"The 1980's are calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

Russia fires 122 missiles and 36 drones in what Ukraine calls the biggest aerial barrage of the war

Worth noting the numbers killed is, so far, low, thankfully.

It's an expensive response to billions of roubles worth of armour being turned into scrap, if I was running the campaign I'd wanting a lot more bang for my buck, especially as they can only do so many of those mass attacks a year now.

I'm sure they are concerned with both. An escalation to WWIII isn't likely if we are cogent on how we handle our involvement, we've been through worse. But unlike Korea or Afghanistan, this time we are influencing things on the Russian border in what they consider their ancestral home.

That's ridiculously cynical. Nothing would make Biden look better in the West and at home then helping Ukraine rout Russia. Especially considering all the election interference and cyber attacks Russia has been engaged in.

That's balanced by having to deal with a Republican congress at home that is obstructionist in every way and holds the power of the purse strings.

The US is a superpower, to be sure, but that doesn't mean we snap our fingers and the world falls in line. It means we can influence thing throughout the world and normally don't pay for our indiscretions.

The way to attack the US is at home, through politics, and we have a bunch of brain dead christofascists that are all too happy to play traitor to slurp Putin's dick.

Yes, and Biden being successful against Russia makes that less probable, not more. He has a lot of incentive to do what he can for Ukraine. Again, he wants to send them $300 billion, now - that's a huge price tag compared to our previous involvement. Congress is balking. But so far Biden has won most of those battles, so we'll see how it plays out.

A school and a maternity hospital were hit. Outrageous.

The money is not being sent to Ukraine. It’s to pay for weapons systems to be sent to Ukraine. Worth remembering when the Treason Caucus starts yammering about giving Ukraine a “blank check”.

Russian state media gloating about the attacks on civilians. Calls Ukrainians vermin. Their language and country fake and that the proper owners of the country will soon fix things except for their lack of intelligence because they are subhumans.

It's just jokes.
Libtards need to learn to lighten up.


P.S. if you so much as call me "doody head"" I'll bury your bones in a garbage dump.

Ricky: But it's not genocide!

Amaris: But there's some Nazis living in Ukraine, so fuck the entire country! They're all guilty by association! If you don't want them to die then you're a Nazi too!

Tererun: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

...acceptable.


Doody head.

Russian city of Belgorod targeted by Ukraine missiles. Russian air defense intercepted them but they still fragmented and hit the city. 14 dead and over 100 injured so far.

We'll see where this goes. A smart person would deescalate, but that would presume Putin gives a shit about his people.

https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/20...in-strike-on-russian-city-of-belgorod-en-news

That certainly is genocidal rhetoric.

Did you watch the video?

Yes I did. Make your point.

Do you think Russian State Media accurately reflects the opinion of the regime?

I think it's probably a little more sophisticated than the supposition that every word uttered is the exact position of Putin's regime. That they give a platform to this kind of thing is bad enough.

So you don’t think that is the position of the regime?

Some of it is. Putin gave a speech immediately before the invasion which contained statements about Ukraine being an artificially constructed nationality which should never have been given independence.

(This is a case of special pleading. There is an element of this to almost all nationalities, including Russian.)

But (and feel free to point it out yourself rather than asking leading questions) I'm not aware of anything indicating stuff about "vermin" and "subhuman" being state policy, and indeed it would run counter to the idea of their being just confused Russians. That is merely useful as part of the allowable range of opinions broadcast by the media in the context of a war. This is Fox News for Russians.

So your contention is that the Russian government doesn’t support the genocide of Ukrainians but they promote calls for genocide of Ukrainians on Russian State TV because the majority of Russians support genocide and the regime is afraid to go against public opinion?

No, that bears little resemblance to what I said. If you don't agree, you should respond to my post rather than concocting a strawman.

So why do you think the regime is promoting Ukrainian genocide on Russian State TV?

Read my post. I don't have time for this game.

I’m just trying to figure out why you think the Putin regime is promoting Ukrainian genocide on Russian State TV.

You’ve said you aren’t sure if the regime actually supports the genocide of the Ukrainian people that is being conducted by their forces.

But if they don’t support it, then why are they promoting it?

I don’t get it.

No, I haven't said that. Read the goddamn post.

I mean, you're just fundamentally misunderstanding (deliberately?) the purpose of state media and it's relationship to the regime.

This guy is a shock jock. He's there because he's onside with Putin and that's not good. But your assumption that he is directly articulating state policy is insane. It takes about 30 seconds on google to find that he's also demanded the invasion of the United States, in alliance with North Korea. He represents and caters to one authorised (particularly extreme) political current in Russia, of which a spectrum does exist - they even have 'debates' on these channels.

The fact that people who publicly disagree with official state policy face long prison terms makes this apologia ring hollow.

Not everything you don't like is regime apologia. There are no genuine oppositional voices on Russian TV. But doctrinal systems are more sophisticated than just acting simply as a megaphone for the guy at the top. Debate is permitted and encouraged within prescribed boundaries. (Should we nuke Ukraine or not?) It's much more effective at controlling public opinion and presenting the appearance of legitimacy.

Yes, this has the effect of tunneling debate in a certain direction. In this case, one that doesn't exclude genocide or expanding to a wider war.

This thread from '08 seems related...

https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/01...ependently-arm-ukraine-if-trump-wins-in-2024/

Better late than never but this would have been really useful two years ago.

This year will likely be one of the toughest for Ukraine in a large part due to shell hunger. The US is finally starting to get our production capacity up (although we have our own issues thanks to Republicans on getting them to the Ukrainians) but Europe is a year behind their promised expansion.