All Things Russia & Ukraine

[Brooklyn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc9gUCy ... el=WerLesh



translation of caption:


While Vladimir Putin has decided to intervene militarily in Ukraine, and an unprecedented propaganda campaign has descended on both his person and Russia, it is important to understand the recent historical context so as not to be influenced or fooled by the media-lies that abound these days.

In this information war, the documentary by Anne-Laure Bonnel, independent journalist, shot in Donbass in 2015, reaches us as a very valuable legacy for all seekers of Truth(s).

Anne-Laure Bonnel, a young French director and mother, decides to accompany Alexandre, a father of Ukrainian origin, in the Donbass region, in eastern Ukraine in the pro-Russian zone. At the heart of the war, it captures the terrible images of a deadly conflict and an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. Donbass is an immersive road movie, a gripping documentary film set in a torn country




According to his defenders, Putin has taken this action in order to stop continued attacks on Russians living inside of the breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk (Donbas).

Not being a resident of this area and having too little knowledge of Russian (the most I ever learned was how to transliterate many words and names), I cannot vouch for the complete authenticity of these revelations.

[lagerhead]

But why would you ask such a ridiculous hypothetical?

...testing your commitment to non-partisanship on this subject.

well, I guess ridiculous hypotheticals do at least stretch the imagination, and heck some imagination may be required.

But give me some drones first. And other covert, as needed.

You can have the hardware, no US operators. No troops on the ground.

[a fan]

But why would you ask such a ridiculous hypothetical?

...testing your commitment to non-partisanship on this subject.

well, I guess ridiculous hypotheticals do at least stretch the imagination, and heck some imagination may be required.

But give me some drones first. And other covert, as needed.

You can have the hardware, no US operators. No troops on the ground.

+100…..no US troops!

We can’t give them drones. We’re trying to deescalate….not ratchet up the military stakes.

It’s up to Zelensky to deescalate, and get the whole world out of this mess. He’s got to stay safe, and get Putin his face saving deal.

[old salt]

The US military does not have suitable drones to give. The MQ-9 Reaper is too big & sophisticated. It's a turboprop.

It's predecessor, the MQ-1 Predator would have been a candidate. Much smaller. simpler & powered by a small general aviation engine.
Our military retired them 4 years ago. It's similar to the Turkish drones they've been using.

The Predator can only carry 2 Hellfires. The Reaper has 4 weapons stations that can each carry 2 Hellfires or 1 500 lb laser guided bomb.
It would take multiple sorties to take out a 30 mile convoy. You need A-10 Warthogs or SU-25 Frogfoot (which the Ukrainian AF have/had).

Don't know what the CIA's got. They used to have Predators. Maybe they'll send in Carrie Mathison to run a detachment.

Drones were made for recon & intel gathering, not close air support. They're for long loiter time, precision pin prick strikes & missions with risk of loss of flight crew..

Maybe the Italians & Turks still have their Predators or could loan them. Don't know if the USAF has any in mothballs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_A ... 1_Predator

[jhu72]

Primer on the fascist Azov Battalion in the Ukrainian Army.

[tech37]

It’s up to Zelensky to deescalate, and get the whole world out of this mess. He’s got to stay safe, and get Putin his face saving deal.

This! We escalate, this realistic best case option goes away. Leave US out of it neocons, chicken hawks, and flat-out crazies.

[Farfromgeneva]

And what peace "dividend".....military spending goes up every year, save the sequester's whopping two years.

It's getting old having to prove this every few years.

https://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/proj ... ldwar.html

As it is getting old telling you that moving the money to different areas, and pretending like "that's not military spending" doesn't fool anyone.

Question: how much did we spend on the VA, and VA alone last year, OS?

Diversion. The peace dividend was taken in the '90's, before the GWOT

Peace dividend from....the end of which war? I honestly have no clue what you're talking about here. Military spending goes up every year. Exceptions being two years under Obama.

The term peace dividend originated after the end of the Cold War. That is the context in which I have consistently used it.

The peace dividend is a very very short term concept, like a one time special dividend as has been seen because the military had no coherent strategy to change their spending paradigm (behaving like every other govt org with a budget utilizing “last year plus” be than any type of “zero based budget”) in combination with their permission behavior around the significant consolidation of the defense industry. It, the supposed dividend, had gone away before 9/11 just like whatever relief we had gotten from pulling out Afghanistan. It’s no different than the short term bump (and subsequent inflation generation) caused by the 2017 tax law changes (cuts). Short termism.

[jhu72]

What a weak move. The Orange dumbass is trying to get on the right side of history, and he thinks no one will see through this bulls*it.

[youthathletics]

You can have the hardware, no US operators. No troops on the ground.

+100…..no US troops!

We can’t give them drones. We’re trying to deescalate….not ratchet up the military stakes.

It’s up to Zelensky to deescalate, and get the whole world out of this mess. He’s got to stay safe, and get Putin his face saving deal.

That is is $10k question. What gives Putin an off ramp IF the entire goal was to have 'his' land back...or was it?

[MDlaxfan76]

But why would you ask such a ridiculous hypothetical?

...testing your commitment to non-partisanship on this subject.

well, I guess ridiculous hypotheticals do at least stretch the imagination, and heck some imagination may be required.

But give me some drones first. And other covert, as needed.

You can have the hardware, no US operators. No troops on the ground.

That works; sit our folks next to a Ukrainian, show them how to move the drones, and when to push the Botton...take out tanks and supply trucks. Strategic targets.

[cradleandshoot]

But why would you ask such a ridiculous hypothetical?

...testing your commitment to non-partisanship on this subject.

well, I guess ridiculous hypotheticals do at least stretch the imagination, and heck some imagination may be required.

But give me some drones first. And other covert, as needed.

You can have the hardware, no US operators. No troops on the ground.

That works; sit our folks next to a Ukrainian, show them how to move the drones, and when to push the Botton...take out tanks and supply trucks. Strategic targets.

Maybe we could just train them on video games? Half of the pimple faced US teenagers in America today could blow up that stalled convoy in a day. Hell, maybe they could even make it to the bonus round? If only it were that easy???

[Peter Brown]

It’s up to Zelensky to deescalate, and get the whole world out of this mess. He’s got to stay safe, and get Putin his face saving deal.

This! We escalate, this realistic best case option goes away. Leave US out of it neocons, chicken hawks, and flat-out crazies.

The neocon and DC establishment is itching to send your children to war.

You can run down a long list of insane tweets and press releases, but Adam Kinzinger is right up there with his overly emotional, teen girl-like repetitive demand to declare war on Russia today. There are more examples of course, but he’s the most uninformed, yet often interviewed congressman doing this. It’s really defaulting of his voice for anything else, sadly for the TDS crowd who otherwise adore this guy.

[Peter Brown]

Elon Musk is a bad ass.....can't believe why Joe Rogan would have him on and waste everyone time learning about a man advancing all progressive ideas: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/149 ... ZCS-29KCvg

Rogan and Musk apparently aren’t well liked by American libs. Go figure.

Once again a voice of sanity in America, from the worlds wealthiest person.

5BB4FDF5-BD4C-4DE7-9A79-398E973D2789.jpeg (115.29 KiB) Viewed 720 times

And yet some of our local denizens say he’s just not respectable.

[jhu72]

WaPo documents military aid sent to Ukraine.

[MDlaxfan76]

It’s up to Zelensky to deescalate, and get the whole world out of this mess. He’s got to stay safe, and get Putin his face saving deal.

This! We escalate, this realistic best case option goes away. Leave US out of it neocons, chicken hawks, and flat-out crazies.

The neocon and DC establishment is itching to send your children to war.

You can run down a long list of insane tweets and press releases, but Adam Kinzinger is right up there with his overly emotional, teen girl-like repetitive demand to declare war on Russia today. There are more examples of course, but he’s the most uninformed, yet often interviewed congressman doing this. It’s really defaulting of his voice for anything else, sadly for the TDS crowd who otherwise adore this guy.

Please provide us with a tweet from Kinzinger demanding that we declare war on Russia.

Else stop with with the disinformation campaign.

[MDlaxfan76]

Attention-seeker Musk is calling for something that's already happening. Rapidly.

The market is responding quickly, uncapping wells that have already been drilled.

Exploration takes much longer.

[runrussellrun]

Attention-seeker Musk is calling for something that's already happening. Rapidly.

The market is responding quickly, uncapping wells that have already been drilled.

Exploration takes much longer.

your not wrong, but couldn't you be saying the exact same thing about plenty of other people ? Hillary, for one. Bill Gates.......

...besides, if people walked while playing golf, we wouldn't need so much oil in the first place

[MDlaxfan76]

Attention-seeker Musk is calling for something that's already happening. Rapidly.

The market is responding quickly, uncapping wells that have already been drilled.

Exploration takes much longer.

your not wrong, but couldn't you be saying the exact same thing about plenty of other people ? Hillary, for one. Bill Gates.......

...besides, if people walked while playing golf, we wouldn't need so much oil in the first place

Hillary sure, but I don't think Gates craves short-span attention for himself, though he does want to draw attention to his causes. He particularly uses his expertise for long form discussions to influence policy that he's actually an expert in, but I don't think that's personal attention seeking. I think he wants to have an impact in the areas he focuses his resources and attention to moving the needle on.

Musk seeks personal attention. Brilliant guy, but also an a-hole.

BTW, before you go there, Gates has a quite reprehensible personal life background. Kinda the nerd who finally found himself attracting women, he didn't say no when he should have.

Lots to not like or like about Gates, but on this personal attention seeking metric, I don't think he's akin to Musk.

I don't have an issue with Musk, who has a lot of followers who consider themselves sensitive to climate, using his influence to say it's ok to increase oil and gas production, but the implication is that's not already happening in response to profit opportunities and is instead constrained by "Democratic government regulations" is simply bogus. That'd be a reasonable debate re longer term, but he's asking for "immediate" increases and that has nothing to do with regulations. It's purely about producers and refiners now seeing massive profit in opening the spigots back up that had been closed when demand crashed...that's been happening already for more than 6 months and nothing else "immediate" is going to have an impact.

[jhu72]

Biden's bold gamble might just save Ukraine.

[runrussellrun]

Attention-seeker Musk is calling for something that's already happening. Rapidly.

The market is responding quickly, uncapping wells that have already been drilled.

Exploration takes much longer.

your not wrong, but couldn't you be saying the exact same thing about plenty of other people ? Hillary, for one. Bill Gates.......

...besides, if people walked while playing golf, we wouldn't need so much oil in the first place

Hillary sure, but I don't think Gates craves short-span attention for himself, though he does want to draw attention to his causes. He particularly uses his expertise for long form discussions to influence policy that he's actually an expert in, but I don't think that's personal attention seeking. I think he wants to have an impact in the areas he focuses his resources and attention to moving the needle on.

Musk seeks personal attention. Brilliant guy, but also an a-hole.

BTW, before you go there, Gates has a quite reprehensible personal life background. Kinda the nerd who finally found himself attracting women, he didn't say no when he should have.

Lots to not like or like about Gates, but on this personal attention seeking metric, I don't think he's akin to Musk.

I don't have an issue with Musk, who has a lot of followers who consider themselves sensitive to climate, using his influence to say it's ok to increase oil and gas production, but the implication is that's not already happening in response to profit opportunities and is instead constrained by "Democratic government regulations" is simply bogus. That'd be a reasonable debate re longer term, but he's asking for "immediate" increases and that has nothing to do with regulations. It's purely about producers and refiners now seeing massive profit in opening the spigots back up that had been closed when demand crashed...that's been happening already for more than 6 months and nothing else "immediate" is going to have an impact.

personally, I feel attacked by this response. Can one attack oneself, for sending out a query in the first place. It IS ok.....relax.....relax.

yes, stop attacking yourself.

dude, Gates only CAUSE.......IS himself.

for a guy who promised to "give it all away" ...seems odd he becomes 10 times wealthier after making that "pledge"

yeah, not much to like about Gates, but, overall, you'll listen to him about MEDICAL issues, because, like another college dropout, Joe Rogan listening....repeat, having a MEDICAL community guest, discuss topics.......is tin foil hat stuff.

yes, stop attacking yourself, fatty........no matter what, you will NEVER hear " you make a good point"

got some lacrosse games.....