[Rancid]

Yale course on Ukrainian history:

Mentioned this back in the very early days of the war. Worth a watch.

[skinster]

How can anyone discard the fact that Russia signed for peace in Minsk and Istanbul, that is both before and after the war?

How do you decide a war when you sign for peace and the other side publically spits on the peace agreement to either create or sustain the war in question?

Who has really decided on this war Rancid?

Nothing can save the liberals when it comes to the reality of this war, despite it all being well documented. Russia was provoked into war and I for one am very glad they went in to protect the people in the Donbass from the fascist scum the US/NATO propped up.

[noemon]

Yale course on Ukrainian history:

Mentioned this back in the very early days of the war. Worth a watch.

Just 5 minutes in he says, "Original Greek Chersonisos, whose ruins are in Sevastopol and from where the other Cherson took its name by Catherine the Great was occupied by Russia in 2014". He chose a very specific location of course with a very unique history of its own. During the soviet Era, Sevastopol was a closed city, which meant that only existing residents were allowed to live, work and visit the city, all the rest had to get a Sevastopol visa, including of course Ukrainians, Sevastopol throughout all the eras has remained a Russian inhabited & quite directly military administered city. He knows this, but he chooses to lie on this fine point as then that enables him to claim other parts because when you start from denying a very clear Russian sovereignity supported by demography, naval, military, historical and ethnic point of view,, then there is no up from there. If that's not Russian then the rest are not Russian either. He is doing precisely what he nis accusing Putin of doing.

Moreover he coughs and hesitates when he says "bad history is political memory" which is precisely what national identity actually is. And that's what he doesn't tell you.

All this theory is based on a lie, namely that Russia is the aggressor in Sevastopol when that is simply not the case. She is the founder of the city, the native of it and has sovereign military administration of it since 1783.

Others are encroaching upon her sovereign space and her naval headquarters.

Original question:

Who is responsible for this war existing, Rancid? by walking out from Minsk, and carrying on? by walking out of Istanbul?

[paeng]

I don't know who are you are referring to, but the person that decided on this war was Putin. IIRC he decided it late in the previous year before he started his war.

Right, the attack took place out of the blue. Or it's because Russia wants to form an "empire".

[paeng]

I'd be totally happy for us to send ground troop into Ukraine to get an immediate peace. Hate filled liberal war mongers like Emmanuel Macron want to send in ground troops into Ukraine to prolong the war, death and, destruction for as long as possible. Macron's talking about a couple of thousand troops, no where near enough to gain Zelenky's peace demands.

Zelensky has stated that his war against Russia and Netanyahu's campaign in Gaza are part of the same struggle, the same war. This is in a sense true. The plan is to turn Crimea into a giant American aircraft carrier. That can then be used as a base to project power in to central Asia, to cut off Russia from Iran and to complete the American encirclement of Iran from the north. I suspect the Israeli government is deeply sceptical of this plan,considering it pie in the sky. Even if Biden wins reelection, they don't trust him not to throw his Ukrainian allies under the bus as he did for his Afghan allies at the start of his first term.

But its only when you understand this plan, that you understand why western leaders were so fanatically opposed to Ukraine defending Bakhmut. Wagner were totally exposed to being surrounded in Bakhmut by counter attacks against the poorly defended flanks. This exposure drove Prigozhin mad, leading to his desperate attempt at insurrection. He could not understand why the Ukrainians were not using their western equipment to counter attack on the weakly held and weakly fortified Russian flanks.

Getting back Crimea has always been a demented, hair brained goal. How do you get the world's biggest nuclear power to accept it short of complete regime collapse? My guess was the thinking amongst western Zionist leaders was if Putin can be compensated by allowing him to capture all of the Donbas and Kharkov, maybe we can get him to accept the loss of Crimea without going nuclear.

The affair's part of a Grand Chessboard coupled with the Wolfowitz Doctrine and the Triffin dilemma. The U.S. needs a unipolar global economy in order to continue voodoo economics, and it can only have that as long as everyone else is weak. That meant encirclement: hence, over 700 military bases and installations worldwide, a very large military budget (one reason why they needed voodoo economics), decades of mayhem:

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/

Meanwhile, they maintain the Reagan/Dubya storyline: Russia and China want to form their own "empires" and must be stopped, while other countries should not fall into their arms and instead become part of the "free" world. In reality, as Stoltenberg correctly pointed out, the real goal is to protect the international financial system dominated by the dollar.

Finally, play both sides, e.g., arm Israel but also arm Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, proclaim that Russia is a "tyranny" but invite it to join NATO until it does something that the U.S. doesn't like (e.g., Syria), arm Taiwan but don't recognize its sovereignty to make China happy, and then continue buying fossil fuels and uranium from the same "tyrannies".

[paeng]

blah blah blah

Anyway, good to see Europe stepping up support.

They should. That's the role of a tool.

[skinster]

From what I remember @noemon, Rancid was initially clueless about this war and appears now to have opted for the straight up bullshit version of events that Putin started the war, despite plenty of information put in front of his face in this thread. My guess is his position is borne out of Trump Derangement Syndrome and the Russiagate that came with it, even though that whole saga was debunked by U.S. intel.

The war began after a U.S. coup in 2014, but history, even recent history, has never been a strong point for the Yankees.

The rest of the world was paying attention though and understood the usual suspect warmongers to be responsible for yet another war. A couple of [url-https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-90-percent-world-isnt-following-us-ukraine-opinion-1743061]CIA clowns cried about that at Newsweek[/url] in the fake-first-year of the war.

[paeng]

Yale course on Ukrainian history:

Mentioned this back in the very early days of the war. Worth a watch.

Also,

https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-art ... in-ukraine

[skinster]

^ I shared the Sachs and Meirsheimer videos in here. You can lead horses to water...

[QatzelOk]

ISIS wants to create a division between Chechens and Russkis.

I doubt they need Ukrainian help!

Yes, but who is really behind ISIS? Are you so easily fooled by branding? Remember all those Saturn-buyers who "found out" that their plastic cars were actually made by GM? And then the brand slowly folded.... having counted on a too-high level of stupidity among its customers.

...The U.S. needs a unipolar global economy in order to continue voodoo economics, and it can only have that as long as everyone else is weak...

And this is why I compare the USA's foreign policy to Jeffrey Dahmer who weakened his victims (by drugging them and drilling holes in their heads) so that he would remain "strong."

And all those closets and floor-spaces in which JD hid dead bodies... were like so many USA military bases and so many clandestinely-sponsored terror organizations and so many well-funded media liars.

No one would ever "find out" what Jeffrey was up to. Right?

[Rugoz]

They should. That's the role of a tool.

Europe being a "tool" in all this is just another stupid Russian propaganda talking point.

In fact, all of this started because Ukrainians desired European integration, that is democracy, the rule of law and economic prosperity. Meanwhile, the only thing Russia could offer was petro-dictatorship.

Europe is the biggest supporter of Ukraine, not only when it comes to humanitarian and financial aid, but also military aid.

[litwin]

BREAKING: Poland suspends its adherence to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) There´LL no longer be any limits on the number of soldiers and where they can be stationed.


as we all know "The agreements signed by Mongol - Moscovites aren't worth the price of the sheet of paper they are written on"...

Well done, Poland. Please continue to bravely lead.

[QatzelOk]

Europe being a "tool" in all this is just another stupid Russian propaganda talking point...

I disagree with this, but I also don't think "Europe is a tool" is accurate.

More like "ordinary European people are being used as a tool."

Europe is a place, and for many oligarchs, it is a prize as well. As long as you can sweep ordinary Europeans aside... like they were swept aside (and terrorized, and butchered) in two huge wars in the century in which most of us were born.

[Rugoz]

I disagree with this, but I also don't think "Europe is a tool" is accurate.

More like "ordinary European people are being used as a tool."

You're not ordinary, Qatz. Stop pretending to defend ordinary people. I'm much closer to being ordinary.

[Rancid]

You're not ordinary, Qatz. Stop pretending to defend ordinary people. I'm much closer to being ordinary.

I'm starting to believe Qatz is a CIA operative.

[skinster]

Rancid, why don't you answer his and noeman's question? Stop being a coward.

Qatz is right. Europe is a U.S. vassal just like Canada, Australia, New Zealand...

[JohnRawls]

Rancid, why don't you answer his and noeman's question? Stop being a coward.

Qatz is right. Europe is a U.S. vassal just like Canada, Australia, New Zealand...

Why are we vassals you numbnuts? Didn't the US abandon Ukraine while we are still supporting them?

You have such a narrow idea of how politics/international relations work it is not even funny.

You are like Putin who wants to get back his assassin who killed couple of people from Germany and goes to the US to ask for him while getting few times in a row a response to ask the Germans since they can't do anything about it. Last attempt was to trade Navalny for him but well Putin decided to kill Navalny so the Germans told him to fuck off.

[skinster]

Why are we vassals you numbnuts? Didn't the US abandon Ukraine while we are still supporting them?

Do you think we in Europe have an independent foreign policy to the U.S.? Give me an example of where this is the case on anything meaningful.

European states fucked themselves up in favour of U.S. dictates vis-a-vis its war in Ukraine. Germany is a great example of that with the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines. We have ended up sanctioning ourselves in the war by paying higher gas prices after ending trade with the Russians who sold us cheaper gas.

The Europeans can't extricate themselves from these mistakes and seek to maintain the war in Ukraine, because they got duped and genuinely believed the West would win. But the U.S has said SEEEEYA.

[Rancid]

Interesting video on at least one technique on how Russian twitter bots are created/managed. I'm sure anyone producing a bot would do similar.

I wonder how many on here are falling for these kinds of bots.

Only thing I disagree with is the assertion towards the end that these particular bots he exposed were for the purpose of Ukraine war disinformation. I'm thinking the more likely explanation is simply that they build up these accounts as sort of sleeper accounts, that get activated when they are ordered to. It just so happened these were activated for Ukraine war disinformation. I'm sure there are tons of these sleeper accounts getting built up with seemingly innocuous posts... to be activated for disinformation eventually.

Funny how these bots are often more believed, than say, professors of history at Yale.

[JohnRawls]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V17meX_V8VM



Do you think we in Europe have an independent foreign policy to the U.S.? Give me an example of where this is the case on anything meaningful.

European states fucked themselves up in favour of U.S. dictates vis-a-vis its war in Ukraine. Germany is a great example of that with the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines. We have ended up sanctioning ourselves in the war by paying higher gas prices after ending trade with the Russians who sold us cheaper gas.

The Europeans can't extricate themselves from these mistakes and seek to maintain the war in Ukraine, because they got duped and genuinely believed the West would win. But the U.S has said SEEEEYA.

Ukraine. We have donated 80% and were the leaders in donations since the start. US helped a lot also but ultimately it is our interest and not USes primarily.

We appreciate the help though but the current US election season makes Europe doubt the US and think about what the US does.

As for others before that obviously Lybia was our adventure and US was a tag along, not that Qadaffi didn't deserve it. Yugoslavia was mostly Europe with US help and our interest. Syria was 50/50 I am not sure who was more interested in that, I suppose just the general idea that people are sick with Assad.

On the other hand we helped US with Iraq 2x and Afghanistan that was US interest.

I think that those conflicts you all know about. But there are much, much, much more to this than just wars and things that can be mentioned. But you don't even know it so its pointless to discuss it.