the mandatory PC consensus on this thread seems to be that Putin has total control over the world's news and social media. — Apollodorus

Cretins whining about social media. What else is new?

Cretins whining about social media. What else is new? — Olivier5

We're not whining about social media, social media is whining about Putin and all but declaring Ukrainian victory and parading in the streets.

Now, if Putin can be beaten by social media posts, that would be one thing.

However, if the war fervor (that almost no one supporting Ukraine on social media has any personal risk in) just embolden's the CIA's plan, as @StreetlightX has posted a good article about you may want to respond to if you perceive yourself as having a "debate", to pump arms into Ukraine, not for Ukraine to win, but just to bleed the Russians ... is maybe harming Ukrainians for nothing but the CIA's stated objective.

Zelensky got the information directly from NATO before the war that Ukraine will never be allowed to join, was just PR standing beside (in the sense of standing in an entirely different and safe country ... not like "actually standing beside" in fighting) Ukraine's "right" to join NATO.

Zelensky should have taken that information and ... instead of--how you say it--"whining" about that being unfair to Ukraine of being in a limbo and wanting to live in denial of needing to do any diplomacy with it's largest neighbor ... done actual diplomacy and crafted a policy that takes into account never joining NATO.

Maybe consider Blinken's publicly explaining long before the war, how Ukraine's military options aren't very good as whatever military asset is put in Ukraine, Russia will simply double or quadrupedal that. If Zelenesky is such a military genius, maybe he would have taken that obvious fact into consideration: that Ukraine has no military solution by itself in dealing with Russia and that Ukraine is never going to be joining NATO.

Maybe being officially neutral is better than being officially NATO's expendable side kick?

Well, Zelensky couldn't parse this information and seems to have concluded instead that when push comes to shove, he could simply hold Ukrainian civilians hostage and "force" NATO to do the right thing and come and save him ... instead of NATO fearing Russia, as he is realizing now.

For years and years and years, the Western media has been ridiculing Putin for wanting a seat at the "big boy table" and to be taken seriously and respected as a nuclear power. Hahahahah our pundits would say.

Seems now that was just a fact all along, NATO does indeed take Russia's nuclear weapons seriously.

Ukraine didn't want to be neutral, and now it has what it wanted--it's certainly not neutral now, it's fighting a war--but it got more than it bargained for in being neutral alone, when it thought it wouldn't be alone ... but it is alone and was told it was alone before the war.

Or, you disagree?

Or, let me guess, you disagree but you feel you need not explain why.

I think the offer Russia made a couple of weeks at the very start of high-intensity warfare, could have been taken. — boethius

In theory, yes. In practice, highly improbable if we consider that, as pointed out by analysts, Ukraine is a pawn on America's chess board and is being pushed by the US and UK to reject all Russian requests in order to draw Russia into a protracted war after which they can impose sanctions to cripple its economy, topple its government, and impose rule by Wall Street.

Niall Ferguson, Putin Misunderstands History. So, Unfortunately, Does the U.S. - Bloomberg

Incidentally, Ferguson is a respected historian, though I'm sure the NATO jihadis on here would like to label him "Putin troll" ....

Or, let me guess, you disagree but you feel you need not explain why. — boethius

You don't understand what's happening if you focus too much on Zelensky. Presidents don't fight wars. Armies don't win wars. Nations win and lose wars.

Mr Zelensky could be dead tomorrow; it won't change much on the battlefield. Don't confuse him with a dictator taking all decisions. He is very different from Putin from this point of view. If Mr Putin dies, this whole thing stops tomorrow.

Ukrainians are fighting for their lives, their land, their freedom; Zelensky is just giving them voice.

Ukrainians have proven that the Russian army is dumb and far weaker than it looked. That's a gain for everybody including Russia. Mr Putin now knows his army is weak and incompetent. I suppose he'll do something about it. If he had any class, he would thank the Ukrainians for the good lesson they gave him.

You don't understand what's happening if you focus too much on Zelensky. Presidents don't fight wars. Armies don't win wars. Nations win and lose wars. — Olivier5

Again: explain how the nation of Ukraine is going to win the war and take Moscow and the East?

But sure, definitely Zelensky the Ukraine "President" should have shared what NATO already told him--that NATO ain't coming and will never be coming--with the "Nation" of Ukraine, so that they, due to the President being irrelevant, could have decided--I guess by referendum--on the cost/benefit of rejecting Russia's neutrality offer before and during the war.

You really think Ukrainians wouldn't have wanted to know that ... or is it they shouldn't know because they aren't the "President" and it's the President with the executive prerogative to do wants?

Zelensky could be dead tomorrow; it won't change much on the battlefield. Don't confuse him with a dictator taking all decisions. He is very different from Putin from this point of view. — Olivier5

Ah yes, the "not a dictator" banning opposition parties and not only banning critical media but consolidating all media into one organization.

The whole nation is fighting; Zelensky is just giving them voice. — Olivier5

Honestly makes negotiation difficult if the whole nation is fighting and all Zelensky has the power to do is casually mention that.

Ukrainians have proven that the Russian army is dumb and far weaker than it looked. — Olivier5

We shall see. Russia has certainly taken losses, but so too has Ukraine. How do Americans justify their opinion of being the best considering Afghanistan? They say "we killed, like 100 Afghanis for every American that died!"

In terms of military capacity, this Russia-Ukraine conflict will be evaluated on the same metric American's evaluate their own military capacity in looking at Afghanistan. US was dumb as it didn't achieve it's objectives of "democratizing" Afghanistan (but don't worry, Afghani's are to blame for that) but not weak (what actually matters to them) because far more Taliban were killed than American soldiers. On this same standard, Russia is not dumb if it achieves it's objectives, and not weak if it has killed more Ukrainians.

You seem to be counting your graves before they've all hatched.

Day 28: Mariupol', Ukraine :point: Fuck Putin!

"Slava Ukraini!"
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60827109
"Žyvie Bielaruś!"

Again: explain how the nation of Ukraine is going to win the war — boethius

Kill enough Russians, I suppose. How do you think Russia is going to win this war?

Ukrainians have proven that the Russian army is dumb and far weaker than it looked.
— Olivier5

We shall see. — boethius

No, this has already been seen. It's a fact. They do exist, you know?

...

That's a gain for everybody including Russia. Putin now knows his army is weak and incompetent. — Olivier5

Putin has put some of his intelligence and army chiefs under house arrest, he has redeployed his troops around Kiev, he has banned Facebook and Instagram, he has stopped European flights, he is nationalizing foreign businesses, etc.

Russian spy chiefs under house arrest – The Independent

Russia arrests military chief – The Independent

So, it may be argued that he’s taking the right steps. All he needs to do now is close down the US and UK embassies, ban the use of English, promote Russian language and culture, and encourage resistance to US-UK imperialism in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Nations win and lose wars. — Olivier5

Sometimes it's "nations", but other times it's the foreign powers behind them. If Ukraine won, that would be a win for US-UK and their NWO agenda.

If Ukraine won, that would be a win for US-UK and their NWO agenda. — Apollodorus

BS. It would be a win for mankind.

So, it may be argued that he’s taking the right steps. — Apollodorus

He's trying, at least.

How do you think Russia is going to win this war? — Olivier5

Russia's land forces may be incompetent, but Russia still has the air power and it can pulverize Ukrainian cities from its own territory. So, Russia hasn't lost the war yet. We can only speculate what the final outcome will be. But if NATO had desisted from insisting on unlimited expansion, the conflict may have been avoided.

It would be a win for mankind. — Olivier5

You mean a mankind ruled by America. I think judging by the historical experience, Britain and America have been far more predatory and imperialistic than Russia could ever have been.

Russia has never had African or Indian slaves. Unlike the British Empire, the Russian Empire was not based on slavery and overseas colonies.

Kill enough Russians, I suppose. How do you think Russia is going to win this war? — Olivier5

That would not be winning the war.

And maybe it should be pause for thought for you, and anyone that sympathizes with you, that you've engaged in pages and pages of analysis of a military situation, promoted Ukrainians fighting on ... and yet you do not even have in mind what a military victory for Ukraine would even look like.

As I've already explained, even if Ukraine pushed Russian forces to the Russian border, the war would still be ongoing, Ukraine would not have won, as Russia is still there, and no one even proposes that as a possibility.

However, certainly you have really no issue then of Russia employing the exact same strategy of just "killing enough Ukrainians, you suppose" as a military objective?

Unfortunately, if you post anything aside from anti-Russian propaganda you get called "Putin troll" by the NATO jihadis on here .... — Apollodorus

No, @StreetlightX posted an interesting, if depressing, article worth considerstion. You post garbage conspiracy theories about a NATO Jihadi war on Slavs aided and abetted by the non-Slav Jew Zelensky. It'll be George Soros next. That's what makes you an embarrassment and him a contributor.

How do Americans justify their opinion of being the best considering Afghanistan? — boethius

Don't forget Vietnam. And Iraq. The US bombed the place into the stone age, left 100,000 Iraqis dead, and the whole region in the hands of Islamic State.

I mean, how dumb can a government be? And does America have a government, or is it run by Wall Street together with defense and energy corporations?

:up:

. “The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime

This could all be a lie, but it looks like the end game to me. In which case, the "Putin Regime" has the right and duty to fight back in self defense or is that right only reserved for some nations?

You have no idea how badly that statement reeks of imperialism and hatred. To me at least. But then these are people willing to use nuclear weapons.

This could all be a lie, but it looks like the end game to me. — FreeEmotion

It's just rhetoric to justify the policy. For, presumably, policies have some objective ... so if we're pumping weapons into Ukraine and sanctioning Russia then, if we're doing international relations and not Tictok, then there's some purpose to these policies.

The only logical thing to say in public is that the goal is to "end the Putin regime".

However, Putin's popularity in Russia has gone up since the war, he has China's backing and India is staying neutral about it, as with the rest of the developing world.

Of course, never say never, but currently there's no indication that the sanctions and the war effort will end the Putin regime.

Now, keep in mind this is just some random official and so they could be just virtue signalling.

However, what is clear--even if the internal evaluation is Putin's hold on power is even tighter as a result of the West "attacking" him--is that the real policy is Cold War 2.0.

That's what the "OMG, we didn't see it coming, but we actually did!" crowd don't really get.

The point of expanding NATO East was to sell arms (a lot of NATO arms can only be sold to NATO countries) and the "warning", from basically every expert, of provoking Russia with this Poilcy, rather than have mutually beneficial trade relations immensely positive, is a great thing from the point of view of this arms selling policy (war on terror was a 'not great, not terrible' place holder) and provoking Russia leads to even way more arms sales and harms the EU (the US' biggest rival).

Wish I could quote this entire interview, conducted with a local Ukrainian leftist, by the communist Endnotes collective:

It’s hard to deny that the current situation definitely serves the reactionary forces: the militarised nationalist groups are receiving more support and are increasingly “mainstream”, and progressive liberals forgot about their “struggles” and threw all the support behind the state apparatus. But I am also seeing many opportunities for radicalization as the army and the police, by conscripting people and not allowing men out of the country, by arresting and killing looters, are exposing their interest in the protection of the law itself, not in our survival. Once you understand that the system we live in is the cause of this horror, that it feeds from this violence, once you feel it with your own skin, it’s really hard to listen to people painting Ukrainian suffering as permanent and suggesting political half-measures.

The Ukrainian government and the media paint the invasion as a “natural”, mythical occurrence. The minister of health easily transitioned from reporting the numbers of people infected and killed by Covid, to reporting the numbers of murdered children. The war and the pandemic are thus divorced from normality, their causes and consequences from the constitution of the state itself and the world at large: these are uncontrollable cataclysms. The mass murder of the Ukrainian civilian population is described as non-political, it originates from an inhuman, genetic and contagious population of Russian “orcs”. The Ukrainian state is merely trying to survive here, and it is treason to not throw your body to protect it.

What further characterises the present situation, after an intentional misattribution of its causes (“war can’t potentially be a part of normality, fascism isn’t a constant in a liberal democracy, it’s outside of it”) is the total absence of solutions among nationalists and liberals. Calls for reparations (themselves just disguised calls for mass genocide of “guilty” Russians), calls for Putin to be assassinated, show that the imperial layout of the world is expected to be eternal, we can only hope for slight redistributions. Financial help for Ukraine is important, but expectations of Ukraine experiencing an economic revival due to “high patriotism” and “national unity” after the war are groundless. These are all simply non-solutions since this war is inextricably bound up with capital and isn’t just an error in its normal functioning. And while a peace treaty or Putin’s death might stop this war here and now, they won’t prevent Russia from policing the post-USSR region in the future.

...What you won’t see in any of today’s war coverage, always praising Ukrainian military performance, and what people generally don’t understand, is that the training, maintenance and arming of the Ukrainian army, along with the IMF’s credit requirements, are the structural cause behind the gutting of hospitals, schools and universities, as well as poverty-level pensions and the lack of public sector wage increases. Austerity is the future that awaits Ukraine if it’s ever accepted into the EU.

https://endnotes.org.uk/other_texts/en/andrew-letters-from-ukraine-part-1

--

No, StreetlightX posted an interesting, if depressing, article worth considerstion. You post garbage conspiracy theories about a NATO Jihadi war on Slavs aided and abetted by the non-Slav Jew Zelensky. It'll be George Soros next. That's what makes you an embarrassment and him a contributor. — Baden

Thank you.

I hope articles like these continue to help extricate us from our projections of Ukraine and realize it's a real place most of us know fuck all about. I had a private student from there a few years back and the main impression I got from him was of a deeply dysfunctional poverty-stricken country ravaged by institutionalized corruption. Being a ping pong ball batted around by the world's most powerful interests obviously isn't helping. Another thing the article brings home is that before we go celebrating the deaths of Russian soldiers, they're just more plebeian coals been thrown into the fire along with their Ukrainian counterparts.

I'm not too sure what you're trying to say here. Were you using some automatic translation? These often need to be carefully edited.

Another thing the article brings home is that before we go celebrating the deaths of Russian soldiers, they're just more plebeian coals been thrown into the fire along with their Ukrainian counterparts. — Baden

Of course, although they are welcome to surrender and seem to be well treated when they do. I doubt the Ukrainians are killing the Russians with joy.

My point was more that the proper "side" to take is not of one powerful interest vs another when that's the very narrative that feeds their continued abuse of the powerless.

To add to that, I don't see this as a "winnable" war. Everyone worth a shit has already lost and can only continue losing more the longer it persists,

I disagree. I think what is far more embarrassing is the pro-NATO camp’s ignorance or denial of facts.

As far as I’m aware, NATO is a military organization. And it fights “righteous wars”. Hence, jihadi organization. It aims to “keep Americans in, Russians out, and Germans down”. Hence, racist organization.

This is from a Pilgrims Society meeting attended by Woodrow Wilson. Last statement is Wilson’s own:

God speed the good work of the Pilgrims and all endeavors to bring the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race closer together … Whatever happens, the spirit of the coming race will be an Anglo-Saxon spirit. It will be of the Anglo-Saxon stamp …. The Anglo-Saxon people have undertaken to reconstruct the affairs of the world, and it would be a shame upon them to withdraw their hand.

Cable Unites Pilgrims Here And In London – New York Times

See also

The Anglo-Saxon Myth in the United States - JSTOR

Atlanticism is a form of "Anglo-Saxon", i.e., Anglo-American imperialism aiming to bring Europe and the rest of the world under Anglo-American control. NATO is an instrument of Atlanticism, i.e. primarily US self-interest, as admitted by its founders:

Atlanticism manifested itself most strongly during the Second World War and in its aftermath, the Cold War, through the establishment of various Euro-Atlantic institutions, most importantly NATO and the Marshall Plan.

Atlanticism - Wikipedia

In his speech to Congress, Eisenhower, the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe, made it very clear that the principal objective of the NATO project was US self-interest:

I have no end to serve, except the good of the United States, and that is the reason I have the courage to appear before this body to express my convictions …. I have one object in view – the good of the United States … We are approaching this problem from the welfare of the United States …. First of all, in Western Europe exists the greatest pool of skilled labor in the world. In Western Europe exists a great industrial capacity second in its capacity only to that of the United States … Now if we take that whole complex with its potential for military exploitation and transfer it from our side to another side, the military balance of power has, in my mind, shifted so drastically that our safety would be gravely imperiled … We would be cut off in short from areas from which we draw the materials that are absolutely essential to our existence, our way of life … Take such items as manganese, copper, uranium. Could we possibly think of existing without access to them? … The Western European complex is so important to our future, with them our future is so definitely tied that we cannot afford to do less than our best in making sure that it does not go down the drain … - New York Times, Feb. 2, 1951

https://www.nytimes.com/1951/02/02/archives/text-of-eisenhowers-speech-to-senate-and-house-of-representatives.html

And, of course, everyone knows that American and British societies are racist and founded on racism and slavery:

Legal scholar Charles Lawrence, speaking about the American political elite said their "cultural belief system has influenced all of us; we are all racists". Philosopher Cornel West has stated that "racism is an integral element within the very fabric of American culture and society. It is embedded in the country's first collective definition, enunciated in its subsequent laws, and imbued in its dominant way of life."

Racism in North America – Wikipedia

Turkey is another racist member of NATO (with a neo-fascist government):

In Turkey, racism and ethnic discrimination are present in its society and throughout its history, including institutional racism against non-Muslim and non-Sunni minorities. This appears mainly in the form of negative attitudes and actions by Turks towards people who are not considered ethnically Turkic, notably Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews.

Racism in Turkey – Wikipedia

Armenian genocide - Wikipedia

Slavery in the Ottoman Empire – Wikipedia

Crimean–Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe - Wikipedia

10 Little-Known Facts From The Crimean Slave Trade

Anyway, the real conspiracy theory that I see on this thread is that Russia is supposed to be responsible for all the problems in the world .... :smile:

It'll be George Soros next. — Baden

Oh our forum Putinist has already extensively covered the evils of George Soros. :smile:

I had a private student from there a few years back and the main impression I got from him was of a deeply dysfunctional poverty-stricken country ravaged by institutionalized corruption. — Baden

That is the sad truth.

I remember what a Finnish former MP privately told about Ukraine. He had been the head of the Finnish-Ukrainian Parliamentary group (made obviously of both Finnish Ukrainian MPs). In a meeting with his Ukrainian counterparts he said that his time as the Finnish head of the group was over as he had lost the elections. The Ukrainians were sorry to hear that, until someone of them asked how long he had served in the Parliament. When he replied that had been a member of Parliament for 12 years, they were "Ah, no problem! You have no troubles!" After all, every MP in the World has had to acquired quite a wealth in 12 years and be a rich man.

Oh our forum Putinist has already extensively covered the evils of George Soros — ssu

Yep, as reported in the New York Times, Putin's personal propaganda outlet, and written by Richard Poe, America's foremost Nazi leader .... :rofl:

https://www.richardpoe.com/2004/07/16/velvet-revolution-usa-2/

My point was more that the proper "side" to take is not of one powerful interest vs another when that's the very narrative that feeds their continued abuse of the powerless. — Baden

The marxist viewpoint, huh? It's another way to take some side, and often the worse one.

My point was more that the proper "side" to take is not of one powerful interest vs another when that's the very narrative that feeds their continued abuse of the powerless. — Baden

Exactly. This shouldn't be this hard. Hewing to a pretty basic principle like this should not occasion accusations of being a Putinist or somesuch. If there's one thing I'm learning is the breathtaking power of propaganda to force one to pick between two completely artificial positions - always aligned with power - as though they exhaust the field of the possible.