Look at the chart for August showing a dramatic increase in attacks on Russian oil refineries in this article.
Eventually, these attacks will start biting into the Russian economy especially if a big strike happens. "Gasoline shortages that first appeared in remote areas are now creeping closer to Moscow, with wholesale prices on the SPIMEX commodity exchange hitting successive records"
It doesn't have to warn Ukraine, Ukraine is the giant Ohka manned missile sent flying towards the Russian ship by the puppeteers much further west. Those need to be warned, as well as the other proxies providing the logistics.
I suspect that Ukraine, as a proxy nation to the US, is testing how far it can push before Russian retaliation strikes of some sort. So far, I don't know of any response.
The US does actual targeting, plus detailed war planning, from countries far beyond the theater of battle and faces no threat.
Meanwhile, Israel attacks a bunch of fat-ass Hamas politicians sitting in Qatar whose involvement in the fighting end of things is little more than cheering from the sidelines.
Russian retaliation is winning WW3 which they do every day at the expense of The Ukraine and the place fornerly known as Europe (Now the Fourth Reich).
Too bad Ukrainians gain nothing as the fake jew Jewdasses and dictator Zelig of Kiev sell the land and its resources. And the Fourth Reich is headed for the big flush to the broken down sewage treatment plant in Hell.
The Ohka, the first agile maneuverable anti ship cruise missile, that included terminal guidance and evasive maneuvers! A marvel of Japanese 1940s engineering!! Only issue, you needed a pilot.
The expression "Tank farm" is an American name for refinery. Every major metropolitan area in the United States has a refinery area. Otherwise lots of dangerous gasoline tanker semis would have to be everywhere, hauling it from a few far off coastal refineries.
Detroit's refineries (tank farms) are on the south and east side. Denver's tank farms are on the north side. I believe NYC's are in Jersey. I could go on. The reason why they're called tank farms is most of a refinery complex is storage tanks. And they're spread so far apart that if one caught on fire, it's too far from the others to take them down too.
Unless you nuked the refinery, you'll get isolated damage.
One missile, one storage tank, from among dozens of storage tanks.
One hit from a cruise missile may take out redundant refinery piping and maybe one giant tank. All a refinery is is pipes and tanks. It's a bit more complicated, but essentially the equipment is very redundant.
Russia actually is responding to it, building more air defense units, at breakneck speed too. Unlike the US, Russia has millions of welders and steelworkers.
But it's nothing like Ukraine's infrastructure, deep into the pre-industrial age heading straight into the stone age.
No wonder Zelensky's team wants to relocate like locusts to relatively unscathed Lvov. Lvov has running water and lights full time. And Lvov's sewage system works. Huge sections of Kiev's sewage system doesn't work, for lack of pumps, spare parts, and the fact most Ukro technicians have become meat bricks on the Eastern front.
Yup,keep doubling down on "Russia is falling" narratives Natasha. Are you guys on Bankova a little shaky now that Mr. Kinzhal came a' callin' the other night? Cheer up, the war will be over soon.
You have no idea what a refinery is or how the actual chemical engineering done at an oil refinery works. Storage tank farms aren't refineries, although refineries generally have an associated tank farm plus pipelines to distributed outlieing storage tank farms for refined liquids.
If the people launching these various attacks manage to hit the actual crude oil processing equipment, they will indeed stop throughput. From what is shown on video, they do seem to be going for storage tanks and their resulting photogenic large, showy fires, visible Ukrainian strategy seems to be "war as performance art".
So I'm wrong but, "oh yeah, you're right", lol. I repeat, "every metropolitan area has a refinery". That means they're redundant and one refinery put out of business, completely even, is easily repaired in weeks.
Plus I never claimed to be an engineer and did not comment on the engineering aspect. My explanation was a lay explanation for people to grasp easily.
You could easily. "add to" a discussion without "felling an opponent". This isn't Rumble.
You continue to use the word "refinery" where you are attempting to describe a "tank farm". "Every city" DOES NOT have a refinery, they are too expensive and unnecessary past point of crude oil delivery. Many mid sized or large cities DO have tank farms.
I've read several other low IQ comments you've made on this article- I'll stop commenting on whatever you post now, "arguing with a fool only shows that there are two of them".
When I wrote "semis", to an American that means automatically truck. But "Cla Parker" did not know that, "Cla" suggests gasoline is hauled to Metro areas on "rails and trucks". That's because "Parker" is not American. Yet Parker knows all about gasoline transport in the United States. Lol.
Look at Cla Parker also use Cyrillic script (ukes understand it). Americans do not use Cyrillic.
These guys, the KFC Billy's and CIA Parkers, don't even realize how volatile gasoline is and cannot be hauled on rail. Oil can be railed around, but not normally gasoline. Try shaking a jerry can of gas up, they are the morons.
Whenever a truther is over a target, expect Stukas filled with Ukrainian pilots to dive bomb ya. As far as KFC Billy's remarks that he's "seen me around" and my remarks are "low IQ" (me:135 IQ), it shows their frustration about Ukraine losing the narrative shaping environment. Lol, :))
The amount of gasoline used by a metro area of a million or more in the United States would require an army of gasoline carrying semi trucks, each carrying only 3,000 gallons or less.
They are typically 40 to 45 foot trailers heavy with baffling inside. They're only used in and out of Metro areas. Not hauling gasoline from fairway refineries..
Gas is about 7 pounds a gallon and the liquid cargo of most gasoline tank trailers are limited to under 28,000 pounds, most are 20,000 lbs, therefore about 3,000 gallons a load.
At a relatively busy gas station, two deliveries a day will be needed. Multiply that by several hundred gas stations in every metro area.
And who the hell are "the Greens"? How ignorant is that? The United States doesn't have Green parties, Europe does.
The entire continental US has 132 refineries (+ or - a few). They are regional at best. Certainly not every metropolitan area. In fact, in the US refineries have been forced out of urban conglomerations by greens and others who don't want to live near or see industrial infrastructure.
I don't know what the situation is in Russia. Recent reports I read today say Russian refining capacity has been reduced by 300k barrels per day. Sounds like a lot, unless total refining capacity is something like 5 million barrels per day.
The proper solution is what is happening in Russia. Let prices rise. Improve defenses and learn to repair quickly.
When I wrote "semis", to an American that means automatically truck. But "Cla Parker" did not know that, "Cla" suggests gasoline is hauled to Metro areas on "rails and trucks". That's because "Parker" is not American. Yet Parker knows all about gasoline transport in the United States. Lol.
Look at Cla Parker also use Cyrillic script (ukes understand it). Americans do not use Cyrillic.
These guys, the KFC Billy's and CIA Parkers, don't even realize how volatile gasoline is and cannot be hauled on rail. Oil can be railed around, but not normally gasoline. Try shaking a jerry can of gas up, morons.
Whenever a truther is over a target, expect Stukas filled with Ukrainian pilots to dive bomb ya. As far as KFC Billy's remarks that he's "seen me around" and my remarks are "low IQ"
(me:135 IQ), it shows frustration about Ukraine losing the narrative shaping environment. Lol, :))
The amount of gasoline used by a metro area of a million or more in the United States would require an army of gasoline carrying semi trucks, each carrying only 3,000 gallons or less.
They are typically 40 to 45 foot trailers heavy with baffling inside. Gas is about 7 pounds a gallon and the liquid cargo of most gasoline tank trailers are limited to under 28,000 pounds, most are 20,000 lbs, therefore about 3,000 gallons.
At a relatively busy gas station, two deliveries a day will be needed. Multiply that by several hundred gas stations in every metro area.
And who the hell are "the Greens"? How ignorant is that? The United States doesn't have Green parties, Europe does.
>As well as hits even farther north in Murmansk, which seem unlikely to have originated from Ukraine proper.
I don't think anything was hit in Murmansk, but drones indeed flew several times this week.
The more problematic situation is with Kazakhstan.
On Saturday a drone hit in Gubakha in Perm. Look that up if you don't know where it is -- it is one of those small industrial towns in the foothills of the Urals which form the really deep Russian industrial rear and which have been absolutely untouchable for 400 years. There were alarms for Sverdlovsk oblast at the same time too, for the first time in this war. Which is on the other side of the Urals...
There were alarms in Orenburg and several of the other regions in the vicinity. But nothing for the regions between Ukraine and the Urals in the previous several hours.
So clearly the drones came from Kazakhstan...
Same with the drone that hit the refinery in Bashkiria on Friday.
This after Lavrov a couple months ago said that they were working with the Kazakh government so that such episodes do not occur again. Who could have guessed that mere talking will have no effect...
With the rise of Kazakh nationalism and Tokaev in power and his flirtations with the West (and he seems to be making the dream of Kazakhstan moving away from the cyrillic alphabet a reality as well), it seems that Kazakhstan may be the next flashpoint after Ukraine.
Some will say, "but Putler saved Tokaev in 2021 by introducing forces", dont forget that Putler also helped Armenia and Azerbaijan, and both of them now hate Russia.
With that said, it is simultaenously possible that the Kazakh government has given some safe haven to Ukrainian GUR groups to fly drones (and know about them), or they snuck in there themselves (I wouldn't count on the Kazakhs not knowing though).
It's actually quite possible Tokaev is not in full control and the drones are launched without his agreement (agreement and knowing about it are different things). Which is arguably an even worse situation than him being in on it, because then a simple regime change operation may not be sufficient.
Also, Kazakhstan is actually an absolute nightmare if you run through the details of a possible SMO.
Right now the biggest killer on the battlefield is drones. Which have made it so that open terrain is a death sentence because there is nowhere to hide. And Kazakhstan is open naked steppe. Now imagine if the Kazakhs have been well prepared with drones of all kinds by their new masters and Russia streams in with columns of armor and softer logistics vehicles from the north. What happens to those? It will be a turkey shoot. Airborne forces are a thing of the past too in the era of MANPADS, which the Kazakhs will certainly be supplied with plenty of too.
The one saving factor is that Kazakhstan has no direct border with NATO. But you need to secure the Caspian shore and do it quickly, otherwise you will have to deal with a third front in Azerbaijan too.
And still it might not be enough, because then there is the more general Central Asian factor. The moment you start an SMO in Kazakhstan, the Uzbeks, Tajiks and even the Kyrghiz will be up in arms too, and you might get a supply line from Pakistan through Afghanistan and then Uzbekistan. And it's the same trap as with Ukraine, but potentially much worse. Because Ukraine is a demographically depressed country, but Central Asia is not. Russia conquered it largely after the Crimean War, much of it without even a fight (e.g. Tajikistan), but it was easy back then because Russia was undergoing a demographic explosion while in Central Asia centuries of warfare and underdevelopment had left the region with just a handful of sizable cities along rivers and in oases, lots of scattered nomads, and a total population of low single-digit millions. Easy pickings.
Now Russia has 145M, however it is demographically depressed too, while Central Asia combined is some 70M, but when you account for how many fighting age males they have, they may actually have more of them than Russia. Plus the Muslims inside Russia, who are now willingly fighting against the Western shaitan will see a war against Muslims in Central Asia rather differently. You see how this goes in a very bad direction very quickly.
A few things that come to mind though - Kazakhstan, unlike Russia, does not have the same extensive experience with drone warfare and so will take some time to build it up. This will give Russia a window of opportunity with superior drone knowledge and expertise (no amount of artificial training will make up for real world experience). In addition, it is likely that Russia will not send armor columns until/if it establishes air dominance. It might simply conquer towns near the border to hold onto as it advances in the slow fashion it uses. It will also be harder for Putler (assuming its still Putler in power at that point), to justify not using missiles or bombing civilians or destroying infrastructure because they are a "brotherly people" simply because of the racial factor and the negative stereotypes many Russians hold towards Central Asians.
Regarding the demographics, you are right. The issue is that outside an explosion of terrorism in Russia's underbelly from Tajik/Uzbek Wahhabists, they won't be able to wage an effective war in the short term, simply because they lack the technological prowess and the military capabilities. That is if there is no preparation of the region ahead of time by hostile forces. And that is of course not accounting for Russia's muslim republics (plus expect a rise in terrorism when Kadyrov dies/steps down, I am not ceratain there is anyone as respected in Chechnya who would be able to hold all the clans in his fist as well).
There is also the China/Turkey question. How will China feel about Russia encroaching on its Central Asian investments? After all, China is becoming a dominant force in the region and might not take kindly to an invasion of Central Asia (Kazakhstan it may be okay with but definitely not Central Asia proper).
Turkey will also be there converting the region to a pan-Turkic worldview (that the region is striving towards anyway) supposing Russia invades.
>It will also be harder for Putler (assuming its still Putler in power at that point), to justify not using missiles or bombing civilians or destroying infrastructure because they are a "brotherly people" simply because of the racial factor and the negative stereotypes many Russians hold towards Central Asians.
In Kazakhstan it will be pretty difficult because there are still a few million Russian there. Not "brotherly people", actual Russians. Yes, it is not 80% ethnic Russian the way Ukraine is, but still. Especially the north is primarily Russian still to this day (and should never have been part of Kazakhstan to begin with, just as most of Ukraine should not have been part of Ukraine, but well, these are the consequences of Soviet idiocy). In fact in 1989 Kazakhstan was still minority Kazakh.
You get to overwhelmingly Kazakh-majority only in the south of the country, and in Alma Ata it is still 20% Russian.
Also, missiles won't do much unless they are nuclear, we have seen it in Ukraine. Cities are too large, missiles are too few and too expensive.
>How will China feel about Russia encroaching on its Central Asian investments?
Russia would be protecting Chinese investments. What happened to Chinese investments into trade routes with Europe? They got all blocked by the US with the Ukraine war. It would be the same with Central Asia.
Yes, China supported Afghanistan in the 1980s, which was absolutely idiotic if you think about the reasons why the USSR went in (which threatened China the same way), but back then they were still trying to lull the US into giving away their industrial basis so they had to cozy up to them. It's different now.
>Turkey will also be there converting the region to a pan-Turkic worldview (that the region is striving towards anyway) supposing Russia invades.
Yes, indeed.
Russia has a long series of wars ahead of it. Not necessarily in the order they will actually play out, but these are quite certain to come:
1) Ukraine
2) Finland
3) The Baltics
4) Poland (and at some point between 2 and 4, all of Europe)
5) Azerbaijan
6) Kazakhstan, and who knows, maybe further south
7) Turkey
8) China towards the end of the century.
And they will all be wars of annihilation, because the game has changed in a major way by technology.
If the FSB actually does its job this time (doubtful, but in the slight chance it does), that Russian majority in the North can be quite beneficial. At the moment, they are quite hostile to Russia despite being Russian. So if this stays (and they even begin adopting Kazakh as their identity and language), treating them as "Russians" would be stupid. That is, if Kazakhstan doesn't do anything stupid and start physically repressing Russians (seeing as how cucked Russians have become, they'd probably take it as they do in the Baltics and Ukraine), they will likely stay in the country or go abroad - god forbid returning to the "big, bad" Rashka
Missiles and bombs do a good job if they are used properly. They aren't being used properly in Ukraine - you have written about it extensively yourself (and I largely agree).
In the chance of war with Kazakhstan and by extension all of Central Asia, invasions of Tajikistan/Uzbekistan - assuming Russia doesn't pull a SMO and fight with its hands tied behind it back - Chinese investments will be harmed. And this time there will be no Kyrgystan/Kazakhstan to bypass embargoes (maybe through North Korea but that's low volume unless Russia increases investment in North Korea soon).
I suspect a war with NATO is brewing - as long as the war is put off longer and Active Measures are taken to weaken NATO internally (or preferably have it fall apart if Trump or Vance pull US out of NATO), war in Europe will largely be avoided if you don't account for the Balts (even then they may adopt a more conciliatory attitude if there is no NATO backing them).
Turkey? I can't see a war with Turkey happening while it is still under the auspices of NATO. Even if its not, Turkey is no longer the Ottoman Empire, and it would not be an easy nut to crack. Its quite a formidable opponent.
China by the end of the century? I do not see it yet - I do not buy the argument of Chinese revanchism in Siberia and it would be a foolish war to have - as Chinese arms and industry and science will be far ahead of the Russian ones, unless Russia suddenly returns to a Soviet style education system and changes socially to value science again.
>Turkey? I can't see a war with Turkey happening while it is still under the auspices of NATO. Even if its not, Turkey is no longer the Ottoman Empire, and it would not be an easy nut to crack. Its quite a formidable opponent.
I am well aware, but Turkey has ambitions on all of Central Asia and beyond -- Bashkiria, Altai, Yakutia, etc.
So the clash is inevitable.
Russia still has an overwhelming military advantage but that is thanks to having nukes and missiles. Otherwise it is 145M against 85M (but younger). Not a major mismatch. How long before Turkey gets its own nukes though?
This is why it was absolutely idiotic for Russia to build NPPs there, but the results of Putin's brilliant strategic thinking are on display around the Russian perimeter for all to see, so what is one more such act of brilliance?
>I do not buy the argument of Chinese revanchism in Siberia and it would be a foolish war to have - as Chinese arms and industry and science will be far ahead of the Russian ones, unless Russia suddenly returns to a Soviet style education system and changes socially to value science again.
It will not be Russia attacking China, and it will be precisely because China will be so far ahead under the current trajectories of development. They may get to the point of having an overwhelming military advantage while also being pressed by rising sea levels (they will have hundreds of millions displaced as a result), desertification, and the growing economy demanding more resources than Russia can supply without eliminating Russian internal consumption.
If Russia goes back to Soviet-style education and invests heavily into technology development and rides out all the confrontations I listed, it might be that the war with China will be avoided, then China will collapse for the reasons I mentioned, and Russia will be the last ones standing eventually. But there are a lot of wars to be fought to survive through it all, and if the nukes are not used, they will not survive through it all, because Russia just doesn't have the manpower anymore to fight endless ever escalating conventional wars.
Or.......Russia sends in a few missiles and a few hundred drones one night, takes out all the crude oil pumping stations and puts Kazakhstan out of business for as long as they feel it is necessary to keep it up.
Or........just puts in whatever number of millions of dollars necessary to unleash all the conflicting ethnic, tribal, family conflicts in the Caucuses that are just waiting for the appropriate match selectively applied match to ignite chaos. All the leadership in the Caucuses know that when the going gets tough for them because of said conflicts, the Russians will get going, come in and deal with it before it gets out of hand as they always do. .
I do not see the need for (8). At present, China is both the best market and the best supplier for sanctioned Russia. For China, Russia is the key commodity supplier, making China essentially immune to blockades. As the end of the century nears, China will run hard into depopulation problems, which are starting already, and will gradually lose its prominence. At no point during this continuum will it confer any advantage on China to stir up a quarrel with Russia. It is primarily the ongoing depopulation that defuses this potential future conflict.
Most of the world will run into population problems. China will still be between 500 to 800 million population and so relatively speaking it will be in a better position than most of the West.
In the West ethnic tensions will grow due to continued unfettered mass migration and cultural replacement. These problems will not be present in China, unless it pulls a Japan and starts importing Africans and Pakis
That said, Ukrainians are essentially Russians when it comes to technological and military skills. Is it the same with central Asians though? I remember talking to an American engineer who worked in Kazakhstan oil industry, who said all good engineers they have are Russian. Kazakhstan (and the other -stans) just do not gave that engineering school. People (asians) we met from those countries themselves say the same - after most ethnic Russians left that area post USSR collapse, they all turned into some kleptocratic dictatorships with no industry to speak of and half of their populations being migrant workers in Russia. An Uzbek worker we met in Russia on our trip there was extremely pro-Russian and anti-Western. Anecdotal, but can be reflection of general mindset. But drones and terror attacks from that area is clearly a major problem. Unfortunately for Russia, it has the opposite problem than most of the world - too much land and resources and too few people
The rapid advance of Russian paratroopers in January 2022🇰🇿Kazakhstan prevented a revolution there. The Supreme Commander was guided by strategic interests, since before the start of the Central Military District, instability on the longest land border in the world created the preconditions for a second front.
At the same time, threats to Russia have evolved significantly over the past three years. From color revolutions along the border perimeter, the enemy has come to a permanent threat due to strikes deep into the country. In 2025, we are recording a direct attack on the "last argument of kings" - Russia's nuclear triad.
At first, drone strikes were consistently aimed at the air component - strategic missile carriers. In parallel, the SSBNs began to hang over the naval carriers of special warheads, creating a constant threat to the fleet.
Against this background, the expectation was also on the success of the ground forces, but the Ukrainian Armed Forces were unable to develop tactical successes. Of course, the possibility of implementing strategic offensive operations against Russia remains if the armies of European countries take part in this. If the forces oppose us🇵🇱Poland,🇩🇪Germany,🇫🇷France and🇬🇧England, then with the highest probability the answer can be nuclear . The Strategic Missile Forces are guided by the principle "after us, silence" . If drones help against ships, submarines and aircraft, then with silos nothing except a soldier's boot can guarantee defeat of nuclear weapons carriers.
Mine and ground complexes, headquarters, support facilities of missilemen are concentrated in Central Russia, in the Urals, and all the way to Omsk. Vast expanses of the country opposite the longest land border in the world.
Therefore, anti-Russian sentiments in Kazakhstan are not at all accidental. They have clear goals and directions. Far-reaching and dangerous in their adventurism. Does the leadership in Kazakhstan understand this? Of course.
And this is one of the factors in the possible transformation of the SVO into a conflict of greater intensity.
In the spring of 2025, the parliament🇰🇿Kazakhstan has reviewed the law on territorial defense. In accordance with its provisions, 20 TRO brigades are being formed. The largest group of 8 brigades is being deployed on the border with Russia by the number of akimats bordering us. Additionally, stateless persons and foreigners are allowed to serve in the TRO.
The government of Kazakhstan has outlined a plan to completely abandon the purchase of basic food categories of goods abroad by 2028. This is called a matter of national security, since now more than 50% of some food categories come from the union state of Russia and Belarus. The State Reserve of Kazakhstan has planned to purchase about 1 billion tons of grain.
Since 2023, a course has been taken, with the active support of the Organization of Turkic States (supervised by🇹🇷Turkey), for the purchase of Turkish heavy weapons and their testing in the steppe climate.
In Kazakhstan, there is also a Turkish production facility for the assembly of Anka UAVs, which are assembled in the interests of Kazakhstan. In addition, an agreement on the transit of military cargo and personnel through each other's airspace has been worked out. This aspect plays with new colors given the presence of the Zangezur corridor under Turkey's wing, which is convenient to use for the transfer of cargo and military personnel from🇪🇺Europe through Transcaucasia, and then the Caspian Sea directly to Kazakhstan from the countries🚩NATO.
For the needs of communication of the population, including civil servants and the military, a single digital platform Aitu was created, which allows Kazakhstan to create its own information space.
In August 2025, terminals of the satellite group officially began operating on the territory of Kazakhstan🇺🇸"Starlink", which is designed to ensure uninterrupted communication, including for the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan and other security agencies.
Recent incidents with the flight of allegedly unknown UAVs into Russian territory from Kazakhstan resemble probing flights to determine the defense system in the border area.
Incompleteness of the demarcation of the Russian-Kazakh border⚡️plays with new colors considering the recognition of the same "Taliban" not as a terrorist organization. It is not difficult to guess that some former thugs will gladly pass on to their neighbors the experience of the "tachanka" war in the steppes at the first opportunity.
✨Thus, the situation in the Central Asian region requires Russia to promptly revise the system of protection of the elements of the nuclear triad, especially in the area of responsibility of the missile armies. The West is interested in a direct military clash with us only after the neutralization of the nuclear potential by foreign hands.
From what Two Majors writes, it looks like Kazakhstan itself is preparing for potential war - this only corroborates my suspicion and is another foreign policy failure by Putler.
So far, Putler has failed entirely in his foreign policy in his near abroad. He has lost almost every post-Soviet State with only Belarus still in the fold. And even with Belarus the situation is uncertain. Lukashenko has a history of promoting Belarussian nationalism through the Zmagars (even though lately he's chilled out a bit in this regard), but his son is an unknown factor. While the current Belarussian/Russian relationship is fueled by personal friendship between Luka and Putler, and the hope of Luka to become President of Russia - his son is an unknown quantity and may take a pro-Western position for Belarus. So unless Russia and Belarus unite soon, the future of the alliance remains uncertain.
The only positives of Putlers foreign policy has been 1) the return of Crimea 2) the alliance with the DPRK (reliable allies - Russia should have been allied with them since the 90s) 3) and good relationship with China (but that is not really Putlers doing but rather circumstances).
It is quite astonishing to see Putin and Lavrov being praised for the great statesmen that they are when their track record is almost nothing but catastrophic failure that has not yet caused the destruction of the country only because the previous generations since the 1400s built it up so large.
I remember reading that Putler was good at home - he rebuilt the economy and rebuilt many cities but was a disaster at home. I also don't like that he represents Oligarch interests and denies the Soviet heritage. It is quite remarkable how former Communist Party functionaries denounced it and became Nationalist/capitalist to the core.
Hey! Tovariska GM, Who is Putler? You two, with this simpleton Africanus, are very disrespectful.
You two are butthurt because your evil world mafia clowns are unable to make any headway, trying to rob the remaining treasure of the planet.
You can speculate all you want, who to send up against the Russians to fight for your wicked desire, but this time, your kind will spectacularly fail. There will be no Nirvana for any of you, only eternal shame.
Moron alert....... Unfortunately for you, the IQ of the average Simplicius reader is far above moron. Keep in mind, this isn't the audience you're used to.
PS. Being on the constant defensive is a losing proposition. The only way to win would be to start surrounding large Western countries with enemies - in the United States that would be to foment racial, political tensions, supply the Cartels (doesn't matter that they are Cartels - Russia needs to stop with the legality arguments) under the condition they increase the amount of terror in the United States (and then increase or decrease the faucet of supply of weapons depending on how much the US does). Repair its relationship with Cuba and potentially start arming it too and perhaps convince it to do raids on Miami and Florida coast.
For Europe - it is sufficient to stoke ethnic tensions in Britain and even increase violence by training some violent immigrants and sending some Wahabbis from Syria there. Same with France and Germany.
For all intents and purposes - resurrect the KGBs 5th and 6th directorate. Will it happen? Probaly not
The first one being the key -- loss minimization as a strategy results in certain total defeat.
P.S. The USSR was doomed the moment it abandoned world revolution as the goal. Both Trotsky and Stalin were correct (and wrong) in their own ways on this issue too.
Envy always ends in hate. Jews and AngloSaxons hate the New Europe - Russia - more than anyone and always have because they are truly inferior to Russians and full of envy and hate. They are about to freeze in radioactive dark soon so the Earth will rejoice once more.
1. Total population of the country? Russian percentage?
2. What is the main, practically the lone economic activity of the country?
3. Would you lose a moment and consider how gas and oil from Kazakhstan can reach the Western markets?
4. Drones are comparatively light, to very light equipment. The occasional lauch attack is
practically impossible to prevent. It also has a very limited effect.
5. Would all the stans unite in a move to become NATO tools in Central Asia? Possible, because human nature produces fools like gardens produce bad weeds. Probable? Not much.
6. Would it happen, China might feel threatened and the possible, and may be probable, answer would change all the character of the conflict.
>4. Drones are comparatively light, to very light equipment. The occasional lauch attack is practically impossible to prevent. It also has a very limited effect.
???
Small toy drones have stalemated the front for three years now
The drones from Kazakhstan attacking the previously untouchable Russian rear are the problem to be solved.
Which likely can't be solved without physical control of Kazakhstan.
But physical control of Kazakhstan is no longer easy to establish, because of small drones, which Kazakhstan will be supplied with by the West, stalemating any front with no real solution in sight.
You are correct. I can easily imagine the west flooding the Caucuses with massive numbers of cheap, easily managed weapons capable of disrupting the economies of advanced countries with virtually no effort or cost to the attackers. I mean what could go wrong? What are we waiting for? Let's do it?
This is a good time for the US and Europe to pressure Turkey to return Northern Cyprus to Cyprus and evacuate their Turkish settlers back to Turkey. Then build an oil pipeline from Israel to Europe via Cyprus and Greece. This will help balance the power with Russia and right historically wrongs committed by Turkey.
This will allow oil from Iraq and the Mideast to flow through stable pro-EU countries bypassing Syria / Turkey / Ukraine.
Turks do not have a diaspora of crypto's for which lurk in the highest (and lowest) corridors of power, influence and decision making. Though Turkey was itself subject to crypto's (Dönmeh). Perhaps that is why the Ottoman empire fell. Hollowed out by subversion before the death blow of WW1.
The Turks are notorious for many genocides of minorities and enslaving non-Christians.
The total number of people killed in the recognized genocides (Armenian, Greek, Assyrian) and related conflicts/massacres (Hamidian, Dersim) committed by Ottoman/Turkish perpetrators is approximately:
• 2–3 million people (mid-range: ~2,025,000; range: 1.38–3.09 million).
Don`t know where your figures are from. Serious historians (Braudel for example) estimate a figure of 12-17 million deported (and ofc enslaved) during the transatlantic african slave trade.
They are, but they don't have an outright Nazi ideology inscribed in their holy books, and before they were infected by nationalism (which was a Western import) they were quite tolerant.
While those holy texts have called for genocide of everyone else for 2500 years.
People read the Old Testament with the "knowledge" that there was always going to be a New Testament after it and that it is the Christian Bible.
Nobody reads it as is, literally, and removing all that Jesus stuff from their minds.
Nobody except a certain group of people, that is.
Now try to read it literally, for what it actually says, working very hard to remember that you are not one of the Chosen People despite perhaps being a Christian. You will be absolutely horrified, it is worse than anything Hitler ever wrote or tried to do.
IMHO, it'll never happen. If anything Turkey is looking at the rest of Cyprus with hungry eyes.
It currently serves as a sword of Damocles that Turkey dangles over the rest of NATO's head. "Give us what we want or we'll invade the rest of Cyprus"..
It's why the UK keeps a tripwire AFB there, to remind Turkey.
>Trump Finally Outwits Europe and the Neocons on Ukraine?
Stop it, please.
I understand very well why you, The Duran, and many others feel the need to stick to the charade of Trump the rebel who valiantly resists the neocons -- it comes down to the simple fact that the MAGA zombies form the major component of the income stream of most of right-leaning Western "alternative media", and if you tell them that Trump is not resisting any neocons, but is a neocon himself, and the ugliest and most rabid of them all so far, then they are more likely to abandon you than to accept that truth.
But that doesn't change the objective facts. Such as:
1) Did Trump gloat publicly on social media about the sneak attack on Iran? Oh, yes, he did.
2) Did he then continue with the most aggressive and blatantly violent foreign policy the world has ever seen from the US and from any other country not named Israel since Germany and Japan in the 1930s and 1940s? Yes, he did. Against Iran, now Venezuela, etc.
3) Was Russian strategic aviation attacked on June 1st? Which could not have happened without the CIA being in on it, likely orchestrating it? Yes, it was, and it was after Trump passive aggressively threatened on social media about "very bad things" happening to Russia.
4) Did the US just approve sending 3,500 short to medium-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, with no restrictions on targeting, i.e. something much more aggressive than what Biden did? Yes, that happened too.
5) Engels airbase was bombed in March under Trump too.
And many other such events, plus the general factor that no other president has given such a blank check to Israel, not even the previous one, nor done it so openly and blatantly.
So how can anyone in their mind or with serious commitment to objective reporting continue with the "Trump is not a neocon" narrative? Well, see above...
What is with the childish insults of the commentators here? I exepected a higher level of discourse, but it seems that most users resort to school yard insults.
It’s in response to the infantile rants, which are very rare here , unfortunately there are persistent “exceptions”. Not sure the plural in that sentence is necessary either.
You are not the Thought Police. You are doing EXACTLY what you no doubt complain about in countries like the US, UK, namely shutting down voices you don't like. You then claim that your childish rant is 'he did it first'. If you are so concerned with the level of discourse here it seems you could adjust it upwardly by keeping quiet.
Sometimes it’s the only way to deflate pomposity. Reasoning is a waste of time in such cases.
As my grandmother used to say to me as a child when I came up with some pompous rot : “if you’re so smart , grease your backside and slide into the next world”
I agree with you for the second time this year! The idea that Trump is outwitting anyone is ludicrous. The europeans thought they could push the US to impose sanctions especially on China and then buy in stuff themselves they could just flog on to the US at a vast mark up- a bit like the US intends to do to europe viz oil and gas originating in Russia. Trump was never going to fall for that.
Meanwhile Russia continues to win this war despite all the yobbery at the fringe.
Jasmine Crockett UNSEALS Trump’s 1970 IQ Wharton Aptitude Test — Genius? Think Again. YouTube. Published online September 7, 2025. Accessed September 15, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbLJ2amswy8
Readers should note that there is no such thing as an IQ Wharton Aptitude Test. Nor has there ever been. The first clue is in the title of the supposed document. I.Q. and aptitude are different things and no academic institution would try to conflate them.
At any rate, Wharton does not utilize any kind of test that would qualify as something that the document is supposed to represent. They use standard university type application material as well as demonstrated past performance coupled with interviews.
Thanks to his family background, Trump had plenty of past business performance to point to. Plus, leaving the public showboating aside, he is famous for his ability to convince in personal conversation.
I did actually wonder if I should not have been more subtle when I was writing my comment ... as in- the idea that Tump can outwit anyone BEYOND fellow inmates in the western asylum- is what is ludicrous. Dumb versus dumber in a great back and forth. You are quite right.
Well, he did win election to the Presidency twice. He definitely outwitted the Democrats. Not much of an achievement to point to but it is undeniably there.
He has changed the entire narrative of government much to the annoyance of those who are outwitted by him in that endeavor .
But to what end, Ron? That is the question as we watch what unfolds all over the globe. I am not sure what sort of gong you want to give him. He has his eye on the Nobel Peace Prize, Or is that the Nobel 'Piss' Prize as Zelenskiiy would say? It is difficult to sustain this conversation as a serious one. I hope you feel my pain.
Jullianne, the real war Trump is fighting is against the EU and the British Crown. When you understand that, a lot of Trump's behavior seems a lot more focused and rational.
Trump views Russia and China as legitimate rivals. He views the EU as lunatic clowns, and the British Ruling Elite (the Crown) as pure existential evil. The former is an easy opponent, the latter is profoundly dangerous. Both of them are in a corner right now, and seem to believe their only real recourse is to knock over the game board by starting WW3.
Right now, Trump is working behind the scenes with Russia and China to erase the EU and the Crown from the playing field, at which point Russia, China, and America can negotiate the power boundaries between them, and figure out a way to peacefully coexist.
This is Tom Luongo's thesis, and I think he's right. You should spend some time getting up to speed with Tom Luongo. He's all over YouTube, you won't have a tough time finding him.
He didn't outwit the Democrats. The Democrats have only 2 purposes, preventing the rise of any left-wing politics, and lining their own pockets. (They receive far more donations when they're not in the White House)
But ranting when something doesn't fit into your worldview, which is truth, and you have no arguments against it.
Typical of what suits the Left and the Greens, if they don't have any arguments, they resort to the Nazi cudgel, and in Europe at least, that's always the Nazi cudgel...
In your case, it's supposedly your valuable time, which you can waste replying to other comments to justify them...instead of immediately rebutting arguments you don't have.
A Trump is a clown who only pretends to wage war through the back door.
Why?
Because a Trump would mean that the USA would be vastly inferior to the Russians, a Trump would act openly.
The only way out would then be nuclear weapons...although in this regard, too, the USA has missed everything that could be missed. They almost let their ancient intercontinental missiles rot away.
And...that's precisely why the USA is left with nothing but the wrong game to play with a Trump. And the cry at every opportunity: "We didn't do it." If Putin retaliates, then please target Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, London... PLEASE not Boston or New York, because WE COULDN'T EVEN INTERCEPT YOUR MISSILES.
That's why he has to duck Putin, or tell the Americans a truth that would break his neck, hence the false play with Iran, with Doha, with Russia. Let others die.
If you have the USA as a friend... you don't need enemies!
At the moment, you have enough problems and technological standstill in your own country.
Speaking of dumb. It was a nauseous picture of Rubio planting his suction lips on the Israeli Blarney Stone.
A view of an American Secretary of State kissing Netanyahoo's private parts in public is another wooden stake driven through the dusty heart of the American Empire. Following in the footsteps of kept-man Trump, Rubio confirms the leash held tightly around his neck, under the shadow of the photos of American Politicians doing things a Priest cringes upon hearing.
And I am reading FBI's purported Director Kash Patel, has a 22 year-old Israeli girlfriend, not Mossad, not a spy, definitely not reporting to Israel. Who writes this script.
Charlie shot in the throat, definitely another very, very, very lucky loner who single handedly lined up 100 cats and marched them in formation to the intended final seconds. Sure. And the check's in the mail.
I criticize Trump constantly for caving to the warmongers, but in this case, as Simplicius explains, he came up with a way to excuse why he isn't imposing the sanctions. Things aren't all black or white.
Because Trump wants specific war not general endless war. What gets me is when did Simp start praising Trump? For weeks Trump was a foreign policy idiot. Now?
Exactly! There’s a large western audience (and unfortunately not only in Gringostan) of deluded so-called right wing or conservative people that strongly believe in the Orange Messiah role as a white knight fighting the combined forces of Evil, Woke, Soros, the pedo-Democrats, the Luciferian central banking Euro elites, the tax man, dyed-hair punks, bad weather, godless communism, and any other real or imagined grievance they might have.
A cult that loves their commentators explaining them about the latest Trump 5D strateregy.
I criticize Trump all the time for failing. But in this issue with the sanctions it is as Simplicius explains. Simplicius also criticizes him for caving to the warmongers, but can also note when he doesn't.
You've been a long time member here, and I have watched your "radicalization" over time. Most know I'm very permissive on free speech here but you're starting to come dangerously close to making implied accusations of a type that will not be tolerated. Careful where you tread, you wouldn't want your own "income stream" to dry up after losing access to your most lucrative provocateuring forum.
Actually on this issue I have been consistent for years, there has been no "radicalization" -- the truth of the matter became apparent in mid-2022 already. It's just that it rarely came up so forcefully as with this post coming at this time
No ill feelings to you in particular, others are much more to blame
You have been consistent for sure, GM. The only thing that makes me wonder: why is it that always only a selected few are able to see god and talk to him. And why they're developing a fanatic passion for what they have convinced themself to be true? So we know now: From Putin over Gerassimov down all are traitors and best buddies with the grand D.J. Trump and his puppeteers. The only thing that can things straighten out are a few nukes. Thanks, for the deep insight in the matter.
You consistently claim that Russia is losing because Putin is a traitor, and that Russia can only win by nuking the West. This is the extent of your "analysis" and it appears that your only purpose is to come here and crap on this blog.
What "evidence" will exactly convince you of the validity of the above statements?
Did Moscow control all of Ukraine in 1991? Yes. Was the bulk of Ukraine Russophonic and Russophilic as recently as 2010 or so? Yes. What is the current situation? We know what it is. Is that a win or a loss?
Repeat that exercise with the whole post-Soviet space, with the expansion of NATO, etc.
Can deterrence be restored without nuking somebody? Analyze the current situation and work through the decision tree.
Right now NATO is launching hundreds of drones (and some missiles) daily all the way to the Urals through Ukraine, and there is no reaction to it from Russia. Not even against the proxies in Ukraine -- the military and political leadership are still untouchable. So what is to make them stop? Nothing. Russia has been striking military and industrial targets. However, that does not enforce deterrence.
But NATO has also been launching drones from Finland, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and the Baltics, we are quite certain of it, and they also directly sunk Russian commercial ships way out of theater, and what was the reaction from the Kremlin? Mostly pretending it is not even happening, let alone a kinetic response.
So right now everyone can fire at Russia at will, and there will be no reaction.
And yet just four years ago that was unthinkable, everyone thought that whoever dares do it would be immediately annihilated.
Is that a win? Do we even need to ask the question?
Now let's work out how to re-establish deterrence. And we do not mean nuclear deterrence, but conventional. Because that has to be the goal -- you don't want to be in a situation where conventional munitions are flying at you every day, because that is how you eventually get exhausted and collapse. You want to return to the situation in which nobody eveer dares fire at you even conventionally.
How will that work out? Let's say the Kremlin finds the courage to call out Finland for the drones launched at Murmansk. What follows?
1) If it is just a verbal reprimand, the launches will continue, because no price has been paid for it, thus why not? That is exactly what happened with Kazakhstan -- Lavrov mentioned it publicly, the launches continued.
2) If Russia declares war and starts lobbing conventional missiles at Finland, it will be just like Ukraine now -- Finland will start launching missiles and drones back at St. Petersburg, Murmansk, and much deeper, on the ground there will be a drone-imposed stalemate (that terrain was already near-impossible to traverse back in 1939-1940 long before drones), and you have another endless war. Which will likely expand, with Poland, the Baltics, Norway, etc. joining.
3) You nuke Finland's military installations, but that does not solve the problem either, because as we have seen in Ukraine, the cities are where the military hides the best, plus if you just do that, then Finland will cry to high heaven for nuclear retaliation on Russia under Article 5 until the end of times, and will put the US in a tough situation where it will either have to launch strikes on Russia or NATO will fall apart.
4) But if you nuke all cities above 10,000 in Finland, then move in with ground forces and exterminate all the survivors with small arms, then annex the territory, there is no Finland anymore and no endless war. And nobody else will ever dare fire anything back or join any other wars against you.
Do you see another way out other than the last option?
There is none left.
There was the option of conventional strikes on political leadership and the economic oligarchy as a deterrent reenforcement once upon a time, but that ship has sailed a long time ago in terms of the loss of deterrence, and only truly drastic action can restore it.
Note that those of us who are calling for nuclear strikes now were calling for conventional strikes of precisely that kind back in 2022, and that was precisely because we knew that if the conventional strikes are not carried out now, then later on the only option left will be to start erasing countries off the map. The Kremlin sat on its hands instead, so here we are today...
No, we human beings do not have a choice between 2 dystopias - 1984 or Brave New World. We have other options, even a workable new paradigm based on understanding, not power and violence.
But someone who is neck deep in academia and its mandatory nihilism and materialism worldview is usually not capable of comprehending "human dignity" and humanity's spiritual evolution.
Your repeated use of the word "gringo" (are you a "spic"?) may get you some woke points in the Social Sciences department, and you are very clever and smart, but not necessarily full spectrum intelligent.
Pretty rich that pointing out the damages, killings, crimes, and imperialistic nonsense committed by Trump in the last year constitutes "radicalization". Why is it not "radical" when you have pointed out the very same things done by Biden, and interpreted his policies as wholly damaging and monstrous? But Trump gets endless benefit of the doubt and constant attempts to exonerate and seperate him from his own actions. It seems to me that GM is being much more consistent in his views and hardly "radical" at all, versus, for a completely random example, someone who lets ideological love for Trump cloud their thinking...
Try understanding reading, use your brain. Where is the author defending Trump or separate him from it's own actions? He leaves the reader room to interpret, to analyze for himself, not to dictate a geopolitical bible or fixing too much on persona's. Trump is an actor in the game, so the author has to try to keep a dialectic view, all other would be indoctrination or propaganda, as I see it.
Oh dear its another yank binary thought paradigm exponent.
Say Trump did something good must mean you are a Trump supporter and anti democrat. There are other ways of thinking other than good/bad, democrat/republican.
Right, so because I believe in consistency i.e. I believe both Biden, Trump, and all other presidents were genocidal Zionist maniacs means I'm a Democrat... looks like you're the one living in the yank binary thought paradigm exponent (put down the thesaurus) bud.
Quick experiment: go back to the Biden era and see if you can find any Simplicius articles praising Biden for "outsmarting" Europe, or insinuating that he's working against some other evil force in his own government. Oh wait that framing is only ever given for Trump, I wonder why hmm 🤔 truly a mystery.
Love him or loathe him, consistency is not a word that should ever be applied to Trump. Since he is always all over the map sometimes he gets things right. I certainly wouldn't count on it, but it happens. As to finding an article that is 'praising Biden for "outsmarting" Europe' just try to find a single example where Biden did indeed outsmart Europe -- and certainly not in the last few years where he couldn't even read a teleprompter properly.
You have a very strange and sad idea of "getting things right" if your best examples include tweets, but still sending aid to Ukraine, maintaining Biden's sanctions, and failing all around to achieve peace or understanding anywhere.
It is a strange place, today, this board. Tiny little soap boxes going up everywhere in an undignified scramble for some moral high ground. Maybe it is a Trump effect like Alex's idea of the Zelenskiiy curse. Some one should just call fainites, and let's start again with our grown up masks glued back on.
( I do not mean this to apply to you, John, who have been doing a manful job of trying to put a lid on this. And Simplicius's comment directly to GM was an absolute gem in the dirt.
But ranting when something doesn't fit into your worldview, which is truth, and you have no arguments against it.
Typical of what suits the Left and the Greens, if they don't have any arguments, they resort to the Nazi cudgel, and in Europe at least, that's always the Nazi cudgel...
In your case, it's supposedly your valuable time, which you can waste replying to other comments to justify them...instead of immediately rebutting arguments you don't have.
A Trump is a clown who only pretends to wage war through the back door.
Why?
Because a Trump would mean that the USA would be vastly inferior to the Russians, a Trump would act openly.
The only way out would then be nuclear weapons...although in this regard, too, the USA has missed everything that could be missed. They almost let their ancient intercontinental missiles rot away.
And...that's precisely why the USA is left with nothing but the wrong game to play with a Trump. And the cry at every opportunity: "We didn't do it." If Putin retaliates, then please target Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, London... PLEASE not Boston or New York, because WE COULDN'T EVEN INTERCEPT YOUR MISSILES.
That's why he has to duck Putin, or tell the Americans a truth that would break his neck, hence the false play with Iran, with Doha, with Russia. Let others die.
If you have the USA as a friend... you don't need enemies!
At the moment, you have enough problems and technological standstill in your own country.
While it is your decision whom to allow to post, is there any possibility to install an ignore function, on nicks and threads following? This flooding, trolling, and derailing makes the comment section unreadable.
Just ban this troll already. The comments sections in this blog are unreadable and only for one reason. He's here, he goads a bunch of people into replying and arguing with him, and he posts about 100 times per blog entry. Enough. This is not his substack page, it's supposed to be yours.
Duran, Simplicius etc are highly critical of Trump. There is no belief that he is on the side of good, though perhaps in the early days there was granting of leeway of a returned President getting to grips with his return. Illusions that Trump is 'our guy' have long been shattered and this is reverberating through his base. There are the false (pay-triot) types who are either incredulous fools or in the pay of Israel. These are the ones whose role is to steer narrative, but their credibility is cratering. A paytriot influencer with American flag hat with a 'don't tread on me' flag in the background as props is wearing thin with a people that are seeing through the deceit or beginning too.
MAGA is not a monobloc of unified zombies as you believe. Many MAGA types resisted and opposed Trump's Warpspeed. They also are largely resistant to notions of going to war with Iran on Bibi's behalf or being involved with war in Ukraine. Zero interest in their tax dollars going to foreign aid including Israel, while their cities are in various stages of societal and economic collapse. Where are the mass deportations of illegals as promised? Trump's dodging of the Epstein files is a massive red flag among his base. MAGA will be soon without its figurehead. The people and their sentiment on a great many issues remains but Trump is losing his base daily. There is no ability for Trump to course correct. He is surrounded by agents of a foreign nation that work within his administration (no different from previous admins of course).
MAGA are the remnants of an America its stooge golem elites want gone. The 'boorish', independence oriented, aspirational masculine patriot type that still feels connected to its people, past and culture is a threat to globohomo controllable 'interchangeable economic units' future intended for that country and for the rests of us.
I'm agnostic on Trump, have no horse in the race. I report facts. If/when Trump does something positive, I praise him. When he doesn't, I criticize him. It's really that simple.
Trump is an education. He plays to the room he finds himself in. When it's a mixed crowd they both get a bon bon.
In the end he may soften the crash landing. To think a president, any president will save us, is a big part of the problem. We got fat and lazy. Addicted and dependent. Entitled and predictable. Without a device, are we smart?
"As always, there is nothing left for the Europeans beyond mindless escalation and wheeling their shopworn countries into the abyss."
These are the compact quips that prove Simplicius is second to none.
Says the devil himself. Good and Evil, Truth and Lie are objective realities. Only the suggestible, the gullible, the profiteers, the manipulators and the wicked say otherwise. As an observation it is consistent that those who “like” Trump, who defend him, who believe him, do so because in their character, they are like him.
The thing to keep in mind is that Ukraine is only one item on Trump's plate and not the most important one. Remember that America is an oligarchy, and all those politicians are paid for by people with interests. Trump has to work with people like Lindsay Graham, for example, on domestic issues, and needs their support Throwing them rhetorical bones to chew on, while not actually doing very much to support their positions, is actually pretty good politics from Trump.
I don't care for the man and his constant hyperbole and blather, but he can be an astute politician when he is not putting his foot in his mouth, and he is not the worst imaginable leader of the U.S. for anyone with pro-Russian sympathies (such as myself).
Just as the West is foolish to wish ill on Putin (because Putin is as pro-Western as Russians get), Russia would be foolish to wish too much ill on Trump. While certainly not ideal by any measure, he is the only current leader with whom there might be a path forward that does not lead to WWIII.
Because Trump is all over the place he doesn't present his enemies with one target to aim at. He confuses the hell out of them. He is certainly a bullshit artist, so that may in fact be intentional. Or as one meme I saw put it, "How can *you* know what I'm doing if *I* don't know what I'm doing?"
Both Alex's (Duran) critical of Trump though as he's stumbled through his multiple gaffe's. I don't see them as believing in Trump as 'the rebel'. They were incredibly skeptical (almost despairing) of his appointees such as Hegseth and Kellogg for example. Early on, they did give Trump leeway and the benefit of the doubt. That turned to incredulity at his self-defeating proclamations and maneuvers. Now and then Duran oscillate back towards benefit of the doubt, which is a chink in their analysis but overall they are not looking at Trump as a savior or rebel as you claim.
Nuance is a thing. Being complimentary /or agreeing with a position, does not mean agreeing with the person themselves.
Alex Mercouris has been criticizing Trump for years in his videos. He does it by factually explaining what Trump is doing and then what he believes the real consequences of that action will be. For example, why Trump's attempts to use sanctions against Russia will fail. Or why Trump's claim that he could end the war in one day through pressure wouldn't work as the pressures Trump mentioned had already been tried. Alex doesn't have to do name calling and condemnations for it to be criticism.
The Duran is fantastic geopolitical commentary channel. I don't expect any commentator to be right 100% of the time, nor do I expect to agree with their views 100% of the time. However the Duran, in general, is spot on the mark.
Yes, I am one of those who was perfectly fine with being called "America First". I voted for Trump, not believing he was a "savior" of any kind. In the U.S. If you are going to waste your time voting you have 2 choices and Trump was the better choice by a long long way. Myself and the Americans that I talk politics with, only a small community of people, the same people that made a pact to defend our community from all the garbage the globalists are pushing, none of us are blind followers of anybody, least of all a politician. "we" are all critical of everything Trump has done concerning foreign policy, it is awful to have to watch it. On some domestic issues he is much better than anyone else has been for decades. "This" is how most real Americans feel, not the accounts who are being paid to divide, which is what "---" like GM think represents real people
What's a real Irishman, Eoin? What makes you distinctly Irish? Your country is globalist controlled slop now. They're calling imported Africans, Irish. lol. By that standard, anyone who sets foot in Ireland can call themselves Irish. There's your absurdity. Your history, genealogy, customs and values mean nothing in the globalist paradigm.
Q. What is a real Irishman?
A. He doesn't know. Whatever his media, politicians and institution's tell him is Irish.
You're being Balkanized. You're being enriched with people that view you as oppressors. Enjoy your barber shops, kebabs and tobacco shops whilst your woman and girls are groped, harassed and raped.
To be a "real" American (in my opinion) you must have core beliefs and principles, so in that sense your little snide Q n A is correct. My friends have many differing ideas on how things should be accomplished but we all believe there is a man and a woman and you can't "think" yourself into the other, men will not play women sports. You can believe in any Religion or God you want as long as you do not try to force those beliefs onto another person or community. A real American believes in free speech, especially speech you disagree with as long as it is not a public call for violence. The point I made by Real American referred to Social Media which both political parties in the U.S. have literal armies of paid "influencers" which gives most Europeans a very skewed view of the population. I believe we barely have half of the population who votes or cares at all about politics and this makes Europeans the most upset. Americans just do not care about Europe.
Very well put, and especially true about Americans not caring about Europe. I've mentioned this before (though I doubt anyone remembers my small contributions) but I spent a year in graduate school at a university in Canada. I was amazed at how closely everyone seemed to follow events in Europe -- and how that differed from what I saw in my undergrad years in the US.
Superb comment. You either choose to vote or you abstain from the game. I choose to vote and I voted for Trump because the alternative would just have been horrific beyond intelligent belief. I also hoped / wished / prayed that Trump would get us out of this Ukraine war, provoked by the West, and at least stop the acceleration of the National Debt in the USA. I was widely optimistic, bordering on the naive, on those two fronts. Alas reality came crashing home in his first 100 days, but thats politics. A crunch is coming, so be it.
I look at the sites you mention on a regular basis. They are anything but overall supportive of Trump or even feel he is free of any neocon influence. They all agree to at least some extent that Trump is mostly ineffective at ending the war or fighting it and that is the result of both his disposition and the political constraints imposed on him.
Case in point.....the three thousand missiles supposedly being sent to Ukraine. They exist only as prototypes. It will take a couple of years of concentrated effort to produce them in numbers. They are air launched with a range about three hundred miles. Since the NATO air assets can't safely get within a hundred miles of the Russian anti air, the missiles have a range of about two hundred miles into Russian territory. They are less capable than missiles already available to the Ukrainians but considerably cheaper to produce (supposedly) as a result of that more limited capability. Therefore they can be used as intended which is in a swarm attack.
Trump manifestly does not want to be involved in the Ukraine war. However, his dithering and thoughtless posturing have got him into a box. He absolutely does not want a catastrophic, public failure in pulling out as Biden had with Afghanistan. His own ego wouldn't let Ukraine go when he first took office while it was still Biden's war and subsequent outcome. Now his fingerprints are all over the Ukraine project preventing him from forgetting about it and move on to the domestic issues he really cares about.
Some retiring American general will be happy to get on the board of the developer and push for the missile's production for export to Ukraine. And another retiring American general or one already positioned on the board of another company will point out that the U.S. must then provide the requisite air assets which they happen to have in inventory to be dispatched to Ukraine to facilitate the operation.
Ukraine/NATO has been flying several sorties every day all the way to the Russian border dropping JDAMs and AASM Hammers into Kursk, and they launched a dozen Storm Shadows last week all the way to Saratov.
They have quite a capable air force and it can be flooded with NATO F-16s and other planes at any moment.
Because Putin never did anything to destroy the bases, let alone the bases in Poland and Romania that they use.
These airbases---I don't mean in Poland, I mean the bases in Ukraine from where the sorties are actually flown (for now)---are not easy to "destroy". They have been bombed numerous times, Starokonstantinov especially. But theses bases, Starokonstantinov especially, were designed by Soviet experts to survive being nuked---to retain at least some functionality after a direct hit in a nuclear exchange. Their key facilities are hardened, redundant, and dispersed. They are tough, in much the same way that we saw the post-Soviet bridges being tough. The Russians bomb the assets stationed at Starokonstantinov, over and over again---but "destroying" that airbase is not really feasible without at least several nuke warheads, and that escalatory risk is not worth it, not while the handful of aircraft based there are a relatively minor factor.
As RalfB said, Russia HAS bombed the airbases, but the economics simply don't add up. A missile for that range is expensive, and generally makes a hole in concrete that can be filled in with a couple of buckets of quick dry cement costing nothing.
The only way to make it work is catching the craft outside, but with America's ISR capability, that is a forlorn hope.
>Case in point.....the three thousand missiles supposedly being sent to Ukraine. They exist only as prototypes. It will take a couple of years of concentrated effort to produce them in numbers.
So? Do you see this war ending with a decisive Russian victory any time within the next decade under current rules of engagement?
>They are air launched with a range about three hundred miles.
So are Storm Shadows
>Since the NATO air assets can't safely get within a hundred miles of the Russian anti air
This is where the biased, glossing over the serious problem, reporting of our host and the other pro-Russian commentators has led you astray once again.
NATO air assets have been flying over Sumy city and then right to the border and dropping glide bombs into Kursk, and occasionally Belgorod too (a whole apartment building was taken out by a French AASM Hammer last year in Belgorod) eery day. How is that possible? Well, it is possible because drone and HIMARS strikes have pushed Russian long-range AD back by a hundred miles from the border, due to the fact that nobody in the Kremlin bothered to enforce the red line of HIMARS strikes into Russia being something completely inadmissible. And those planes fly very low too. So the planes fly low, radar has hard time tracking them (which in turn is because Putin allowed untold trillions to be taken out of the country while not a single new AWACS plane or a MiG-31 interceptor was built since the USSR collapsed, thus there aren't enough of either of those assets), then they rise up at the last moment, launch their munitions, drop low again, and safely return to base.
If you follow what is happening, the AFU is flying many sorties every day along the Zaporozhye and Donetsk fronts and the official border, yet we long ago stopped hearing about planes being shot down. S-400s, R-37Ms, totally MIA. They worked out their tactics and pushed Russian defenses back.
>the missiles have a range of about two hundred miles into Russian territory. They are less capable than missiles already available to the Ukrainians but considerably cheaper to produce (supposedly) as a result of that more limited capability.
The Ukrainians were originally given Storm Shadows in export variants, which have a range of 300 km, then Storm Shadows directly from the British and French inventories, with longer range. And they were given ATACMS with a range of around 300 km too. Which is why the ATACMS, when they were used in Russia proper, only hit halfway into Bryansk region, while the deepest Storm Shadow strike we know of reached Oryol oblast.
But most importantly, the strike on Engles in March aside, once Trump was in office, those attacks stopped. But now they are resuming.
Thus "three hundred miles" in these numbers is actually a rather dramatic escalation.
And yet the Ukrainian troops on the battle front say that they have no air cover because the Russian anti air forces the Ukrainian air assets low and there is too much local anti air to risk low level operations. That includes the Ukrainian troops fighting in the Sumy area. So who to believe ....you or the troops on the ground?
You're spot on GM. It soon became apparent Trump was not what he purported to be. On a broader note, I tend to agree with Riley Wagman, aka Edward Slavsquat. He called it a non-war - Russia sold diesel to Ukraine, pipelines went across Ukraine to Europe transporting gas and Russia paid Ukraine transit fees and so forth. Politics (think Wagner group) and money are still King it would appear. Plus I suppose Russia now sees this war as existential. Ha, as does the EU/UK. Only the latter are the losers and in the end Ukraine will cease to exist.
Why is it that some people cannot understand that everything is not black and white? If you don't hate someone or something, it doesn't mean you love them or it. If you are not with something, it doesn't mean you are against it. If someone is not an devil it doesn't mean they are an angel. If you don't think that Trump is an evil fool all the time, it doesn't mean that you think he's a good genius. It's like being back in the playground.
Exactly. My view on Trump is that he is a lousy security guard, but people like Biden are the actual bank robbers. (Though on the issue of Israel Trump is with the bank robbers, which is unforgivable.) In peace time without the media control and the others who control politics, Trump would be a good president, but he is in over his head now and caves. I believe he wanted to stop mass immigration which he first campaigned on. He lost a lot of money in business because of that and was ostracized in New York social circles. But he has traded away election promises to appease the establishment that he wants on his side.
He is not "just as bad as Biden" and he is not very good either. He does some things you wouldn't get with someone like Biden. He caves in other matters.
Magnificent take-down of the Trump peacemaker" nonsense.
Trump's first-term sanctions on China and withdrawal from the Iran deal were kept in place by the Biden Senility Government.
Trump wants the conflict ended so he can get a Nobel Prize and so the looting of Ukraine's natural resources can start before Russia overruns all of them.
first, repeat, you are either a useful idiot, or an MI6/Ukrainian asset. You keep showing your stupidity by misunderstanding global strategic situation, and your traitor role by attacking Russia (Putin is a symbol, a leader of Russia). But we have been there already, and you and other useful idiots who boast, grow like empty balloons by attacking Russia are just showing what you are built of - weak and pitiful.
most people do not understand the nature of the change in world order. The easiest way to look at it is BRICS.
BRICS, meaning rise of alternative powers, and these powers having minimal level of wisdom, intelligence, cunning, not to enter the British/US/Zionist game of divide and rule...
Why is the Himalayas war, between China and India the most important war of 21st century?
Because it is being fought with sticks.
Fighting the war with sticks means India and China, although having different interests, are wise enough not to be manipulated into escalating conflict, and real war, conventional, and nuclear.
There is only one way of crushing the most powerful state in the world, for competing great powers. Not to fight among themselves.
Britain rose to be world power, first global superpower, ruling the oceans, by continuously using Divide and Rule strategy, organising a series of wars against the strongest power on the Continent. (Spain, France, Germany, USSR).
US took over in the First World War, and definitely in the Second World War. Unipolar global world order, US attacking and destroying all other great powers before they could present a challenge to US supremacy.
ANd here, begins the difference, between Biden/globalists and Trump.
Trump understands unipolarity is over. He is doing all he can to secure place for US as a great power among other great powers, as he hopes, the strongest among great powers in this new World, but not he only power.
Trump's US will try to continue using Divide and Rule, but if US/CIA cannot start a war between India and China, it is of no great use.
Trump's America is not going to be an angel, a peace loving country ....but he is not going to waste US energy fighting wars for global supremacy, and he will stay out of new wars,
Israel is a special case, and will in the end define Trump's legacy, or even his survival, depends on his actual decisions.
Trump is like a new kid in the schoolyard, trying to define his relations with other potential strong kids/powers, so he is pushing, shoving, threatening, and the result of this exchange of energies will define future relations between great powers.
With China, de facto equal, with India, to be seen, but as India refused to submit to threats, also most probably equal, with Europe subordination on the surface, but cunning ambition to fool and use US beneath, led by Britain... with Russia, an inherited war, that Trump is not escalating, and accepting that war will be decided on the battlefield, i.e. as much as Europe is willing to put into the war, Trump will accept.
For Russia this means fighting against proxy supported by NATO, in the measure that Europe is willing to provide money, weapons...
There is an inertia when great powers change their course, and US foreign policy establishment is still on the trajectory of keeping unipolar US might.
In this world view, and strategy Russia was to be surrounded by regime changed states, it worked in Ukraine, didn't in Belarus, and misfired in Georgia, extended through attack by Ukrainian proxy and finally subdued by economic pressure/sanctions.
Subduing Russia didn't succeed, but Empires change slowly, and US foreign policy establishment, as well as globalists' led European establishment is doubling down on original antiRussian strategy, they do not understand, or do not accept the alternative.
Trump is letting them fail.
So, as conclusion, Trump is not unipolar neocon, Trump is multipolar, America First neocon.
And you are an useful idiot, or a foreign secret service asset.
If you were not secret service asset, you would be saying the same, but would not attack Putin.
Because Russia needs to have KAraganovs, wolf warriors, to say from time to time, what else could be coming from Russia ...
But using this kind of thinking, threatening to the West in order to discredit, diminish Putin is what makes you a traitor, an MI6, SBU asset-
If you look honestly, there was a time when communism was religion of the humiliated and offended masses, but USSR perished, dissolved, there was a time when Maoism was next best thing, and then China chose capitalism and market economy,
Of all the BRIC members INDIA is the one who didn't move, from its original anti-imperialist, anti colonial position, as one of the leaders of the nonaligned countries now being replaced, reflected, repackaged, reinterpreted in BRICS
India has not changed, and India is now the most populous country in the world, and will be twice as populous as China in 50 years, English speaking, dominating Indian Ocean, closest to Africa, of all the major powers, the centre of the BRICS,
India needs markets, and it would be fine if Chinese example could be replicated, but India is not going to become a proxy of the US. Ukraine and Qatar are lessons for the global South, Kissinger was deadly precise:
It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.
21st century is already Asian century, Asean means China, but also ASEAN, and India, and Iran, and Moslem and Arab world.
India is on the path to being one of the two most powerful states in the world, and BRICS objectively promises more than being an American proxy.
Right. This thing about the sanctions on India and China is just another version of the game of chicken the US and the Euros have been playing over the frozen (stolen) Russian assets. You blow up your financial system, Europe. No, you blow up yours, América. Now it's the whole economy. 🙄 Tiresome and dangerous 🙄🙄🤬
Don't have much use for Tom Luongo, but he got that little economic war between the allies right from the start.
While you’re right that president Trump is a Neocon to the bones, he’s more China-first, Iran-first and Easy-Wars-First kind of neocon. Trump knows perfectly well that his MAGA support may collapse if inflation goes out of control. He needs Russian oil on the markets to keep oil price low. He wants to put the conflict with Russia on the back burner, switching to more subtle tools like all those subversive NGOs and sponsoring terrorist cells. Trump knows he needs weapons for the war in the Middle East and against China, so he cannot afford sending them to the Ukrainian black hole. He’s got just different set of priorities, which makes him looking like kinda pursuing peace in Ukraine.
The letter is not just for the EU, it is for the whole of NATO, and the turkish cockroach not ever EVER in 10,000 years would agree to impose sanctions on Russia. It would break his already weak economy and deprive him of that sweet transit money from gas going to the EU.
Not to mention that Hungary and Slovakia would also never agree to sanctions.
This pipeline operation is not like the others. In Avdiivka and Sudzha, the pipeline went under enemy positions to emerge in the enemy rear. In the case of the operation north of Kupiansk, the entire pipeline was under Russian held positions. So we are no longer avoiding enemy soldiers, this was a long pipeline journey solely to avoid enemy UAVs.
The war is inexorably shifting in Russia's favour, but it is getting more complicated rather than less. Continuous advances in drone warfare make manoeuvre warfare increasingly difficult. Thus, the big arrow offensives cannot be done without unacceptable losses in men and materiel. So attrition warfare it will be until the military, political, or economic collapse of Ukraine.
I thought it went under the river so they secured their positions on that bank. Otherwise they would be vulnerable to counter attacks. If so it was a good operation to secure a weak position.
This is a good analysis, and the point that the entire length of the pipeline is in Russian-controlled land is a good catch. It likely is true that whichever country overpowers the other in production, innovation and operational employment of drones will win the war, through enhanced attrition of enemy forces.
There are a couple of note of caution, however - Russia retains the advantage of unrestricted air force operations, and its surveillance-only drones identify timely targets for glide-bomb attacks which are orders of magnitude more destructive than pinprick attacks against individual infantry, on occasions when a group or formation can be caught together. Western intelligence services attempt to make up this deficiency by furnishing Ukraine with targeting information, but Ukraine needs to attack with a missile or rocket because it has no air force left, and often the enemy-movement information gets to the firing point too late to be of practical use.
You're right that the war is inexorably shifting in Russia's favour - the key word being 'inexorably' - but you're also right that tactics are constantly evolving, and the west can write up as many 'lessons learned' briefs as it likes, it is still going to come out of this war far, far behind the new curve in modern warfare. For a long time the belief persisted - I believed it myself - that Russia's slow progress is designed to avoid a shock event which could be portrayed as an atrocity, a slaughter that would compel western forces to step in to help. And while it's true Zelensky urgently desires this, he could probably do just as good a job of faking it without it even happening for real; they've done it before, and it didn't work. So you're likely correct as well that the pervasive use of FPV drones makes traditional infantry advance all but impossible (hence the motorcycles and ATV's), but Russia still has an edge in air operations and artillery. Nice work.
Trump is a closet Neo-con himself and likely more loyal to the one's DH talks about all the time (lol) than American citizens. Trump is a lying, corrupt, fake, clown and failed businessman. But he is also a charismatic actor who fools and deceives his followers. And so are most American politicians, all on the take or else bad things will happen to them just like how they threatened Ross Perot about bad things happening to his family. So he backed up. American politics is like a big mafia with enforcers from Israel. No one makes it up to high political positions clean in the US, and the ones that do have no clout. (just for show)
I guess it depends on your definition of neo-con. I always thought they were Straussians generally of Eastern European decent (or views at least) with the commonality of an extreme desire to destroy Russia, the Grand Chessboard's ultimate prize.
Trump is certainly not in this club. Some might suggest he is fooling us, but there is absolutely no reason for a US president to take this position. It is part of the job description for POTUS. Trump is out on a limb on this one.
Being a neo-con and doing things neo-cons support is certainly a.major difference. I've never considered Biden, Obama and Dubya as neo-cons either. The day we have a neo-con POTUS is a very dangerous day. They are usually down the line like Cheney or Blinken.
So if they carry out every neocon wish and basically act like neocon skinpuppets, that's okay as long as they aren't Straussians of eastern european descent?
Lol, you can try to twist this to suit your bias but the reality is that Trump and Putin met in Alaska and came away both talking up the meeting. He is obviously NOT a neo-con no matter how much this grates on your worldview.
Trump is clearly not a neocon. He has to deal with them because they run US foreign policy. The US is an empire. To think it has been some kind of democracy or republic is ridiculous. This is power politics. Everything is geared towards gaining more power and influence. The Alaska meeting was symbolic. It was the US acknowledging the return of Russia as a powerful actor. It doesn't mean the US gives in. It just means the US recognizes it has to take Russia seriously. This is what has Europe so freaked out. You don't engage with a country like that unless you respect their power. It has been a long claw back for Russia. Starting with its low point at the bombing of Serbia and the Russian security state meeting with Yeltsin and telling him he had to go. Yelstin had a mandate to integrate with the West and he failed. Wall Street raping Russia, losing the first Chechen war and noting CIA assistance (even funneling UNA/UNSO western Ukrainian nazis into Chechnya), and the bombing of Serbia was the last straw. Putin's mandate was to rebuild and modernize the military, reform the economy, and restore a balance of power (deterrence). He has done a remarkable job. The turn around of Russia is remarkable. They should give him the title Putin the Great. Posthumously because I'm sure he won't accept it while he is alive.
You obviously don't listen to Brian Berletic. The Duran is just the cheese. If you want the meat of the situation you listen to Brian. Plus, Brian isn't skittish like the Duran about Palestine.
ZION-Don IS the Swamp. Just listen to his Circus Barker Lunatic Lutnik or little Marco taking us toward AI Fascism, One World Order, and Noahide Laws. Maybe look what his Administration is DOING rather than SAYING. Washington D.C. might as well be Tel Aviv. They're one and the same.
* The left call Darya Dugin fascist, and murder her.
* The left call Charlie Kirk fascist, and celebrate his death, while urging that his whole family should also be killed.
* The left hate Putin, call him fascist, and equate him to Hitler.
* The left maintain a hit list of prominent people whom the left call fascist, openly urging for them to be exterminated.
* The left call Donald Trump fascist, and attack him with lawfare and attempted assassinations.
* Antifa means 'anti-fascist', supported by vast sums of Soros and corporate money.
* The left hate everyone who does not think exactly as they do, and consider all of them fascist.
* When native populations object to incompatible immigrants, their government leaders jail them for being fascist.
* Fascists believe in the nation as an extended family of homogeneous genetics, culture, religion, and traditions; unlike current western autocrats, fascists don't import immigrants into their nation.
* Fascists believe in the traditional family; unlike current western autocrats, fascists don't promote homosexual unions, transgenderism, or anything else that destroys the traditional family.
* Leftism evolves over time, such that woke leftism is its latest manifestation.
* The leftist agenda meshes perfectly with globalist goals; globalists hate nations, since globalists want a one-world government in control of slaves.
* After their decades-long 'march through the institutions', the left are now in control of every organization and government in western societies.
* Anyone who keeps yapping that the west is fascist, or that fascists are in control, displays a stubborn lack of awareness that borders on stupidity.
* Anyone who ignores the left while extolling the dangers of fascism has supreme ignorance of history, ideology, and their own damn societies.
* Anyone who ignores leftism is doing so deliberately, because they are (1) unwitting dupes and shills making excuses for the left, or (2) stealth leftist trolls pushing a deceitful hidden agenda.
* Tactics of controlling populations are Totalitarian, not fascist, and are used by any zealot of any ideology.
* Anyone who ascribes every societal evil to fascism needs to shut up and seriously reconsider their position before making fools of themselves even further.
Are you sure you got it not backwards? LEFT is working class, your description is woke idiots who are useful idiots to blame a political left that is almost non exist anymore in the West since the 'Radikalenerlass' of W. Brandt in Germany back in the day. If you have no clue about what 'left' even means, please spare us your unhinged rants that are completely derailing the facts.
The term "left" covers many things. What I make of it is that there is, on the one hand, the socio-economic left, the party of the ordinary folks, and, on the other hand, the morally left: the kind of people who are in favor of lowering traditional moral standards, the wokes, the liberals. Therefore, you can be both left and right at the same time. Putin, for instance, seems to be a leftist in the socio-economic sense, but a rightist or conservative in the moral sense.
You are either left or right, being both at the same time is an oxymoron. Capitalist money like Soros has never ever been left, always fascists by heart and making their money on the back of the working class.
There is no 'morally left', it's an invention by the ruling class to present themself as left, because left is still seen as a way to go. Average people don't read about political economics and the warfare of the rich against the working. Warren Buffet spilled the beans as he explained the warfare rich against working. The woke crowd is manned by spoiled sons and daughters of the higher, mostly academic middle class, displaying their i-phone 15+ and buying 500€ sneakers, nothing close to working class (exceptions are very few).
changing the traditional meaning(s) of 'left' and 'right' constantly and often not-so-subtly is pure manipulation by the thought police. the terms have become easy labels to point out an "enemy". and too many falling for it :-((
Herman, any movement that isn't rooted in class is Liberal rather than Left. Some are good, some are not. But unless you support Organised Labour as a balance to organised Capital, you ain't Left.
The so-called left is an attitude of many in the Western countries, who desire to destroy Western civilization. It is a common danger in mature civilizations which tend to produce a general and radical antithesis to the accepted norms and traditions. The human spirit, mind and feelings, functions in a dialectical way.
In fact, life itself in the evolutionary development functions in such a way starting with the simplest forms. See Konrad Lorenz's Die Rückseite des Spiegels.
The destructive left has used the justified complains of the working classes as a weapon to demolish the structure of their own societies.
That is why every leftist leader is considered a traitor by the left as soon as he/she is confronted with
reality and must abandon destructive mantras.
for practical measures.
It also explains why the left hates, most of all, the right wing politicians who happen to
improve the economic circumstances of the working classes.
Just compare the lots of workers in the BND in Adenauer times and the situation of Romanians under Ceausescu.
This did not prevent the left to consider that the Romanian government was theirs and the successive West Germans ones capitalists to be destroyed even through murder, remember the Rote Armee Fraktion.
I get that you are an anti communist to the bone and swallowed the whole right wing shit probably with your mothers milk. It's not my intention to convince you otherwise, you're too far gone already, the anti left imprint in you is cherished by you and I am happy for you that you have a conviction anyway.
Just the RAF as Brigado Rosso where bored rich kids and useful idiots for a bunch of 3 Letter agencies to do their bidding. They claimed to be Mao-ists, just the missing tse tung would have fried their brains. Was also a nice way to keep Gladio out of sight and blame anything to the bloody communists who allegedly constantly run out of other peoples money, right?
Just we can see since 1929 that's always the capitalist class who comes begging for taxpayers money when they crashed the 'improving economic circumstances' you are cheering for. Your bending of reality and history is indeed mind boggling but what do I know, I am a simple working communist.
Thanks Frank, especially the "running out of other peoples money" line. When I hear that from dweebs I ask myself, WTF am I talking to this shitbird for?
The "woke-Left"are drinking an "Italian" type coffee/ice cream confection and 70lbs overweight with green hair. All they know about "Lenin" is he had long hair and played with a band known as "The Beatles". S/he, it, them, they know as much about the events in 1917 Russia as they know about Trigonometry.
Would you prefer Zionists, Trotskyites, or some other noun that doesn't trigger you? We're becomig a Corporatocracy but then most "corporations" are run by Zionionists or the 1%. Jesus Christ. People have a fit over a term like those people who can see the forest fighting over the trees.
"The left" like Sahra Wagenknecht? Many see the world as black and white, or left and right. Fortunately the reality is an vastly complex array of greys. Complexity begets resilience, lack of complexity brings instability at best, and often systemic collapse at worst.
It all gets down to totalitarian olygarchic banking class versus everyone else. Everything else is play on words used for divide and conquer. Left, right, fascist, democratic, etc etc lost any meaning
Thanks for your shedding "some light". You are exposing the crudely criminal genocidal uderbelly.
You are looking in all the "wrong"-DARK places. /s Many thanks...
Ask Diogenes:>>
<<
The meme you are describing is based on a story about the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, and it's most often referred to as the Streetlight Effect, or the Diogenes Fallacy. The "bubblegum cartoon" (my inquiry of AI) aspect likely comes from a modern cartoon or webcomic that illustrates the concept for comedic effect.
The origin of the story
The original story goes that Diogenes would walk around Athens in broad daylight with a lit lantern, claiming to be "looking for an honest man". The meme takes a more humorous, and often exasperated, spin on the concept:
The joke: The meme shows a man searching for a lost item under a streetlight, even though he knows he dropped it somewhere else.
The punchline: When asked why he's searching in the wrong place, he replies, "The light is better here."
The meaning of the meme
The meme is used to critique irrational or illogical decision-making. It applies to situations where people ignore a problem's actual location or cause and instead search for a solution where it's most convenient to look, even if that's an unproductive effort.
I think that take that the Duran is somehow failing in their coverage of Palestine is disingenuous. Alexander lives in the UK where you can get arrested for wearing a free Palestine shirt. So he has to be careful with what he says ... That said, what he said about the whole matter which has forever been burned into my brain was: "when the history of this time will be written, we will see that the collective West had descended into the moral abyss". I think Brain and the Duran are both excellent and I watch almost all their stuff.
Things are definitely starting to change with the SMO. Russia is increasing the tempo, the Ukrainians are having trouble keeping up, and the Europeans are losing it even more.
I guess we should all be grateful that Trump's bag of tricks were fully deployed via his zugzwang. But let's count the cost of him pleasing Lindsey Graham and the Neo-Con warhawks, and also this slow-mo extrication of the US from a dogfight that never was ours.
What took him so long? Seven months is an eternity for soldiers. Ukraine has lost an entire army since Trump took office.
Contrary to what Trump cites for battlefield deaths, from the Pentagon puree that is spoon fed to him, there's an average of 1,500 daily Ukrainian KIA's. It's been more, it's been less. That's a minimum of 40,000 Ukrainian AFU soldiers dying per month. Trump's been president for 7 full months. Seven times 40,000= 280,000 Ukro KIA's since he took office.
So was pleasing Lindsey Graham et al worth 280,000 deaths? (not even counting Russian KIAs).
Trump could've pulled away from Ukraine back in January, and there'd be the same amount of casualties. I don't doubt it. But the deaths wouldn't be because he was giving hope to Zelensky, frequently stating he won't abandon Zelensky. Plus, as an American, I wouldn't be co-responsible either. The guilty is not just on Trump, no sirree Bob. What Trump does makes ALL of us Americans bloodguilty. Red or blue.
I kinda think it is Trump's war as well. The 280,000+ deaths prove it is.
Trump mounts a pedestal (truth social) and publically washes his hands.. of the guilt, just like a modern day Pontius Pilate. That is so arrogant and narcissistic. But just like Pilate, history will have a say at judging him.
It is Trumps war. He facilitated all preparations for it in Ukraine from 2016 until 2020 in his first term. Biden just continued what was already there and escalated it to have the SMO unfold.
"also this slow-mo extrication of the US from a dogfight that never was ours."
Never was ours? The US who started the whole thing with the Maidan coup? The US who financed and supported Ukraine from that momentous time to the present? The US whose main purpose was to extend Russia?
The US dream of influence starts with Zbigniew Brzezinski 'grand chessboard' and actions date back to 1990. The Timoshenko was a Soros creation already.
Well, if you want to play that game, it goes back to the end of WWII when the US found itself the last man standing and decided then that it would remain so.
This war's has to be fought until the last Ukrainian...Lindsay Graham said so himself. So, whilst there are still men left it will carry on - 280k less is 280k closer to the goal.
It becomes clearer to me with each passing month that if Russia really wants to secure itself, it needs to defeat Ukraine entirely with no deals besides surrender.
They cant. As Arestovich so eloquently puts it: Ukraine achieved a Victory back in 2022 but it was ”stolen” from them by Boris J aka Deep State in UK/EU/US. Likewise Russia was screwed from achieving their tiny objectives of securing Luhansk and Donetsk and get the question of Crimea behind them. Had it all stopped then we wouldnt have millions of dead and the inumerable damages we have seen evolved over time.
Then of course there could have been another War…
But I dont believe that the coalition of willing (unwilling for peace) ever will let Russia win over Ukraine. They rather burn down whole of Europe. And Russia is unable to muster the decisiveness it takes to win this War.
Ukraine wasn't responsible for Russian pulling back from Kiev and eastern parts of Ukraine. Moscow made that decision based on the fact the mission was accomplished. A rescue mission.
Russia went in deep, even surrounding Kiev, to take the pressure off of the Donbass. Kiev had to recall troops from the Eastern front.
Russia's move in deep wasn't for territory, it was to provide security for millions of ethnic Russians to leave Ukraine for Russia. Millions did, 6+ million left those areas for Russia.
That 6+ million coupled with the 6 million in the Donbass= 12 million rescued ethnic Russians from Banderite clutches. They are now Russian citizens living in safety and freedom.
After rescuing those people Russia pulled back, determined to defend the Donbass.
UKRAINE's puppet masters claimed it as a "victory", but even today, Russia defends and Ukraine attacks, Kiev trying to reconquer the Donbass people.
Thanks for putting it correctly once more. Seems like the western propaganda gets in really deep. Even into peoples brains who mean well at the basics.
Fact is that Russia fumbled and Ukraine put up a fierce resistance that perplexed Russia. That was sort of a ”victory”. If Ukraine then had signed the Istanbul agreement both sides would have won in the sense of sparing lives and achieving what this War (sorry, SMO) eventual will. Until next War of course. But nevertless a chance to cool down things was missed, or rather sabotaged by the Deep State actors.
Your description of Russia rescuing 12 millions because ”it wasnt for territory” is ridiculous. And you dont discuss what I answered Denis. I think Denis is right - Russia need to win an uncompromising victory over Ukraine&NATO. But I dont think they can. Discus this question and dont waffle about fantasy Russia objectives.
Not true at all. Russia did surround Kiev, hoping that that would scare the Ukies into pulling back and asking for peace, and subsequently pulled back as an act of good will when the Ukraine negotiating team signed the peace agreement that was shitcanned by Johnson's lies. Russia's mistake was entering that fiasco with not enough troops and logistics to support the large gains it had made in the Kharkov direction, so decided to pull back to consolidate its forces behind a line that could be better defended. Of course, Ukraine took all that to be their mighty victory over the Russians. And you believe them.
So in the end, now Ukraine is winning, yes? No. Putin has clearly indicated that the war will be decided on the battlefield. And when he says that, he means just that. Russia will do whatever it takes for an uncompromising victory even that means conquering all of Ukraine. But it doesn't have to mean conquering all of Ukraine if the West finally wakes up and smells the coffee. My opinion is that Russia will conquer the East and the South and make certain the rest is placed into the hands of a Russian-friendly regime that will make certain that this never happens again by declaring neutrality, limiting its military capabilities to defense only and removing all nazis from power..
"Fact is that Russia fumbled and Ukraine put up a fierce resistance"
I think you mean Russia attacked with around 120k at the beginning of the SMO, plus around 80k Donbass militia. Ukraine had 450-600k in the field. There was never a chance of a military victory for Russia in 2022. They hoped to settle this politically.
Whatever you describe it as (correct it is) - it was a fumble. Russia obviously did seek an agreement after they realized that they had underestimated the NATO influence in Ukraine. It (weakness showed) probably encouraged UK&others to undermine the Istanbul negotiations. Irrespective of what happened later - Russia had the ball but failed to score.
Russia has since then made tremendous efforts to gain the advantage they now have. But do they score?
As Simplicius implies, Trump is walking off this War that US started and tries to negotiate a ”draw” to stop the killing. UK/EU are not interested in a draw (neither the Deep State in US) , they long for a victory for the Liberal World Order and no sacrifice is too big.
Until one side score hard we will have this slo-mo human disaster.
Settle down. Trump is not walking away from anything. How many times have we seen this movie before?
Anyway, if this drone incursion does not get the intended result, that is, for the Americans to ride to the rescue, the next incursion will be bigger and a few poles will get killed.
Russia's weakness was being drawn into this war in the first place. Like I said previously, they could never win militarily in 2022. It has taken them 3 years to ramp up their armed forces to be in the position they are in now where the front is being stretched too far for Ukraine to maintain. The NATO goal was always to keep feeding Ukrainians into the meat grinder no matter what. Nothing has changed in this regard.
And scoring is just your own bias hoping for something that may well never have been Russia's objective and may not happen anytime soon. The Russians are stretched for sure, but have the Chinese at their back. The Europeans are the major losers. The US really did the dirty on them. They only have the European's back to push them into war with Russia.
The main thing to remember is that Russia wants to win this politically. They need Ukraine to be aligned or at least neutral. Destroying the country will just ensure the war smoulders on for a very long time.
@Mikey: 'burn down [the] whole of Europe' using.... what, exactly? the EU is not a very united organisation, although some of its leaders pretend it is. it seems that specifically Germany has continued to import (although underhandedly) Russian LPG: "... Despite a German de facto ban on accepting LNG directly from Russia, Germany has been importing surging volumes of natural gas from France and Belgium where terminals continue to accept Russian LNG..." - https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Germanys-Imports-of-Russian-LNG-From-Other-EU-Ports-Jump.html
but hey, its chancellor is an investment banker (BlackRock) and Big Business means... big business, no matter the battlefield outcome.
Not quite. They are "saying" what they want, not "doing" what they want. There is a difference, after all. They do not have money. They do not have resources. They do not have the industrial capacity to last more than a week or two under war conditions. They have no air defenses against Russia. They do not have unity of spirit. Their people are against war with Russia. If they do manage to send troops into Ukraine, those troops will be destroyed. And then what? Their people will rise up in masses and their economies will self-destruct.
Russia has complete escalation dominance. The Ukraine operation will go the way the Russians want it to go - it has thus far and will continue to be so.
They, the leaders of Europe, have started the biggest investement in armaments since the Cold War. Its doing.
They dont need money. They borrow.
And you should read carefully what I write:
” But I dont believe that the coalition of willing (unwilling for peace) ever will let Russia win over Ukraine. They rather burn down whole of Europe. And Russia is unable to muster the decisiveness it takes to win this War.” No word of Western Europe winning over Russia. So stop put opinions in my mouth.
When Western leaders speak of “economic war against Russia,” or “ruining Russia” by arming and supporting Ukraine, one wonders whether they are consciously preparing World War III, or trying to provide a new ending to World War II. Or will the two merge?
Define Russian decisiveness. Has Gerassimov talked to you over the weekend? It's mind boggling what misjudged military and political experts are out there. A. Martyanov is right, shut up if you do not know what war really means and what you are talking about.
Europe can never borrow the amount of money needed to build up their armaments industry to the level they want. For one thing they are already heavily in debt - France's credit rating has been recently reduced. Germany, France and the UK have onerous debt to GDP ratios. And indeed a significant part of their answer to this problem is to reduce social spending. You can imagine how popular that idea is to the already stretched financial status of the average bloke on the street. And they want to radically increase the size of their troop levels - also a dream as who in their right mind wants to join the military of a country that wants war with Russia? And they have a serous lack of the numbers of people trained up in STEM subjects to support such an effort. And these industries require huge and complex supplier networks that would have to be built out. And because they have committed energy suicide, the costs of doing all these things would be well beyond any European country's reach. Companies are leaving Europe - not entering Europe. And lastly, they have weak and ineffective leadership, so I question their political resolve to accomplish any of this.
Lastly, I don't believe I said anywhere that you believe that Western Europe can win over Russia. Correct me if I am wrong on that. Though I will say that your statement that the CoW will never let Russia win over Ukraine is most likely seriously flawed as Russia will win decisively regardless of the pressures placed by Europe, or even America for that matter. How they win and when they win is entirely in Russian hands, but the bottom line is that Russia will win. Where in the world you get that idea that they will not be able to muster the decisiveness needed is beyond me. You must be talking to Igor Strelkov and his followers (or are you one of them?...😉).
If the people start to interfere now seriously, we'll have blood in the streets because the 'public' has been sucessfully splintered and set up against each other, plus lacks any responsible leadership, since the left is weak.
Good point. Add to that the near impossibility of determining who's a fifth columnist. Leaders will take over a group only to sell it out to it's enemies. This will be common in any coming civil war. Some people love being sneaky and duplicitous. Review the litany of Ukro trolls throughout American social blogs. Many of them have sockpuppets.
@Mikey: dream on. UK has a non-functioning government, last month the Dutch gov't fell (3rd round of elections in 3 years) and although the non-elected heads of the EU pretend otherwise, it's brewing in many places. France's Yellow Vests are back on the streets. also see Germany's Wagenknecht's recent speech - https://tass.com/world/2016515
see, "we" really liked Putin's oil & gas, untill it was, very stupidly, decided (TQ Nord Stream) that we weren't receiving anymore. that was reckless, in many respects.
reaction to your previous remark that in Europe 'We have leaders doing what they want with no interference from the public.' this is not quite true, for there's social and political unrest in several EU member states, including taking place at grassroot level. peace out.
However, the Russian leadership do not want to make war on what they still consider their misguided brethren, just as they do not want to make war on the West but to be allowed to join it.
Humans are not rational animals but rationalizing animals.
As Franz Fanon put it: "Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief."
From my observation - for most humans, most of the time, the fastest and surest way to wind up dead or seriously disadvantaged has been at the hands of fellow humans. At the same time, "our group", whether by faith, family, tribe, regiment, whatever, are the people a human can trust to have his back.
Therefore, whatever else happens, whatever we have to do, believe absurdities, blindly follow barking insane leaders, parrot obvious lies to our detriment, do or suffer terrible things, but please whatever you do, please don't kick us out of the group!
What this also means is that when humans are presented with incontrovertible proof that the group narrative is wrong or that the group leaders are mad or charlatans or worse, rather than change leaders or change beliefs or change groups, most people, most of the time will instead double down. Witness the behavior of cultists.
This is "cognitive dissonance" and it is abundantly documented. As alluded to earlier, there are entire religions organized around the principle.
Cognitive dissonance is not limited to stupid people. In fact, the intelligent are at least as prone, perhaps because they are better at rationalizing. In fact, much so-called "knowledge work" is basically learning symbol manipulation in order to rationalize something.
I would have agreed before the Kursk incursion. But to me it seems like it can't, otherwise Ukraine would not be penetrating Russian defenses so frequently
Its also becoming increasingly clear that if Russia wants to survive, it must defeat Ukraine fast and with no mercy. There is nothing left of the "brotherly people" and so it needs to start acting like Israel in Gaza. There is no other way to win
lol. Anders Arseland warmongering comment on what Estonia would have done "respond with ballistic missiles". What a diseased parasite. These old establishment narrative spewing boomer golems need to be fed into the woodchipper of the front line. They've never known consequence, so it's easy to up the war ante when it's not their pathetic lives on the line. Imagining him pulling up his excrement riddled pants at the horror of being subjected to the meatgrinder as he awkwardly stumbles around with his ill fitting pack and firearm, whilst being urged to move before his stink is aerosolized onto others by artillery strike, has a pleasant thought to it.
It's always old men that know each other, let young man, that have no clue about the 'enemy' fight for 'god' and 'the country'. In peace time the young fellows would play soccer with each other, having a beer and chasing skirts - just money and 'geo' politics won't have that. To be used like that by your own politicians is worse than rape, it's a potential dead sentence for having done nothing wrong but been born and raised at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Young men are like crops to despots and monarchs. We see in history that when there was a bumper crop of young men in a country, then the despot would see how many and plan accordingly on how wide a war he'd wage.
IMHO the solution is simple: dilute power. Instead of only 100 senators, make it 500. Instead of 400+ representatives, make it 4,000. Build more congressional buildings if you have to. Dilute their power.
We've frozen the number of Congress because we revere the buildings too much, trying to stuff Congress all into one building when we've expanded as a nation 100x's since 1776: 3.5 million to 350 million.
Why feed ten times more parasites of politicians with no interest or conviction that suits the working class instead claiming the Senat and House for the people that get up at 6 in the morning and build/maintain the country every day?
I think it would be better for the US to return to its roots - a federation of independent states with limited central government to handle trade and commerce and provide for the defense of the country.
Why is that myth of 'limited government' still alive? The US government employs around 2 million people, since the 70's by an ever growing population, I'd call that efficiency.
Doesn't matter if it works. And what better way to distract from Epstein than a jolly little war?
Russia needs to warn Ukraine about its increasing attacks on its oil refineries.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-stepping-drone-attacks-russian-080000826.html
Look at the chart for August showing a dramatic increase in attacks on Russian oil refineries in this article.
Eventually, these attacks will start biting into the Russian economy especially if a big strike happens. "Gasoline shortages that first appeared in remote areas are now creeping closer to Moscow, with wholesale prices on the SPIMEX commodity exchange hitting successive records"
It doesn't have to warn Ukraine, Ukraine is the giant Ohka manned missile sent flying towards the Russian ship by the puppeteers much further west. Those need to be warned, as well as the other proxies providing the logistics.
I suspect that Ukraine, as a proxy nation to the US, is testing how far it can push before Russian retaliation strikes of some sort. So far, I don't know of any response.
All targeting and flight planning around Russia AD is done by the US
Yes.
The US does actual targeting, plus detailed war planning, from countries far beyond the theater of battle and faces no threat.
Meanwhile, Israel attacks a bunch of fat-ass Hamas politicians sitting in Qatar whose involvement in the fighting end of things is little more than cheering from the sidelines.
I smell Zionist bullshit.
Ma nishtana
Hasbara troll.
Incel troll
The US does everything. The Ukranians all left.
But did we not just learn that Trump is the 'good' guy and is playing at some elevated level of Warcraft?
I know Gisela.
It's baffling.
The Americans won't put boots on the ground, so all this theatre is just pointless.
The Russians will win militarily and win diplomatically because they're going to win militarily.
Russian retaliation is winning WW3 which they do every day at the expense of The Ukraine and the place fornerly known as Europe (Now the Fourth Reich).
Too bad Ukrainians gain nothing as the fake jew Jewdasses and dictator Zelig of Kiev sell the land and its resources. And the Fourth Reich is headed for the big flush to the broken down sewage treatment plant in Hell.
I love this metaphor!
The Ohka, the first agile maneuverable anti ship cruise missile, that included terminal guidance and evasive maneuvers! A marvel of Japanese 1940s engineering!! Only issue, you needed a pilot.
I agree with GM. This isn't the Ukrainians, so punishing them is a waste of time.
The expression "Tank farm" is an American name for refinery. Every major metropolitan area in the United States has a refinery area. Otherwise lots of dangerous gasoline tanker semis would have to be everywhere, hauling it from a few far off coastal refineries.
Detroit's refineries (tank farms) are on the south and east side. Denver's tank farms are on the north side. I believe NYC's are in Jersey. I could go on. The reason why they're called tank farms is most of a refinery complex is storage tanks. And they're spread so far apart that if one caught on fire, it's too far from the others to take them down too.
Unless you nuked the refinery, you'll get isolated damage.
One missile, one storage tank, from among dozens of storage tanks.
One hit from a cruise missile may take out redundant refinery piping and maybe one giant tank. All a refinery is is pipes and tanks. It's a bit more complicated, but essentially the equipment is very redundant.
Russia actually is responding to it, building more air defense units, at breakneck speed too. Unlike the US, Russia has millions of welders and steelworkers.
But it's nothing like Ukraine's infrastructure, deep into the pre-industrial age heading straight into the stone age.
No wonder Zelensky's team wants to relocate like locusts to relatively unscathed Lvov. Lvov has running water and lights full time. And Lvov's sewage system works. Huge sections of Kiev's sewage system doesn't work, for lack of pumps, spare parts, and the fact most Ukro technicians have become meat bricks on the Eastern front.
Yet gasoline prices hit new records as shortages keep rising.
Thanks for the detailed explanation, though. I see what you mean, R.Baker.
I smell Zelig on you. You probably also think that there is no genocide in Gaza and that Satanyahu did not have Charlie Kirk whacked.
Just one more sanctions bill and the Russian economy finally collapsed!!!!
Not according to Rosstat, SPIMEX, FAS and MinEnergo.
Yup,keep doubling down on "Russia is falling" narratives Natasha. Are you guys on Bankova a little shaky now that Mr. Kinzhal came a' callin' the other night? Cheer up, the war will be over soon.
Lvov works because the Ukie government is not located there. Isuspect they would suddenly develop problems if the government does indeed move there.
R. Baker
You have no idea what a refinery is or how the actual chemical engineering done at an oil refinery works. Storage tank farms aren't refineries, although refineries generally have an associated tank farm plus pipelines to distributed outlieing storage tank farms for refined liquids.
If the people launching these various attacks manage to hit the actual crude oil processing equipment, they will indeed stop throughput. From what is shown on video, they do seem to be going for storage tanks and their resulting photogenic large, showy fires, visible Ukrainian strategy seems to be "war as performance art".
So I'm wrong but, "oh yeah, you're right", lol. I repeat, "every metropolitan area has a refinery". That means they're redundant and one refinery put out of business, completely even, is easily repaired in weeks.
Plus I never claimed to be an engineer and did not comment on the engineering aspect. My explanation was a lay explanation for people to grasp easily.
You could easily. "add to" a discussion without "felling an opponent". This isn't Rumble.
R. Baker
You continue to use the word "refinery" where you are attempting to describe a "tank farm". "Every city" DOES NOT have a refinery, they are too expensive and unnecessary past point of crude oil delivery. Many mid sized or large cities DO have tank farms.
I've read several other low IQ comments you've made on this article- I'll stop commenting on whatever you post now, "arguing with a fool only shows that there are two of them".
To be fair to Baker, he's far from the only low IQ commenter here.
My comments are unfair to Ukro-bots wanting to make the argument that Ukraine has really hurt Russia. There, fixed it for you.
I'll take that adage to heart and stop arguing with a fool like you.
When I wrote "semis", to an American that means automatically truck. But "Cla Parker" did not know that, "Cla" suggests gasoline is hauled to Metro areas on "rails and trucks". That's because "Parker" is not American. Yet Parker knows all about gasoline transport in the United States. Lol.
Look at Cla Parker also use Cyrillic script (ukes understand it). Americans do not use Cyrillic.
These guys, the KFC Billy's and CIA Parkers, don't even realize how volatile gasoline is and cannot be hauled on rail. Oil can be railed around, but not normally gasoline. Try shaking a jerry can of gas up, they are the morons.
Whenever a truther is over a target, expect Stukas filled with Ukrainian pilots to dive bomb ya. As far as KFC Billy's remarks that he's "seen me around" and my remarks are "low IQ" (me:135 IQ), it shows their frustration about Ukraine losing the narrative shaping environment. Lol, :))
The amount of gasoline used by a metro area of a million or more in the United States would require an army of gasoline carrying semi trucks, each carrying only 3,000 gallons or less.
They are typically 40 to 45 foot trailers heavy with baffling inside. They're only used in and out of Metro areas. Not hauling gasoline from fairway refineries..
Gas is about 7 pounds a gallon and the liquid cargo of most gasoline tank trailers are limited to under 28,000 pounds, most are 20,000 lbs, therefore about 3,000 gallons a load.
At a relatively busy gas station, two deliveries a day will be needed. Multiply that by several hundred gas stations in every metro area.
And who the hell are "the Greens"? How ignorant is that? The United States doesn't have Green parties, Europe does.
The entire continental US has 132 refineries (+ or - a few). They are regional at best. Certainly not every metropolitan area. In fact, in the US refineries have been forced out of urban conglomerations by greens and others who don't want to live near or see industrial infrastructure.
I don't know what the situation is in Russia. Recent reports I read today say Russian refining capacity has been reduced by 300k barrels per day. Sounds like a lot, unless total refining capacity is something like 5 million barrels per day.
The proper solution is what is happening in Russia. Let prices rise. Improve defenses and learn to repair quickly.
"I repeat, "every metropolitan area has a refinery'"
It's great when morons double down.
You are the moron.
Condescending sure. Even nasty. But who's the one that won't admit they didn't know what a word means?
"Every major metropolitan area in the United States has a refinery area."
Tremendously ignorant statement
"Otherwise lots of dangerous gasoline tanker semis would have to be everywhere, hauling it from a few far off coastal refineries."
нефтепровод
газопровод
продуктопровод
And rail - and trucks
When I wrote "semis", to an American that means automatically truck. But "Cla Parker" did not know that, "Cla" suggests gasoline is hauled to Metro areas on "rails and trucks". That's because "Parker" is not American. Yet Parker knows all about gasoline transport in the United States. Lol.
Look at Cla Parker also use Cyrillic script (ukes understand it). Americans do not use Cyrillic.
These guys, the KFC Billy's and CIA Parkers, don't even realize how volatile gasoline is and cannot be hauled on rail. Oil can be railed around, but not normally gasoline. Try shaking a jerry can of gas up, morons.
Whenever a truther is over a target, expect Stukas filled with Ukrainian pilots to dive bomb ya. As far as KFC Billy's remarks that he's "seen me around" and my remarks are "low IQ"
(me:135 IQ), it shows frustration about Ukraine losing the narrative shaping environment. Lol, :))
The amount of gasoline used by a metro area of a million or more in the United States would require an army of gasoline carrying semi trucks, each carrying only 3,000 gallons or less.
They are typically 40 to 45 foot trailers heavy with baffling inside. Gas is about 7 pounds a gallon and the liquid cargo of most gasoline tank trailers are limited to under 28,000 pounds, most are 20,000 lbs, therefore about 3,000 gallons.
At a relatively busy gas station, two deliveries a day will be needed. Multiply that by several hundred gas stations in every metro area.
And who the hell are "the Greens"? How ignorant is that? The United States doesn't have Green parties, Europe does.
"Stop! Or we shall shout 'Stop!' again!"?
🥱 yahoo news. Russian economy in taters! Find more washing machines!
>As well as hits even farther north in Murmansk, which seem unlikely to have originated from Ukraine proper.
I don't think anything was hit in Murmansk, but drones indeed flew several times this week.
The more problematic situation is with Kazakhstan.
On Saturday a drone hit in Gubakha in Perm. Look that up if you don't know where it is -- it is one of those small industrial towns in the foothills of the Urals which form the really deep Russian industrial rear and which have been absolutely untouchable for 400 years. There were alarms for Sverdlovsk oblast at the same time too, for the first time in this war. Which is on the other side of the Urals...
There were alarms in Orenburg and several of the other regions in the vicinity. But nothing for the regions between Ukraine and the Urals in the previous several hours.
So clearly the drones came from Kazakhstan...
Same with the drone that hit the refinery in Bashkiria on Friday.
This after Lavrov a couple months ago said that they were working with the Kazakh government so that such episodes do not occur again. Who could have guessed that mere talking will have no effect...
We are at the edge. Let us pause, reflect, and as I, as an Orthodox Christian, let us pray. 🙏🏼
2 Corth 2:14-15 Let him lead us to triumph!
Let us watch and see. Godspeed. One and all.
Let us not count on a supreme being to do what was given to us with free will to do and that will take more than prayers, good man.
You are, without doubt, correct.
We have been endowed with free will and I honor you for pointing this out, dear brother.🙇🏼♀️
Personally, I advocate' for 'freedom from religion'.
Exactly, now lets drops some tactical nukes.
lol
A worm like you would say that. You really will inherit the Earth - but just 6 feet of it and then your slimy little worm gods will greet you.
A much cleverer 'chess player' than I imagined. Even if it is 'revenge'...let the games begin!
With the rise of Kazakh nationalism and Tokaev in power and his flirtations with the West (and he seems to be making the dream of Kazakhstan moving away from the cyrillic alphabet a reality as well), it seems that Kazakhstan may be the next flashpoint after Ukraine.
Some will say, "but Putler saved Tokaev in 2021 by introducing forces", dont forget that Putler also helped Armenia and Azerbaijan, and both of them now hate Russia.
With that said, it is simultaenously possible that the Kazakh government has given some safe haven to Ukrainian GUR groups to fly drones (and know about them), or they snuck in there themselves (I wouldn't count on the Kazakhs not knowing though).
It's actually quite possible Tokaev is not in full control and the drones are launched without his agreement (agreement and knowing about it are different things). Which is arguably an even worse situation than him being in on it, because then a simple regime change operation may not be sufficient.
Also, Kazakhstan is actually an absolute nightmare if you run through the details of a possible SMO.
Right now the biggest killer on the battlefield is drones. Which have made it so that open terrain is a death sentence because there is nowhere to hide. And Kazakhstan is open naked steppe. Now imagine if the Kazakhs have been well prepared with drones of all kinds by their new masters and Russia streams in with columns of armor and softer logistics vehicles from the north. What happens to those? It will be a turkey shoot. Airborne forces are a thing of the past too in the era of MANPADS, which the Kazakhs will certainly be supplied with plenty of too.
The one saving factor is that Kazakhstan has no direct border with NATO. But you need to secure the Caspian shore and do it quickly, otherwise you will have to deal with a third front in Azerbaijan too.
And still it might not be enough, because then there is the more general Central Asian factor. The moment you start an SMO in Kazakhstan, the Uzbeks, Tajiks and even the Kyrghiz will be up in arms too, and you might get a supply line from Pakistan through Afghanistan and then Uzbekistan. And it's the same trap as with Ukraine, but potentially much worse. Because Ukraine is a demographically depressed country, but Central Asia is not. Russia conquered it largely after the Crimean War, much of it without even a fight (e.g. Tajikistan), but it was easy back then because Russia was undergoing a demographic explosion while in Central Asia centuries of warfare and underdevelopment had left the region with just a handful of sizable cities along rivers and in oases, lots of scattered nomads, and a total population of low single-digit millions. Easy pickings.
Now Russia has 145M, however it is demographically depressed too, while Central Asia combined is some 70M, but when you account for how many fighting age males they have, they may actually have more of them than Russia. Plus the Muslims inside Russia, who are now willingly fighting against the Western shaitan will see a war against Muslims in Central Asia rather differently. You see how this goes in a very bad direction very quickly.
Very excellent angle I hadn't considered.
A few things that come to mind though - Kazakhstan, unlike Russia, does not have the same extensive experience with drone warfare and so will take some time to build it up. This will give Russia a window of opportunity with superior drone knowledge and expertise (no amount of artificial training will make up for real world experience). In addition, it is likely that Russia will not send armor columns until/if it establishes air dominance. It might simply conquer towns near the border to hold onto as it advances in the slow fashion it uses. It will also be harder for Putler (assuming its still Putler in power at that point), to justify not using missiles or bombing civilians or destroying infrastructure because they are a "brotherly people" simply because of the racial factor and the negative stereotypes many Russians hold towards Central Asians.
Regarding the demographics, you are right. The issue is that outside an explosion of terrorism in Russia's underbelly from Tajik/Uzbek Wahhabists, they won't be able to wage an effective war in the short term, simply because they lack the technological prowess and the military capabilities. That is if there is no preparation of the region ahead of time by hostile forces. And that is of course not accounting for Russia's muslim republics (plus expect a rise in terrorism when Kadyrov dies/steps down, I am not ceratain there is anyone as respected in Chechnya who would be able to hold all the clans in his fist as well).
There is also the China/Turkey question. How will China feel about Russia encroaching on its Central Asian investments? After all, China is becoming a dominant force in the region and might not take kindly to an invasion of Central Asia (Kazakhstan it may be okay with but definitely not Central Asia proper).
Turkey will also be there converting the region to a pan-Turkic worldview (that the region is striving towards anyway) supposing Russia invades.
>It will also be harder for Putler (assuming its still Putler in power at that point), to justify not using missiles or bombing civilians or destroying infrastructure because they are a "brotherly people" simply because of the racial factor and the negative stereotypes many Russians hold towards Central Asians.
In Kazakhstan it will be pretty difficult because there are still a few million Russian there. Not "brotherly people", actual Russians. Yes, it is not 80% ethnic Russian the way Ukraine is, but still. Especially the north is primarily Russian still to this day (and should never have been part of Kazakhstan to begin with, just as most of Ukraine should not have been part of Ukraine, but well, these are the consequences of Soviet idiocy). In fact in 1989 Kazakhstan was still minority Kazakh.
You get to overwhelmingly Kazakh-majority only in the south of the country, and in Alma Ata it is still 20% Russian.
Also, missiles won't do much unless they are nuclear, we have seen it in Ukraine. Cities are too large, missiles are too few and too expensive.
>How will China feel about Russia encroaching on its Central Asian investments?
Russia would be protecting Chinese investments. What happened to Chinese investments into trade routes with Europe? They got all blocked by the US with the Ukraine war. It would be the same with Central Asia.
Yes, China supported Afghanistan in the 1980s, which was absolutely idiotic if you think about the reasons why the USSR went in (which threatened China the same way), but back then they were still trying to lull the US into giving away their industrial basis so they had to cozy up to them. It's different now.
>Turkey will also be there converting the region to a pan-Turkic worldview (that the region is striving towards anyway) supposing Russia invades.
Yes, indeed.
Russia has a long series of wars ahead of it. Not necessarily in the order they will actually play out, but these are quite certain to come:
1) Ukraine
2) Finland
3) The Baltics
4) Poland (and at some point between 2 and 4, all of Europe)
5) Azerbaijan
6) Kazakhstan, and who knows, maybe further south
7) Turkey
8) China towards the end of the century.
And they will all be wars of annihilation, because the game has changed in a major way by technology.
If the FSB actually does its job this time (doubtful, but in the slight chance it does), that Russian majority in the North can be quite beneficial. At the moment, they are quite hostile to Russia despite being Russian. So if this stays (and they even begin adopting Kazakh as their identity and language), treating them as "Russians" would be stupid. That is, if Kazakhstan doesn't do anything stupid and start physically repressing Russians (seeing as how cucked Russians have become, they'd probably take it as they do in the Baltics and Ukraine), they will likely stay in the country or go abroad - god forbid returning to the "big, bad" Rashka
Missiles and bombs do a good job if they are used properly. They aren't being used properly in Ukraine - you have written about it extensively yourself (and I largely agree).
In the chance of war with Kazakhstan and by extension all of Central Asia, invasions of Tajikistan/Uzbekistan - assuming Russia doesn't pull a SMO and fight with its hands tied behind it back - Chinese investments will be harmed. And this time there will be no Kyrgystan/Kazakhstan to bypass embargoes (maybe through North Korea but that's low volume unless Russia increases investment in North Korea soon).
I suspect a war with NATO is brewing - as long as the war is put off longer and Active Measures are taken to weaken NATO internally (or preferably have it fall apart if Trump or Vance pull US out of NATO), war in Europe will largely be avoided if you don't account for the Balts (even then they may adopt a more conciliatory attitude if there is no NATO backing them).
Turkey? I can't see a war with Turkey happening while it is still under the auspices of NATO. Even if its not, Turkey is no longer the Ottoman Empire, and it would not be an easy nut to crack. Its quite a formidable opponent.
China by the end of the century? I do not see it yet - I do not buy the argument of Chinese revanchism in Siberia and it would be a foolish war to have - as Chinese arms and industry and science will be far ahead of the Russian ones, unless Russia suddenly returns to a Soviet style education system and changes socially to value science again.
>Turkey? I can't see a war with Turkey happening while it is still under the auspices of NATO. Even if its not, Turkey is no longer the Ottoman Empire, and it would not be an easy nut to crack. Its quite a formidable opponent.
I am well aware, but Turkey has ambitions on all of Central Asia and beyond -- Bashkiria, Altai, Yakutia, etc.
So the clash is inevitable.
Russia still has an overwhelming military advantage but that is thanks to having nukes and missiles. Otherwise it is 145M against 85M (but younger). Not a major mismatch. How long before Turkey gets its own nukes though?
This is why it was absolutely idiotic for Russia to build NPPs there, but the results of Putin's brilliant strategic thinking are on display around the Russian perimeter for all to see, so what is one more such act of brilliance?
>I do not buy the argument of Chinese revanchism in Siberia and it would be a foolish war to have - as Chinese arms and industry and science will be far ahead of the Russian ones, unless Russia suddenly returns to a Soviet style education system and changes socially to value science again.
It will not be Russia attacking China, and it will be precisely because China will be so far ahead under the current trajectories of development. They may get to the point of having an overwhelming military advantage while also being pressed by rising sea levels (they will have hundreds of millions displaced as a result), desertification, and the growing economy demanding more resources than Russia can supply without eliminating Russian internal consumption.
If Russia goes back to Soviet-style education and invests heavily into technology development and rides out all the confrontations I listed, it might be that the war with China will be avoided, then China will collapse for the reasons I mentioned, and Russia will be the last ones standing eventually. But there are a lot of wars to be fought to survive through it all, and if the nukes are not used, they will not survive through it all, because Russia just doesn't have the manpower anymore to fight endless ever escalating conventional wars.
You sound like part of the Mossad/CIA Retire.. I mean Retard Brigade. Your post may be copious bu they are stuffed mainly with shit.
GM
Or.......Russia sends in a few missiles and a few hundred drones one night, takes out all the crude oil pumping stations and puts Kazakhstan out of business for as long as they feel it is necessary to keep it up.
Or........just puts in whatever number of millions of dollars necessary to unleash all the conflicting ethnic, tribal, family conflicts in the Caucuses that are just waiting for the appropriate match selectively applied match to ignite chaos. All the leadership in the Caucuses know that when the going gets tough for them because of said conflicts, the Russians will get going, come in and deal with it before it gets out of hand as they always do. .
I do not see the need for (8). At present, China is both the best market and the best supplier for sanctioned Russia. For China, Russia is the key commodity supplier, making China essentially immune to blockades. As the end of the century nears, China will run hard into depopulation problems, which are starting already, and will gradually lose its prominence. At no point during this continuum will it confer any advantage on China to stir up a quarrel with Russia. It is primarily the ongoing depopulation that defuses this potential future conflict.
Exponential economic growth versus slow linear depopulation against a background of shrinking farmland and depleting resources
Which trend wins out?
Most of the world will run into population problems. China will still be between 500 to 800 million population and so relatively speaking it will be in a better position than most of the West.
In the West ethnic tensions will grow due to continued unfettered mass migration and cultural replacement. These problems will not be present in China, unless it pulls a Japan and starts importing Africans and Pakis
Eat your Kellogs Corn Flakes, flake.
Ah more childish, schoolyard insults. No arguments though
That said, Ukrainians are essentially Russians when it comes to technological and military skills. Is it the same with central Asians though? I remember talking to an American engineer who worked in Kazakhstan oil industry, who said all good engineers they have are Russian. Kazakhstan (and the other -stans) just do not gave that engineering school. People (asians) we met from those countries themselves say the same - after most ethnic Russians left that area post USSR collapse, they all turned into some kleptocratic dictatorships with no industry to speak of and half of their populations being migrant workers in Russia. An Uzbek worker we met in Russia on our trip there was extremely pro-Russian and anti-Western. Anecdotal, but can be reflection of general mindset. But drones and terror attacks from that area is clearly a major problem. Unfortunately for Russia, it has the opposite problem than most of the world - too much land and resources and too few people
Also, this was posted on one of the main Russian Telegram channels yesterday:
https://t.me/dva_majors/79397
The "Soft" Underbelly of Russia. Part 1
The rapid advance of Russian paratroopers in January 2022🇰🇿Kazakhstan prevented a revolution there. The Supreme Commander was guided by strategic interests, since before the start of the Central Military District, instability on the longest land border in the world created the preconditions for a second front.
At the same time, threats to Russia have evolved significantly over the past three years. From color revolutions along the border perimeter, the enemy has come to a permanent threat due to strikes deep into the country. In 2025, we are recording a direct attack on the "last argument of kings" - Russia's nuclear triad.
At first, drone strikes were consistently aimed at the air component - strategic missile carriers. In parallel, the SSBNs began to hang over the naval carriers of special warheads, creating a constant threat to the fleet.
Against this background, the expectation was also on the success of the ground forces, but the Ukrainian Armed Forces were unable to develop tactical successes. Of course, the possibility of implementing strategic offensive operations against Russia remains if the armies of European countries take part in this. If the forces oppose us🇵🇱Poland,🇩🇪Germany,🇫🇷France and🇬🇧England, then with the highest probability the answer can be nuclear . The Strategic Missile Forces are guided by the principle "after us, silence" . If drones help against ships, submarines and aircraft, then with silos nothing except a soldier's boot can guarantee defeat of nuclear weapons carriers.
Mine and ground complexes, headquarters, support facilities of missilemen are concentrated in Central Russia, in the Urals, and all the way to Omsk. Vast expanses of the country opposite the longest land border in the world.
Therefore, anti-Russian sentiments in Kazakhstan are not at all accidental. They have clear goals and directions. Far-reaching and dangerous in their adventurism. Does the leadership in Kazakhstan understand this? Of course.
And this is one of the factors in the possible transformation of the SVO into a conflict of greater intensity.
https://t.me/dva_majors/79398
The "soft" underbelly of Russia. Part 2.
In the spring of 2025, the parliament🇰🇿Kazakhstan has reviewed the law on territorial defense. In accordance with its provisions, 20 TRO brigades are being formed. The largest group of 8 brigades is being deployed on the border with Russia by the number of akimats bordering us. Additionally, stateless persons and foreigners are allowed to serve in the TRO.
The government of Kazakhstan has outlined a plan to completely abandon the purchase of basic food categories of goods abroad by 2028. This is called a matter of national security, since now more than 50% of some food categories come from the union state of Russia and Belarus. The State Reserve of Kazakhstan has planned to purchase about 1 billion tons of grain.
Since 2023, a course has been taken, with the active support of the Organization of Turkic States (supervised by🇹🇷Turkey), for the purchase of Turkish heavy weapons and their testing in the steppe climate.
In Kazakhstan, there is also a Turkish production facility for the assembly of Anka UAVs, which are assembled in the interests of Kazakhstan. In addition, an agreement on the transit of military cargo and personnel through each other's airspace has been worked out. This aspect plays with new colors given the presence of the Zangezur corridor under Turkey's wing, which is convenient to use for the transfer of cargo and military personnel from🇪🇺Europe through Transcaucasia, and then the Caspian Sea directly to Kazakhstan from the countries🚩NATO.
For the needs of communication of the population, including civil servants and the military, a single digital platform Aitu was created, which allows Kazakhstan to create its own information space.
In August 2025, terminals of the satellite group officially began operating on the territory of Kazakhstan🇺🇸"Starlink", which is designed to ensure uninterrupted communication, including for the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan and other security agencies.
Recent incidents with the flight of allegedly unknown UAVs into Russian territory from Kazakhstan resemble probing flights to determine the defense system in the border area.
Incompleteness of the demarcation of the Russian-Kazakh border⚡️plays with new colors considering the recognition of the same "Taliban" not as a terrorist organization. It is not difficult to guess that some former thugs will gladly pass on to their neighbors the experience of the "tachanka" war in the steppes at the first opportunity.
✨Thus, the situation in the Central Asian region requires Russia to promptly revise the system of protection of the elements of the nuclear triad, especially in the area of responsibility of the missile armies. The West is interested in a direct military clash with us only after the neutralization of the nuclear potential by foreign hands.
From what Two Majors writes, it looks like Kazakhstan itself is preparing for potential war - this only corroborates my suspicion and is another foreign policy failure by Putler.
So far, Putler has failed entirely in his foreign policy in his near abroad. He has lost almost every post-Soviet State with only Belarus still in the fold. And even with Belarus the situation is uncertain. Lukashenko has a history of promoting Belarussian nationalism through the Zmagars (even though lately he's chilled out a bit in this regard), but his son is an unknown factor. While the current Belarussian/Russian relationship is fueled by personal friendship between Luka and Putler, and the hope of Luka to become President of Russia - his son is an unknown quantity and may take a pro-Western position for Belarus. So unless Russia and Belarus unite soon, the future of the alliance remains uncertain.
The only positives of Putlers foreign policy has been 1) the return of Crimea 2) the alliance with the DPRK (reliable allies - Russia should have been allied with them since the 90s) 3) and good relationship with China (but that is not really Putlers doing but rather circumstances).
Yes, indeed.
It is quite astonishing to see Putin and Lavrov being praised for the great statesmen that they are when their track record is almost nothing but catastrophic failure that has not yet caused the destruction of the country only because the previous generations since the 1400s built it up so large.
I remember reading that Putler was good at home - he rebuilt the economy and rebuilt many cities but was a disaster at home. I also don't like that he represents Oligarch interests and denies the Soviet heritage. It is quite remarkable how former Communist Party functionaries denounced it and became Nationalist/capitalist to the core.
Hey! Tovariska GM, Who is Putler? You two, with this simpleton Africanus, are very disrespectful.
You two are butthurt because your evil world mafia clowns are unable to make any headway, trying to rob the remaining treasure of the planet.
You can speculate all you want, who to send up against the Russians to fight for your wicked desire, but this time, your kind will spectacularly fail. There will be no Nirvana for any of you, only eternal shame.
Agree. Describing Putin as ”Putler” is derogatory. And it makes me NOT reading the comment.
I call Putin "Putler" to mock the Ukrainians who use that term referring to Putin as literally "Hitler".
Would you please stop this childish "Putler" thing and write like an adult?
There is no such leader anywhere in the world.
I call Putin "Putler" to mock the Ukrainians who use that term referring to Putin as literally "Hitler".
Moron alert....... Unfortunately for you, the IQ of the average Simplicius reader is far above moron. Keep in mind, this isn't the audience you're used to.
PS. Being on the constant defensive is a losing proposition. The only way to win would be to start surrounding large Western countries with enemies - in the United States that would be to foment racial, political tensions, supply the Cartels (doesn't matter that they are Cartels - Russia needs to stop with the legality arguments) under the condition they increase the amount of terror in the United States (and then increase or decrease the faucet of supply of weapons depending on how much the US does). Repair its relationship with Cuba and potentially start arming it too and perhaps convince it to do raids on Miami and Florida coast.
For Europe - it is sufficient to stoke ethnic tensions in Britain and even increase violence by training some violent immigrants and sending some Wahabbis from Syria there. Same with France and Germany.
For all intents and purposes - resurrect the KGBs 5th and 6th directorate. Will it happen? Probaly not
All good points.
The first one being the key -- loss minimization as a strategy results in certain total defeat.
P.S. The USSR was doomed the moment it abandoned world revolution as the goal. Both Trotsky and Stalin were correct (and wrong) in their own ways on this issue too.
Your useless circle jerk speculations are ever so tiresome.
Send them to Michael Bay or Christopher Nolan and we'll wait for the book to come out.
Envy always ends in hate. Jews and AngloSaxons hate the New Europe - Russia - more than anyone and always have because they are truly inferior to Russians and full of envy and hate. They are about to freeze in radioactive dark soon so the Earth will rejoice once more.
Dude I am Russian. I think I know better what goes on in our region than some boomer from anglostan
Liberals are not Russian. I suspect you have other taints as well.
There are plenty of Russian liberals. Fortunately they have no power now, but who knows what happens in the future
Next, you will tell us how your perspective mirrors that of the typical Russian.
In many ways it does, especially amongst the Moscow/St Petersburg educated class
No Russian is vulgar enough to use the word “dude”. You are a dud and probably a liar too.
Блять, челик, ты меня реально заебал
X
About Kazakhstan:
1. Total population of the country? Russian percentage?
2. What is the main, practically the lone economic activity of the country?
3. Would you lose a moment and consider how gas and oil from Kazakhstan can reach the Western markets?
4. Drones are comparatively light, to very light equipment. The occasional lauch attack is
practically impossible to prevent. It also has a very limited effect.
5. Would all the stans unite in a move to become NATO tools in Central Asia? Possible, because human nature produces fools like gardens produce bad weeds. Probable? Not much.
6. Would it happen, China might feel threatened and the possible, and may be probable, answer would change all the character of the conflict.
>4. Drones are comparatively light, to very light equipment. The occasional lauch attack is practically impossible to prevent. It also has a very limited effect.
???
Small toy drones have stalemated the front for three years now
Do you have some difficulties in reading?
One thing is the mass use of drones and another the occasional attack like the ones you are talking about from Kazakhstan.
You are mixing up the two things.
The drones from Kazakhstan attacking the previously untouchable Russian rear are the problem to be solved.
Which likely can't be solved without physical control of Kazakhstan.
But physical control of Kazakhstan is no longer easy to establish, because of small drones, which Kazakhstan will be supplied with by the West, stalemating any front with no real solution in sight.
GM
You are correct. I can easily imagine the west flooding the Caucuses with massive numbers of cheap, easily managed weapons capable of disrupting the economies of advanced countries with virtually no effort or cost to the attackers. I mean what could go wrong? What are we waiting for? Let's do it?
Luis Gómez de Aranda
Would all the stans unite to do anything??!!?? The Fergana Valley decide to become a NATO ally??!!?? Your salient questions answer themselves.
It is easy for Anglo-Saxons to manipulate small groups inside Kazakhstan, and nothing more.
This is a good time for the US and Europe to pressure Turkey to return Northern Cyprus to Cyprus and evacuate their Turkish settlers back to Turkey. Then build an oil pipeline from Israel to Europe via Cyprus and Greece. This will help balance the power with Russia and right historically wrongs committed by Turkey.
This will allow oil from Iraq and the Mideast to flow through stable pro-EU countries bypassing Syria / Turkey / Ukraine.
I haven't decided if the Turks or Israelis are more duplicitous and loathsome. It's such a tight race between them.
It is no contest actually, the Turks are angels in comparison.
Presumably right angles given they are Turkish
Turks do not have a diaspora of crypto's for which lurk in the highest (and lowest) corridors of power, influence and decision making. Though Turkey was itself subject to crypto's (Dönmeh). Perhaps that is why the Ottoman empire fell. Hollowed out by subversion before the death blow of WW1.
The Turks are notorious for many genocides of minorities and enslaving non-Christians.
The total number of people killed in the recognized genocides (Armenian, Greek, Assyrian) and related conflicts/massacres (Hamidian, Dersim) committed by Ottoman/Turkish perpetrators is approximately:
• 2–3 million people (mid-range: ~2,025,000; range: 1.38–3.09 million).
Enslavements (1299–1922)
• Crimean–Nogai Raids (1500–1700): ~2,000,000 enslaved (range: 1–3 million)
• Barbary Slave Trade (1530–1780): ~1,000,000 enslaved (range: 1–1.25 million)
• Devshirme System (14th–18th centuries): ~500,000 enslaved (range: 200,000–1 million)
• Circassian/Caucasian Trade (18th–19th centuries): ~1,500,000 enslaved (range: 1–2 million)
• African Slave Trade (15th–19th centuries): ~3,000,000 enslaved (range: 2–4 million)
• Total Enslaved: ~12,500,000 (range: 10–15 million)
Don`t know where your figures are from. Serious historians (Braudel for example) estimate a figure of 12-17 million deported (and ofc enslaved) during the transatlantic african slave trade.
This is specific to Turkey.
They are, but they don't have an outright Nazi ideology inscribed in their holy books, and before they were infected by nationalism (which was a Western import) they were quite tolerant.
While those holy texts have called for genocide of everyone else for 2500 years.
That's a major difference
Would you care to elaborate?
People read the Old Testament with the "knowledge" that there was always going to be a New Testament after it and that it is the Christian Bible.
Nobody reads it as is, literally, and removing all that Jesus stuff from their minds.
Nobody except a certain group of people, that is.
Now try to read it literally, for what it actually says, working very hard to remember that you are not one of the Chosen People despite perhaps being a Christian. You will be absolutely horrified, it is worse than anything Hitler ever wrote or tried to do.
@Stentorian
Israelis and Turks are in a dead heat for 2nd and 3rd place, the British are still winning the race.
Yes, but the British have done the world the courtesy of abolishing themselves. In 20 years, they will be a menace of the past, not present.
Apparently Simplicius isn't going to do anything about the Resident Alien crowd such as yourself -
IMHO, it'll never happen. If anything Turkey is looking at the rest of Cyprus with hungry eyes.
It currently serves as a sword of Damocles that Turkey dangles over the rest of NATO's head. "Give us what we want or we'll invade the rest of Cyprus"..
It's why the UK keeps a tripwire AFB there, to remind Turkey.
Most extraordinary comment! Your lack of realism is astonishing.
What would the Turkish reaction be to that kind of pressure?
Closing all US bases in the country to start with.
Then pipelines from Israel, to transport what exactly?
So losing a war in Ukraine is a convenient time to pressure Turkiye? What's to stop the Turks from calling your bluff and orientating to the East?
Not sure Turkiye needs the West any more.
The West has many pressure points over the Turkish leadership.
>Trump Finally Outwits Europe and the Neocons on Ukraine?
Stop it, please.
I understand very well why you, The Duran, and many others feel the need to stick to the charade of Trump the rebel who valiantly resists the neocons -- it comes down to the simple fact that the MAGA zombies form the major component of the income stream of most of right-leaning Western "alternative media", and if you tell them that Trump is not resisting any neocons, but is a neocon himself, and the ugliest and most rabid of them all so far, then they are more likely to abandon you than to accept that truth.
But that doesn't change the objective facts. Such as:
1) Did Trump gloat publicly on social media about the sneak attack on Iran? Oh, yes, he did.
2) Did he then continue with the most aggressive and blatantly violent foreign policy the world has ever seen from the US and from any other country not named Israel since Germany and Japan in the 1930s and 1940s? Yes, he did. Against Iran, now Venezuela, etc.
3) Was Russian strategic aviation attacked on June 1st? Which could not have happened without the CIA being in on it, likely orchestrating it? Yes, it was, and it was after Trump passive aggressively threatened on social media about "very bad things" happening to Russia.
4) Did the US just approve sending 3,500 short to medium-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, with no restrictions on targeting, i.e. something much more aggressive than what Biden did? Yes, that happened too.
5) Engels airbase was bombed in March under Trump too.
And many other such events, plus the general factor that no other president has given such a blank check to Israel, not even the previous one, nor done it so openly and blatantly.
So how can anyone in their mind or with serious commitment to objective reporting continue with the "Trump is not a neocon" narrative? Well, see above...
Thank you for providing an illustration/proof of what I was referring to.
Presumably that is some kind of “come back” in the humourless small mental cage you inhabit.
What is with the childish insults of the commentators here? I exepected a higher level of discourse, but it seems that most users resort to school yard insults.
It’s in response to the infantile rants, which are very rare here , unfortunately there are persistent “exceptions”. Not sure the plural in that sentence is necessary either.
Hussein Hopper. You don't have to agree with him, but may be best to ignore him or contradict his arguments?
Just see who has posted and skip the post if it pisses you off mate. Personally I'm warming to GM 's less outlandish opinions.
You are not the Thought Police. You are doing EXACTLY what you no doubt complain about in countries like the US, UK, namely shutting down voices you don't like. You then claim that your childish rant is 'he did it first'. If you are so concerned with the level of discourse here it seems you could adjust it upwardly by keeping quiet.
Sometimes it’s the only way to deflate pomposity. Reasoning is a waste of time in such cases.
As my grandmother used to say to me as a child when I came up with some pompous rot : “if you’re so smart , grease your backside and slide into the next world”
You are less than convincing. Reply to his arguments, defeat them one by one.
Stop being pompous.
Goofy is coming to the rescue of Mickey... If you only have this channel, you should order popcorn. Otherwise, better to zap.
I agree with you for the second time this year! The idea that Trump is outwitting anyone is ludicrous. The europeans thought they could push the US to impose sanctions especially on China and then buy in stuff themselves they could just flog on to the US at a vast mark up- a bit like the US intends to do to europe viz oil and gas originating in Russia. Trump was never going to fall for that.
Meanwhile Russia continues to win this war despite all the yobbery at the fringe.
All Trump haters assume he is dumb. Well have you actually looked at the Euro cucks he is engaging with in this case?
Dumb is a relative concept, evident even in this refined intellectual space.
"Dumb is a relative concept..."
Such a true remark in the context of Trump and "the Euro cucks".
(However, maybe not so applicable to some parts of the UK deep state.)
Jasmine Crockett UNSEALS Trump’s 1970 IQ Wharton Aptitude Test — Genius? Think Again. YouTube. Published online September 7, 2025. Accessed September 15, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbLJ2amswy8
Readers should note that there is no such thing as an IQ Wharton Aptitude Test. Nor has there ever been. The first clue is in the title of the supposed document. I.Q. and aptitude are different things and no academic institution would try to conflate them.
At any rate, Wharton does not utilize any kind of test that would qualify as something that the document is supposed to represent. They use standard university type application material as well as demonstrated past performance coupled with interviews.
Thanks to his family background, Trump had plenty of past business performance to point to. Plus, leaving the public showboating aside, he is famous for his ability to convince in personal conversation.
Trump scored an 'overall 38 percentile of test takers', wow, that much.
I did actually wonder if I should not have been more subtle when I was writing my comment ... as in- the idea that Tump can outwit anyone BEYOND fellow inmates in the western asylum- is what is ludicrous. Dumb versus dumber in a great back and forth. You are quite right.
Well, he did win election to the Presidency twice. He definitely outwitted the Democrats. Not much of an achievement to point to but it is undeniably there.
He has changed the entire narrative of government much to the annoyance of those who are outwitted by him in that endeavor .
But to what end, Ron? That is the question as we watch what unfolds all over the globe. I am not sure what sort of gong you want to give him. He has his eye on the Nobel Peace Prize, Or is that the Nobel 'Piss' Prize as Zelenskiiy would say? It is difficult to sustain this conversation as a serious one. I hope you feel my pain.
Jullianne, the real war Trump is fighting is against the EU and the British Crown. When you understand that, a lot of Trump's behavior seems a lot more focused and rational.
Trump views Russia and China as legitimate rivals. He views the EU as lunatic clowns, and the British Ruling Elite (the Crown) as pure existential evil. The former is an easy opponent, the latter is profoundly dangerous. Both of them are in a corner right now, and seem to believe their only real recourse is to knock over the game board by starting WW3.
Right now, Trump is working behind the scenes with Russia and China to erase the EU and the Crown from the playing field, at which point Russia, China, and America can negotiate the power boundaries between them, and figure out a way to peacefully coexist.
This is Tom Luongo's thesis, and I think he's right. You should spend some time getting up to speed with Tom Luongo. He's all over YouTube, you won't have a tough time finding him.
He didn't outwit the Democrats. The Democrats have only 2 purposes, preventing the rise of any left-wing politics, and lining their own pockets. (They receive far more donations when they're not in the White House)
But ranting when something doesn't fit into your worldview, which is truth, and you have no arguments against it.
Typical of what suits the Left and the Greens, if they don't have any arguments, they resort to the Nazi cudgel, and in Europe at least, that's always the Nazi cudgel...
In your case, it's supposedly your valuable time, which you can waste replying to other comments to justify them...instead of immediately rebutting arguments you don't have.
A Trump is a clown who only pretends to wage war through the back door.
Why?
Because a Trump would mean that the USA would be vastly inferior to the Russians, a Trump would act openly.
The only way out would then be nuclear weapons...although in this regard, too, the USA has missed everything that could be missed. They almost let their ancient intercontinental missiles rot away.
And...that's precisely why the USA is left with nothing but the wrong game to play with a Trump. And the cry at every opportunity: "We didn't do it." If Putin retaliates, then please target Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, London... PLEASE not Boston or New York, because WE COULDN'T EVEN INTERCEPT YOUR MISSILES.
That's why he has to duck Putin, or tell the Americans a truth that would break his neck, hence the false play with Iran, with Doha, with Russia. Let others die.
If you have the USA as a friend... you don't need enemies!
At the moment, you have enough problems and technological standstill in your own country.
Where are your arguments...
Arguments?
How about Ukraine is Rome leaving Britain.
A sign of unlimited power. No?
Speaking of dumb. It was a nauseous picture of Rubio planting his suction lips on the Israeli Blarney Stone.
A view of an American Secretary of State kissing Netanyahoo's private parts in public is another wooden stake driven through the dusty heart of the American Empire. Following in the footsteps of kept-man Trump, Rubio confirms the leash held tightly around his neck, under the shadow of the photos of American Politicians doing things a Priest cringes upon hearing.
And I am reading FBI's purported Director Kash Patel, has a 22 year-old Israeli girlfriend, not Mossad, not a spy, definitely not reporting to Israel. Who writes this script.
Charlie shot in the throat, definitely another very, very, very lucky loner who single handedly lined up 100 cats and marched them in formation to the intended final seconds. Sure. And the check's in the mail.
More Lies Please.
Israeli Blarney Stone - very good!
I criticize Trump constantly for caving to the warmongers, but in this case, as Simplicius explains, he came up with a way to excuse why he isn't imposing the sanctions. Things aren't all black or white.
Because Trump wants specific war not general endless war. What gets me is when did Simp start praising Trump? For weeks Trump was a foreign policy idiot. Now?
Exactly! There’s a large western audience (and unfortunately not only in Gringostan) of deluded so-called right wing or conservative people that strongly believe in the Orange Messiah role as a white knight fighting the combined forces of Evil, Woke, Soros, the pedo-Democrats, the Luciferian central banking Euro elites, the tax man, dyed-hair punks, bad weather, godless communism, and any other real or imagined grievance they might have.
A cult that loves their commentators explaining them about the latest Trump 5D strateregy.
I criticize Trump all the time for failing. But in this issue with the sanctions it is as Simplicius explains. Simplicius also criticizes him for caving to the warmongers, but can also note when he doesn't.
You've been a long time member here, and I have watched your "radicalization" over time. Most know I'm very permissive on free speech here but you're starting to come dangerously close to making implied accusations of a type that will not be tolerated. Careful where you tread, you wouldn't want your own "income stream" to dry up after losing access to your most lucrative provocateuring forum.
Actually on this issue I have been consistent for years, there has been no "radicalization" -- the truth of the matter became apparent in mid-2022 already. It's just that it rarely came up so forcefully as with this post coming at this time
No ill feelings to you in particular, others are much more to blame
Your opinion is interesting, GM, but "Stop it, please" sounds like you are reprimanding a child... It's infuriating.
Unfortunately, too often that does seem to be the level of discourse in comments originating from the US: childish reasoning and puerile insults.
I disagree, it sounds pretty polite to me. He could have told Simp to STFU.
Yeah, I read this as GM gently yanking Simp's chain a little.
Looks like he ended up getting bit.
You have been consistent for sure, GM. The only thing that makes me wonder: why is it that always only a selected few are able to see god and talk to him. And why they're developing a fanatic passion for what they have convinced themself to be true? So we know now: From Putin over Gerassimov down all are traitors and best buddies with the grand D.J. Trump and his puppeteers. The only thing that can things straighten out are a few nukes. Thanks, for the deep insight in the matter.
This would have been a better response from Simp. :)
You consistently claim that Russia is losing because Putin is a traitor, and that Russia can only win by nuking the West. This is the extent of your "analysis" and it appears that your only purpose is to come here and crap on this blog.
No, I go much deeper than this simplistic summary.
But if we are to be simplistic:
Is Russia losing? Yes.
Can it win and restore deterrence without nuking whole countries? No, at this point it cannot.
Who is to blame for all this? One person in particular.
What does that mean about that person? That he is either a traitor or an imbecile, no other options left.
Claims you have no evidence for.
What "evidence" will exactly convince you of the validity of the above statements?
Did Moscow control all of Ukraine in 1991? Yes. Was the bulk of Ukraine Russophonic and Russophilic as recently as 2010 or so? Yes. What is the current situation? We know what it is. Is that a win or a loss?
Repeat that exercise with the whole post-Soviet space, with the expansion of NATO, etc.
Can deterrence be restored without nuking somebody? Analyze the current situation and work through the decision tree.
Right now NATO is launching hundreds of drones (and some missiles) daily all the way to the Urals through Ukraine, and there is no reaction to it from Russia. Not even against the proxies in Ukraine -- the military and political leadership are still untouchable. So what is to make them stop? Nothing. Russia has been striking military and industrial targets. However, that does not enforce deterrence.
But NATO has also been launching drones from Finland, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and the Baltics, we are quite certain of it, and they also directly sunk Russian commercial ships way out of theater, and what was the reaction from the Kremlin? Mostly pretending it is not even happening, let alone a kinetic response.
So right now everyone can fire at Russia at will, and there will be no reaction.
And yet just four years ago that was unthinkable, everyone thought that whoever dares do it would be immediately annihilated.
Is that a win? Do we even need to ask the question?
Now let's work out how to re-establish deterrence. And we do not mean nuclear deterrence, but conventional. Because that has to be the goal -- you don't want to be in a situation where conventional munitions are flying at you every day, because that is how you eventually get exhausted and collapse. You want to return to the situation in which nobody eveer dares fire at you even conventionally.
How will that work out? Let's say the Kremlin finds the courage to call out Finland for the drones launched at Murmansk. What follows?
1) If it is just a verbal reprimand, the launches will continue, because no price has been paid for it, thus why not? That is exactly what happened with Kazakhstan -- Lavrov mentioned it publicly, the launches continued.
2) If Russia declares war and starts lobbing conventional missiles at Finland, it will be just like Ukraine now -- Finland will start launching missiles and drones back at St. Petersburg, Murmansk, and much deeper, on the ground there will be a drone-imposed stalemate (that terrain was already near-impossible to traverse back in 1939-1940 long before drones), and you have another endless war. Which will likely expand, with Poland, the Baltics, Norway, etc. joining.
3) You nuke Finland's military installations, but that does not solve the problem either, because as we have seen in Ukraine, the cities are where the military hides the best, plus if you just do that, then Finland will cry to high heaven for nuclear retaliation on Russia under Article 5 until the end of times, and will put the US in a tough situation where it will either have to launch strikes on Russia or NATO will fall apart.
4) But if you nuke all cities above 10,000 in Finland, then move in with ground forces and exterminate all the survivors with small arms, then annex the territory, there is no Finland anymore and no endless war. And nobody else will ever dare fire anything back or join any other wars against you.
Do you see another way out other than the last option?
There is none left.
There was the option of conventional strikes on political leadership and the economic oligarchy as a deterrent reenforcement once upon a time, but that ship has sailed a long time ago in terms of the loss of deterrence, and only truly drastic action can restore it.
Note that those of us who are calling for nuclear strikes now were calling for conventional strikes of precisely that kind back in 2022, and that was precisely because we knew that if the conventional strikes are not carried out now, then later on the only option left will be to start erasing countries off the map. The Kremlin sat on its hands instead, so here we are today...
No, we human beings do not have a choice between 2 dystopias - 1984 or Brave New World. We have other options, even a workable new paradigm based on understanding, not power and violence.
But someone who is neck deep in academia and its mandatory nihilism and materialism worldview is usually not capable of comprehending "human dignity" and humanity's spiritual evolution.
Your repeated use of the word "gringo" (are you a "spic"?) may get you some woke points in the Social Sciences department, and you are very clever and smart, but not necessarily full spectrum intelligent.
You are a Machiavelli, not a Dostoevsky.
Worried about losing your soap box are we.
Pretty rich that pointing out the damages, killings, crimes, and imperialistic nonsense committed by Trump in the last year constitutes "radicalization". Why is it not "radical" when you have pointed out the very same things done by Biden, and interpreted his policies as wholly damaging and monstrous? But Trump gets endless benefit of the doubt and constant attempts to exonerate and seperate him from his own actions. It seems to me that GM is being much more consistent in his views and hardly "radical" at all, versus, for a completely random example, someone who lets ideological love for Trump cloud their thinking...
Try understanding reading, use your brain. Where is the author defending Trump or separate him from it's own actions? He leaves the reader room to interpret, to analyze for himself, not to dictate a geopolitical bible or fixing too much on persona's. Trump is an actor in the game, so the author has to try to keep a dialectic view, all other would be indoctrination or propaganda, as I see it.
Oh dear its another yank binary thought paradigm exponent.
Say Trump did something good must mean you are a Trump supporter and anti democrat. There are other ways of thinking other than good/bad, democrat/republican.
Give it a go mate.
Right, so because I believe in consistency i.e. I believe both Biden, Trump, and all other presidents were genocidal Zionist maniacs means I'm a Democrat... looks like you're the one living in the yank binary thought paradigm exponent (put down the thesaurus) bud.
Quick experiment: go back to the Biden era and see if you can find any Simplicius articles praising Biden for "outsmarting" Europe, or insinuating that he's working against some other evil force in his own government. Oh wait that framing is only ever given for Trump, I wonder why hmm 🤔 truly a mystery.
Agree, didn’t get where you were coming from from
Love him or loathe him, consistency is not a word that should ever be applied to Trump. Since he is always all over the map sometimes he gets things right. I certainly wouldn't count on it, but it happens. As to finding an article that is 'praising Biden for "outsmarting" Europe' just try to find a single example where Biden did indeed outsmart Europe -- and certainly not in the last few years where he couldn't even read a teleprompter properly.
You have a very strange and sad idea of "getting things right" if your best examples include tweets, but still sending aid to Ukraine, maintaining Biden's sanctions, and failing all around to achieve peace or understanding anywhere.
Amen to that. Rants/lectures are not comments.
They are comments though. Just comments you don't like.
It is a strange place, today, this board. Tiny little soap boxes going up everywhere in an undignified scramble for some moral high ground. Maybe it is a Trump effect like Alex's idea of the Zelenskiiy curse. Some one should just call fainites, and let's start again with our grown up masks glued back on.
( I do not mean this to apply to you, John, who have been doing a manful job of trying to put a lid on this. And Simplicius's comment directly to GM was an absolute gem in the dirt.
But ranting when something doesn't fit into your worldview, which is truth, and you have no arguments against it.
Typical of what suits the Left and the Greens, if they don't have any arguments, they resort to the Nazi cudgel, and in Europe at least, that's always the Nazi cudgel...
In your case, it's supposedly your valuable time, which you can waste replying to other comments to justify them...instead of immediately rebutting arguments you don't have.
A Trump is a clown who only pretends to wage war through the back door.
Why?
Because a Trump would mean that the USA would be vastly inferior to the Russians, a Trump would act openly.
The only way out would then be nuclear weapons...although in this regard, too, the USA has missed everything that could be missed. They almost let their ancient intercontinental missiles rot away.
And...that's precisely why the USA is left with nothing but the wrong game to play with a Trump. And the cry at every opportunity: "We didn't do it." If Putin retaliates, then please target Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, London... PLEASE not Boston or New York, because WE COULDN'T EVEN INTERCEPT YOUR MISSILES.
That's why he has to duck Putin, or tell the Americans a truth that would break his neck, hence the false play with Iran, with Doha, with Russia. Let others die.
If you have the USA as a friend... you don't need enemies!
At the moment, you have enough problems and technological standstill in your own country.
Where are your arguments...
While it is your decision whom to allow to post, is there any possibility to install an ignore function, on nicks and threads following? This flooding, trolling, and derailing makes the comment section unreadable.
Just ban this troll already. The comments sections in this blog are unreadable and only for one reason. He's here, he goads a bunch of people into replying and arguing with him, and he posts about 100 times per blog entry. Enough. This is not his substack page, it's supposed to be yours.
It’s not that simple man
Duran, Simplicius etc are highly critical of Trump. There is no belief that he is on the side of good, though perhaps in the early days there was granting of leeway of a returned President getting to grips with his return. Illusions that Trump is 'our guy' have long been shattered and this is reverberating through his base. There are the false (pay-triot) types who are either incredulous fools or in the pay of Israel. These are the ones whose role is to steer narrative, but their credibility is cratering. A paytriot influencer with American flag hat with a 'don't tread on me' flag in the background as props is wearing thin with a people that are seeing through the deceit or beginning too.
MAGA is not a monobloc of unified zombies as you believe. Many MAGA types resisted and opposed Trump's Warpspeed. They also are largely resistant to notions of going to war with Iran on Bibi's behalf or being involved with war in Ukraine. Zero interest in their tax dollars going to foreign aid including Israel, while their cities are in various stages of societal and economic collapse. Where are the mass deportations of illegals as promised? Trump's dodging of the Epstein files is a massive red flag among his base. MAGA will be soon without its figurehead. The people and their sentiment on a great many issues remains but Trump is losing his base daily. There is no ability for Trump to course correct. He is surrounded by agents of a foreign nation that work within his administration (no different from previous admins of course).
MAGA are the remnants of an America its stooge golem elites want gone. The 'boorish', independence oriented, aspirational masculine patriot type that still feels connected to its people, past and culture is a threat to globohomo controllable 'interchangeable economic units' future intended for that country and for the rests of us.
I'm agnostic on Trump, have no horse in the race. I report facts. If/when Trump does something positive, I praise him. When he doesn't, I criticize him. It's really that simple.
Trump is an education. He plays to the room he finds himself in. When it's a mixed crowd they both get a bon bon.
In the end he may soften the crash landing. To think a president, any president will save us, is a big part of the problem. We got fat and lazy. Addicted and dependent. Entitled and predictable. Without a device, are we smart?
"As always, there is nothing left for the Europeans beyond mindless escalation and wheeling their shopworn countries into the abyss."
These are the compact quips that prove Simplicius is second to none.
"Good cannot come from evil, just as a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit."
Good and evil are often in the eye of the beholder.
Says the devil himself. Good and Evil, Truth and Lie are objective realities. Only the suggestible, the gullible, the profiteers, the manipulators and the wicked say otherwise. As an observation it is consistent that those who “like” Trump, who defend him, who believe him, do so because in their character, they are like him.
The thing to keep in mind is that Ukraine is only one item on Trump's plate and not the most important one. Remember that America is an oligarchy, and all those politicians are paid for by people with interests. Trump has to work with people like Lindsay Graham, for example, on domestic issues, and needs their support Throwing them rhetorical bones to chew on, while not actually doing very much to support their positions, is actually pretty good politics from Trump.
I don't care for the man and his constant hyperbole and blather, but he can be an astute politician when he is not putting his foot in his mouth, and he is not the worst imaginable leader of the U.S. for anyone with pro-Russian sympathies (such as myself).
Just as the West is foolish to wish ill on Putin (because Putin is as pro-Western as Russians get), Russia would be foolish to wish too much ill on Trump. While certainly not ideal by any measure, he is the only current leader with whom there might be a path forward that does not lead to WWIII.
Because Trump is all over the place he doesn't present his enemies with one target to aim at. He confuses the hell out of them. He is certainly a bullshit artist, so that may in fact be intentional. Or as one meme I saw put it, "How can *you* know what I'm doing if *I* don't know what I'm doing?"
Here is The Duran making excuses for Trump very recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8-Xpvqpa6k&ab_channel=TheDuran
Both Alex's (Duran) critical of Trump though as he's stumbled through his multiple gaffe's. I don't see them as believing in Trump as 'the rebel'. They were incredibly skeptical (almost despairing) of his appointees such as Hegseth and Kellogg for example. Early on, they did give Trump leeway and the benefit of the doubt. That turned to incredulity at his self-defeating proclamations and maneuvers. Now and then Duran oscillate back towards benefit of the doubt, which is a chink in their analysis but overall they are not looking at Trump as a savior or rebel as you claim.
Nuance is a thing. Being complimentary /or agreeing with a position, does not mean agreeing with the person themselves.
The only reason the Duran began expressing faux criticism of Trump was to keep their subscribers from bolting not because they became apostates.
dream on
Correct, it became too absurd at some point
But you will still hear practically nothing about the genocide in Gaza from them unless their guests bring it up.
The Duran is very forgiving of Trump on the basis of "the enemy of my enemy".
The beardy one who laughs at his own jokes especially. He really wants Trump to be more than he is.
I think most of his supporters want Trump to be more than he is. They are stuck with this edition, though.
Alex Mercouris has been criticizing Trump for years in his videos. He does it by factually explaining what Trump is doing and then what he believes the real consequences of that action will be. For example, why Trump's attempts to use sanctions against Russia will fail. Or why Trump's claim that he could end the war in one day through pressure wouldn't work as the pressures Trump mentioned had already been tried. Alex doesn't have to do name calling and condemnations for it to be criticism.
The Duran is fantastic geopolitical commentary channel. I don't expect any commentator to be right 100% of the time, nor do I expect to agree with their views 100% of the time. However the Duran, in general, is spot on the mark.
Yes, I am one of those who was perfectly fine with being called "America First". I voted for Trump, not believing he was a "savior" of any kind. In the U.S. If you are going to waste your time voting you have 2 choices and Trump was the better choice by a long long way. Myself and the Americans that I talk politics with, only a small community of people, the same people that made a pact to defend our community from all the garbage the globalists are pushing, none of us are blind followers of anybody, least of all a politician. "we" are all critical of everything Trump has done concerning foreign policy, it is awful to have to watch it. On some domestic issues he is much better than anyone else has been for decades. "This" is how most real Americans feel, not the accounts who are being paid to divide, which is what "---" like GM think represents real people
Q. What is a 'real' American?
A. One who thinks like me.
What's a real Irishman, Eoin? What makes you distinctly Irish? Your country is globalist controlled slop now. They're calling imported Africans, Irish. lol. By that standard, anyone who sets foot in Ireland can call themselves Irish. There's your absurdity. Your history, genealogy, customs and values mean nothing in the globalist paradigm.
Q. What is a real Irishman?
A. He doesn't know. Whatever his media, politicians and institution's tell him is Irish.
You're being Balkanized. You're being enriched with people that view you as oppressors. Enjoy your barber shops, kebabs and tobacco shops whilst your woman and girls are groped, harassed and raped.
What's worse, it is all supported by the political wing of the IRA Sein Féin.
To be a "real" American (in my opinion) you must have core beliefs and principles, so in that sense your little snide Q n A is correct. My friends have many differing ideas on how things should be accomplished but we all believe there is a man and a woman and you can't "think" yourself into the other, men will not play women sports. You can believe in any Religion or God you want as long as you do not try to force those beliefs onto another person or community. A real American believes in free speech, especially speech you disagree with as long as it is not a public call for violence. The point I made by Real American referred to Social Media which both political parties in the U.S. have literal armies of paid "influencers" which gives most Europeans a very skewed view of the population. I believe we barely have half of the population who votes or cares at all about politics and this makes Europeans the most upset. Americans just do not care about Europe.
Very well put, and especially true about Americans not caring about Europe. I've mentioned this before (though I doubt anyone remembers my small contributions) but I spent a year in graduate school at a university in Canada. I was amazed at how closely everyone seemed to follow events in Europe -- and how that differed from what I saw in my undergrad years in the US.
Superb comment. You either choose to vote or you abstain from the game. I choose to vote and I voted for Trump because the alternative would just have been horrific beyond intelligent belief. I also hoped / wished / prayed that Trump would get us out of this Ukraine war, provoked by the West, and at least stop the acceleration of the National Debt in the USA. I was widely optimistic, bordering on the naive, on those two fronts. Alas reality came crashing home in his first 100 days, but thats politics. A crunch is coming, so be it.
You nailed it there, bud. The last par above all.
GM
I look at the sites you mention on a regular basis. They are anything but overall supportive of Trump or even feel he is free of any neocon influence. They all agree to at least some extent that Trump is mostly ineffective at ending the war or fighting it and that is the result of both his disposition and the political constraints imposed on him.
Case in point.....the three thousand missiles supposedly being sent to Ukraine. They exist only as prototypes. It will take a couple of years of concentrated effort to produce them in numbers. They are air launched with a range about three hundred miles. Since the NATO air assets can't safely get within a hundred miles of the Russian anti air, the missiles have a range of about two hundred miles into Russian territory. They are less capable than missiles already available to the Ukrainians but considerably cheaper to produce (supposedly) as a result of that more limited capability. Therefore they can be used as intended which is in a swarm attack.
Trump manifestly does not want to be involved in the Ukraine war. However, his dithering and thoughtless posturing have got him into a box. He absolutely does not want a catastrophic, public failure in pulling out as Biden had with Afghanistan. His own ego wouldn't let Ukraine go when he first took office while it was still Biden's war and subsequent outcome. Now his fingerprints are all over the Ukraine project preventing him from forgetting about it and move on to the domestic issues he really cares about.
Without disagreeing with your overall thrust, one extra point: those long range missiles are also air-launched! :'D
How much of an airforce does Ukr have left to launch enough missiles to make a swarm?
Some retiring American general will be happy to get on the board of the developer and push for the missile's production for export to Ukraine. And another retiring American general or one already positioned on the board of another company will point out that the U.S. must then provide the requisite air assets which they happen to have in inventory to be dispatched to Ukraine to facilitate the operation.
Ukraine/NATO has been flying several sorties every day all the way to the Russian border dropping JDAMs and AASM Hammers into Kursk, and they launched a dozen Storm Shadows last week all the way to Saratov.
They have quite a capable air force and it can be flooded with NATO F-16s and other planes at any moment.
Because Putin never did anything to destroy the bases, let alone the bases in Poland and Romania that they use.
These airbases---I don't mean in Poland, I mean the bases in Ukraine from where the sorties are actually flown (for now)---are not easy to "destroy". They have been bombed numerous times, Starokonstantinov especially. But theses bases, Starokonstantinov especially, were designed by Soviet experts to survive being nuked---to retain at least some functionality after a direct hit in a nuclear exchange. Their key facilities are hardened, redundant, and dispersed. They are tough, in much the same way that we saw the post-Soviet bridges being tough. The Russians bomb the assets stationed at Starokonstantinov, over and over again---but "destroying" that airbase is not really feasible without at least several nuke warheads, and that escalatory risk is not worth it, not while the handful of aircraft based there are a relatively minor factor.
A couple kilotons bunker buster on the runway takes an airbase out for quite a long time
And once Russia demonstrably uses tactical nukes, that opens up the easy use of them against Russian troop formations "In retaliation".
I know you desperately want WW3 and 80% of the Northern Hemisphere depopulated, but the saner heads in the Kremlin don't.
No. It only takes out the single runway. Look at the layout of the Starokonstantinov base.
Which is why I said "several warheads".
As RalfB said, Russia HAS bombed the airbases, but the economics simply don't add up. A missile for that range is expensive, and generally makes a hole in concrete that can be filled in with a couple of buckets of quick dry cement costing nothing.
The only way to make it work is catching the craft outside, but with America's ISR capability, that is a forlorn hope.
>Case in point.....the three thousand missiles supposedly being sent to Ukraine. They exist only as prototypes. It will take a couple of years of concentrated effort to produce them in numbers.
So? Do you see this war ending with a decisive Russian victory any time within the next decade under current rules of engagement?
>They are air launched with a range about three hundred miles.
So are Storm Shadows
>Since the NATO air assets can't safely get within a hundred miles of the Russian anti air
This is where the biased, glossing over the serious problem, reporting of our host and the other pro-Russian commentators has led you astray once again.
NATO air assets have been flying over Sumy city and then right to the border and dropping glide bombs into Kursk, and occasionally Belgorod too (a whole apartment building was taken out by a French AASM Hammer last year in Belgorod) eery day. How is that possible? Well, it is possible because drone and HIMARS strikes have pushed Russian long-range AD back by a hundred miles from the border, due to the fact that nobody in the Kremlin bothered to enforce the red line of HIMARS strikes into Russia being something completely inadmissible. And those planes fly very low too. So the planes fly low, radar has hard time tracking them (which in turn is because Putin allowed untold trillions to be taken out of the country while not a single new AWACS plane or a MiG-31 interceptor was built since the USSR collapsed, thus there aren't enough of either of those assets), then they rise up at the last moment, launch their munitions, drop low again, and safely return to base.
If you follow what is happening, the AFU is flying many sorties every day along the Zaporozhye and Donetsk fronts and the official border, yet we long ago stopped hearing about planes being shot down. S-400s, R-37Ms, totally MIA. They worked out their tactics and pushed Russian defenses back.
>the missiles have a range of about two hundred miles into Russian territory. They are less capable than missiles already available to the Ukrainians but considerably cheaper to produce (supposedly) as a result of that more limited capability.
The Ukrainians were originally given Storm Shadows in export variants, which have a range of 300 km, then Storm Shadows directly from the British and French inventories, with longer range. And they were given ATACMS with a range of around 300 km too. Which is why the ATACMS, when they were used in Russia proper, only hit halfway into Bryansk region, while the deepest Storm Shadow strike we know of reached Oryol oblast.
But most importantly, the strike on Engles in March aside, once Trump was in office, those attacks stopped. But now they are resuming.
Thus "three hundred miles" in these numbers is actually a rather dramatic escalation.
And yet the Ukrainian troops on the battle front say that they have no air cover because the Russian anti air forces the Ukrainian air assets low and there is too much local anti air to risk low level operations. That includes the Ukrainian troops fighting in the Sumy area. So who to believe ....you or the troops on the ground?
https://t.me/lpr1_treugolnik/141540
https://t.me/lpr1_treugolnik/141524
https://t.me/lpr1_treugolnik/141445
https://t.me/lpr1_treugolnik/141434
https://t.me/lpr1_treugolnik/141433
https://t.me/lpr1_treugolnik/141395
Why are you sending me links to material in Russian which requires me to download something onto my computer to view it?
You wanted sources.
This is where you get real-time information about AFU strikes
There is a difference between comments and longwinded rants, I couldn’t care less about comments , I disagree with lots of them here.
You may think it’s ok for someone to rant as a form of self promotion. I don’t.
You're spot on GM. It soon became apparent Trump was not what he purported to be. On a broader note, I tend to agree with Riley Wagman, aka Edward Slavsquat. He called it a non-war - Russia sold diesel to Ukraine, pipelines went across Ukraine to Europe transporting gas and Russia paid Ukraine transit fees and so forth. Politics (think Wagner group) and money are still King it would appear. Plus I suppose Russia now sees this war as existential. Ha, as does the EU/UK. Only the latter are the losers and in the end Ukraine will cease to exist.
Why is it that some people cannot understand that everything is not black and white? If you don't hate someone or something, it doesn't mean you love them or it. If you are not with something, it doesn't mean you are against it. If someone is not an devil it doesn't mean they are an angel. If you don't think that Trump is an evil fool all the time, it doesn't mean that you think he's a good genius. It's like being back in the playground.
Exactly. My view on Trump is that he is a lousy security guard, but people like Biden are the actual bank robbers. (Though on the issue of Israel Trump is with the bank robbers, which is unforgivable.) In peace time without the media control and the others who control politics, Trump would be a good president, but he is in over his head now and caves. I believe he wanted to stop mass immigration which he first campaigned on. He lost a lot of money in business because of that and was ostracized in New York social circles. But he has traded away election promises to appease the establishment that he wants on his side.
He is not "just as bad as Biden" and he is not very good either. He does some things you wouldn't get with someone like Biden. He caves in other matters.
Magnificent take-down of the Trump peacemaker" nonsense.
Trump's first-term sanctions on China and withdrawal from the Iran deal were kept in place by the Biden Senility Government.
Trump wants the conflict ended so he can get a Nobel Prize and so the looting of Ukraine's natural resources can start before Russia overruns all of them.
Exactly. A peacemaker without parallel if he accomplishes it. If not, well, whatever.
tRump is nothing but a zionist Asshole.
No more than half of America. Admittedly, Israel's current excesses in Gaza are starting to turn that around but not by much.
GM,
first, repeat, you are either a useful idiot, or an MI6/Ukrainian asset. You keep showing your stupidity by misunderstanding global strategic situation, and your traitor role by attacking Russia (Putin is a symbol, a leader of Russia). But we have been there already, and you and other useful idiots who boast, grow like empty balloons by attacking Russia are just showing what you are built of - weak and pitiful.
most people do not understand the nature of the change in world order. The easiest way to look at it is BRICS.
BRICS, meaning rise of alternative powers, and these powers having minimal level of wisdom, intelligence, cunning, not to enter the British/US/Zionist game of divide and rule...
Why is the Himalayas war, between China and India the most important war of 21st century?
Because it is being fought with sticks.
Fighting the war with sticks means India and China, although having different interests, are wise enough not to be manipulated into escalating conflict, and real war, conventional, and nuclear.
There is only one way of crushing the most powerful state in the world, for competing great powers. Not to fight among themselves.
Britain rose to be world power, first global superpower, ruling the oceans, by continuously using Divide and Rule strategy, organising a series of wars against the strongest power on the Continent. (Spain, France, Germany, USSR).
US took over in the First World War, and definitely in the Second World War. Unipolar global world order, US attacking and destroying all other great powers before they could present a challenge to US supremacy.
ANd here, begins the difference, between Biden/globalists and Trump.
Trump understands unipolarity is over. He is doing all he can to secure place for US as a great power among other great powers, as he hopes, the strongest among great powers in this new World, but not he only power.
Trump's US will try to continue using Divide and Rule, but if US/CIA cannot start a war between India and China, it is of no great use.
Trump's America is not going to be an angel, a peace loving country ....but he is not going to waste US energy fighting wars for global supremacy, and he will stay out of new wars,
Israel is a special case, and will in the end define Trump's legacy, or even his survival, depends on his actual decisions.
Trump is like a new kid in the schoolyard, trying to define his relations with other potential strong kids/powers, so he is pushing, shoving, threatening, and the result of this exchange of energies will define future relations between great powers.
With China, de facto equal, with India, to be seen, but as India refused to submit to threats, also most probably equal, with Europe subordination on the surface, but cunning ambition to fool and use US beneath, led by Britain... with Russia, an inherited war, that Trump is not escalating, and accepting that war will be decided on the battlefield, i.e. as much as Europe is willing to put into the war, Trump will accept.
For Russia this means fighting against proxy supported by NATO, in the measure that Europe is willing to provide money, weapons...
There is an inertia when great powers change their course, and US foreign policy establishment is still on the trajectory of keeping unipolar US might.
In this world view, and strategy Russia was to be surrounded by regime changed states, it worked in Ukraine, didn't in Belarus, and misfired in Georgia, extended through attack by Ukrainian proxy and finally subdued by economic pressure/sanctions.
Subduing Russia didn't succeed, but Empires change slowly, and US foreign policy establishment, as well as globalists' led European establishment is doubling down on original antiRussian strategy, they do not understand, or do not accept the alternative.
Trump is letting them fail.
So, as conclusion, Trump is not unipolar neocon, Trump is multipolar, America First neocon.
And you are an useful idiot, or a foreign secret service asset.
If you were not secret service asset, you would be saying the same, but would not attack Putin.
Because Russia needs to have KAraganovs, wolf warriors, to say from time to time, what else could be coming from Russia ...
But using this kind of thinking, threatening to the West in order to discredit, diminish Putin is what makes you a traitor, an MI6, SBU asset-
The overarching premise / pattern seems to be that of accelerationism.
Blackpilling the fellow visitors in this ecosystem is but one aspect,
sowing division amongst them another.
There is a cerebral / think tanky & hubrist grandiosity to this perspective IMO.
BRICS? You mean the BRICS were India did not show up to recent meetings and that is now cast in doubt over Trumps tarrif threats? That one?
Scipio,
do not underestimate India.
If you look honestly, there was a time when communism was religion of the humiliated and offended masses, but USSR perished, dissolved, there was a time when Maoism was next best thing, and then China chose capitalism and market economy,
Of all the BRIC members INDIA is the one who didn't move, from its original anti-imperialist, anti colonial position, as one of the leaders of the nonaligned countries now being replaced, reflected, repackaged, reinterpreted in BRICS
India has not changed, and India is now the most populous country in the world, and will be twice as populous as China in 50 years, English speaking, dominating Indian Ocean, closest to Africa, of all the major powers, the centre of the BRICS,
India needs markets, and it would be fine if Chinese example could be replicated, but India is not going to become a proxy of the US. Ukraine and Qatar are lessons for the global South, Kissinger was deadly precise:
It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.
21st century is already Asian century, Asean means China, but also ASEAN, and India, and Iran, and Moslem and Arab world.
India is on the path to being one of the two most powerful states in the world, and BRICS objectively promises more than being an American proxy.
Right. This thing about the sanctions on India and China is just another version of the game of chicken the US and the Euros have been playing over the frozen (stolen) Russian assets. You blow up your financial system, Europe. No, you blow up yours, América. Now it's the whole economy. 🙄 Tiresome and dangerous 🙄🙄🤬
Don't have much use for Tom Luongo, but he got that little economic war between the allies right from the start.
While you’re right that president Trump is a Neocon to the bones, he’s more China-first, Iran-first and Easy-Wars-First kind of neocon. Trump knows perfectly well that his MAGA support may collapse if inflation goes out of control. He needs Russian oil on the markets to keep oil price low. He wants to put the conflict with Russia on the back burner, switching to more subtle tools like all those subversive NGOs and sponsoring terrorist cells. Trump knows he needs weapons for the war in the Middle East and against China, so he cannot afford sending them to the Ukrainian black hole. He’s got just different set of priorities, which makes him looking like kinda pursuing peace in Ukraine.
The letter is not just for the EU, it is for the whole of NATO, and the turkish cockroach not ever EVER in 10,000 years would agree to impose sanctions on Russia. It would break his already weak economy and deprive him of that sweet transit money from gas going to the EU.
Not to mention that Hungary and Slovakia would also never agree to sanctions.
MORALE ADVANTAGE!!!!! Conveniently forgot the 100,000’s that have deserted.
The best way 2 raise morale is to get rid of all the unhappy people!
An interesting form of survivorship bias !
Nothing conveys Morale Advantage like mobilization officers hunting for meat for their trenches...
Kellogg is not forgetting the deserters. He is counting on them. They have the highest morale.
Joke
LOL
Bankova street needs to be re - wilded, together with all the animals that live there.
This pipeline operation is not like the others. In Avdiivka and Sudzha, the pipeline went under enemy positions to emerge in the enemy rear. In the case of the operation north of Kupiansk, the entire pipeline was under Russian held positions. So we are no longer avoiding enemy soldiers, this was a long pipeline journey solely to avoid enemy UAVs.
The war is inexorably shifting in Russia's favour, but it is getting more complicated rather than less. Continuous advances in drone warfare make manoeuvre warfare increasingly difficult. Thus, the big arrow offensives cannot be done without unacceptable losses in men and materiel. So attrition warfare it will be until the military, political, or economic collapse of Ukraine.
That's a true and good point.
I thought it went under the river so they secured their positions on that bank. Otherwise they would be vulnerable to counter attacks. If so it was a good operation to secure a weak position.
This is a good analysis, and the point that the entire length of the pipeline is in Russian-controlled land is a good catch. It likely is true that whichever country overpowers the other in production, innovation and operational employment of drones will win the war, through enhanced attrition of enemy forces.
There are a couple of note of caution, however - Russia retains the advantage of unrestricted air force operations, and its surveillance-only drones identify timely targets for glide-bomb attacks which are orders of magnitude more destructive than pinprick attacks against individual infantry, on occasions when a group or formation can be caught together. Western intelligence services attempt to make up this deficiency by furnishing Ukraine with targeting information, but Ukraine needs to attack with a missile or rocket because it has no air force left, and often the enemy-movement information gets to the firing point too late to be of practical use.
You're right that the war is inexorably shifting in Russia's favour - the key word being 'inexorably' - but you're also right that tactics are constantly evolving, and the west can write up as many 'lessons learned' briefs as it likes, it is still going to come out of this war far, far behind the new curve in modern warfare. For a long time the belief persisted - I believed it myself - that Russia's slow progress is designed to avoid a shock event which could be portrayed as an atrocity, a slaughter that would compel western forces to step in to help. And while it's true Zelensky urgently desires this, he could probably do just as good a job of faking it without it even happening for real; they've done it before, and it didn't work. So you're likely correct as well that the pervasive use of FPV drones makes traditional infantry advance all but impossible (hence the motorcycles and ATV's), but Russia still has an edge in air operations and artillery. Nice work.
Trump is a closet Neo-con himself and likely more loyal to the one's DH talks about all the time (lol) than American citizens. Trump is a lying, corrupt, fake, clown and failed businessman. But he is also a charismatic actor who fools and deceives his followers. And so are most American politicians, all on the take or else bad things will happen to them just like how they threatened Ross Perot about bad things happening to his family. So he backed up. American politics is like a big mafia with enforcers from Israel. No one makes it up to high political positions clean in the US, and the ones that do have no clout. (just for show)
I guess it depends on your definition of neo-con. I always thought they were Straussians generally of Eastern European decent (or views at least) with the commonality of an extreme desire to destroy Russia, the Grand Chessboard's ultimate prize.
Trump is certainly not in this club. Some might suggest he is fooling us, but there is absolutely no reason for a US president to take this position. It is part of the job description for POTUS. Trump is out on a limb on this one.
By that logic, Biden, Obama and Dubya also were not neocons, in that none were Straussians of eastern european descent.
Judging them on what they *did*, the neocons were happy with all of them, Trump included.
Being a neo-con and doing things neo-cons support is certainly a.major difference. I've never considered Biden, Obama and Dubya as neo-cons either. The day we have a neo-con POTUS is a very dangerous day. They are usually down the line like Cheney or Blinken.
So if they carry out every neocon wish and basically act like neocon skinpuppets, that's okay as long as they aren't Straussians of eastern european descent?
Lol, you can try to twist this to suit your bias but the reality is that Trump and Putin met in Alaska and came away both talking up the meeting. He is obviously NOT a neo-con no matter how much this grates on your worldview.
None of that has resulted in anything concrete. Nor will it. Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
Trump is clearly not a neocon. He has to deal with them because they run US foreign policy. The US is an empire. To think it has been some kind of democracy or republic is ridiculous. This is power politics. Everything is geared towards gaining more power and influence. The Alaska meeting was symbolic. It was the US acknowledging the return of Russia as a powerful actor. It doesn't mean the US gives in. It just means the US recognizes it has to take Russia seriously. This is what has Europe so freaked out. You don't engage with a country like that unless you respect their power. It has been a long claw back for Russia. Starting with its low point at the bombing of Serbia and the Russian security state meeting with Yeltsin and telling him he had to go. Yelstin had a mandate to integrate with the West and he failed. Wall Street raping Russia, losing the first Chechen war and noting CIA assistance (even funneling UNA/UNSO western Ukrainian nazis into Chechnya), and the bombing of Serbia was the last straw. Putin's mandate was to rebuild and modernize the military, reform the economy, and restore a balance of power (deterrence). He has done a remarkable job. The turn around of Russia is remarkable. They should give him the title Putin the Great. Posthumously because I'm sure he won't accept it while he is alive.
You obviously don't listen to Brian Berletic. The Duran is just the cheese. If you want the meat of the situation you listen to Brian. Plus, Brian isn't skittish like the Duran about Palestine.
ZION-Don IS the Swamp. Just listen to his Circus Barker Lunatic Lutnik or little Marco taking us toward AI Fascism, One World Order, and Noahide Laws. Maybe look what his Administration is DOING rather than SAYING. Washington D.C. might as well be Tel Aviv. They're one and the same.
"..fascism.." You people never learn.
* The left call Darya Dugin fascist, and murder her.
* The left call Charlie Kirk fascist, and celebrate his death, while urging that his whole family should also be killed.
* The left hate Putin, call him fascist, and equate him to Hitler.
* The left maintain a hit list of prominent people whom the left call fascist, openly urging for them to be exterminated.
* The left call Donald Trump fascist, and attack him with lawfare and attempted assassinations.
* Antifa means 'anti-fascist', supported by vast sums of Soros and corporate money.
* The left hate everyone who does not think exactly as they do, and consider all of them fascist.
* When native populations object to incompatible immigrants, their government leaders jail them for being fascist.
* Fascists believe in the nation as an extended family of homogeneous genetics, culture, religion, and traditions; unlike current western autocrats, fascists don't import immigrants into their nation.
* Fascists believe in the traditional family; unlike current western autocrats, fascists don't promote homosexual unions, transgenderism, or anything else that destroys the traditional family.
* Leftism evolves over time, such that woke leftism is its latest manifestation.
* The leftist agenda meshes perfectly with globalist goals; globalists hate nations, since globalists want a one-world government in control of slaves.
* After their decades-long 'march through the institutions', the left are now in control of every organization and government in western societies.
* Anyone who keeps yapping that the west is fascist, or that fascists are in control, displays a stubborn lack of awareness that borders on stupidity.
* Anyone who ignores the left while extolling the dangers of fascism has supreme ignorance of history, ideology, and their own damn societies.
* Anyone who ignores leftism is doing so deliberately, because they are (1) unwitting dupes and shills making excuses for the left, or (2) stealth leftist trolls pushing a deceitful hidden agenda.
* Tactics of controlling populations are Totalitarian, not fascist, and are used by any zealot of any ideology.
* Anyone who ascribes every societal evil to fascism needs to shut up and seriously reconsider their position before making fools of themselves even further.
A fascist: everybody you don’t like
It's like the word "heretic" in the Middle Ages: a death sentence.
Are you sure you got it not backwards? LEFT is working class, your description is woke idiots who are useful idiots to blame a political left that is almost non exist anymore in the West since the 'Radikalenerlass' of W. Brandt in Germany back in the day. If you have no clue about what 'left' even means, please spare us your unhinged rants that are completely derailing the facts.
The term "left" covers many things. What I make of it is that there is, on the one hand, the socio-economic left, the party of the ordinary folks, and, on the other hand, the morally left: the kind of people who are in favor of lowering traditional moral standards, the wokes, the liberals. Therefore, you can be both left and right at the same time. Putin, for instance, seems to be a leftist in the socio-economic sense, but a rightist or conservative in the moral sense.
You are either left or right, being both at the same time is an oxymoron. Capitalist money like Soros has never ever been left, always fascists by heart and making their money on the back of the working class.
There is no 'morally left', it's an invention by the ruling class to present themself as left, because left is still seen as a way to go. Average people don't read about political economics and the warfare of the rich against the working. Warren Buffet spilled the beans as he explained the warfare rich against working. The woke crowd is manned by spoiled sons and daughters of the higher, mostly academic middle class, displaying their i-phone 15+ and buying 500€ sneakers, nothing close to working class (exceptions are very few).
Spot on
The left I remember as an ETU shop steward in the 70s were economically left but socially conservative. They only exist in small numbers now.
changing the traditional meaning(s) of 'left' and 'right' constantly and often not-so-subtly is pure manipulation by the thought police. the terms have become easy labels to point out an "enemy". and too many falling for it :-((
Herman, any movement that isn't rooted in class is Liberal rather than Left. Some are good, some are not. But unless you support Organised Labour as a balance to organised Capital, you ain't Left.
The so-called left is an attitude of many in the Western countries, who desire to destroy Western civilization. It is a common danger in mature civilizations which tend to produce a general and radical antithesis to the accepted norms and traditions. The human spirit, mind and feelings, functions in a dialectical way.
In fact, life itself in the evolutionary development functions in such a way starting with the simplest forms. See Konrad Lorenz's Die Rückseite des Spiegels.
The destructive left has used the justified complains of the working classes as a weapon to demolish the structure of their own societies.
That is why every leftist leader is considered a traitor by the left as soon as he/she is confronted with
reality and must abandon destructive mantras.
for practical measures.
It also explains why the left hates, most of all, the right wing politicians who happen to
improve the economic circumstances of the working classes.
Just compare the lots of workers in the BND in Adenauer times and the situation of Romanians under Ceausescu.
This did not prevent the left to consider that the Romanian government was theirs and the successive West Germans ones capitalists to be destroyed even through murder, remember the Rote Armee Fraktion.
Was this "left" or "right"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obshchina
Try to figure it out, who needs wikipedia is lost anyway to any fruitful talk, sorry.
Wikipedia has plenty of useful and credible info - no need to throw it over the side completely. Yet.
I get that you are an anti communist to the bone and swallowed the whole right wing shit probably with your mothers milk. It's not my intention to convince you otherwise, you're too far gone already, the anti left imprint in you is cherished by you and I am happy for you that you have a conviction anyway.
Just the RAF as Brigado Rosso where bored rich kids and useful idiots for a bunch of 3 Letter agencies to do their bidding. They claimed to be Mao-ists, just the missing tse tung would have fried their brains. Was also a nice way to keep Gladio out of sight and blame anything to the bloody communists who allegedly constantly run out of other peoples money, right?
Just we can see since 1929 that's always the capitalist class who comes begging for taxpayers money when they crashed the 'improving economic circumstances' you are cheering for. Your bending of reality and history is indeed mind boggling but what do I know, I am a simple working communist.
Thanks Frank, especially the "running out of other peoples money" line. When I hear that from dweebs I ask myself, WTF am I talking to this shitbird for?
Well put
Thanks for some clarity here, Frank.
The "woke-Left"are drinking an "Italian" type coffee/ice cream confection and 70lbs overweight with green hair. All they know about "Lenin" is he had long hair and played with a band known as "The Beatles". S/he, it, them, they know as much about the events in 1917 Russia as they know about Trigonometry.
Would you prefer Zionists, Trotskyites, or some other noun that doesn't trigger you? We're becomig a Corporatocracy but then most "corporations" are run by Zionionists or the 1%. Jesus Christ. People have a fit over a term like those people who can see the forest fighting over the trees.
1000%
Put the meth pipe down just for a few seconds.
lol
"The left" like Sahra Wagenknecht? Many see the world as black and white, or left and right. Fortunately the reality is an vastly complex array of greys. Complexity begets resilience, lack of complexity brings instability at best, and often systemic collapse at worst.
It all gets down to totalitarian olygarchic banking class versus everyone else. Everything else is play on words used for divide and conquer. Left, right, fascist, democratic, etc etc lost any meaning
Thanks for your shedding "some light". You are exposing the crudely criminal genocidal uderbelly.
You are looking in all the "wrong"-DARK places. /s Many thanks...
Ask Diogenes:>>
<<
The meme you are describing is based on a story about the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, and it's most often referred to as the Streetlight Effect, or the Diogenes Fallacy. The "bubblegum cartoon" (my inquiry of AI) aspect likely comes from a modern cartoon or webcomic that illustrates the concept for comedic effect.
The origin of the story
The original story goes that Diogenes would walk around Athens in broad daylight with a lit lantern, claiming to be "looking for an honest man". The meme takes a more humorous, and often exasperated, spin on the concept:
The joke: The meme shows a man searching for a lost item under a streetlight, even though he knows he dropped it somewhere else.
The punchline: When asked why he's searching in the wrong place, he replies, "The light is better here."
The meaning of the meme
The meme is used to critique irrational or illogical decision-making. It applies to situations where people ignore a problem's actual location or cause and instead search for a solution where it's most convenient to look, even if that's an unproductive effort.
I think that take that the Duran is somehow failing in their coverage of Palestine is disingenuous. Alexander lives in the UK where you can get arrested for wearing a free Palestine shirt. So he has to be careful with what he says ... That said, what he said about the whole matter which has forever been burned into my brain was: "when the history of this time will be written, we will see that the collective West had descended into the moral abyss". I think Brain and the Duran are both excellent and I watch almost all their stuff.
Trump is simply weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
Things are definitely starting to change with the SMO. Russia is increasing the tempo, the Ukrainians are having trouble keeping up, and the Europeans are losing it even more.
I guess we should all be grateful that Trump's bag of tricks were fully deployed via his zugzwang. But let's count the cost of him pleasing Lindsey Graham and the Neo-Con warhawks, and also this slow-mo extrication of the US from a dogfight that never was ours.
What took him so long? Seven months is an eternity for soldiers. Ukraine has lost an entire army since Trump took office.
Contrary to what Trump cites for battlefield deaths, from the Pentagon puree that is spoon fed to him, there's an average of 1,500 daily Ukrainian KIA's. It's been more, it's been less. That's a minimum of 40,000 Ukrainian AFU soldiers dying per month. Trump's been president for 7 full months. Seven times 40,000= 280,000 Ukro KIA's since he took office.
So was pleasing Lindsey Graham et al worth 280,000 deaths? (not even counting Russian KIAs).
Trump could've pulled away from Ukraine back in January, and there'd be the same amount of casualties. I don't doubt it. But the deaths wouldn't be because he was giving hope to Zelensky, frequently stating he won't abandon Zelensky. Plus, as an American, I wouldn't be co-responsible either. The guilty is not just on Trump, no sirree Bob. What Trump does makes ALL of us Americans bloodguilty. Red or blue.
I kinda think it is Trump's war as well. The 280,000+ deaths prove it is.
Trump mounts a pedestal (truth social) and publically washes his hands.. of the guilt, just like a modern day Pontius Pilate. That is so arrogant and narcissistic. But just like Pilate, history will have a say at judging him.
It is Trumps war. He facilitated all preparations for it in Ukraine from 2016 until 2020 in his first term. Biden just continued what was already there and escalated it to have the SMO unfold.
It's the State Department's war. It's the Deep State's war.
And amazes me just how popular the notion is that the executive branch has so much control over our international policy
"also this slow-mo extrication of the US from a dogfight that never was ours."
Never was ours? The US who started the whole thing with the Maidan coup? The US who financed and supported Ukraine from that momentous time to the present? The US whose main purpose was to extend Russia?
All else I agree with.
The US dream of influence starts with Zbigniew Brzezinski 'grand chessboard' and actions date back to 1990. The Timoshenko was a Soros creation already.
I think it goes back to Truman at least.
Well, if you want to play that game, it goes back to the end of WWII when the US found itself the last man standing and decided then that it would remain so.
It is Biden's war. It's the US foreign policy establishment war, the US deep state war.
But if lost, it would be Trump's defeat.
This war's has to be fought until the last Ukrainian...Lindsay Graham said so himself. So, whilst there are still men left it will carry on - 280k less is 280k closer to the goal.
"He says that he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs General Caine share the view that Ukraine is winning the war."
I want some of what these guys are smoking.
It's like Aristovich said - no matter what happens, Ukraine is winning.
It becomes clearer to me with each passing month that if Russia really wants to secure itself, it needs to defeat Ukraine entirely with no deals besides surrender.
They cant. As Arestovich so eloquently puts it: Ukraine achieved a Victory back in 2022 but it was ”stolen” from them by Boris J aka Deep State in UK/EU/US. Likewise Russia was screwed from achieving their tiny objectives of securing Luhansk and Donetsk and get the question of Crimea behind them. Had it all stopped then we wouldnt have millions of dead and the inumerable damages we have seen evolved over time.
Then of course there could have been another War…
But I dont believe that the coalition of willing (unwilling for peace) ever will let Russia win over Ukraine. They rather burn down whole of Europe. And Russia is unable to muster the decisiveness it takes to win this War.
Ukraine wasn't responsible for Russian pulling back from Kiev and eastern parts of Ukraine. Moscow made that decision based on the fact the mission was accomplished. A rescue mission.
Russia went in deep, even surrounding Kiev, to take the pressure off of the Donbass. Kiev had to recall troops from the Eastern front.
Russia's move in deep wasn't for territory, it was to provide security for millions of ethnic Russians to leave Ukraine for Russia. Millions did, 6+ million left those areas for Russia.
That 6+ million coupled with the 6 million in the Donbass= 12 million rescued ethnic Russians from Banderite clutches. They are now Russian citizens living in safety and freedom.
After rescuing those people Russia pulled back, determined to defend the Donbass.
UKRAINE's puppet masters claimed it as a "victory", but even today, Russia defends and Ukraine attacks, Kiev trying to reconquer the Donbass people.
Thanks for putting it correctly once more. Seems like the western propaganda gets in really deep. Even into peoples brains who mean well at the basics.
Rewriting history doesnt make sense…
”Surrounding Kiev” never happened.
Fact is that Russia fumbled and Ukraine put up a fierce resistance that perplexed Russia. That was sort of a ”victory”. If Ukraine then had signed the Istanbul agreement both sides would have won in the sense of sparing lives and achieving what this War (sorry, SMO) eventual will. Until next War of course. But nevertless a chance to cool down things was missed, or rather sabotaged by the Deep State actors.
Your description of Russia rescuing 12 millions because ”it wasnt for territory” is ridiculous. And you dont discuss what I answered Denis. I think Denis is right - Russia need to win an uncompromising victory over Ukraine&NATO. But I dont think they can. Discus this question and dont waffle about fantasy Russia objectives.
Not true at all. Russia did surround Kiev, hoping that that would scare the Ukies into pulling back and asking for peace, and subsequently pulled back as an act of good will when the Ukraine negotiating team signed the peace agreement that was shitcanned by Johnson's lies. Russia's mistake was entering that fiasco with not enough troops and logistics to support the large gains it had made in the Kharkov direction, so decided to pull back to consolidate its forces behind a line that could be better defended. Of course, Ukraine took all that to be their mighty victory over the Russians. And you believe them.
So in the end, now Ukraine is winning, yes? No. Putin has clearly indicated that the war will be decided on the battlefield. And when he says that, he means just that. Russia will do whatever it takes for an uncompromising victory even that means conquering all of Ukraine. But it doesn't have to mean conquering all of Ukraine if the West finally wakes up and smells the coffee. My opinion is that Russia will conquer the East and the South and make certain the rest is placed into the hands of a Russian-friendly regime that will make certain that this never happens again by declaring neutrality, limiting its military capabilities to defense only and removing all nazis from power..
I didnt write that Ukraine is winning.
And the ”surrounding” thing you have to back down from.
Apologies, Mikey. You are correct. That isn't what you said, and I will indeed back off my "surround" statement - a bit of hyperbole, I'm afraid.
"Fact is that Russia fumbled and Ukraine put up a fierce resistance"
I think you mean Russia attacked with around 120k at the beginning of the SMO, plus around 80k Donbass militia. Ukraine had 450-600k in the field. There was never a chance of a military victory for Russia in 2022. They hoped to settle this politically.
Whatever you describe it as (correct it is) - it was a fumble. Russia obviously did seek an agreement after they realized that they had underestimated the NATO influence in Ukraine. It (weakness showed) probably encouraged UK&others to undermine the Istanbul negotiations. Irrespective of what happened later - Russia had the ball but failed to score.
Russia has since then made tremendous efforts to gain the advantage they now have. But do they score?
As Simplicius implies, Trump is walking off this War that US started and tries to negotiate a ”draw” to stop the killing. UK/EU are not interested in a draw (neither the Deep State in US) , they long for a victory for the Liberal World Order and no sacrifice is too big.
Until one side score hard we will have this slo-mo human disaster.
Settle down. Trump is not walking away from anything. How many times have we seen this movie before?
Anyway, if this drone incursion does not get the intended result, that is, for the Americans to ride to the rescue, the next incursion will be bigger and a few poles will get killed.
Russia's weakness was being drawn into this war in the first place. Like I said previously, they could never win militarily in 2022. It has taken them 3 years to ramp up their armed forces to be in the position they are in now where the front is being stretched too far for Ukraine to maintain. The NATO goal was always to keep feeding Ukrainians into the meat grinder no matter what. Nothing has changed in this regard.
And scoring is just your own bias hoping for something that may well never have been Russia's objective and may not happen anytime soon. The Russians are stretched for sure, but have the Chinese at their back. The Europeans are the major losers. The US really did the dirty on them. They only have the European's back to push them into war with Russia.
The main thing to remember is that Russia wants to win this politically. They need Ukraine to be aligned or at least neutral. Destroying the country will just ensure the war smoulders on for a very long time.
This was foolish beyond belief.
The 12 million persecuted ethnic Russians that were escorted out didn't think their rescue was "ridiculous", I'm sure.
If Kiev got their meat hooks into those people, Kiev would've forcibly funnelled them first into the meat grinders, against their own Russian kinfolk.
@Mikey: 'burn down [the] whole of Europe' using.... what, exactly? the EU is not a very united organisation, although some of its leaders pretend it is. it seems that specifically Germany has continued to import (although underhandedly) Russian LPG: "... Despite a German de facto ban on accepting LNG directly from Russia, Germany has been importing surging volumes of natural gas from France and Belgium where terminals continue to accept Russian LNG..." - https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Germanys-Imports-of-Russian-LNG-From-Other-EU-Ports-Jump.html
but hey, its chancellor is an investment banker (BlackRock) and Big Business means... big business, no matter the battlefield outcome.
You are not paying attention of what is happening in Europe. We have leaders doing what they want with no interference from the public.
Not quite. They are "saying" what they want, not "doing" what they want. There is a difference, after all. They do not have money. They do not have resources. They do not have the industrial capacity to last more than a week or two under war conditions. They have no air defenses against Russia. They do not have unity of spirit. Their people are against war with Russia. If they do manage to send troops into Ukraine, those troops will be destroyed. And then what? Their people will rise up in masses and their economies will self-destruct.
Russia has complete escalation dominance. The Ukraine operation will go the way the Russians want it to go - it has thus far and will continue to be so.
They, the leaders of Europe, have started the biggest investement in armaments since the Cold War. Its doing.
They dont need money. They borrow.
And you should read carefully what I write:
” But I dont believe that the coalition of willing (unwilling for peace) ever will let Russia win over Ukraine. They rather burn down whole of Europe. And Russia is unable to muster the decisiveness it takes to win this War.” No word of Western Europe winning over Russia. So stop put opinions in my mouth.
When Western leaders speak of “economic war against Russia,” or “ruining Russia” by arming and supporting Ukraine, one wonders whether they are consciously preparing World War III, or trying to provide a new ending to World War II. Or will the two merge?
Define Russian decisiveness. Has Gerassimov talked to you over the weekend? It's mind boggling what misjudged military and political experts are out there. A. Martyanov is right, shut up if you do not know what war really means and what you are talking about.
Europe can never borrow the amount of money needed to build up their armaments industry to the level they want. For one thing they are already heavily in debt - France's credit rating has been recently reduced. Germany, France and the UK have onerous debt to GDP ratios. And indeed a significant part of their answer to this problem is to reduce social spending. You can imagine how popular that idea is to the already stretched financial status of the average bloke on the street. And they want to radically increase the size of their troop levels - also a dream as who in their right mind wants to join the military of a country that wants war with Russia? And they have a serous lack of the numbers of people trained up in STEM subjects to support such an effort. And these industries require huge and complex supplier networks that would have to be built out. And because they have committed energy suicide, the costs of doing all these things would be well beyond any European country's reach. Companies are leaving Europe - not entering Europe. And lastly, they have weak and ineffective leadership, so I question their political resolve to accomplish any of this.
Lastly, I don't believe I said anywhere that you believe that Western Europe can win over Russia. Correct me if I am wrong on that. Though I will say that your statement that the CoW will never let Russia win over Ukraine is most likely seriously flawed as Russia will win decisively regardless of the pressures placed by Europe, or even America for that matter. How they win and when they win is entirely in Russian hands, but the bottom line is that Russia will win. Where in the world you get that idea that they will not be able to muster the decisiveness needed is beyond me. You must be talking to Igor Strelkov and his followers (or are you one of them?...😉).
If the people start to interfere now seriously, we'll have blood in the streets because the 'public' has been sucessfully splintered and set up against each other, plus lacks any responsible leadership, since the left is weak.
Good point. Add to that the near impossibility of determining who's a fifth columnist. Leaders will take over a group only to sell it out to it's enemies. This will be common in any coming civil war. Some people love being sneaky and duplicitous. Review the litany of Ukro trolls throughout American social blogs. Many of them have sockpuppets.
@Mikey: dream on. UK has a non-functioning government, last month the Dutch gov't fell (3rd round of elections in 3 years) and although the non-elected heads of the EU pretend otherwise, it's brewing in many places. France's Yellow Vests are back on the streets. also see Germany's Wagenknecht's recent speech - https://tass.com/world/2016515
see, "we" really liked Putin's oil & gas, untill it was, very stupidly, decided (TQ Nord Stream) that we weren't receiving anymore. that was reckless, in many respects.
Dream on - on what? What are you answering or are you just trolling?
reaction to your previous remark that in Europe 'We have leaders doing what they want with no interference from the public.' this is not quite true, for there's social and political unrest in several EU member states, including taking place at grassroot level. peace out.
This was obvious three years ago.
However, the Russian leadership do not want to make war on what they still consider their misguided brethren, just as they do not want to make war on the West but to be allowed to join it.
This of course, is pure foolishness.
Obvious, confirmed with visible data. Yet it is so overlooked by the many still stuck in trust the plan mode. lol It baffles me.
Humans are not rational animals but rationalizing animals.
As Franz Fanon put it: "Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief."
From my observation - for most humans, most of the time, the fastest and surest way to wind up dead or seriously disadvantaged has been at the hands of fellow humans. At the same time, "our group", whether by faith, family, tribe, regiment, whatever, are the people a human can trust to have his back.
Therefore, whatever else happens, whatever we have to do, believe absurdities, blindly follow barking insane leaders, parrot obvious lies to our detriment, do or suffer terrible things, but please whatever you do, please don't kick us out of the group!
What this also means is that when humans are presented with incontrovertible proof that the group narrative is wrong or that the group leaders are mad or charlatans or worse, rather than change leaders or change beliefs or change groups, most people, most of the time will instead double down. Witness the behavior of cultists.
This is "cognitive dissonance" and it is abundantly documented. As alluded to earlier, there are entire religions organized around the principle.
Cognitive dissonance is not limited to stupid people. In fact, the intelligent are at least as prone, perhaps because they are better at rationalizing. In fact, much so-called "knowledge work" is basically learning symbol manipulation in order to rationalize something.
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
The Russian leadership doesn't want to or can't? There is a fundamental difference between the two positions
I suspect the former.
I would have agreed before the Kursk incursion. But to me it seems like it can't, otherwise Ukraine would not be penetrating Russian defenses so frequently
There are doubtless plenty of people in the MoD who will take Yankee dollars. That and plain old incompetence in a war that Russia does not want.
That has the West licking its chops.
Its also becoming increasingly clear that if Russia wants to survive, it must defeat Ukraine fast and with no mercy. There is nothing left of the "brotherly people" and so it needs to start acting like Israel in Gaza. There is no other way to win
We're not the only ones who think Russia must defeat Ukraine. Listen to this video. I couldn't say it any better. It's worth watching.
https://youtu.be/3AoXL_xQRXI
lol. Anders Arseland warmongering comment on what Estonia would have done "respond with ballistic missiles". What a diseased parasite. These old establishment narrative spewing boomer golems need to be fed into the woodchipper of the front line. They've never known consequence, so it's easy to up the war ante when it's not their pathetic lives on the line. Imagining him pulling up his excrement riddled pants at the horror of being subjected to the meatgrinder as he awkwardly stumbles around with his ill fitting pack and firearm, whilst being urged to move before his stink is aerosolized onto others by artillery strike, has a pleasant thought to it.
It's always old men that know each other, let young man, that have no clue about the 'enemy' fight for 'god' and 'the country'. In peace time the young fellows would play soccer with each other, having a beer and chasing skirts - just money and 'geo' politics won't have that. To be used like that by your own politicians is worse than rape, it's a potential dead sentence for having done nothing wrong but been born and raised at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Young men are like crops to despots and monarchs. We see in history that when there was a bumper crop of young men in a country, then the despot would see how many and plan accordingly on how wide a war he'd wage.
IMHO the solution is simple: dilute power. Instead of only 100 senators, make it 500. Instead of 400+ representatives, make it 4,000. Build more congressional buildings if you have to. Dilute their power.
We've frozen the number of Congress because we revere the buildings too much, trying to stuff Congress all into one building when we've expanded as a nation 100x's since 1776: 3.5 million to 350 million.
Why feed ten times more parasites of politicians with no interest or conviction that suits the working class instead claiming the Senat and House for the people that get up at 6 in the morning and build/maintain the country every day?
Yes, the only difference would be that the Jewish segment would simply have to give out more money to keep control.
I think it would be better for the US to return to its roots - a federation of independent states with limited central government to handle trade and commerce and provide for the defense of the country.
Why is that myth of 'limited government' still alive? The US government employs around 2 million people, since the 70's by an ever growing population, I'd call that efficiency.
Does Estonia even have ballistic missiles?
Of course! they use them during celebrations lighting the skies with fireworks.
A little bit too flowerish in the description, but all things put together a wise proposition. Mr. Arseland to the front ASAP!
Great stuff 👍
Since Aslund will never face the front, it doesn't matter.