« First « Previous Comments 2,121 - 2,160 of 4,272 Next » Last » Search these comments
Perhaps origins of war are at least partially in hydrocarbons, as often is the case. NATO joining rhetoric by itself is insufficient, as Finland having as long border with Russia will be in NATO soon and is not attacked..
How’s That War Going?
“The American press, once the guardian of democracy, was hollowed out to the point that it could be worn like a hand puppet by the U.S. security agencies and party operatives….Disinformation is both the name of the crime and the means of covering it up; a weapon that doubles as a disguise.” — Jacob Siegel
How’s the war going? Huh? Do you mean the war over in Ukraine? Or the US government’s war against its own people?
Well, the first one, the Ukraine War, is mostly destroying Europe — though, apparently, they haven’t figured that out yet. Europe’s industrial economy is toast without affordable Russian natgas. We turned off their pipeline for that in September and nobody in Europe objected. They just sucked it up and went back to smoking cigarettes at their café tables. A year or so from now, nobody in Europe will have enough money for a cappuccino (or cigarettes) and maybe then they’ll start asking the mental mollusks who run things there some questions — if they don’t just leapfrog all that politesse and burn the joint down.
The main thing about the Ukraine War is that the US doesn’t want it to end. You understand, it is not about any airy-fairy principles such as freedom for Ukraine. It’s about antagonizing Russia no matter how many dead Ukrainians it takes, because US officials developed a delusional psychosis about Russia after years of using it to mind-fuck American citizens, and we have to justify that antagonism by pretending we have vested interests in Ukraine, which we don’t, by the way.
So far, everything we’ve done to promote the conflict has backfired on Western Civ. Most of the rest of the world recognizes that the US has gone insane and they are taking careful steps to decouple from us — mainly to stop using our money for international trade. Really, would you want to have anything to do with a crazy person? No, you’d put as much distance between you and him as possible and stop even trying to communicate. If the world stops using the dollar in trade, the dollar will lose value, and so will the trillions in US bond paper held by other countries, which said countries will seek to unload as quickly as possible. Can you spell sovereign debt crisis? Look out below….
You get the picture? Now how about that other war: our government’s war against us? What canny reporters (Taibbi, Shellenberger) are calling the Censorship Industrial Complex has been pretty well outed. Everybody knows that the FBI, CIA, DHS, and many other agencies, via hijacked social media, have worked tirelessly to confound and bamboozle the public debate about, really, everything that matters. The odd part is that roughly half of America doesn’t seem to care. Of course, that is the same half of the country that has fallen in love with surveillance, censorship, political prosecutions, election monkey business, mandated mRNA shots, and other excursions into bad faith. Their auditors in the mainstream news media actually seem to relish their roles as enforcers of unreality.
All this is doing is getting a lot of people needlessly killed. End the fucking war. Russia can't lose, if they wanted, they could end this tomorrow with nuclear weaponry, but it could escalate with a war with Europe, which they could ALSO end. They are either #2 or #1 in nuclear armaments.
End this fucking war. The longer it goes on, the more people die.
I've noticed that many on this site are rightfully suspicious of any Western reporting on Ukraine. Fair enough. It is hard to know precise numbers of casualties as both Russia and Ukraine have vested interested in keeping that info secret.
But I don't think many can dispute the current battle maps. Is anyone claiming Russia has more land under their control then what is shown below?
https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1642323710072836097?ref_src=patrick.net
Can anyone watch the battle timeline below and really believe that Russia is "winning" after a year of so much loss of life and material?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pfmQpennxM
At best, Russia is locked in a...
But Bakhmut has been ceded by the Ukes - Russia is now in control. This effectively disproves the maps, etc., you have provided.
and Russia will be able to walk in where they want.
But Bakhmut has been ceded by the Ukes - Russia is now in control.
Russia's spending on the war is at least 14 billion dollars. per month
The state portal "Electronic budget" (its operators are the Ministry of Finance and the Treasury of Russia) reported the main parameters of the federal budget as of March 24, 2023.
Its revenues amounted to 3.46 trillion rubles, expenses - 7.37 trillion rubles, budget deficit - 3.91 trillion rubles. The amount of federal budget expenditures classified by functional areas (economy, social policy, etc.) amounted to almost 5 trillion rubles. In particular, the declared expenses under the item "National Defense" were equal to 531 billion rubles. The difference between all expenses and expenses distributed by functional items is almost 2.4 trillion rubles. represents a secret part of the costs, amounting to almost a third of all costs.
According to experts, the budget expenditures of law enforcement agencies, directly or indirectly related to the war against Ukraine, are classified. Thus, the actual expenditures on military operations are the sum of expenditures under the open item "National Defense" and secret expenditures, that is, 2901 billion rubles.
Strictly speaking, this figure does not give a complete picture of all the military-financial efforts of Russia. To this figure, one should also add the valuation of military equipment, weapons, ammunition, and other military materials produced in previous years, but subject to reactivation, withdrawal from warehouses, transportation to the front line and use in combat operations in the reporting period. However, such data is not currently available.
Thus, the minimum estimate of Russia's spending on the war for the first 83 days of 2023 (as of March 24) turns out to be 2901 billion rubles, or 40 billion dollars, which is 39.4% of all federal budget expenditures and approximately 8.1 % GDP Q1 2023
The average exchange rate in the first 83 days of 2023 amounted to 72.6 rubles. per US dollar.
The estimate of GDP in the 1st quarter of 2023 is assumed to be 36 trillion rubles.
Based on the fact that all spending on the war as of March 24, 2023 reached $40 billion, Russia's average monthly military spending in the first three months of 2023 amounted to at least $14.4 billion."
I don't think many can dispute the current battle maps. Is anyone claiming Russia has more land under their control then what is shown below?
At best, Russia is locked in a stalemate and hanging onto Eastern Ukraine is going to be a massive drain on blood and treasure which will be a festering wound for decades. It will make the Israeli/Palestinian conflict look like nothing.
Unless Russia can somehow deliver a knockout punch that topples the government in Kiev causing a total route of military command - how does Russia "win" under the current reality?
After building up the reserves during and after the Stalingrad meat grinder, it took the Soviet army only 2 months to not only cover that distance but also capture Karkov (name for Karkiv back then) and pushing on the Bug-River-line before Manstein's "genius" counter-stroke (3rd Battle of Karkov).
Reality says
After building up the reserves during and after the Stalingrad meat grinder, it took the Soviet army only 2 months to not only cover that distance but also capture Karkov (name for Karkiv back then) and pushing on the Bug-River-line before Manstein's "genius" counter-stroke (3rd Battle of Karkov).
I really don't think Russia of 2023 is the same thing as the Soviet army of WWII that had an almost limitless supply of MOTIVATED men and huge financial backing from the West. The Russia Lend Lease program was the equivalent of $180 Billion dollars of US aid!
The only way the war ends is for Russia to stop invading and occupying their sovereign neighbor.
socal2 says
The only way the war ends is for Russia to stop invading and occupying their sovereign neighbor.
No, it can end another way. With the dissolution of the NATO and the failure of the US government which has spent the last 20 years invading sovereign nations.
For the killing to stop, Richwicks needs Ukraine to lose AND the dissolution of NATO - AND the downfall of the US Government?
Nah - I think the easiest way to stop the needless death and destruction is for Putin to remove his crap-ass invading army out of Ukraine.
socal2 says
For the killing to stop, Richwicks needs Ukraine to lose AND the dissolution of NATO - AND the downfall of the US Government?
Please, do not strawman me.
You know how I know this war is going to go on for a good, fucking long time, that's every war the United States starts. The US was in Afghanistan for 20 years, what was the mission of that? There's no mission in Ukraine either.
richwicks says
socal2 says
For the killing to stop, Richwicks needs Ukraine to lose AND the dissolution of NATO - AND the downfall of the US Government?
Please, do not strawman me.
You flat out said: "With the dissolution of the NATO and the failure of the US government".
All the US wars since Vietnam were small bush fires compared to massive human atrocity happening in Ukraine.
Russia lost nearly double the troops in Ukraine in 12 months than the US lost in Vietnam over 10 years
I really don't think Russia can keep up this tempo. Any future big pushes to Kiev are off the table - so all they will be able to do is try to hunker down and defend themselves in the land they currently occupy in Eastern Ukraine.
What a shit show.
For the killing to stop, Richwicks needs Ukraine to lose AND the dissolution of NATO - AND the downfall of the US Government?
Anything else?
Last night, Tucker Carlson also got it, he found the real story in all the noise. Tucker broadcast his monologue about the actual significance of this story: the constant lying and the illegal, unauthorized proxy war.
Fox’s most popular commenter correctly identified that the U.S. isn’t just helping out an underdog democratic government fight off an evil invader. This is actually World War III:
“The slides show that this is not Ukraine’s war. It’s our war. The United States is a direct combatant in a war against Russia. As we speak, American soldiers are fighting Russian soldiers. So this is not a regional conflict in Eastern Europe. This is a hot war between the two primary nuclear superpowers on Earth.”
Tucker also noted that the government’s internal records say the reverse opposite of the lies the U.S. government and its credulous cronies in the corporate media have been peddling for 14 months:
“The second thing we learned from these slides is that despite direct U.S. involvement, Ukraine is in fact losing the war. Seven Ukrainians are being killed for every Russian. Ukrainian air defenses have been utterly degraded. Ukraine is losing.”
Don’t listen to Tucker, he’s a Putin-lover!
Tucker also accurately concluded that, absent Congressional approval, the proxy war is radioactive-level illegal: “But Lloyd Austin has not been arrested for committing that crime,” Tucker said. “Instead, the only man who has been taken into custody or likely ever will be, is a 21 year old Massachusetts air national guardsmen.”
Here’s Tucker’s 10-minute monologue:
https://twitter.com/ColumbiaBugle/status/1646684037023514630?ref_src=patrick.net
... I guess our cyber-security isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. But then, neither is our war effort in Ukraine. Yes, our war effort. We own this war from tail to snout, lock, stock, and barrel, the whole shootin’ match. We started it (in 2014, when we began the preps there), we goaded the Russians into it in bad faith, and now we’re losing it. Why? Because it was a stupid venture from the get-go. Now, it’s really a matter of how psychotic our government’s reaction will be when the Russians restore order to the place.
Restore order? That’s right. I believe that’s what they’re aiming to do. Our country went into Ukraine to create disorder in that corner of the world — which has been within Russia’s sphere-of-influence for over three hundred years, you understand. ...
The mysterious “Joe Biden” regime, in its brief two-plus years of service, has proven especially adept at creating fiascos. Are they aiming for the gold ring in this Ukraine gambit, that is, nuclear war? People seriously wonder. Or is something else going on? Blogger (and ex-CIA agent) Larry Johnson says the leak was done for a specific purpose, namely to shove “Joe Biden” out of the White House. Yes, our Deep State is at it again. Why, because “Joe Biden” can no longer be trusted to even pretend he’s chief executive. (Well, maybe they shouldn’t have installed him in the first place.)
Larry also reminds us that, conveniently, an Obama-era whistleblower named Mike McCormick, who accompanied Veep Joe Biden’s delegation to Ukraine in 2014, has stepped forward to detail Biden family grifting operations there, with the help of then-aide (now National Security Advisor) Jake Sullivan. It’s like somebody is laying out a case for impeachment — or resignation. One really off-the-wall theory floating “out there” has Veep Kamala Harris being induced to take Dianne Feinstein’s senate seat (DF, 89, is very ill), and “Joe Biden” then appointing Barack Obama to be Veep — with BHO stepping back into the White House when “JB” exits (or gets exited). Note, the XXII Amendment only prohibits a person from being “elected” president more than twice. No mention of appointment. Now there’s a real Catch-22! ...
Whatever the Mike McCormick whistleblower matter means, it’s only an additional layer to the rotten onion of Biden family corruption, the millions of dollars flowing into their bank accounts from all over the planet. This treasonous business has been right in America’s face for three years. The Hunter Biden laptop alone is crammed with hard evidence of felonies that the federal justice system has willfully managed to ignore. Rep. James Comer’s House Oversight Committee sits on a raft of Biden family bank records detailing hundreds of flagged suspicious transactions. ...
In the meantime, though, we’re likely to see the collapse of the Ukraine war effort. The recriminations from that should be huge, with calls for General Milley and SecDef Austin to step down just for starters and turmoil through the Pentagon command. Imagine also the confused rage of American voters who watched over $100-billion squandered on this stupid misadventure, including the estimated $300-million that Mr. Zelensky stuffed in his pockets.
Also, in the meantime, watch the rapidly accelerating move away from the dollar in global trade settlements as many other nations lose confidence in the floundering USA. That, of course, will affect the value of the dollar. The Federal Reserve will be helpless to manage the consequences of that, and the problem will be hugely aggravated if other nations start dumping the US Treasury bonds and bills they hold. In short, at the same time the Ukraine is lost and the “Joe Biden” regime falls apart, we get a king-hell financial crisis combined with a cratering on the-ground economy. Things stop moving, including food.
Triple-also, in the meantime, the spooky question of Covid vaccine deaths rises to the previously resistant public’s attention, and they realize that they have been poisoned by their own government, now in ominous convulsion. All of this will make starkly clear that America suffers a dangerous leadership vacuum. This is not civil war. This is something else. But what?
This is not civil war. This is something else. But what?
As far as the obvious false flag 'leak', means,
The crash landing with respect to us foreign policy?
You mean when they finally admit that the deep state runs foreign policy under the direction and to the pleasure of the globalists Satanic cabal?
We haven’t heard from the kid Texiera yet. But he could be another Snowden. THe military seems to have a lot of trouble keeping classified documents secure.
« First « Previous Comments 2,121 - 2,160 of 4,272 Next » Last » Search these comments
https://twitter.com/HinchaPenta/status/1496700652084473857?s=20&t=T1inEM5Hv6ahmrL4nzNirQ&source=patrick.net