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Where Do Things End With Vlad? (h/t romad1)


chasfh

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6 hours ago, oblong said:

Where do you rank these events in historical significance?  Is it bigger than 9/11?  I think so because of the delicacy of it.  Are we at 1991 levels when Gorbechev was in hiding?  Or 1962?  

1st Gulf War-ish

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14 hours ago, Kacie said:

It's cool.  For the record, I wasn't in any way trying to imply that the people of Ukraine don't matter.  Just that there are millions of others in insufferable situations and we should be as concerned about them as well.

Its about confronting my own biases as well.  Grew up in a very conservative household and drank the Kool Aid for many years.  The cops wouldn't shoot them black folks if they just cooperated.  If they just worked hard like we do and pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, they wouldn't be living with crime and poverty. We don't need affirmative action, they need to earn it like we did.  I'd like to think I've evolved over the years, but just when I think I have, I realize I still have a long way to go.  When I watched the Trevor Noah clip, my initial reaction was that it was more PC Bullshit.  Then after my conversation with my internet friend, I had to ask myself why does the Ukraine situation affect me differently than other equally horrific situations?  It's Putin, it's the economy, the threat of nuclear war, their heroic leader...maybe?  It's more likely that I'm relating to people who are more like me.  I'm not feeling for the people of Yemen or Afghanistan or Haiti, etc, as much because I'm not seeing myself in them.  I'm not relating on a human level.  I've been to Honduras on several occasions to provide services through a charitable organization and it lulled me into thinking that must mean I don't have biases or prejudices.  I'm honest enough to admit I do.  No, not everyone and everything is racist, but I need to do better and I don't think I'm the only one.

 

You are not the only one, and I need to do better as well.

Great post.

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14 hours ago, Tigerbomb13 said:

I don’t think it’s possible to even understand the magnitude of the negative effects this invasion is going to have in Russia. They can eventually overtake the Ukraine, but in between a depleted military and zero economy that’s toast, how long can this go on? The only thing Vlad is going to have left is his nukes. 

Much like Trump, his red hats and his inner circle, Putin believed in the Kool-Aid he was drinking. He believed that Ukraine is an illegitimate state; that “Ukrainian” is a fake nationality; that in their hearts people living there identity as Russian; that they were duped by an faux-democratic globalist conspiracy into leaving Mother Russia; and that once they realize this they would welcome his soldiers with open arms; since they are going there only to eliminate the Uki-Nazi leadership and their sympathizers.

Now he’s going to get bogged down by a super expensive occupation that is going to complete the bankruptcy of his country that began with the withdrawal of the world economic and business community. His people are going to starve, there will be protests and even riots in the street, and his soldiers will have to decide whether to draw blood from their fellow countrymen in defense of whatever the fuck Putin tells them the principles at hand are.

As for Putin himself, he’ll be like Kim Jong Un for at least a while: a guy who owns everything and everyone in an entire country, with which and whom he can do as he pleases. He can steal from anyone, torture anyone, fuck anyone, kill anyone he wants, with complete impunity. For now, anyway.

It’s very possible that the sheer ugliness of the story that will eventually be told about the Russia of this era will be as shocking as anything we learned about Nazi Germany.

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11 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

Here's the instance in which it will change, and NATO will become involved:

Pictures of dead Ukrainian children get out into the world. The World, the United Nations, NATO, the United States of America become outraged at Putin's genocide against the Ukrainian peoples, civilians, women & children.

Multiple countries demand an immediate cessation of hostilities and a withdrawal of Russian forces back to pre-2022 locations; otherwise a declaration of war against Russia, by the UK, Poland, Romania, Norway, Germany, and France. Uncertain on Canada, but the U.S. will join them although... there's always Congress to get through.

 

I was thinking about this a few days ago, wondering whether we will see the dead bodies, and I’m guessing we won’t, because sensitivities.

Remember Vietnam? Each night, the network news would show video of soldiers wounded in the field, or coffins of soldiers coming home. It was instrumental in shifting American sentiment against the war. The then-current presidential administration and its military complex did not like that. So, in the wars after that, starting with Lebanon and Grenada and on through Panama, Desert Storm, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and all the post-9/11 wars, the military embedded the media with the troops to get them on the same sympathetic side as the soldiers, and there was exactly zero footage of facts on the ground like dead soldiers blown up by IEDs made available for the media to air. This worked to prevent Americans from seeing as they did with Nam just how dirty and deadly war actually is. It didn’t necessarily keep all Americans invested in pursuing those wars, because other reasons, but grim footage of death on a nightly basis was not a factor in people’s opposition to, for instance, America’s Middle East wars.

I think it would be beyond shocking for the media to foist close-up images of dead people at all, let alone children, on any basis, let alone nightly. There are probably websites out there that will feature that kind of imagery, but people would have to seek that out, and I don’t think anyone save for a few NGO professionals and perhaps some ghoulish people would do so. So unless there is a dramatic shift in the perspective of presenting raw war footage in the media, I think the closest we will get to anything like that is grainy or blurry or heavily edited images of unidentifiable adult people falling down from a distant camera angle, and maybe not even that.

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The central idea is contained in the tweet.  The nuances are in the article

as a practitioner of air power I would LOVE to see F-35s and F-22s proving themselves on a battlefield for Xi to see before he contemplates this coming invasion of Taiwan.  However, as a person who enjoys having a non-nuclear suntan and low levels of radioactive material in my atmosphere, lets be careful.

Also, Ukraine can kick Putin's ass with aid + intel + lend lease equipment.

Edited by romad1
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