The Russians are coming.

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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby Steve James on Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:09 pm

Wow, the WH is getting tough with Russia. Ooh, and our fearless leader called Putin to give a piece of his mind. He said congrats on the election. Funny though. He has not said or tweeted a harsh word about Putin, or Stormy Daniels.

I was married. I know that if some woman claimed than I had had an affair with her, if it were true, I'd lie as long as I could. And, I'd do it loud and long. The prez needs to clear this stuff up with Melania or he's going to be denied nookie, and that can't be good. Although, he's spending the weekends at Mar a Lago ... again.
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby grzegorz on Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:45 am

I remember arguing that when US presidents try to work with the Russians things never work out. Which is unfortunate but it is how it is and will always be.

Image
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby Steve James on Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:55 am

Dude, you can't take him seriously. He's in a very important position, but what he tweets and his words are irrelevant. What'd he call Kim? Just wait.
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby Michael on Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:03 pm

It's difficult to believe he thought this out, but last April 2017, you know the last time there was a completely unfounded accusation of Syria using chemical weapons, Trump threw some feckless Tomahawks at an airbase and killed a few people, which actually seemed to sate everybody's bloodlust for a little while without starting a war.

Once again, we're supposed to believe Assad would do pretty much the most counter-productive thing possible at the moment, and believe it without any proof whatsoever, but if it's a chance for Trump to show he's anti-Russia and also rally the troops, it's being smarter than believing Assad used chemical weapons in Douma.
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby grzegorz on Thu Apr 12, 2018 10:21 pm

Steve James wrote:Dude, you can't take him seriously. He's in a very important position, but what he tweets and his words are irrelevant. What'd he call Kim? Just wait.


I don't take him seriously but it is the first time he has criticized Little Putin.

Later he tweeted something about working with and peace the Russians. So yeah, I think he is mostly just blowing off steam but getting into a war would be a great way to make all these scandals fade away.
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby Michael on Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:25 am

12 minutes from Putin's address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, where he discusses Russia's new weapons that were created after the USA pulled out of the ABM treaty.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qldhOHjxsI
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby wiesiek on Tue Apr 17, 2018 2:09 am

..."So yeah, I think he is mostly just blowing off steam but getting into a war would be a great way to make all these scandals fade away...."

awww,
I`m stunned by iron logic of the statement.
Bigger maturity of the contemporary society/s/ is our only hope,
but
chances are quite low, as I can see it,
`cause
if we look around the world for most of the leaders elections... -argh-
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby grzegorz on Tue Apr 17, 2018 4:50 pm

Little Putin pulled the same trick. Before his invasion of Ukraine his popularity was fading and then he starts a war and the Russians love him. It is the tribal mentality which is no different here although at least here you and your family won't poisoned for speaking out so there is some hope. Not to mention no American, I know of, see any glory in this.
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby grzegorz on Thu Apr 26, 2018 1:32 pm

Azer wrote:
grzegorz wrote:I don't worry about the same things you worry about. I have been to Ukraine since our debates and I can tell you that the western Ukraine improves every year. More right wing? Hooligans? Yes, the cops are hooligans.

Is there corruption everywhere? Are the politicians crooks? Yes, bad habits die hard. But I don't believe that gives the neighbors a right to invade.

I understand the Russian position. Poland used to be the buffer state and then it was Ukraine and now it is not. I know where you are coming from but believe that like Cuba countries have the right to self-rule even if we disagree with that government.


That's not really my issues with Ukraine, its more about xenophobia and oligarchy using said extremism to further their feudal control over state and personal assets which they are stealing. I have Ukrainian relatives as well as numerous friends and contacts, and their country as far as I see it is held ransom for Western geopolitical goals, and by a small number of very unsavoury characters, with very low morals and a large extremists element. Furthermore, some of my Ukrainian relations had major economic assets confiscated and the driver for this was the formerly mentioned apartheid fascist state's government related mob and their Ukrainian tentacles, but they already got a bit of a push back and much more enroute. As you can see, it's much the same dynamic, state player using local extremists, who are equally hateful of the ethnicity of their sponsors, but being the prostitutes that they are, take $$$ where they can get them. Hindsight, foresight, knowledge of history, not their strong points. They only see $$$, clearly sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies. A very common and rewarded trait these days, and not an accident, it is pushed to the fore and exhalted by prevalent economic models. This is also a major driver for foreign policy, and it's utterly disgusting.

An old one, but a great one on psychopaths and power:

http://cluborlov.blogspot.sg/2017/01/in ... trust.html

When these local and international policies spill out in to the streets and result in government forces and government extremist murdering 9,000+ locals, I think there is every justification to enter and eradicate said extremists and government. That hasn't actually happened I. E. Invasion, currently it's more protection, if Russia invaded, I doubt I'd have anything to say on this topic, and I do hope they will sooner rather than later, the extreme elements are becoming increasingly brazen.


I hear you and I am learning that the more I listen to people with opposing opinions the more I can see that we have a lot of common ground.

Yes, Ukraine has a ton of problems. I can remember children beginning for money at 2:00 AM in the streets of Kiev.

Not to mention the EU slowing down their process of including the Ukraine due to all the corruption but I do not agree that war solves problems.

Like Michael (much respect) I too am a veteran and I think for the both of we left with a distrust of a "military solution" but with different points of view.

Just as Cuba was once a U.S. territory as was "the" Ukraine a Russian/Soviet I don't think the military is the answer and in fact is more of a setback than anything else. Although I am not a pacifist I don't see glory in war. Most wars are for profit and power and not done for a better life for the locals although they are sold that way they are in fact done for a better life for the invaders.

I appreciate your feedback and wish your family & relatives well.
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby Azer on Tue May 08, 2018 9:46 am

Hey Greg, sorry didn't see this earlier.

Thanks man, all the best to you and yours!
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby Michael on Sun Jul 15, 2018 5:03 am

Larry King interviewed Russian Foriegn Minister Sergei Lavrov. If you want to be well-informed about complex topics, I think you have to listen to both sides. Lavrov answers questions.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ivIrJUCjSA
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby grzegorz on Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:16 pm

Btw, for those interested in this part of the world (which is why I am sharing here) I highly recommend the series Einsatzgruppen-Nazi Death Squads which shows how both the locals and the Germans contributed to genocide and crimes against humanity.

I find it interesting not for the blame game but for a deeper understanding of what actually happens in war once we get past the flag waving and chest beating and the masses believe that the end justifies the means.
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby grzegorz on Sun Jul 22, 2018 1:39 pm

Strange comments by Trump on Montenegro after meeting with Putin

Watch "People of Montenegro laugh off Trump's criticism" on YouTube

https://youtu.be/d6LxMwfeTSc
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby Steve James on Sun Jul 22, 2018 5:49 pm

Don't laugh. They may get very aggressive with Russia, or maybe even China. They have troops stationed in Afghanistan, too. They some bad mofos.
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Re: The Russians are coming.

Postby grzegorz on Mon Sep 24, 2018 7:32 am

Putin’s war is transforming Ukraine

By Anne Applebaum

Columnist

September 23 at 7:43 PM

LVIV, Ukraine

When they first arrived in Lviv, a university rector told me, the students who came from Donetsk walked around in packs, speaking loudly in Russian. They didn’t want to speak Ukrainian, as most inhabitants of this city do; they didn’t want to integrate. Lviv is in western Ukraine, near the Polish border. Donetsk, hundreds of miles to the east, has been occupied by Russian-backed “separatists” since the Russian invasion in 2014. The new students were “internally displaced persons” — refugees in their own country.

But that first year ended, and the second year was different. By the third year, the rector told me, the students from western Ukraine and the students from eastern Ukraine were nearly indistinguishable — and they aren’t alone. Four years have now passed since the invasion, and the 1.5 million Ukrainians displaced by the war are coping better than might be expected. Most of those who are of working age have jobs. The majority say they trust their neighbors.

The integration of the Donetsk refugees into schools and communities in the central and western parts of the country is also part of a broader story: the integration of the war into the consciousness of Ukrainians. Although it’s no longer on front pages, the Russian-Ukrainian war continues. One of the Russian-backed separatist leaders was killed in a bomb attack in August. Skirmishes take place most days, and soldiers on both sides die most weeks; there have been more than 10,000 casualties since 2014. Some of Lviv’s baroque churches have chapels dedicated to the victims.

Slowly, the never-ending conflict is altering attitudes here, leading to what a perceptive Atlantic Council reporthas called “the geopolitical divorce of the century”: the separation of two countries that have been part of the same empire for centuries. Trade between Ukraine and Russia, whose economies have been intertwined since the Middle Ages, has plunged, replaced in Ukraine by trade with Europe and the rest of the world. India, not Russia, is now the largest buyer of Ukrainian food. Ancient religious links between the two countries are dying too: The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has now formally split from Moscow. Even personal ties are fading: With travel now limited by bans on direct flights between the two countries, Ukrainians are less likely to live and work in Russia, and more likely to go to Poland instead.

Russian cultural influence, once all-powerful, is also disappearing, partly thanks to official decisions. Ukrainian radio stations — like those in Canada or France — are required to play a certain percentage of Ukrainian-origin songs, and many Russian state television stations are banned on the grounds that they carry war propaganda. Some want to go further: Foolishly, the regional legislature in Lviv last week declared it wanted to ban all Russian books and music, a measure that no one in this profoundly bilingual country will be able to enforce. Russian books were readily available at shops, at street stalls and at the city’s annual Book Forum last week. I asked my own Ukrainian-language publisher what she thought of the ban. She texted back a single word: “Crazy.”

These petty, discriminatory measures are an expression of frustration with a war that doesn’t end. They are also pointless, because a more profound, tectonic shift is already underway. Thanks to the war, and to their anger at its perpetrators, Ukrainians themselves are choosing to speak Ukrainian — more say they do every year. Thanks to the war, the different regions of this vast country are drawing more closely together. Many complain that the war also gives Ukrainian politicians an excuse not to do things, not to make the radical economic and legal reforms that the country still needs. But thanks to the war, more Ukrainians also identify themselves as “European,” in opposition to Russia, and more Ukrainians understand that this “Europeanness” means they need to be vocal and organized in their desire for change.

It is ironic that the Russian invasion, originally intended to punish Ukraine’s Western-oriented government, has pushed the country in a dramatically different direction. It’s also a reminder that the supposed strategic gifts of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, are in fact very limited. His interference in Ukraine has made a once-friendly neighboring country into an enemy. His efforts to unite “Russian-speaking peoples” into a Eurasian bloc persuaded thousands of people to stop speaking Russian. And, of course, his interference in the U.S. election has produced more paranoia about Russia in the United States, and more opposition to Russia, than we’ve seen in half a century. Ukraine is an excellent reminder of how violence can have unexpected consequences — and of how a short-term victory can lead to a longer-term defeat



The Washington Post: Putin’s war is transforming Ukraine

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html
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