The Ukraine CrySis - Crimea River

[albrecht]

Here there are a few bars that still require it in certain areas known for activism, probably will for eternity at this rate 🤷 I just don't go to them, I think it has been clear for at least a year that there is little if any practical benefit and it is just harrying nuisance to make it inconvenient for folks to slack off

I think air-travel has always been the 'testing' point on things. Starts off: fun, leisure, skirts, etc. Then goes (you could argue the deregulation and union battles) a bit cheaper but more of a hassle. And then now: like you are a victim and resented but has to be moved. Hazed, scanned, or groped by slack-jawed TSA people in government make-jobs, demand for a REAL ID compliant document, nickle-and-dimed for everything, and (until recently depending on route forced masked and show vaccines,) and then most, even in the airport, don't accept cash to buy an over-priced (captive market) drink or food item. But, somehow, illegals, without an ID, get a free trip to Martha's Vineyard or anywhere else in the country.

[K_Dubb]

I think air-travel has always been the 'testing' point on things. Starts off: fun, leisure, skirts, etc. Then goes (you could argue the deregulation and union battles) a bit cheaper but more of a hassle. And then now: like you are a victim and resented but has to be moved. Hazed, scanned, or groped by slack-jawed TSA people in government make-jobs, demand for a REAL ID compliant document, nickle-and-dimed for everything, and (until recently depending on route forced masked and show vaccines,) and then most, even in the airport, don't accept cash to buy an over-priced (captive market) drink or food item. But, somehow, illegals, without an ID, get a free trip to Martha's Vineyard or anywhere else in the country.

Yes, makes sense, most time in confined space with perfect strangers, perfect ad hoc focus group though tends to prioritize business travelers and folks with disposable income for leisure, study social interaction and signaling, lots of bored people with phones to document any disturbance in social order.  Worth noting in context of current discussion that it was airline heads who pushed for dropping mask mandate as too troublesome to enforce and that liberal cities dropped their mask mandates even before.

[WOTR]

This has been a limited war so far with negotiated rules that are mostly followed, people on the ground there are perfectly aware, that is why they all went back to Kiev and resumed business as normal.  There are still plenty of ways for Pootie to escalate within the boundaries without using nukes.  It's only weenies over here, all of a suspiciously similar political cast, trying to scare down Western support rather than lose their chief sponsor.

It's almost been a week since this post. Do you still feel that this is working out nicely with rules that we are all following- or does "general Armageddon" ramping up the bombing efforts change things? Any concern yet that after the infrastructure ends up destroyed just in time for winter?

*I know. We are still supposed to be in cheer leading mode.

[WOTR]

LOL I would not have canned you you goof, tolerance is a classical liberal virtue going back to the Enlightenment and the measure of tolerance is how much disagreement you can stomach before you punish someone, when it is in your power to do so.  I think your vax position is utter horseshit but I still haven't shown my vax card to anyone.

Bears are what we call fat gays, we hate them so much we make them have their own separate parties, and it was at bearfest in Provincetown last year around the 4th of July when it was first widely reported that a near-100% vaccinated crowd could spread covid.  The unvaccinated owe the brave Provincetown Bears a debt of gratitude for pushing social distancing to the limit and stress-testing the vaccine.

You are basically passing PUtin positions undigested here.  Are you checking your opinions with counterpoints at all?  Nuclear missiles on his border with Ukraine?

Ukraine's NATO membership was never remotely realistic before this war and, even if they joined, that means nothing.  The Baltics on his border have been NATO members since 2004, no nukes stationed there or any real pressure to do so.  Now Pootie is threatening nukes in Kaliningrad in retaliation for Finland and Sweden joining  He is picking this fight with NATO and losing because most of the world can see he is an old-school imperialist asshole and running for cover.  Your anti-war stance is kind of jarring here.

Well, I appreciate that. But perhaps somebody should inform the other leftists of this tradition of tolerance. I have seen people lose jobs, family, friends and their lives (another one who was let go during covid and committed suicide last week.) The dehumanization, financial instability and hatred of "polite" society actually did take a toll on a number of people.

Anyhow, your last paragraph really shows the problem. A good "left" friend of mine has been commenting on the "west" surrounding both Russia and China for the last decade and has been saying that eventually one (or both) of them will say "enough." This was not something that people did not see coming. Look up the location of US military bases in 2005 and then recent locations.

I suppose you see no provocation. I don't say that Russia should have invaded. Only that Stevie Wonder could have seen the war coming. And the Ukraine with it's ports and it's strategic location with no geographical barriers for in invasion into Russia abandoning neutrality was likely going to be a tipping point. 

*You do realize that on this you are to the right of, and more of a war monger than Henry Kissinger, right?

[Silphion]

Our Russian friends need your help - K_Dubb, Sredni, Pud, etal.

How can they ever redeem their souls?

Now get on board and PRAY FOR THEM. Preach, brother! 🙃

Get your propaganda on! And pray for these damned Ruskies.


ᴀᴅᴀᴍ ᴄᴜʀᴛɪꜱ' ᴀꜱᴛᴏɴɪꜱʜɪɴɢ ᴀᴜᴛᴏᴘꜱʏ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴀʟʟ ᴏꜰ ʀᴜꜱꜱɪᴀ ᴡɪʟʟ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪᴅᴇ-ᴇʏᴇᴅ

A long dark road ploughs through a wasteland of snow towards an icy horizon. Welcome, this opening image unequivocally says, to post-Soviet hell, where women wait in line for meat and abortions, men brawl in banks and parliaments, where everyone sells anything to survive – shoes, bodies, blood.

In Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone (BBC iPlayer), documentary essayist Adam Curtis has filleted thousands of hours of unused footage from the BBC's archive to craft a phantasmagoric autopsy of the USSR as it breaks apart in a thousand brutal ways, making way for capitalism. The result is a garish multi-part disaster epic.

Onto a boundless compendium of chaos Curtis has contrived to impose structure via canny juxtapositions and ironic echoes. Thus in the first film the corpse of Kim Philby seems to symbolise the death of communism. In the last film, it's the turn of democracy to lie in an open casket at the funeral of politician Galina Starovoitova, murdered a month after speaking to the BBC. In between, the leitmotif of death is everywhere from Chernobyl to Chechnya, from the reassembled bones of the last tsar to the looted graves of German soldiers.

No film by Curtis comes without a portion of irate mansplaining, crammed here into captions which tell of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and a harmless-looking pipsqueak called Putin the oligarchs finally install as their puppet. Mainly, though, he lets astonishing pictures do the talking.

"𝙈𝙖𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙍𝙪𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙍𝙪𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙨 𝙗𝙚 𝙙𝙖𝙢𝙣𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙡!" screams a woman fleeing the bombing of Grozny. Elsewhere, expectant Russian mothers are coached to sing to their unborn children who'll now be old enough to bomb Zaporizhzhia.

Alongside such dolorous portents, surreal metaphors for delusion and dysfunction sprout like irradiated knotweed. Grotesque bodybuilders flex pecs under giant images of Marx and Lenin. A bear wanders the forest by night, infra-red eyes glaring as if in psychic shock. A cosmonaut is marooned in the Mir station because there's no money to fly him home.

From America, among many chancers, comes a motivational speaker teaching Russia's women to smile. The most captivating smile of all belongs to wily street beggar Natasha. Imagine Shirley Temple in a novel by Dostoevsky. Filmed across several years by a BBC crew, like a good capitalist she eventually requests remuneration. "You'll get paid," she argues, "and it's costing me my time." This staggering masterpiece is worth yours.

[K_Dubb]

It's almost been a week since this post. Do you still feel that this is working out nicely with rules that we are all following- or does "general Armageddon" ramping up the bombing efforts change things? Any concern yet that after the infrastructure ends up destroyed just in time for winter?

*I know. We are still supposed to be in cheer leading mode.

No concern, Russia threatens every time something goes against them.  We officially take them seriously and threaten back.  Were you around for Syria?  Same old shit.

[Dr. MD MD]

Were you around for Syria?  Same old shit.

Isn't that the war where the CIA were applying FX makeup to kids to make it seem like they'd been in a war before the "news" people photographed them in order to elicit public sympathy back home?

[K_Dubb]

Well, I appreciate that. But perhaps somebody should inform the other leftists of this tradition of tolerance. I have seen people lose jobs, family, friends and their lives (another one who was let go during covid and committed suicide last week.) The dehumanization, financial instability and hatred of "polite" society actually did take a toll on a number of people.

Anyhow, your last paragraph really shows the problem. A good "left" friend of mine has been commenting on the "west" surrounding both Russia and China for the last decade and has been saying that eventually one (or both) of them will say "enough." This was not something that people did not see coming. Look up the location of US military bases in 2005 and then recent locations.

I suppose you see no provocation. I don't say that Russia should have invaded. Only that Stevie Wonder could have seen the war coming. And the Ukraine with it's ports and it's strategic location with no geographical barriers for in invasion into Russia abandoning neutrality was likely going to be a tipping point. 

*You do realize that on this you are to the right of, and more of a war monger than Henry Kissinger, right?

This is just the "Ukraine is a fake country" argument which was settled when they fought back so heroically that first week.  Shamed the West into supporting them.  They want to align with Europe.  Nobody in Europe likes the Russian stink that smells like cabbage and doctor sausage and graft except Recent Russian immigrants, the Czechs even had a tourism campaign that invited people to look at a map and see that their country was really rather Central and not Eastern Europe at all!

Kissinger said that months ago, before it became clear Russia was getting desperate, retreating, mobilizing, I do not blame the Ukrainians for wanting to test how firm Russia's grip is on those parts they just annexed.

[K_Dubb]

Isn't that the war where the CIA were applying FX makeup to kids to make it seem like they'd been in a war before the "news" people photographed them in order to elicit public sympathy back home?

You're gonna miss Alex Jones aren't you 

[Dr. MD MD]

You're gonna miss Alex Jones aren't you 

It was that war then.

[albrecht]

You're gonna miss Alex Jones aren't you 

Aside from a heart attack or stroke, considering his apparent size and anger, he will still likely be around. Or 'suicided.' As I mentioned in his thread the bankruptcy and legal structuring and ability, and internet- for now- will likely keep him going in some fashion. He really should set up a church set-up and REALLY avoid taxes and the rate increases Austin Energy has increased. Those are really sweet deals. Though we are seeing a lot of banks, systems, CC companies (almost also based in Delaware due to their interesting laws and Court system) cutting people off due to their speech. So who knows?

[Dr. MD MD]

This is just the "Ukraine is a fake country" argument which was settled when they fought back so heroically that first week.  Shamed the West into supporting them.  They want to align with Europe.  Nobody in Europe likes the Russian stink that smells like cabbage and doctor sausage and graft except Recent Russian immigrants, the Czechs even had a tourism campaign that invited people to look at a map and see that their country was really rather Central and not Eastern Europe at all!

Kissinger said that months ago, before it became clear Russia was getting desperate, retreating, mobilizing, I do not blame the Ukrainians for wanting to test how firm Russia's grip is on those parts they just annexed.

To the right of Kissenger and proud of it!

[Jackstar]

To the right of Kissenger and proud of it! ;D

Destroying the forum, blah blah, personal blog, yadda-yadda, tired! nap!

[Dr. MD MD]

Destroying the forum, blah blah, personal blog, yadda-yadda, tired! nap!

P.S. How is Azzgab doing? Does anyone besides you even post there anymore?

[WOTR]

This is just the "Ukraine is a fake country" argument which was settled when they fought back so heroically that first week.  Shamed the West into supporting them. 

And what a job he has done of that so far. I'm curious aside from the sacrifice of his fighting age men, what else has Zelensky sacrificed?

Ukraine needs $38 billion to cover our budget deficit next yr; we need $17 billion to "rebuild the critical infrastructure"; we need $2 billion to rebuild our "electric energy infrastructure"; & we need "not less than $5 billion" for gas & coal purchases

You now get to pay the salaries of doctors and teachers and the pensions of Ukrainians as well as for their hospitals. Too bad you can't afford public healthcare down there. 

(and that is just the demands this month without touching on military aid and the billions already pledged and sent.)


https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1580547558417522688

[WOTR]

Isn't that the war where the CIA were applying FX makeup to kids to make it seem like they'd been in a war before the "news" people photographed them in order to elicit public sympathy back home?

I think it was the same war that the OPCW whistleblower said was supported by a report of his that was altered to fit the preferred narrative on the use of chemical weapons.

*I will say that "they" are getting better at suppressing what they want to label as "misinformation." I know the scientist came forward after the email was leaked to wikileaks (remind me again why Assange is so popular with the CIA?) But right now I can only find the initial reports and wikileaks. Also a news segment from Tucker about the possibility that the evidence was fabricated (wonder why other outlets didn't cover it...)

I'm almost certain that Aaron Mate interviewed the UN whistleblower? It's really frustrating when new outlets now alter stories and delete what they don't like with search engines buying what is not popular.



https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1206003435868438528

[WOTR]

Thankfully, I found it. You know what is scary is that if I didn't know that Mate had at least mentioned them by name, I don't know if I ever would have been shown a search result past the wikileaks eamil to find out that yes, two named individuals came forward. What used to be a free(ish) internet is quickly becoming just another propaganda arm pushing official and approved information only.

Ian Henderson, a veteran OPCW inspector who challenged a cover-up of his organization's investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria, recently testified before the United Nations Security Council...

...testimony of the OPCW's former chief, José Bustani, who had come to speak out in support of the whistleblowers.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/opcw-syria-whistleblower-and-ex-opcw-chief-attacked/id1478159781?i=1000493922860

[Silphion]

And what a job he has done of that so far. I'm curious aside from the sacrifice of his fighting age men, what else has Zelensky sacrificed?

Ukraine needs $38 billion to cover our budget deficit next yr; we need $17 billion to "rebuild the critical infrastructure"; we need $2 billion to rebuild our "electric energy infrastructure"; & we need "not less than $5 billion" for gas & coal purchases

You now get to pay the salaries of doctors and teachers and the pensions of Ukrainians as well as for their hospitals. Too bad you can't afford public healthcare down there. 

(and that is just the demands this month without touching on military aid and the billions already pledged and sent.)


https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1580547558417522688

Old story, the same old grift.

[K_Dubb]

And what a job he has done of that so far. I'm curious aside from the sacrifice of his fighting age men, what else has Zelensky sacrificed?

Ukraine needs $38 billion to cover our budget deficit next yr; we need $17 billion to "rebuild the critical infrastructure"; we need $2 billion to rebuild our "electric energy infrastructure"; & we need "not less than $5 billion" for gas & coal purchases

You now get to pay the salaries of doctors and teachers and the pensions of Ukrainians as well as for their hospitals. Too bad you can't afford public healthcare down there. 

(and that is just the demands this month without touching on military aid and the billions already pledged and sent.)


https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1580547558417522688

LOL how dare he tell the people who pledged to back him what he needs, it's Christmas, he will be grateful for his socks and like it    what kind of way is that to run a war

We don't have formalized public healthcare in this country because one of our major political parties -- the one these goobers are supposed to vote for -- is dedicated to torpedoing all efforts to bring it about, because it is communism or something.

[K_Dubb]

Aside from a heart attack or stroke, considering his apparent size and anger, he will still likely be around. Or 'suicided.' As I mentioned in his thread the bankruptcy and legal structuring and ability, and internet- for now- will likely keep him going in some fashion. He really should set up a church set-up and REALLY avoid taxes and the rate increases Austin Energy has increased. Those are really sweet deals. Though we are seeing a lot of banks, systems, CC companies (almost also based in Delaware due to their interesting laws and Court system) cutting people off due to their speech. So who knows?

Oh yeah there will always be a market for his shtick just like there will always be a market for people insecure about their weewees, turns out they are the same people lol if it's not him someone else will take it up.

I think he is a grotesque hog-faced ranter but funny and oddly likable in a way, he was really done in by his listeners here, some of whom it turns out are pretty stinky and nasty.  Companies cut him off because of who he brings with, the way security keeps bums out of the mall, because it depresses commerce.

[K_Dubb]

Old story, the same old grift.

That would be the same Gen. Butler who warned about business interests mobilizing an army of disgruntled WWI veterans to overthrow the government and install a fascist dictatorship back in the 30s.

[albrecht]

That would be the same Gen. Butler who warned about business interests mobilizing an army of disgruntled WWI veterans to overthrow the government and install a fascist dictatorship back in the 30s.

Yes. He was, maybe still is, the most highly decorated Marine in history and then claimed that certain industrialists and bankers contacted him to do a coup in the US. He wrote a book "War is a Racket."

[Juan]

 One of Ian's favorite books.  He's mentioned it a number of times.

[Dr. MD MD]

[Dr. MD MD]

[albrecht]

One of Ian's favorite books.  He's mentioned it a number of times.

Now I'm a bit more suspect of the General. 

[Silphion]

Now I'm a bit more suspect of the General. 

For the doubters and the literary challenged



Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America

[Silphion]

This is just the "Ukraine is a fake country" argument which was settled when they fought back so heroically that first week.  Shamed the West into supporting them.  They want to align with Europe.  Nobody in Europe likes the Russian stink that smells like cabbage and doctor sausage and graft except Recent Russian immigrants, the Czechs even had a tourism campaign that invited people to look at a map and see that their country was really rather Central and not Eastern Europe at all!

Kissinger said that months ago, before it became clear Russia was getting desperate, retreating, mobilizing, I do not blame the Ukrainians for wanting to test how firm Russia's grip is on those parts they just annexed.

Not to get too personal but are you secretly one of the FELLAS?

So deeply offended by all that Russian stink.

[albrecht]

For the doubters and the literary challenged



Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America

No doubt Gen.Butler was a badass. And funny they made a pulp novel about his exploits and achievements. Might have to check out. The autobiography of this guy is insane. Mainly because the typical stiff upper-lip stylings. But amazing stuff. 'Those' in Hollywood couldn't make it up. And no way, well, I guess if really SHTF would a military still allow.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/adrian-carton-de-wiart.html?firefox=1

I also like that I think he looks like Peter Sellers.
https://www.amazon.com/Happy-Odyssey-Adrian-Carton-Wiart/

[albrecht]

LOL how dare he tell the people who pledged to back him what he needs, it's Christmas, he will be grateful for his socks and like it    what kind of way is that to run a war

We don't have formalized public healthcare in this country because one of our major political parties -- the one these goobers are supposed to vote for -- is dedicated to torpedoing all efforts to bring it about, because it is communism or something.

I doubt Zelenski celebrates Christmas.