Paul Brancato Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 35 minutes ago, Bob Ness said: They're 100% Ukrainian. Don't listen to the disinformation. Same thing Hitler and every European invasion is prefaced by. "I'm going to protect our people!" Putin has handed out 700,000 passports. Did the same thing in Crimea. I got that from Wikipedia. Ukraine, for better or worse, has been part of Russia for hundreds of years, and the eastern part near Russia is more than twice as much Russian as the rest of Ukraine. Can anyone else here see NATO and the US as an aggressor here? At least Russia has an excuse for being concerned. A Russian friendly government on their border, historically part of their empire, was overthrown by coup. Do the details of that coup matter? The West wants to play hero, or maybe they just want access to resources, of which Ukraine is well endowed. jeff - if that news story is true it will be welcome news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Allison Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 A summit where Putin says "Dissolve NATO" and Biden chuckles and replies with, " No chance, Sparky"? So we're right back to where we are today? Snore. One way or another, Putin is going to try to annex Ukraine. This isn't difficult to see. He doesn't want NATO around when he does so. This isn't chess here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 (edited) 13 minutes ago, Matt Allison said: A summit where Putin says "Dissolve NATO" and Biden chuckles and replies with, " No chance, Sparky"? So we're right back to where we are today? Snore. One way or another, Putin is going to try to annex Ukraine. This isn't difficult to see. He doesn't want NATO around when he does so. This isn't chess here. If we think of this as a chess match--my favorite game-- Putin either intends to invade, or he is staging an elaborate bluff to obtain concessions from the Western democracies. Jeff has been maintaining that there will be no invasion. Perhaps he has access to some inside informazia. 🤓 Edited February 21, 2022 by W. Niederhut Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirk Gallaway Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 (edited) It's probably not completely fair to judge to judge from East European immigrants what life was like under the Soviets as they or their family immigrated here precisely because they weren't comfortable with the Soviet system. I've encountered a number of people from a number of Soviet satellite countries but also a few while traveling in Europe, and whether they're from Russia, East Germany, Ukraine,Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, there is no love lost at all for the Soviet Union. Many feel cheated that they lived half of their lives under Soviet dominance. They completely bought the West's characterization of themselves as the "Free World". They feel they missed out on the rich cultural experiences of a freer society , including political movements, Rock and Roll and alternative lifestyles. I think the experimentations with Socialism and Communism in the 20th Century was a very useful stage in historical political development to see the how these systems would function in real life. There are some very successful European governments that have some Socailst leanings. In a rare case the juries out still economically, at least with China, but regarding the the USSR and present day Russia there's a tendency by some to discount the economic tragedy that many generations have suffered at the hands of the rulers of the USSR and Russia, as it is clearly the most underachieving country in the world with a population still having remnants of the old Serf mentality with low expectation and never insisting that their government truly could serve it's people. To put this in terms of human survival. We do have to acknowledge that the USSR lost 21- 26 million people during WW2, but still: The population of Russia proper in 1900 was 87 million and US was 76 million. 2022: Russia has 146 million and US has 332 million. (2.3 times as much) We can be thankful. Also Russia's population was 147 million in 1990. It's lost 1 million people in the last 30 years Edited February 21, 2022 by Kirk Gallaway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Allison Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 W- the concession Putin wants is for NATO to be neutered. Which isn't going to happen. Whatever happens, at some point Putin is going to try to annex Ukraine. I'm sure he realizes now that he should have done it when Trump was President, but at that time he knew it would heavily damage Trump politically, and figured he could wait for Trump's 2nd term, which he was convinced was a shoo-in all the way until June of 2020. Putin is painfully aware of his age and the fact that the average lifespan of his countrymen is significantly lower than those of us in the west. He wants this done as soon as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 (edited) 26 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said: It's probably not completely fair to judge to judge from East European immigrants what life was like under the Soviets as they or their family immigrated here precisely because they weren't comfortable with the Soviet system. I've encountered a number of people from a number of Soviet satellite countries but also a few while traveling in Europe, and whether they're from Russia, East Germany, Ukraine,Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, there is no love lost at all for the Soviet Union. Many feel cheated that they lived half of their lives under Soviet dominance. They completely bought the West's characterization of themselves as the "Free World". They feel they missed out on the rich cultural experiences of a freer society , including political movements, Rock and Roll and alternative lifestyles. I think the experimentations with Socialism and Communism in the 20th Century was a very useful stage in historical political development to see the how these systems would function in real life. In a rare case the juries out still economically with China, but regarding the the USSR and present day Russia there's a tendency by some to discount the economic tragedy that many generations have suffered at the hands of the rulers of the USSR and Russia, as it is clearly the most underachieving country in the world with a population still having remnants of the old Serf mentality with low expectation and never insisting that their government truly could serve it's people. To put this in terms of human survival. We do have to acknowledge that the USSR lost 21- 26 million people during WW2, but still: The population of Russia proper in 1900 was 87 million and US was 76 million. 2022: Russia has 146 million and US has 332 million. (2.3 times as much) We can be thankful. Also Russia's population was 147 million in 1990. It's lost 1 million people in the last 30 years The Leninist/Stalinist Soviet experiment was not only an economic disaster, it was a gargantuan cultural and humanitarian disaster. UCLA Professor Jared Diamond correctly pointed out in his book, The Third Chimpanzee, that the Soviet genocide of it's own citizenry was the single worst genocide in human history-- including the Stalinist purges, Gulag concentration camps, and the Holodomor in Ukraine. The reason that the 20th century Soviet genocide is relatively unknown in the West is that awareness of it was suppressed for decades by the Soviet government. Nor have Hollywood and the U.S. M$M told the story. Solzhenitsyn brought the history of the Gulag to world attention, but few Americans today know anything about the horrific Soviet persecution and desecration of the Russian Orthodox Church and citizenry after 1917. Orthodox churches throughout Russia were destroyed by the Bolsheviks or converted into gymnasiums and skating rinks, and monasteries like Solovki were turned into concentration camps for Orthodox bishops and priests. The NKVD poisoned the last free Patriarch of Moscow with arsenic in 1921, (St. Tikhon) and appointed KGB agents as priests and heirarchs to spy on and control what was left of the church in the USSR -- i.e., the Moscow Patriarchate. Putin's hero, Joseph Stalin, blew up the Spaasky Cathedral near the Kremlin because he couldn't stand to look at it! Edited February 21, 2022 by W. Niederhut Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Ness Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 24 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said: I got that from Wikipedia. Ukraine, for better or worse, has been part of Russia for hundreds of years, and the eastern part near Russia is more than twice as much Russian as the rest of Ukraine. Can anyone else here see NATO and the US as an aggressor here? At least Russia has an excuse for being concerned. A Russian friendly government on their border, historically part of their empire, was overthrown by coup. Do the details of that coup matter? The West wants to play hero, or maybe they just want access to resources, of which Ukraine is well endowed. jeff - if that news story is true it will be welcome news. The "coup" was actually a popular uprising between several different factions who wanted to align with the EU and reject Russian supported elements in the Eastern region. Putin used the full force of the Russian federation to put down that uprising including infesting the country with para-military groups, threatening and bribing politicians, murdering reporters and others and none of those things are disputable. Putin's aggression in in other parts of the region are also indisputable, even if you work for RT. Ukraine was established and has full international legal authority as a separate entity from the Russian Federation as do many countries who fled the influence of the former Soviet Union after decades of tyranny under their rule (please see the Holomodor in Ukraine, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania et al). Ukraine's resources are of more interest to it's neighbors I assure you - like Russia and Belarus. These facts have been reaffirmed by the UN and the Russian Federation is currently under sanctions for the Crimea. The idea that Russia has legal status over any part of the eastern portion of Ukraine is very similar to Hitler's claim over the Sudetanland and the Danzig corridor. It's a pretext to attack just as happened in Crimea. Think of it like providing passports to Mexicans and then defending those American citizens by invading. Not to mention the sizable expat population that lives there. That does NOT make them Americans. Americans are people who live inside the border of the US. Russian citizens live here too. We are NOT Russia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Ness Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 9 hours ago, Jeff Carter said: To claim there is a universalist Ukrainian identity which has been disrupted by Russian aggression - which is Bob’s stated opinion - is itself a form of disinformation. I said there are borders that establishes Ukraine as independent sovereign nation. There are Americans in Canada - that doesn't make it the US. Are you trying to say that Russia has never tried to disrupt it's neighbors before? What a joke. You refuse to recognize the sovereignty of the Ukraine. The Ukraine is NOT a region of Russia. Sorry Jeff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Allison Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Needless to say, I heartily agree with all your above points, Bob. I suspect Russia has finally gotten a bit too confident in their ability to gaslight Americans, which isn't really a surprise, considering they got away with seemingly everything in the Trump era. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micah Mileto Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 19 hours ago, Pat Speer said: It's been clear for some time that Putin wants to reconstruct the Soviet empire. Some tankies wish upon a star that Putin, as a former KGB Agent, will one day suddenly flip the tables and out himself as an actual badass communist who really cares about economic inequality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Cole Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 It’s back! Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds--60 minutes CBS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 (edited) Ukraine/Russia Don't forget the Cossacks. You cross the Dnieper River at your peril. Eastern Europe tends to swallow armies. Steve Thomas Edited February 21, 2022 by Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirk Gallaway Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 (edited) Kremlin says repeated predictions of Ukraine invasion may have 'detrimental consequences' So by that: Is Putin saying?: "If you say we're going to invade .....3 more times, I'll do it, swear to God I'm going to invade." or..... "I'm so offended that you would even accuse me of invading, I'm just going to invade to show you." or..... "Look if you guys don’t stop saying that we’re gonna invade Ukraine, then we’re gonna have to invade Ukraine.” or...... "Guys, everybody seems to really want us to invade Ukraine... I mean, I wasn't gonna... but now it feels like I kinda have to, you know?!" or....... Putin: We are unable to fabricate a believable false-flag pretext for invasion given the transparency of the Internet and commercially available satellite imagery, so we're going to blame your repeated warnings that we are in attack posture for our being "forced" to attack. Trump's weighed in: “I asked Putin if he had troops on the border, he said they didn’t and I believe him” ******* Has Old Man Biden punk'd Putin? As I was saying, this has turned out to be a good Biden strategy. They call Putin out on a world stage, and say Putin is committed to attack.'which means that if Russia attacks, US gets to say "we have superior intelligence" (who for sure knows we don't?), while if they back down to show the US had bad intelligence, Ukraine doesn't get invaded. It's win-win for the US and lose-lose for Russia, and reaffirms every day, Putin is the aggressor. I never thought I'd say this, but "brilliant". ******* Jeff, our Putin insider and Forum Convoy Expert has assured us again, the Putin convoy is "going nowhere". Good to know! heh heh Edited February 21, 2022 by Kirk Gallaway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 (edited) Excellent article at The Atlantic today by Yale historian Timothy Snyder about the history of Russian propaganda and secret police ops-- from the Okhrana to the NKVD, KGB, and modern FSB. Vladimir Putin’s Hall of Mirrors The Russian president sees the world through the lens of maskirovka and provokatsiia. How Putin Makes His Enemies Do All the Work - The Atlantic February 21, 2022 Edited February 21, 2022 by W. Niederhut Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Allison Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Putin got clowned by Biden in all this. He's got to be furious this isn't turning out like he thought it would. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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