., Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq—yet could not spare even one of its 620 generals or admirals for Ukraine.

Further weakening the U.S. deterrent posture, Trump began questioning the United States’ commitment to NATO and even declined to affirm NATO’s Article 5, its most important mutual defense clause. Worse, in 2018, Trump employed heavy-handed tactics more suited for a transactional relationship than an alliance, explicitly threatening member states that he would not come to their aid in the event of a Russian attack unless they paid up. Trump described NATO as “obsolete” and, like a 1940s union boss, harshly decried its European members for not paying their dues.

By some accounts, Trump was even considering the nuclear option: leaving NATO altogether. The message to Russia from such fratricidal melees was clear: If the United States would not protect fellow NATO states that it was treaty-bound to defend, then the United States would definitely not defend a non-NATO country in Russia’s backyard.

The poor signaling only continued with the Biden administration. Even as it became clearer that Russia was considering an attack, the United States drastically limited the supply of weapons that it provided to Ukraine. In November 2021, U.S. officials snubbed Ukrainian requests for shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles—a purely defensive weapon.

Then, in December, barely two months before the invasion, the White House hesitated approving a package of “lethal and nonlethal assistance” that included Javelins, counter-artillery radars, sniper rifles, small arms, and other equipment because it worried that the assistance would be “too provocative to Russia.”

Only when it became clear that the invasion was imminent did the United States provide a modicum of uptick in aid, consisting of a limited number of Javelin and Stinger missiles, with the latter coming from U.S. allies as opposed to from the United States itself. Useful as those proved, they did not alter Russia’s cost-benefit analysis. And with little talk of additional aid, this was a clear signal to Russia that the United States’ commitment would hardly be different from what it was in 2014.

Most of all, the United States seemed to be convinced, as Moscow was, that Ukrainian resistance would rapidly crumble in the face of a Russian assault. Given the United States’ paltry efforts to build Ukraine’s military into one that could credibly deter Russia, it should not be surprising that both nations made this miscalculation. On Feb. 14, 2022, just prior to the invasion, the United States sent another important signal that further communicated a lack of commitment to Ukraine and a resignation that the war was already lost: It announced it was closing its embassy in Kyiv. By comparison, the United States refused to close its embassy in Paris even as Nazi Germany threatened France and maintained an embassy in Vichy after the surrender and occupation. The closure of the Kyiv embassy echoed moves by the U.S. military to withdraw the vast majority of military advisors days earlier.

Both actions conveyed clearly that the United States had little stake in Ukraine and was not willing to risk American lives. In many ways, it gave a green light for the Russian assault that Moscow anticipated to be a fait accompli repeat of Crimea. To the Ukrainians, it sent the message that instead of fighting, they should pursue a diplomatic solution as they had done, unsuccessfully, for Crimea in 2014.

In the final weeks before the invasion, there was some debate in Washington as to whether to impose withering sanctions in an attempt to deter Russia or afterward as a punishment and future deterrent. But Russia had already amassed more than 100,000 troops at Ukraine’s border, a momentous strategic move that bore considerable costs. Barring a significant deterrent act by the United States and its allies, the die had already been cast. Sanctions could possibly have inflicted enough of a cost to deter the invasion, but one of Russia’s key lessons from 2014 was that it could weather any new measures that the United States and its allies were likely to implement.

When the invasion came, U.S. actions spoke louder than words. Officials in the Biden administration believed that Ukraine could not win and that Kyiv would fall within days. The United States even offered to evacuate Zelensky, to which he famously replied, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” Publicly communicating an expectation that the invasion would be over quickly only undermined deterrence by signaling the cost would be minimal to Russia. It was only after Ukraine demonstrated capability and resolve that significant military assistance began flowing and punishing sanctions were enacted—actions that, ironically, might have deterred Russia in the first place.

The sad irony is that U.S. leaders, of both parties, chose to avoid deterrence for fear of escalating conflict—only to find themselves continually escalating their support once conflict started. Time after time, the United States chose the option that was perceived as the least provocative but that instead led to the Russians becoming convinced that they were safe to carry out the most provocative action of all: a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The United States ignored the eternal wisdom of the Latin phrase Si vis pacem, para bellum (“If you want peace, prepare for war”) and instead hoped that half-steps and compromise would suffice. While so far those decisions have prevented direct conflict between two nuclear-armed superpowers, they have caused Russia and the West to be locked in a continuing series of escalations with an increasing danger of a miscalculation that could lead to exactly that scenario.

The authors would like to thank Steven Pifer, Lionel Beehner, Alexander Lanoszka, and Michael Hunzeker for their thoughtful feedback.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230220171416/https://foreignpolicy.com/2
023/02/20/ukraine-deterrence-failed-putin-invasion/

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 7:53 AM

SECOND

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


Biden Went to Kyiv Because There’s No Going Back to the Old "Normal" with Russia

by Anne Applebaum

The president’s surprise visit sent a message to Moscow—and to European leaders.

February 20, 2023, 11:48 AM ET

An American AWACS began patrolling the skies west of Ukraine last night; Kyiv was locked down this morning. Motorcades crisscrossed the city and rumors began to spread. But although it was clear someone important was about to arrive, the first photographs of President Joe Biden—with President Volodymyr Zelensky, with air-raid sirens blaring, with St. Michael’s Square in the background—had exactly the impact they were intended to have: surprise, amazement, respect. He’s the American president. He made an unprecedented trip to a war zone, one where there are no U.S. troops to protect him. And, yes, he’s old. But he went anyway.

Biden’s visit took place on the eve of the first anniversary of the outbreak of the war, and on the eve of a major speech to be delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the visit was not just a blaze of one-upmanship, nor should it be understood as the beginning of some kind of mano-a-mano public-relations battle between the two presidents. The White House says the planning began months ago, and the visit is actually part of a package, a group of statements designed to send a single message. The first part came in Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, when she declared that “the United States has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity” and that Russia will be held accountable for war crimes in Ukraine. The next will be delivered in Warsaw, tomorrow: America will continue to stand by Poland and the rest of the NATO alliance, and no NATO territory will be left undefended.

The message today is about Ukraine itself: Despite a year of brutal war, Kyiv remains a free city; Ukraine remains a sovereign country—and this will not change. Jake Sullivan, the national-security adviser, put it like this during a press-conference call from Kyiv: “The visit today was an effort to show, and not just tell, that we will continue to stand strong.”

These messages matter because Ukraine is now engaged in a war of attrition on several fronts. In the eastern part of the country, Ukraine and Russia are fighting an old-fashioned artillery battle. Russia sends waves of conscripts and convicts at the Ukrainian defenses, suffering huge losses and appearing not to care. The Ukrainians use up huge quantities of equipment and ammunition—one Ukrainian politician in Munich reminded me that they need a bullet for every Russian soldier—and, of course, take losses themselves.

But alongside that ground combat, a psychological war of attrition is unfolding as well. Putin thinks that he will win not through technological superiority, and not through better tactics or better-trained soldiers, but simply by outlasting a Western alliance that he still believes to be weak, divided, and easily undermined. He reckons that he has more people, more ammunition, and above all more time: that Russians can endure an infinite number of casualties, that Russians can survive an infinite amount of economic pain. Just in case they cannot, he will personally demonstrate his capacity for cruelty by locking down his society in extraordinary ways. In the city of Krasnodar, police recently arrested and handcuffed a couple in a restaurant, after an eavesdropper overheard them complaining about the war. The Sakharov Center, Moscow’s last remaining institution devoted to human rights, has just announced that it is being evicted from its state-owned buildings. Paranoia, suspicion, and fear have risen to new levels. Many expect a new mobilization, even an imminent closure of the borders.

This psychological war plays out elsewhere too. Some Europeans, and indeed some Americans, have not yet adjusted their thinking to this Russian strategy. In Munich last weekend, it was clear that many haven’t yet accepted that the continent is really at war. The Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, told me she fears her colleagues secretly hope “that this problem will disappear by itself,” that the war will end before any deep changes have to be made, before their defense industries have to be altered. “Russia,” she said in a speech at the conference, “is hoping for just that, that we will get tired of our own initiatives, and in Russia, meanwhile, there is a lot of human resources, and enterprises there work in three shifts.” Consciously or unconsciously, many still speak as if everything will soon return to normal, as if things will go back to the way they were. Defense industries have not yet switched to a different tempo. Defense industries have not yet raised their production to meet the new demands.

Biden’s visit to Kyiv is intended to offer a bracing contrast, and a different message: If the U.S. president is willing to take this personal risk, if the U.S. government is willing to invest this effort, then time is not on Russia’s side after all. He is putting everyone on notice, including the defense ministries and the defense industries, that the paradigm has shifted and the story has changed. The old “normal” is not coming back.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230220190657/https://www.theatlantic.com
/ideas/archive/2023/02/biden-trip-ukraine-kyiv/673134/

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 8:58 AM

SECOND

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


FEBRUARY 21, 2023 / 6:40 AM

In his long-delayed state-of-the-nation address, Putin cast Russia — and Ukraine — as victims of Western double-dealing and said Russia, not Ukraine, was the one fighting for its very existence.

"We aren't fighting the Ukrainian people," Putin said in a speech days before the war's first anniversary on Friday. Ukraine "has become hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/putin-ukraine-war-speech-today-blames-us-
nato-after-one-year-invasion/

Continuing his speech, Putin said, "Up is down. Believe me."

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 10:22 AM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Ukraine sounds like Vietnam 2.0.

Mistake then.
Mistake now.



'Black Swan' Author Says Biden's Walk Through Kyiv Streets 'Worst Humiliation' For Putin

"Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb said it was the “worst humiliation” for Vladimir Putin that President Joe Biden visited Ukraine on Monday.

Taleb referred to Putin by his middle name and tweeted, “Vladimir Vladimirovich was imagining himself walking around in Kyiv in March 2022, just as Hilter and Churchill toured Paris and Berlin, respectively, the type of thing that makes a conquest a conquest.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/black-swan-author-says-biden-s-wa
lk-through-kyiv-streets-worst-humiliation-for-putin/ar-AA17JFF0?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=36d70b1a0c4f4187883e7d36ba0ee4dc


Yep, I'll say it again. Told you so comrade.

T

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 11:33 AM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:


And for someone who keep complaining that "Russians keep threatending nukes" there YOU are.... threatening nukes.
You crazy.



Putin pulls back from last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the US

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-pulls-back-from-last-remain
ing-nuclear-arms-control-pact-with-the-us/ar-AA17L5Hh?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=fbbd1bda25954fe9be58e7f6ffb26940


Here you go comrade.

T

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 1:07 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Dood:the WH called Moscow to ask them "Please don't bomb Kiev while Biden* is here, pretty please".

You such a tool.

Also, since WE pulled out of all the other nuclear weapons treaties, why should they take any of them seriously?

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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 1:09 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Good. Fuck Ukraine.
Trump knows what Putin and Trumptards need:

Trump says his personal relationship with Vladimir Putin would have kept the Russian president from invading Ukraine a year ago.

"If you watch and understand the moves being made by Biden on Ukraine, he is systematically, but perhaps unknowingly, pushing us into what could soon be WORLD WAR III," Trump wrote on his Truth Social network. "How crazy is that?"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2023/02/21/ukraine-russia-wa
r-live-updates/11310591002/

I would not be surprised if Trump has been speaking to Putin on the phone, despite lawyers telling him that diplomacy by a private citizen is illegal. "How could it be wrong to promise Putin all of Ukraine if he helps my campaign?" bullheaded Trump would ask. (See the legal reasoning in Trump's first impeachment, over Ukraine, for how it is wrong.)

Trump's First Impeachment
https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+first+impeachment

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 1:11 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


East Palestine Mayor Is Furious: Biden's Ukraine Visit To Hand Out Millions "Biggest Slap In The Face"
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/east-palestine-mayor-furious-biden
s-ukraine-visit-hand-out-millions-biggest-slap-face

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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 1:43 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
East Palestine Mayor Is Furious: Biden's Ukraine Visit To Hand Out Millions "Biggest Slap In The Face"
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/east-palestine-mayor-furious-biden
s-ukraine-visit-hand-out-millions-biggest-slap-face
Democratic US Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio @SenSherrodBrown
NEW: @EPA will force Norfolk Southern to pay for all cleanup & testing in East Palestine or face legal action.

I've been clear from the start—Norfolk Southern created this mess, and they're responsible for making things right.

nbcnews.com
EPA orders Norfolk Southern to clean up Ohio train derailment, pay costs
If the company fails to complete any actions ordered by EPA, the agency will “immediately” conduct the work, and then seek to compel Norfolk Southern to pay triple the cost.
12:30 PM · Feb 21, 2023
https://twitter.com/SenSherrodBrown/status/1628099736031961088

East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway, a Trumptard, was on Fox News complaining that Biden was not giving him free money. Trumptards are stupid, which is why their lives are burning dumpster fires polluting America. If you prefer, burning train wrecks instead of dumpster fires.
https://thehill.com/homenews/3867552-east-palestine-mayor-biden-ukrain
e-visit-biggest-slap-in-the-face/

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 1:57 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Dood:the WH called Moscow to ask them "Please don't bomb Kiev while Biden* is here, pretty please".

You such a tool.

Also, since WE pulled out of all the other nuclear weapons treaties, why should they take any of them seriously?
Joe Biden Could be Assassinated in Ukraine, Russian Pundits Warn

"Propagandists are already discussing Biden's visit to Kyiv. Bloodthirsty as always."

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-ukraine-russia-assassination-russia
-warning-attack-1782412

Putin rages against West in speech decried as absurd propaganda

In an angry state-of-the-nation address, the Russian leader says he will pull out of a nuclear treaty and blames Ukraine for the invasion he started.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/21/russias-leader-putin-accuses-
west-for-war-in-major-speech

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 6:08 AM

SECOND

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


Russian military expert on Ukraine: ‘War could end this year’

Al Jazeera interviews Pavel Felgenhauer on the current state of war and possibilities for peace.

There’s a well-known saying that “Russia is never as strong as you fear”, as we see during this year, but “Russia is also never as weak as you hope”. So you can’t just write off Russia. The intensity of the fighting is too high for it to be maintained for long.

There will be problems in the West with supply, but they are a bit more manageable because the Ramstein coalition’s gross GDP is more than 100 times that of Russia. So financially and economically, they are more prepared for a longer conflict than the Russians. (The "Ramstein coalition" refers to the United States-led defense meeting composed of 43 countries held at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany in an effort to rally more financial and military support for Ukraine. )

But who’s going to win? I don’t know. War is like football. Everyone believes that Brazil should win but it doesn’t win every time.

The Russian military has been isolated for more than 100 years from world tendencies in war-making. They are still living in the world of tanks, believing that if you mass enough, victory falls into your lap.

They were not prepared intellectually, mentally, and physically for the conflict.

Of course, this conflict has a long history after the demise of the Soviet Union and the breakup between Ukraine and Russia. This was a serious trauma for the Russian elite. They believed that this was wrong and Ukraine was seen as an integral part of Russia. So, in the end, we will all get back together, back again happily into one great big old Russian family. That’s what many officials told me in the 1990s — that there were no problems that, for instance, there are negative birth rates in Russia and the number of Russians is declining. They said, ‘No problem, Pavel, we will take over a half of Ukraine or Belarus, a half of Kazakhstan, will get after 40 million good Slavic people into the fold and everything is going to be just OK’.

The idea that Ukraine has left Russia for good and will become a totally independent entity was not really contemplated. Maybe as a temporary thing, but not for keeps.

Russia right now wants to freeze the situation more or less as it is on the line of control, as it is. Ukraine says it doesn’t want that. Someone has to give. And that’s most likely going to be on the battlefield.

If one side will begin to clearly win on the battlefield, that will be decisive. Military victory can bring the other side to real crisis — and maybe even regime change.

More at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/21/qa-dr-pavel-felgenhauer-russi
a-ukraine-war

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 7:35 AM

SECOND

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


The Problem With Russia Is Russia
by Oksana Zabuzhko

Ms. Zabuzhko is a Ukrainian novelist, poet and essayist.

KRAKOW, Poland — One year ago this Tuesday, Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the Russian-backed separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk — effectively the starting pistol for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began three days later. For us Ukrainians, the world would never be the same. Yet it was another act of recognition in 2022, one largely neglected, that made my heart beat faster. On Oct. 18, Ukraine’s Parliament declared the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria “temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation.”

I should explain. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechnya was one of the two autonomous republics of the newly independent Russian Federation that claimed independence. (The other one was Tatarstan.) But world leaders were by then quite fed up with the discovery that all those union republics that they had for decades regarded simply as administrative units of Russia — Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan and others, still harder to pronounce — appeared to be real things. The West’s shock at this new geography meant that independent Ichkeria had not the slimmest chance of recognition.

The dismemberment of the Soviet empire was duly halted at the borders of the Russian Federation — at the cost of two devastating Chechen wars, for which the Kremlin was given a free hand both domestically and internationally. As a result, Chechnya-Ichkeria became a testing ground for the military strategy now applied against Ukraine: state terrorist warfare.

What if, I keep asking myself, Russia’s new totalitarianism had not been so lightheartedly overlooked by the rest of the world in the 1990s? Back then, to spare humanity the rise of a new Hitler, it would have been enough to let Russia go on peacefully shrinking under proper international control. Alas, the West agreed to blame Communism alone for all the atrocities of the Soviet regime. Russian imperialism was never identified as a problem.

Could this have been — as my war-honed anticolonial acuity prompts me to believe — a case of latent imperialistic solidarity? Was it guilty pleasure that for decades made the elites of the former Western empires smile indulgently, rather than shudder, when faced with the brazen colonial supremacy with which Moscow was treating its non-Russian subjects? I fail to see any other reasonable explanation for why so many in the West clung to the irrational belief that democratic transformation in Russia was just around the corner.

Yet Russia will not become a democracy until it falls apart. That’s because Russia is not really a nation-state but the same premodern multiethnic empire living on geographic expansion and resource looting as 300 years ago — and is thus doomed to reproduce, again and again, under whatever ideological cover, the same prison-ward-like political structure that alone keeps it together.

One intellectual holdover from the imperialistic 19th century is the idea that preserving the Russian empire would be less catastrophic, in terms of humanitarian consequences, than recognizing the right to life of dozens of peoples whose lot under Moscow’s rule was never anything other than dogged survival, under the threat of extinction. This prejudice helped the empire to survive twice in the 20th century, in 1921 and in 1991. It is high time to rethink it.

I remember only too well how the specter of extinction was stalking Ukraine through the 1970s and early 1980s, until the Chernobyl disaster finally broke our social paralysis and pushed Ukrainians to take our security into our own hands. In those police years, those who dared to speak Ukrainian in public could be at any moment humiliated with the Russian colonialist phrase “Govorite po-chelovecheski!” (“Speak human!”) If you heard it once and were unable to respond — any discontent about the superiority of everything Russian was labeled Ukrainian nationalism, the worst political crime of the time — you could never forget the experience.

Looked at closely, this war on Moscow’s part is a monstrously enlarged version of the Ukrainian purges of the 1970s (Operation Block, as it was known in the K.G.B. files): same language, same techniques. The only difference is the scale. Those purges were selective and unostentatious, whereas nowadays each of the thousands of Russian rockets that have so far hit our cities howls the same message — “Speak human!” — at the highest possible pitch. Ukrainians respond with the glorious phrase from the defenders of Snake Island. We will survive the Russian Federation, just as we survived the Soviet Union.

But not every nation once in Moscow’s grip proved so lucky. That is why our Parliament, 30 years later, recognized Ichkeria. We have been there: We know what it is like to be sentenced to disappear as a nation, with the rest of the world taking no heed.

And the same story is repeating itself. The disproportionately large conscription among Russia’s ethnic minorities in 2022, a form of ethnic purge of potentially mutinous regions, was not half as widely discussed as the plight of Moscow office workers fleeing abroad. The women’s protests against mobilization in Dagestan and Yakutia, too, were tellingly headlined in the world media as protests in Russia.

With a sigh, I recall that’s how Chernobyl was discussed in 1986, as a nuclear catastrophe in Russia. Thanks, but no. Never again, please; the age of imperialism is over. If there could be any positive result found in the 12 months of this horrific war — in tens of thousands of people murdered, raped and mutilated, in millions of lives ruined, in the best black soil on earth littered with mines, in innumerable treasures of cultural heritage turned to debris — it would be that we Ukrainians have all together, in a united effort of resistance, proved that non-Russian lives matter.

It is good news, for that was not the case before, certainly not in the past century. It gives all those who speak human, with no quotation marks, hope for the future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/opinion/russia-ukraine-war.html

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 7:58 AM

SECOND

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


Russia’s Cult of Death
By Alexander J. Motyl

Russian Orthodox clergy routinely bless tanks and encourage Russian soldiers to defend Mother Russia with their lives. A holy picture, issued by the Bryansk Eparchy, informed them last year that “Your task [is] to wipe the Ukrainian nation from the face of the earth.”

In early 2023, the Russian propagandist and popular television talk-show host Vladimir Solovyov matter-of-factly informed viewers that “Life is highly overrated.” His two guests nodded in agreement, adding that Russians used to live from day to day, but now they have “nonmaterial dreams” and “lofty goals” — namely, war. Besides, intoned Solovyov, “Why fear what is inevitable? Especially when we’re going to heaven. Death is the end of one earthly path and the beginning of another.”

Russian officialdom is making a virtue of necessity and glorifying war and death. As Solovyov said, why fear death if it’s inevitable — especially for growing numbers of poorly trained and poorly equipped draftees whose role in the war is that of cannon fodder?

There’s a longstanding Russian tradition of employing unrestrained violence and treating its own people as expendable pawns.

Muscovy, as the Russian Empire was called until the early 18th century, expanded into Siberia by destroying the native peoples and their cultures. Imperial Russia did the same in Belarus, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and Central Asia. The Soviet Union, Imperial Russia’s successor, established the Gulag, engineered a famine-genocide in Ukraine, and slaughtered hundreds of thousands in waves of terror.

Official Russia’s indifference to human life evidently extends to Russians as well. General Mikhail Kutuzov defeated Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812 by pursuing a scorched-earth policy that made large swaths of Russia uninhabitable for both the French and Russians. The Bolsheviks slaughtered millions of Russians in the Civil War of 1918-1920. Joseph Stalin sent millions of soldiers to their deaths in poorly planned assaults on the German Wehrmacht.

Finally, there’s the nature of the regime that Putin has assiduously constructed over the past two decades. Regardless of what his regime is called, there are striking similarities between it and Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. All three were illiberal, deeply authoritarian polities that were ruled by a charismatic leader with a personality cult and war-making and empire-building agenda.

Not accidentally, all three also glorified violence and death. Only violence could destroy their political opposition, and only violence could guarantee the state’s imperial aspirations. Since war was central to their identities, all three polities logically had to glorify the soldiers and heroes who died for the cause, whether in street battles or on the front.

How many hundreds of thousands of Russians must die on the front before their friends and relatives say “enough”? Putin obviously believes that Russians are cattle, and that Russia is an abattoir. It’s up to them to show him that they aren’t.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”

More at https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3864092-russias-cult-of-deat
h/

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 9:37 AM

SECOND

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


Time for Russian sanctions with real teeth

The media breathlessly reports on the occasional seizure of a luxury yacht but the hard truth is that the Russian elite have managed to successfully evade the toothless sanctions currently in place.

Just look at London’s Billionaires Row, France’s swankiest shopping districts and ski resorts like Courchevel, or the resorts in Maldives and Dubai. They are all jam-packed with big-spending, Kremlin-connected Russians enjoying legal impunity and living like the gods they think they are. I suspect that nearly every $25,000-a-night hotel room in the world is occupied by a Russian.

Until this changes, these powerful oligarchs will continue to support Putin’s bloody war. They currently aren’t paying any price. Thus, targeting and seizing the wealth of Putin’s many collaborators is an essential part of any real strategy to end his disastrous invasion of Ukraine.

What does that mean specifically? Take Sergei Chemezov, the CEO of the Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec Corp., and a longtime Putin confidante. His $80 million 737 airplane continues to travel around Europe, despite sanctions imposed on Chemezov. How? Last year his plane was re-registered in Serbia, and now it travels freely to Serbia, Switzerland, Croatia and Austria. That plane is ripe for seizure in any number of European jurisdictions.

Or look at Roman Abramovich, the longtime owner of the Chelsea football club. He may have been forced to sell his team, but a new investigation from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reveals that he is still getting financing from Credit Suisse, despite sanctions.

Finally, consider Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of The Wagner Group, a Russlan paramilitary organization whose mercenaries are fighting for Russia in Ukraine. One might assume that Prigozhin is exactly the kind of businessman the West would target most vociferously with sanctions, given his direct role in the war. And yet, the British government apparently issued a special carveout allowing him to hire lawyers in the U.K. to sue a journalist.

These kleptocrats are near the top of any public, let alone classified, list of Putin enablers. And they are prime examples of how weak current sanctions are. If Prigozhin, a potential successor to Putin, gets special treatment from No. 10 Downing Street, imagine the warm welcome the rest of the Russian kleptocracy receives from banks, realtors, top tier schools, and the most exclusive resorts across the world.

The West helped create the elaborate schemes and accounting structures that oligarchs use to maintain and grow their fortunes. That’s why the West must uncover and eradicate them. The U.S. in particular must also insist that its allies cease enabling Russian oligarchs

The United States and its allies must make three major changes quickly to save the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainians and bring an end to Russia’s bloodshed.

First, they must put meaningful manpower behind sanctions implementation, recruiting the best expertise from the private sector to enforce the sanctions that have been announced and give them real teeth.

Second, expand the list of Russians who are subject to sanctions. The current list only scratches the surface of those who are supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Finally, the West must deny Russian oligarchs the safe harbors around the world where they reside, vacation and invest their ill-gotten wealth. If they want to support Putin, let them sit in Moscow with him.

That kind of crackdown on the Kremlin’s oligarchs will have long-term benefits for the future security of Europe. And for Russia. Putin won’t be in power forever. But whoever comes next will find themselves surrounded by an intelligence service, military, mercenary industry, and economic elites deeply invested in corruption, organized crime and violent nationalism. Unless Europe and the U.S. decide that enough is enough.

The best way to break the current deadly stalemate reminiscent of the trenches in World War I is to try a new approach. Show Putin’s vast army of enablers that their lifestyles and wealth aren’t safe as long as Russia continues to wage war against innocent Ukrainian civilians.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ukraine-war-anniversary-time-for-russi
an-sanctions-with-real-teeth

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 11:48 AM

SECOND

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


Putin has canceled a decree that recognized Moldova's sovereignty in resolving the dispute over the Moscow-backed breakaway region of Transnistria.

The decree, enacted in 2012 when Russia's relations with the West were less fraught, was annulled to "ensure the national interests of Russia".

Putin's order follows accusations that Russia was seeking to destabilize Moldova. Last week, citing Ukrainian intelligence, its president, Maia Sandu, accused Moscow of plotting to overthrow her government.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky said that Russia was planning to capture the airport in Chisinau to fly in Russian military reinforcements to open a new front in Ukraine from Transnistria.

Moldova's Prime Minister Dorin Recean confirmed the rumor, but told local media that despite "several scenarios of destabilization....our institutions are prepared to face such challenges."

The Moldovan president met President Joe Biden in Warsaw. The White House confirmed "strong U.S. support for Moldova's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Sandu tweeted her thanks to Biden "for his unwavering support to Moldova & for standing in solidarity with us," suggesting that Chisinau (the capital and largest city of the Republic of Moldova) may be relying on U.S. backing against the threat from Russia.

https://www.newsweek.com/moldova-russia-ukraine-transnistria-putin-178
2914

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 1:09 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Time for Russian sanctions with real teeth

The media breathlessly reports on the occasional seizure of a luxury yacht but the hard truth is that the Russian elite have managed to successfully evade the toothless sanctions currently in place.
Does anyone think that, after making Russian gas exports to the EU impossible, cutting off the Russian Central Bank from the SWIFT (the financial "nuclear option"), attempting to cap the price of Russian oil, and seizing Russian central bank foreign assets that were in western banks, that grabbing a few yachts here and there will ake a difference?

Here's a few hints:

The Russian oiligarchs who parked their money abroad are NOT Putin's friends and don't drive Russian policy, so sanctioning them doesn't weaken Putin.

Making holdings outside of Russia insecure will actually prevent capital flight from Russia, bc the Russian elite will be wary of placing their assets in the west. It's counterproductive

Taking these actions will convince any ordinary Russians who are not yet convinced that "the west" doesn't just hate Putin, it hates Russia and all Russians.

Grabbing yachts, mansions, and bank accounts from Russians is petty piracy. The west thought that it could collapse Russia and steal its national resources. Failing that, it thought it could grab Russian government foreign holdings (just like it stole gold from Libya and Venezuela) and launder that money into its own accounts by pretending that it would be used for Ukrainian rebuilding.

Now its reduced to digging thru pants pockets and looking under couch cushions for spare change. Smacks of desperation.

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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 1:22 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Now its reduced to digging thru pants pockets and looking under couch cushions for spare change. Smacks of desperation.
The real point is to motivate Russian billionaires to kill Putin before they are either impoverished by war or pushed out a window by an assassin sent by Putin who is displeased at their lack of enthusiasm for his war. Signym, if you claim Putin hasn't isolated himself because he fears assassination, you have not been paying attention.

Full List of Russians to Fall Out of Windows Since Putin Invaded Ukraine
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-russians-fall-windows-putin-ukraine
-war-1781790

Putin ‘fears for his life’ as ex-KGB spy warns he may be ‘poisoned’ in coup
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1736585/ukraine-war-live-russia-v
ladimir-putin-health-volodymyr-zelensky

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 2:58 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


More delusional blah blah blah

US fails to get Middle East allies to take sides one year into the Ukraine war
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/middleeast/us-mideast-allies-ukraine-wa
r-mime-intl/index.html

Putin and China’s top diplomat pledge to strengthen ties ahead of Ukraine war anniversary
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/china/china-wang-yi-moscow-ukraine-intl
-hnk/index.html



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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 4:42 PM

SECOND

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


GOP attacks on Biden's Ukraine visit are worse than partisanship — they really want Russia to win

Far-right Republicans tied themselves into knots dissing Biden without coming right out and saying they want Ukraine to lose. Some, like the American Nazi supporters of WWII, tried to package their stance as mere isolationism. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, for instance, exploited the Ohio train wreck catastrophe to argue "Biden is ditching America for Ukraine." Others, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, went full incoherence, raving, "It's becoming more like a U.S.- China war through the Ukraine — Russia war." And some went for puerile race-baiting, such as Rep. Greg Murphy yelling about "the war zone [Biden] created at our southern border." (In reality, the refugee crisis at the U.S.-Mexican border was created by Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies that Biden has been prevented from fixing by the GOP-controlled Supreme Court.)

Perhaps the biggest show of pretzel logic came courtesy of Florida's GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, who tried to leverage the past year's successes against Russia as evidence that the U.S. should drop the support for Ukraine. "I think they've shown themselves to be a third-rate military power," he said of Russia on Fox News, as if that justified rolling over and letting Putin take Ukraine.

Sure, these people would oppose puppies and rainbows if Biden said he liked those things, but there's a deeper reason why so many Republicans are going out of their way to undermine American support for Ukraine. It's because they agree with Putin's anti-democracy cause and share his hopes that defeating Ukraine will demoralize pro-democracy forces around the world.

It's a good thing that so few MAGA Republicans — including Trump himself — feel comfortable expressing direct support for Putin and direct opposition to Ukraine. It means it's still taboo, even in the GOP ranks, to be proudly fascist, much less openly supportive of war crimes. The pretense that MAGA Republicans believe in democracy is still being maintained, even as it's obvious that they would prefer to get to the part of the story where president-for-life Donald Trump cancels all future elections.

The underlying premise of MAGA Republicanism is that abandoning democracy in favor of a Trumpian autocracy will be beneficial for their tribe of white conservative Christians.

Putin, however, is a living reminder of the dangers of putting a nation's fates in the hands of a power-mad sociopath — and how it can come back to haunt even his supporters. That's why the MAGA media prefers to prop up Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán as their authoritarian role model, not Putin.

That's where the GOP establishment differs from isolationist anti-Ukraine Republicans, who also happen to be the ones who make the most excuses for the January 6 insurrection. For the hardcore MAGA Republicans, the Ukrainian war is ideological. They're not worried about global stability being wrecked by Putin, so much as advancing the anti-democratic cause. I suspect most of them dislike Ukraine for the same reason the country's independence got under Putin's skin: Because its existence cuts across their cynical arguments against democracy.

Like Putin, the MAGA movement knows better than to argue against democracy on moral grounds. Instead, the argument is one grounded in performative cynicism. "Gosh, democracy sounds nice on paper," goes the reasoning, "but, in practice, it just can't work." Opponents of democracy will portray democracies as hopelessly corrupt or pathetically weak. That's why, for instance, they are so dependent on the Big Lie, which has become an all-purpose tool to portray democracy in a bad light. It's also why Trumpists will toggle back and forth between portraying Biden as an evil mastermind who stole the election, and then arguing the man is too sleepy to handle basic leadership duties. It may be contradictory and nonsensical, but it's about framing authoritarianism as a necessary evil, and democracy as a pipe dream.

If Ukraine wins this, though, it undermines this nihilistic view and gives democracy proponents worldwide a shot of morale. So even if MAGA Republicans were indifferent to Ukraine prior to this invasion, now that it's become an international symbol, they are rooting for Ukraine's failure. Indeed, Fox News isn't even trying to make its anti-Ukraine rhetoric make sense. Tucker Carlson had Tara Reade — whose only claim to fame is a sexual assault allegation against Biden that was shown to strongly conflict with the real world, and even basic geographic, evidence — to unspool wild conspiracy theories on Putin's behalf.

Reade is not a foreign policy expert or expert on anything, really. But she was willing to spew gibberish to undermine the Ukranian cause, and that's all that matters to the unsubtle fascist propagandists at Fox News. The kitchen-sink approach to the anti-Ukraine rhetoric really gives the game away. There's no principled, much less coherent, rationale. They're just throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. It's the rhetorical strategy of people who know they can't offer their real reasoning, so instead, they flood the zone with noise to confuse people about what it is we're even trying to talk about here.

The reason MAGA Republicans won't say what they're actually thinking is that they want the U.S. to pull support from Ukraine. They want Ukraine to lose. And they want Ukraine to lose because a Ukrainian success would be a boost to democratic sentiment worldwide. That would harm the war on democracy the Trumpists are waging at home. It's really no more complicated than that, no matter how many random talking points they generate by the hour.

More at https://www.salon.com/2023/02/22/on-bidens-ukraine-visit-are-worse-tha
n-partisanship--they-really-want-to-win/

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 4:59 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


RUSSIABOT RUSSIABOT BLAH BLAH BLAH!
/snicker

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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 5:11 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
RUSSIABOT RUSSIABOT BLAH BLAH BLAH!
/snicker
Every Texan I know who takes sides with Trump or Putin, I knew them to be untrustworthy before Trump went into politics and Putin invaded Crimea. In their own way, they are mini-versions of Trump and Putin, with the same behavioral defects as the big guys have. Signym, I don't know you and all the twisty turning details of your life as I do of those Trumptards in Texas, but I strongly suspect you are fundamentally as defective as they are.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 5:46 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Putin is very trustworthy... for Russians. Russians can count on him for looking out for their interests while maintaining national sovereignty.

I wish I could say the same for our politicians, who are so much more concerned with small faraway nations and the poor illegal migrants that they forget their own citizens.

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


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

YOUR OPTIONS

NEW POSTS TODAY

USERPOST DATE

OTHER TOPICS

DISCUSSIONS
Cry Baby Trump
Sat, April 27, 2024 18:56 - 78 posts
Putin the boot in ass
Sat, April 27, 2024 18:53 - 85 posts
Russian losses in Ukraine
Sat, April 27, 2024 18:42 - 1014 posts
Another Putin Disaster
Sat, April 27, 2024 18:34 - 1513 posts
In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)
Sat, April 27, 2024 18:28 - 3571 posts
Elections; 2024
Sat, April 27, 2024 18:10 - 2312 posts
Punishing Russia With Sanctions
Sat, April 27, 2024 18:09 - 505 posts
14 Tips To Reduce Tears and Remove Smells When Cutting Onions
Thu, April 25, 2024 23:52 - 8 posts
Scientific American Claims It Is "Misinformation" That There Are Just Two Sexes
Thu, April 25, 2024 20:03 - 17 posts
Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
Thu, April 25, 2024 19:19 - 6306 posts
Sentencing Thread
Thu, April 25, 2024 14:31 - 365 posts
Axios: Exclusive Poll - America warms to mass deportations
Thu, April 25, 2024 11:43 - 1 posts
 VIEW MORE TOPICS 

FFF.NET SOCIAL