The United States(!) of A
Would be weird, if the unnamed country's nuclear capabilities was Israel, given the Tablets provenance...this is going to be really 'fun to watch' (thanks Joey Turps)
And context for the use of the term deracinated???
FBI : "We've just uncovered invisible ink stains on Trump (vs) Stormy Daniels Non Disclosure Agreement!"
Ms Daniels : 'Err...this is rather embarrassing Guys...but I'm afraid to have to tell you...that's not ink!'
FBI : " ? "
Jelly Flater wrote:Haha… etarip
‘I’ve spoken to lots of people about Ukraine’ blah blah… ;);)
….
Russia are sitting pretty.
You need to understand Russians first.
….
And nobody actually can state that ‘things will get worse for Russia from here on. That’s not hope, that’s what’s going to happen’.That is hearsay. That’s an opinion based on what? What’s going to happen is ‘we have no farkn idea’…. ;);)
Atleast get that bit straight ;)
I said wait three months and we can revisit, but I’m happy to revisit now if you want JF?
Lawrence Freedman’s take on the Ukrainian offensive / Russian operational level collapse.
Whether this Kharkiv situation, which is unravelling really quickly for the Russians, deepens across the whole of Russian occupied Ukraine remains to be seen. Either way, this is going to reverberate all the way back to Moscow.
Interesting reading John Pilger’s take on propaganda. It’s sure to upset some with his views on present day events. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/john-pilger-s...
Supafreak wrote:Interesting reading John Pilger’s take on propaganda. It’s sure to upset some with his views on present day events. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/john-pilger-s...
This piece itself is full of lies, misrepresentations and false equivalencies Supa.
etarip wrote:Supafreak wrote:Interesting reading John Pilger’s take on propaganda. It’s sure to upset some with his views on present day events. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/john-pilger-s...
This itself is full of lies Supa.
Which part is full of lies ? I personally wouldn’t know , I’ve always liked John Pilger but when I read and watched some of his specials like the ‘ coming war on china ‘ I was sceptical and thought he was a bit of an apologist for china , but again I wouldn’t really know . It’s hard to know who and what to believe these days .
Supafreak wrote:Interesting reading John Pilger’s take on propaganda. It’s sure to upset some with his views on present day events. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/john-pilger-s...
Pilger has been spot on since the 80's with his book Hero's. Along with Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky, he is exposing the truth....
Ref Ukraine: Off the top of my head, and I’ve got my hands full with the kids, 2 stand out: the piece about Putin needing to invade Ukraine because Zelensky was going to get nuclear weapons and secondly the comment about the war in Donbas raging for 8 years on Russian borders.
Firstly, the road to weaponisation for nukes is long, torturous and expensive. As well as illegal for an NOT signatory. Even for a country with nuclear energy. So, the imputation that there was an imminent threat is a lie.
Secondly, the conflict in Donbas was initiated, deepened and sustained by Putin. You’re telling me that invasion of Ukraine by declared Russian forces was the ONLY mechanism that could have stopped that conflict? Again, a lie.
I don’t disagree with some of Pilger’s analysis of US foreign policy. But I can’t not call out his apologist stance for Putin.
The alternate universe is that people have been duped as much by Russian propaganda as they have by the US version.
There’s just layers and layers of bullshit and battalions of gullible fools prepared to perpetuate untruths.
Look at Pilger’s article. The ‘last straw’ was Zelensky’s threat to develop nukes? On 24 February? But that was the last straw? What exactly then precipitated the 3 months of military build up before that?
Have you read / listened to the genocidal ravings of Russian state media pundits in the past six months?
The irony of Pilger’s position (and whataboutery) on this is that this is / was always an exercise in colonialism. An evil that he built his reputation on savaging.
Anyway, my point was that it’s all going wrong for Russia. Quickly.
It’s all going wrong for Ukrainians. Caught between the US led globalist neoliberals who want to rort the country from end to end and Putin claiming territory to in order to deny it from NATO aggression.
The Ukrainians get a choice between getting robbed, debt enslaved or killed.
Yeeewwww!
DudeSweetDudeSweet wrote:It’s all going wrong for Ukrainians. Caught between the US led globalist neoliberals who want to rort the country from end to end and Putin claiming territory to in order to deny it from NATO aggression.
The Ukrainians get a choice between getting robbed, debt enslaved or killed.
Yeeewwww!
Reckon that is pretty much correct. :(
You’ve just proved my point Blowin. Bullshit. Putin doesn’t want Ukraine as a buffer. He wants it as part of the Russian Federation, mainly for its resources. NATO is a distraction, a bullshit casuals belli. VJ posted something ages back that shows the disposition of natural resources in Ukraine. Funnily enough they overlap neatly with Russian claims.
Why hasn’t Russia invaded Finland and Sweden?
It’s a fucking tragedy. As shitty as their options might seem, Ukrainians are voting with their actions right now. They’ll take their chance with Europe.
Russian propaganda lines:
1. It’s the Donbas
2. It’s NATO
3. Ukraine isn’t a real thing anyway
4. Ukraine was developing Nukes
Do ya reckon biden is on an election winner spending upwards of 54 billion so far ?
Dunno SF, I’m not a US voter but I don’t think it’s the hot issue that some parts of the GOP want it to be.
etarip wrote:Dunno SF, I’m not a US voter but I don’t think it’s the hot issue that some parts of the GOP want it to be.
I think it would be an issue with Americans that are on the streets or doing it tough with health and cost of living regardless of which party they preferred.
Maybe, but how many of them vote?
Not being callous, it might not be popular in the street, I just don’t know if it’s an energising issue that’ll make people vote.
Probably the same as Trump docs.
@etarip , can you see putin pulling out of this war ? I noticed on tonight’s news that it was saying Ukraine has gained back a lot of ground recently .
The momentum has definitely swung in Ukraine’s favour in the Kharkiv region. Concurrent to this is a slower counteroffensive in the south (Kherson). The Ukrainians have taken back more land in the past week than Russia gained in the last three months. They’ve liberated a number of strategically important towns and, crucially, transportation hubs.
I can post some links if you’re interested.
Putin’s options have narrowed, not increased.
Will he pull out of the war? I don’t know. He’s out himself in a pretty rough position. If he’d been able to ‘freeze’ the conflict two weeks ago he might have had a stronger negotiating position. A lot of that has fallen apart.
The figures of Russian casualties are eye-watering. Equipment and personnel. Up to 50K troops dead according to some reasonably sober analysts.
Worst case scenario. Operational level (ie, an ‘area’ of the battlefield) collapse infects the broader strategic level (ie the whole front). He feels he has to do something dramatic to reverse that. He’s run out of options to escalate in a Conventional sense. (Cruise and ballistic missiles targeting civilian centres). Ukrainians have their tails up. Doesn’t leave much in the golf bag.
Yeah I’ll have a read thanks . I know it’s a difficult question (s) but can you see this war ending anytime soon ? Is putin mad enough to use nukes ? Edit posted this before I read your last one .
Is he mad? I don’t know. It’s probably still rational from his perspective.
Interestingly, I think Russian nuclear doctrine outlines use of nukes in a situation where national survival is at risk. Depends what he sees as ‘national’ - is a potential loss Crimea (annexed but not recognised) in this category?
The US doesn’t want the war to end. Where do you think the US billions are going? Just like the trillions spent on the wars in the Middle East, the money spent all ends up in the hands of the US plutocracy. It’s a free pour of US cash into the hands of the crew who actually rule the US . The war will continue as long as it’s still profitable.
I agree that the US isn’t going all in to enable a quick Ukrainian victory. I think the US has been very deliberate in the choice of and pace of weapons it has provided. Initially this was based on a real concern that the Ukr would collapse and the Rus would get access to higher end US tech. They did provide a lot of defensive weaponry (ie Anti-tank and anti-air shoulder launched missiles) but not much else.
Since they held on during the the initial invasion and the war ‘slowed down’ in tempo the concern of a rapid Russian victory (and this ukr equipment loss) became less prominent.
The timing of sharing of weapons systems has been important for two reasons: 1. Keep pace with the Ukrainian development of their campaign and not accelerate this. This undermines the Russian narrative that it’s direct involvement in the war, reducing the chance of escalation (horizontal or vertical). - Those terms are in vogue in national security speak at the moment, but essentially it means either broadening the conflict but with the same means or deepening the conflict by upping the type of weapons used (ie nukes). And, 2. They’re letting the Russians bleed themselves out from a conventional weapons and personnel perspective. This is actually working tbh.
The BS narrative about ‘fighting to the last Ukrainian’ is…. BS. The Ukrainian manpower reserves are actually greater than Russia’s at this point in time. The question is shifting to whether Putin is thinks Ukraine is worth fighting to the last Russian. (Or to be more precise, Buryat, Chechen, Degastani, or even more dubiously to the last pressganged Luhansk / Donetsk ‘volunteer’ - ethnic Russians are grossly under-represented in the casualty figures)
Also, this isn’t a US-only show. A lot of central / Eastern European countries have contributed a lot compared to their size. Still, the greatest provider of arms and ammunition to Ukraine is none other than…. Russia!
Much of the recently approved US billions in military aid is actually allocated to new production with time horizons to roll off production lines from 2023 to 2025. They have run down their current stocks of equipment and munitions to the point that they are below general readiness levels for their own defence.
So the immediate supply of weapons is not nearly at the levels the headlines suggest. The same applies across Europe. The supply is drying up.
US is is also providing support on a lend lease basis - a giant Ukrainian credit card. The UK only just finished off paying the US for WWII
So the US economy gets a big boost - while Ukraine shoulders the grind of war and debt for generations.
War is so often not what it appears on the surface.
I’m sure it’s pure coincidence that the tiny irrelevant country in which the current US President has been involved in a years long imbroglio of corruption allegations , is now receiving more US government money than US citizens themselves.
Nothing to see here folks…..move along!
Sorry, my bad. I forgot that the source of all evil is linked to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
So, going back a couple of steps. Are you (or anyone else) saying that US arms exports to Ukraine precipitated in part or otherwise, the Russian actions (undeclared invasion of Ukraine) in 2014?
frog wrote:Much of the recently approved US billions in military aid is actually allocated to new production with time horizons to roll off production lines from 2023 to 2025. They have run down their current stocks of equipment and munitions to the point that they are below general readiness levels for their own defence.
So the immediate supply of weapons is not nearly at the levels the headlines suggest. The same applies across Europe. The supply is drying up.
US is is also providing support on a lend lease basis - a giant Ukrainian credit card. The UK only just finished off paying the US for WWII
So the US economy gets a big boost - while Ukraine shoulders the grind of war and debt for generations.
War is so often not what it appears on the surface.
Do you work in supply chain / logistics Frog? You’re right on one level. Most of the US equipment supplied is already written off. Sunk costs. Reality is though that the shelf life of much of many of the ammunition natures being provided has been reached or is imminent. So of course allocation of funding will replace those stocks but not many people within the system will be upset by that.
The other, less obvious, part of supplying Ukraine has little to do with US materiel. It’s about facilitating the purchase and supply of Soviet specification ammunition and in some cases equipment on global markets that is compatible with existing Ukr stocks. That is complementing what Ukrainians are currently capturing in Kharkiv.
There’s this constant refrain / theme that the Ukrainians are mere puppets, only existing to be toyed with (and owned by) Russia or the US. It’s pretty fucking condescending to be honest.
“Tiny irrelevant country” according to Blowie. Clearly not either of those things. 44million people, one of the largest grain exporters in the world. The basis of much of the USSR’s tech know how.
Again, I certainly don’t think that US actions are altruistic. But they ain’t the arch-puppet masters that people want to make them out to be. They’re opportunistic. And Ukraine’s expectation-defying, successful, against the odds, initial defence against Putin’s inept invasion gave them an incredible opportunity.
Your words: "gave them an incredible opportunity"
This attributes a very high motivation to achieve some desired strategic objective by the US. Not so much a passive bystander stepping in to simply to protect the vulnerable.
Or more simply put, it implies the US was itching for a fight with Russia by proxy. Someone itching for a fight often finds one.
Does that attitude make us safer or spread world peace?
One paper I read suggested the US was manoeuvring to put Australia at the pointy end of a proxy war with China over Taiwan. I hope they do not see that as another one of your incredible opportunities.
@etarip , last night you offered to send some links if I was interested, I did reply I would like to have a read thanks , I’m still interested thanks .
SF - I’d start with the Lawrence Freedman link I posted earlier if you haven’t read it. He’s balanced, he’s one of the pre-eminent writers on strategy and military history.
There’s also Eliot Cohen. He’s a (maybe reformed?) US neocon, but his analysis of the war’s progress has been pretty accurate.
This is from April, but makes a pretty clear case that Putin’s gamble to double down in the east was folly.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/ukraine-russia-war-con...
What’s interesting about Cohen is that he’s critical of the US Administration for not doing enough to ensure a Ukrainian victory sooner.
Phillips O’Brien is a respected military historian. He has been writing about the shifting balance in Ukraine for months.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/ukraine-counteroffensi...
@etarip , thanks for that , cheers . Watching news today and some of the questions I put to you about putin and nukes came up , don’t feel so stupid asking now.
Frog, my identifying that the US identified an opportunity doesn’t make it ‘my opportunity’. You get that, right?
Are you seriously suggesting that the US government shouldn’t have strategic objectives? That they shouldn’t or wouldn’t exploit the missteps of a strategic competitor. What’s your expectation of governments?
You’ve made a massive logical leap there, and you’ve attempted to mischaracterise what I wrote. I never said that they were acting as a Good Samaritan. In fact I clearly wrote the opposite. You didn’t read what I wrote as it conflicted with what you thought I was trying to say - confirmation bias
Supafreak wrote:@etarip , thanks for that , cheers . Watching news today and some of the questions I put to you about putin and nukes came up , don’t feel so stupid asking now.
SF, it’s bloody scary mate. The fact that we’re discussing this is terrifying.
Nuclear deterrence. I was only a kid in the 80s, high school when the Cold War ended, but I never thought I’d live in an age where we discussed the possibility of nuclear war.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/escalation-management-and-nuclear-empl...
etarip wrote:Supafreak wrote:@etarip , thanks for that , cheers . Watching news today and some of the questions I put to you about putin and nukes came up , don’t feel so stupid asking now.
SF, it’s bloody scary mate. The fact that we’re discussing this is terrifying.
Nuclear deterrence. I was only a kid in the 80s, high school when the Cold War ended, but I never thought I’d live in an age where we discussed the possibility of nuclear war.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/escalation-management-and-nuclear-empl...
I was born in 61 and grew up with a fear of nuclear war . My parents met and married in woomera , they worked for WRE ( weapons research establishment ) and my older sister was born there . Dad was eventually transferred to salisbury Adelaide and worked for WRE for 25 years. He never really talked about work much and ended up as an assessor of various projects carried out in woomera. Occasionally he showed me photos of rockets and such and was always reading books about ww1 & 2 . Surfing was a great escape from that fear as a youngster and yes it’s a little scary that we are talking about it now .
Son of scientists? Both of my parents are scientists.
As far as resources about the war, without the media fluff and opinion the ISW does a pretty balanced assessment. This is the last link I’ll post unless I find something else that’s really good or presents an alternative (but credible) perspective.
https://www.iswresearch.org/2022/09/russian-offensive-campaign-assessmen...
Sorry, one more. Good to get an insight into the Russian media spin on things:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCoAw0n5OyITkmejSCMfmnWg
https://m.
etarip wrote:Son of scientists? Both of my parents are scientists.
As far as resources about the war, without the media fluff and opinion the ISW does a pretty balanced assessment. This is the last link I’ll post unless I find something else that’s really good or presents an alternative (but credible) perspective.
https://www.iswresearch.org/2022/09/russian-offensive-campaign-assessmen...
No my parents weren’t scientists, mum was a computer https://adelaideaz.com/articles/salisbury-wre-women-crucial-as-computers... Dad went to woomera from the army , they met on a tracking station , and he worked his way up through the ranks . Family were allowed to visit the rocket range and salisbury occasionally. . Salisbury WRE was built from the exact plans from the one they had in England so it was quite comical as you had these snow drains down the sides of the streets . BTW I’ve read the 2 articles you posted, got around the paywall by googling the articles. Very interesting how Ukraines unorthodox approach is working for them .
Ha, that’s a cool story. My mum was a biochemist, which like many scientific disciplines was (is) pretty male dominated. Never had to dress in army uniforms to keep the lower ranks away tho!
Some smarter tactics by the Ukrainians in recent days and success in a territory grab in less well defended areas.
But head to head against the core Russian last army last week sounded brutal - see below for a surprisingly graphic account for mainstream western media:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/07/ukraine-kherson-offensiv...
Some accounts by wounded soldiers. Fire 3 mortars and face 20 in return. Turn on your mobile to phone family and get detected and targeted by missiles. Lose five of your own for every one Russian. Unheard drones 1 km overhead detecting your movements and calling in attacks.
Crikey, our white pointer worries in the surf are nothing compared to that stuff.
Now apparently a peace deal was close in April but big brave Boris flew in to stop it and then flew home first class to his comfy bed back in the UK. Probably said something like - Keep at em chaps - jolly good show eh what? Give them Ruskies a bit more good old biffo... I'll make sure the chaps at my club quaff a toast for you all tonight when I get home!
What a hero.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/09/01/report-russia-ukraine-tentatively-agre...
I bet lot of Ukrainians would prefer peace back then with loss of some territory to the ongoing meat grinder of war.
This guy, Kamil Galeev, is always good for a counterpoint.
He’s been predicting a eventual Ukrainian victory since the first days of the war.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1497993363076915204?ref_sr...
Frog - the proposition in Kherson (south) is much more difficult for a counter-attack. The Ukrainians have been talking it up for at least a month before kick off. Looks like it worked and the Russians shifted a lot of forces to reinforce that area, resulting in weakness in the north that the Ukrainians exploited. That’s not going to win the war though.
The problems for the Russians in the south are that they have a lot of troops (~20K) on the western side of the Dnipro river and there’s only two barely functional bridges to resupply them that are constantly being interdicted and / or cut. The figures of required supply vs actual supply don’t look good. Fuel, ammo, food - just the basics that you need to fight.
Can anyone see putin getting bumped off by someone wanting to take over as leader ? Then ending the war and becoming popular ? Popular but probably not trusted .
Theres some conjecture that the only people who would be likely to bump off / depose Putin are the ‘hardliners’ who’ve been critical of his soft approach.
Life comes at you fast: pundits on Russian TV realize that their military is failing and their country is in trouble. They are starting to play the blame game. Some of them finally understand that their genocidal denial of the Ukrainian identity isn't working in Russia's favor. pic.twitter.com/jNNn5xifI5
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) September 11, 2022
Continuing to quietly follow this, it appears the Ukrainians have had some great success. Clip above seems to be Russian talking heads beginning to turn on each other.
What seems the case in MSM headlines may not be so. It pays to mix your sources to see a bit better through the fog of war.
The above link is to a more or less balanced but Russian-leaning commentator - no flashy production but well researched. He suggests that Ukraine attacked where Russia had already planned and begun a retreat already back to a more easily defendable river. They were leaving behind an area that had been hard to defend and over time had been seen as of little benefit. The move was too fast and with too little fighting to be a head to head battle victory.
Fast forward over a lot of territory by Ukraine means over extended lines vulnerable to air attacks and or pincer moves etc.
He also says that the last few days are terrible short term optics for Russia in the info / morale war. So that is a big cost to Russia.
But there may be a master plan behind it - particularly with winter coming.
One viewer comment said:
"Rails stop functioning throughout karkhiv after strikes on electricity infrastructure. Fuel storage also blown out. Lights out across other part of Ukraine too. Logistics for Ukraine offensive in karkhiv destroyed in less than a day, Russia was capable of doing this earlier but they intentionally allowed Ukraine advance deep into contested regions in karkhiv. Ukraine fell for a big trap."
That may be totally wrong but western media would not even discuss such possibilities. Both the west and Russia will have set traps of various sorts and scales. Traps upon traps. Like a chess game, slow action actually can just be the setting of pieces then things move quickly. That time is coming soon I suspect.
Ah, the old feint! Like the debacle in Kyiv. This is retrospective justification. Russian fallback to the Oskil river wasn’t planned. They lost towns that they’d spent months fighting for. In days. Where exactly are Russia getting the resources from to spring this trap? They WERE over extended. They still are.
Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure and population centres in Kharkiv days after the Ukrainian advance was more of a hissy fit than sound military logic. And untimely it used a stack of ‘precision’ munitions to turn out the lights for a couple of hours.
You’re right in one respect. There’s plenty of space for deception in this war. I’m just not sure that both sides are evenly matched in that regard.
Septic Tanks are going to Septic Tank