They have already oil & gas pipelines to China and likely will build more: — ssu

Yes, but these pipelines across thousands of Kilometres do take time to build, so my reading is the nuclear ice-breakers are a plan B to ship oil out the arctic ... it's not like they'd be shipping beanie babies.

Yes, we will surely soon forget this thread and the media can focus on other issues, but as long as the war goes on, the effects of it will be there. And even if the war would tone down as it did after 2015 for seven years or there would be a cease-fire that held, the World has already changed. — ssu

My basic point is that the Western media will focus on something else as soon as focusing on this is inconvenient. Afghanistan babies starving to death is inconvenient, so we're focusing on the Russians now.

Normal people don't necessarily forget, but the Western media is pretty synchronous with whatever policy the West "needs to do right now" to deal with [insert outrage].

Problems today, for Western institutions, are whatever Western media says they are, proven by the fact Western media is saying it and, doubly so, by the fact Western institutions are answering the call to do something about it.

Opinions of normal people don't really matter in this conversation between Western media and Western institutions, just that Western bureaucrats and politicians and even CEO's know what they're supposed to be doing today, hating the people that need hating today and coddling the people that need sympathy today from knowing about, sometimes even interacting, with said hated group (but mostly just knowing about a hated group exists, even if they lack any power at all to affect your life, is oppressive enough). From time to time the conversation exists to explain that, yes it's unfortunate, but nothing really can be done to help people negatively affected by Western policies--no end of the "realist" supply when those issues are "debated".

What if a Presidential candidate came forward stating that he would never engage in a war of conquest with any nation?
— FreeEmotion
Well, I guess Putin would be the first person declaring that! He's just protecting ethnic Russians and welcomes them who want to join mother Russia. Just like Milosevic did for the Serbs. And uses his military on special military operations to stop a genocide perpetrated by neo-nazis.

The age when leaders truthfully admitted that they engaged in wars of conquest is ancient history. — ssu

What I meant was, would people ever elect a president who promised never to attack another nation unless they attacked first? That would mean stopping existing wars. The converse of that would be that people would only elect a president who would leave the military option open, which means war is accepted as part of foreign policy.

What do you think?

I find cheerleading a war — boethius

You are the only war cheerleader here.

You are the only war cheerleader here. — Olivier5

By recommending diplomacy be engaged with in good faith to try to end the war? And, simultaneously to that, diplomacy be used to protect civilians ... like evacuating them by boat from a port city.

Before this high intensity phase of the war began, diplomacy could have easily resolved it.

However, not taking that opportunity, now Zelensky and the West are faced with the problem that Ukraine won't be Russia's Afghanistan as their plan is to just completely demolish Ukraine's war infrastructure ... and most it's trained soldiers, and then just lay siege to cities until their demands are met.

And the whole thing of Western war hawks rushing to declare Ukraine Russia's Afghanistan as the insurgency will be impossible to manage (until shh, shh, shh we need to pretend their winning to justify sending the warms to fuel the insurgency) is premised on what:

1. The West's own Afghanistan was a completely immoral debacle and cluster fuck that simply killed Western soldiers for nothing, couldn't be won, and simply resulted in two decades of war and suffering and terrible deaths for normal Afghans only to be ruled, in the end, by fanatical extremists (the only kinds of people that fight an insurgency for 2 decades) that are even more extreme than before and now have zero fear of any Western military interventions of any kind and no diplomatic pressure can be placed on them whatsoever to alleviate people's suffering much less try to export those "Western values" I keep hearing so much about.

2. The conflict only benefited Western Arms dealers, just as this Ukraine conflict only benefits Western arms dealers at the end of the day.

3. The self-righteous refusal for years and years and years to negotiate some peace settlement with the Taliban, when there was far better position and leverage to do so, as "they're too evil", wasn't self-righteous and good faith at all, but just as an excuse to sell more arms ... considering negotiating with the Taliban is exactly what NATO does when they tire of the war and there's more arms to be sold in a new Cold war which is obviously coming (the pull out of Afghanistan happens after the Ukraine army start preparing for a large offensive in Dombas which solicits the totally expected and inevitable buildup of Russian forces, that must invade if there's no deal ... which NATO knows ahead of time isn't going to happen).

4. Ukraine will be totally wrecked by the insurgency and far more Ukrainians will be killed by fanatical extremists than Russians will be.

5. Ukraine, like Afghanistan, will serve as a extremist fighter training ground as well as giant arms depot, to then export extremist violence all around the region to destabilize any government of the CIA's choosing at any moment by providing more arms and money in exchange for focusing a generally omnidirectional fanatical rage on the target of the day, with "advisors" on the ground if things aren't going to great as over confidence is the fanatical extremist fighter's weakness and they keep dying in foolhardy attacks planned and executed entirely based on their own sense of superiority.

6. Decades from now, Ukrainian babies will be literally starving to death, and, just as with the West's Afghanistan, no one will care about the Russian's Afghanistan at that point in the future. Let them eat cake, those babies ... you know, if it's their birthday they certainly deserve it.

7. Such a public and long term moral and military disaster, waste of troops and equipment, will, just like the US, undermine Russia's security, position in the world, and erode their military's confidence and domestic and international image, leading, ultimately, to an embarrassing withdrawal (military loss) and signal to American "friends" that American "friendship" means dick-all and can't be counted on and also signal to all America's competitors that US public is tired of war and they need not fear any "boots on the ground" military intervention at any time in the near and medium and perhaps long term future, except maybe the supply of arms and dropping some bombs from time to time (2 things that can be easily dealt with technologically if you're any more sophisticated and prepared than Gadafi ... who honestly though he was a friend of the West, pitching his tent in the ).

When current and ex CIA, and other retired "Generals" and officials and so on, trip over the dicks and their tits to gleefully tell us Ukraine will be Russia's Afghanistan, it's exactly the above they have in mind.





Caption: European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana talks with Gaddafi during a meeting in his bedouin tent in Brussels, on 27 April 2004; Photograph: European Council/Reuters



For, when you have friends like these ... who needs enemies?



Lybia post-NATO no fly zone and glorious liberation!

Fill the air with lies so nobody knows what to think. That's what the exploiters do to control the public.
— frank

It's just damage control, I suspect. The idea is to combat the rapid depreciation of Mr Putin's allure in the West and elsewhere, as swift as the ruble's on the currency market. — Olivier5

There's a theory that Putin and Trump express obvious lies as a means of domination. The relentless bullshit creates a fog of abuse.

I'd say refusing to admit a difference between financing and support of other kinds is along the same lines: "I deny any semblance of common ground with you. You aren't even human to me."

That kind of thing.

There's a theory that Putin and Trump express obvious lies as a means of domination. The relentless bullshit creates a fog of abuse. — frank

Yep. It's about manufacturing confusion and doubt.

Note how frequently some posters misunderstand what we say here. It's done on purpose, evidently. They don't seriously try to reach understanding. That's not their goal.

Note how frequently some posters misunderstand what we say here. It's done on purpose, evidently. They don't seriously try to reach understanding. That's not their goal. — Olivier5

It's abuse.

If anybody has an inability to read it's the two of you.

Boethius: "Valid criticism of the USA and NATO"

You: you're a "war cheerleader".

Maybe find a log cabin so the two of you can keep jerking either off.

What I meant was, would people ever elect a president who promised never to attack another nation unless they attacked first? That would mean stopping existing wars. The converse of that would be that people would only elect a president who would leave the military option open, which means war is accepted as part of foreign policy.

What do you think? — FreeEmotion

I think the bellicose rhetoric of "fortress Russia" will only end when there is a humiliating defeat and too many soldiers are killed in a war that many don't understand why it's fought.

Take for example France and Algeria. Algeria was seen as part of France and not a colony, it had actually very many French living there. Well after seven years of war, 26 000 French soldiers and 50 000 French Harkis dead (plus the over two hundreds thousand Algerians killed), the French retreated.

That's the way thinking in Russia will change. If it changes. The division between "zapadniks" and the "slavophiles" is quite alive in Russia even today.

There's a theory that Putin and Trump express obvious lies as a means of domination. The relentless bullshit creates a fog of abuse. — frank

I think this is why right wingers gravitate to obvious liars: it is a sign of strength and status, to be able to tell such lies. The stronger one is, the bolder the lies one is able to tell.

I think this is why right wingers gravitate to obvious liars: it is a sign of strength and status, to be able to tell such lies. The stronger one is, the bolder the lies one is able to tell. — hypericin

Like being bound to facts is a sign of weakness. Yep.

no end of the "realist" supply when those issues are "debated" — boethius

"Can we do something about the Syrian refugees?"
"We'd love to, but it's all terribly complicated, getting the funding, the resources..."

"Can we take on one of the world's largest nuclear powers, in a fight to the death?"
"Sure, saddle up, grab that spare $15 billion we had lying around, and let's go!!"

I think this is why right wingers gravitate to obvious liars: it is a sign of strength and status, to be able to tell such lies. The stronger one is, the bolder the lies one is able to tell. — hypericin

Oh, you mean like the literal head of the CIA accusing, unnironically, the Russian's of waging an "information war".

Or ... do you have more in mind the current President of the United States saying he engaged in civil disobedience with Corn Pop as well as arrested in South Africa trying to see Mandela in prison.

Or maybe you have in mind something like George Bush joking about finding WMD's in Iraq, that they "gotta be around there somewhere"?

You have that sort of unaccountable lying ... or just Trump, who, last time I checked, does get held accountable for his lies, the liberal media repeats them ad nauseam and, unlike the neo-con's who bragged about "making the facts", Trump was held accountable in the democratic process and lost re-election and he's held accountable by the powerful all the time for his continued insistence the election was stolen from him. But, certainly Trump had so much power and was so unnacountable for anything he says that losing the election was the biggest expression of raw power the world has ever seen.

The script literally writes itself.

My only worry is we can't go "bigger" in the next installment of the NATO cinematic universe.

They don't seriously try to reach understanding. — Olivier5

Oh, this is gold. So...just so I understand what's missing, would you quote for me an example of you 'trying to reach understanding' with any of the posters here opposing your position (me, boethius,, benkei, streetlight...). I just want to see how it's done.

Is it...

More confused BS. — Olivier5

or...

That's simply an insane, delusional or very ignorant argument. — ssu

or...

Liar — frank

or...

Boethius must be on their payroll. Otherwise, his behavior here makes no logical sense. — Olivier5

or...

Your rhetoric is as empty as the Kremlin's. — Olivier5

or...

I am not reading your ignorant bullshit. — SophistiCat

or...

you suck — frank

Maybe find a log cabin so the two of you can keep jerking either off. — Benkei

Now that's classy. What is it with Putin sycophants and their constant horniness and jerkicity?

I signed on for room and board for Ukrainians because my wife and daughter wanted to and am now left wondering why they never wanted to do that for Syrians. Meanwhile, Ukrainian refugees of colour are being discriminated against. What a surprise!

... of course, that being said NATO can always hire Marvel and DC script doctors to do a clean reboot a la The Batman and Spiderman: Far from Home.

But does NATO have that kind of cash to attract that sort of talent?

And is there enough creative material and fan loyalty to avoid an X-men or Fantastic 4 ... just ... sort of fizzling out?

There's chances the franchise can keep loyal fans and build on that, but, honestly ... NATO may have to sell to Disney to access their production studios, creative pool and audience reach.

Sure, NATO's tapping yesterday's stars, but can Bono's edgy anti-establishment poetry he's so famous for, really get fans back in the seats? Can audiences really keep up with the franchise when there's huge drops like Obi Wan ... is Disney even prepared to pickup another creative orphan?

Uncertain times in the market, and I'm just not sure one hit, even as massive and totally adored on social media as it is now, is enough to fix plot things long term for NATO's creative executives.

Even die hard fans maybe difficult to keep committed if plot holes like NATO officers being killed in missile strikes don't have some sort of fan service resolution that keeps the older generation, that really grew up reading the old pre-NATO installments, like WWII, interested, while also reaching out to the new generation that thinks the SS were just total bad asses and it's just super fun to mix them up in a campy mashup of different characters fighting the new super villain; bringing out the "Red Army" is for sure a nostalgic throwback and safe choice for NATO, really directly addressing the core audience, but at the same time, even details like the new uniforms is a really big leap in design for them to take in, not to mention the whole re-conception of "The Soviet Red Menace" for a younger, more digital audience who connects more if they fear them as more of a "virtual" foe that's mostly just a danger to anonymous avatars online, than some actual "physical" enemy that may blowup entire cities at any moment, the classic "ticking clock" that kept eyes glued to screens in the 70s franchise heyday; but viewed by younger generations as a pre-internet tiresome gimmick. There's not even any submarines in this new story that happens nearly entirely on land, and for a lot of people that's a big disappointment; but maybe NATO's teasing a neo-Nazi submarine escape from Mariupole as a way to bridge those concerns, there's certainly no end to that sort of speculation about this sort of plot twist on the legacy fan forums, and maybe a way to really win over hearts that the rebranded neo-Nazi's as a ambiguous "anti-heros" that fans are supposed to empathize and understand in this new alliance, rather than that classic archetypal villain that just needs to be defeated for the plot to move forward, are a core part of the story now; of course, solutions may exist, such as another fan theory favorite is having them play that super cool submarine role, satisfying old fans demands to see more submarines as well a form of narrative continuation of the original Nazi's, of which submarines was a signature ability.

However, not taking that opportunity, now Zelensky and the West are faced with the problem that Ukraine won't be Russia's Afghanistan as their plan is to just completely demolish Ukraine's war infrastructure ... and most it's trained soldiers, and then just lay siege to cities until their demands are met. — boethius

Oh sure, how the war is going it surely won't be an Afghanistan for Russia. It will be much, much worse. In Afghanistan in 9 years of fighting Russians lost merely 14 000 men. Now in less than a month of fighting, the estimate is what? 7 000 dead? Even in the two Chechen wars Russia lost more that in Afghanistan. Now they aren't facing one of the poorest nations in the World. Just one of the poorest European countries that is getting massive support from the West.

I guess the issue with being critical of the West and the US, like you or @Benkei, @Isaac are, is the thing that Russia is fighting a brutal war without caring much about civilian lives. For example @Isaac has stated it quite clearly: he doesn't want to give any credit the the US here as being a "knight in white armour". Fine. Yet talking about the failures and the imperialism of the West doesn't change the war in Ukraine.

That use massive firepower has been the Russian military doctrine in the past and that is it still today. They have done that in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Syria and now in Ukraine. As I said to @jorndoe 21 days ago, Ukrainian cities will look like Grozny. And of course, this will mean a lot of civilian casualties. The Russia warfighting tactics will cause enormous civilian losses.

Yet if someone talks about the attrocities of the Russians, then it's a bit odd to attack those of "believing in Western propaganda" or being "warmongers" or the type. This is thread of war in Ukraine, so that this war is discussed here.

Yeah, we've offered the caravans on our farm, but it's probably too far from anywhere to be of any use. We did have some Somalis with us a few years back, but they we part of a scheme organised by a local charity in the city. Everything has been sporadic and scraping around for funding... until now. It feels wrong complaining about the amount of help now available (for some), but I just can't help feeling what a fucking kick in the teeth it must be for the millions who've been crying out for help for the past decades.

Imagine being half-drowned, imprisoned, destitute and scraping for scraps for years and now finding the government who's mercy you've been begging all this time, can all of a sudden find £350 per person per month for an unlimited amount.

Barring the possibility of our governments suddenly finding a conscience, it just shows the latent racism thst still underlies the refugee issue.

I signed on for room and board for Ukrainians because my wife and daughter wanted to and am now left wondering why they never wanted to do that for Syrians. Meanwhile, Ukrainian refugees of colour are being discriminated against. What a surprise! — Benkei

I am happy that you did that. Or that your wife and your smart daughter insisted on that.

Never underestimate how precarious the acceptance of foreigners are. And that's why the Zelenskyi administration saying that all adult men of military age would have to stay in Ukraine was really important to the acceptance of Ukrainian refugees in Europe. Seeing that the refugees are mothers with small children and not young military aged men likely did make the Polish and the Hungarians open their arms for them. Just look at how the Polish government reacted to the hybrid operation of Lukashenko just some months ago.

I think it's very tough for the refugees from the Middle East to cope here in Europe. People aren't hospitable and are very open to negative stereotypes. What I'm worried is how Russians will be treated as the war goes on.

I think this is why right wingers gravitate to obvious liars: it is a sign of strength and status, to be able to tell such lies. The stronger one is, the bolder the lies one is able to tell. — hypericin

Right wingers and and left wingers too. That's why they're called wingers.

We might as well just nuke each other now and get it over with. — Isaac

The suspense is killing me. At this point the West would be well advised to begin seriously addressing the mineshaft gap.

:100: :cheer:

Oh sure, how the war is going it surely won't be an Afghanistan for Russia. It will be much, much worse. — ssu

This isn't an "Afghanistan".

If the war is quick, it may cost lives but doesn't slowly ground down morale and domestic support over time.

Right now Putin's popularity has increased and Russian's support the war, so the war need only be ended within this window of popularity.

Putin has not made promises that can't be kept: like "democratize" Ukraine at the end of a rifle.

Putin has already achieved the land bridge to Crimea and if the Dombas front collapses and territory pushes out regions border, Putin can just sit on this territory and shell to oblivion anything that approaches while continuing to strike command and control and logistics infrastructure.

The entire Russian army can be consolidated to the lines around what Putin claims to want, maybe around Kiev as well to keep pressure on the capital ... and then just wait for his terms, that have not changed since the beginning of the war, to be accepted.

What the Kremlin has learned from previous episodes, is that Western "Unity" is only ever short lived and only ever exists on social media and not in any tangible form. Winning the social media culture war ... doesn't win a real war, is the main lesson to be drawn from Syria.

If a military status quo settles in with the Russian army mostly just sitting on the territory it wants to keep, then the EU is going to start to wonder what it's going to do with all the refugees and disputes will break out about that ... gonna look really attractive the idea of the war actually ending so Ukrainians can go back to Ukraine (which, for now, most want to do ... but if the war goes on for any amount of time, most will start making new lives and will have nothing to go back to).

As far as I can tell, the only reason Zelensky didn't accept Russia's terms in the first phase of the war, when it was easy to do:

1. Neo-Nazi's made it clear they would kill him if he did.

2. He genuinely believed in the power of acting to conjure up a NATO no-fly zone a la Churchillian Dumbledore.

3. He got so many views ... no one in show business can walk away from

However, the difference with Churchill is that he also had a feasible military strategy and feasible political strategy of getting US into the war and a pathway to military victory based on military experience (indeed, experience largely considered to be failures, and maybe a little dabbling in genocide, but potentially kind of experience that breeds the requisite caution). Also a little foot note: Britain was still head of a large empire from which to draw resources to take on the new Nazi empire, with the Nazi-Soviet alliance tenuously paranoid at best.

The modern conception that Churchill's speech somehow caused, in itself, the defeat of the Nazi's without any sort of credible plan ... is possibly misguided.

Politicians love Zelensky because social media loves Zelensky and his views of photo-ops are their views of photo-ops and the whole thing makes other political problems just sort of ... vanish.

And, their real constituents, the arms manufacturers, tell them war is good, and so it is. And so it is.

However, if speeches don't cause wars to be won in themselves, then Zelensky is in a dilly of a pickle, having fought an existential war to the last man ... only to accept terms offered on day one.

Of course, Russia likely knew the terms would be rejected, so they could then sell the war they want (total obliteration of the Ukrainian military as a going concern) even easier to the home audience, as nearly all Russians will agree A. Ukraine should be neutral and not host NATO missiles and nukes pointed at their cities B. Crimea should stay Russian and be recognized as Russian and C. Dombas should be independent.

At the end of the day, Russians are simply buying what Putin's selling as it makes sense to them, and he hasn't overplayed his hand by promising much more.

He's argued Ukraine is somehow apart of Russia already ... but there has not really been any actual demands to annex the whole of Ukraine, so that could be sort of contextual historical analysis not directly connected to any current political aim as well as a legal cover for conscripts in Ukraine, which did happen and may have been planned as a plan-C "if needs be" (as the conscripts can legally only defend Russia ... obviously, as @Benkei points out, the law doesn't really matter, but still pretextual justifications are needed, just as NATO made the pretextual justification to go from "No-fly-zone" to bombs everything that moved on the basis that anything that moved could in theory support an anti-air asset that in theory could support a plane that in theory could fly if Lybia had any left that weren't already shot down or bombed--it was totally preposterous reasoning, and the whole point is that doesn't matter).

You: you're a "war cheerleader". — Benkei

Moi? I have been accused of war cheerleading here more often than I care to count. The words roll off the tongue of your buddies day and night. And when for the first time I return them the compliment, I'm the one to blame?

That's called a double standard.

So...just so I understand what's missing, would you quote for me an example of you 'trying to reach understanding' with any of the posters here opposing your position (me, boethius,, benkei, streetlight...). I just want to see how it's done. — Isaac

Many posters here have been patiently explaining the most obvious things to you and the other serial misunderstanders for days now. You are either very slow on the uptake or you pretend to misunderstand. In your case my money is on the former.

Like what?

Maybe provide at least some examples of what's misunderstood.

How are you sure you're not serial misunderstanding your understanding of serial misunderstanderers?

And you've ruled out the possibility that it's they who don't understand our arguments because...?

I can't decide if it's just rhetoric or if you genuinely are so grossly narcissistic that you can't even contemplate the idea that it might be you who are actually wrong.

My money is on the former, but I'm excited at the prospect of having found a genuine case of the latter.