Posts by rowdyraven112

Melissa Rivera5 said:What's even the point here? You think being 21 makes him too young for war crimes?

My point is he's way too young to grasp what "we'll let you go home if you confess" actually means☕. I'd bet money he's being subjected to some serious psychological pressure just to squeeze out a confession.
I just watched a documentary about how the Japanese police operate—they condemn basically everyone based on confessions they easily manufacture in their "democratic" prisons☕

Susan Walker25 said:And who's doing the counting? The victors?

Did the Mexicans bother counting after our storm hit? ☕

mellowdrifter80 said:So, are you the self-appointed expert who gets to decide what qualifies as propaganda and what doesn't? Is the footage of a decapitated Ukrainian soldier next to a severed head also just a fabrication?

https://twitter.com/ALAl18840361/sta...94440961675264

And I suppose the geolocation in occupied Popasna is fake too, manufactured in some biological laboratory?

https://twitter.com/TuiteroMartin/st...691200/photo/1

The battle for Popasna ended on May 7th when the Ukrainian Armed Forces pulled out. This footage is dated August 5th. By then, muscle tissue should be visibly decaying. The body should be crawling with scavengers. If you've ever spent any time hiking, you'd know what a carcass looks like after a week of being picked at by worms and bugs. Unless the body was preserved in those heavy-duty body bags. Not to mention, anyone filming this would need either a gas mask or a stomach of steel. You get this in real life when a smell starts drifting from an apartment where a lonely, forgotten old man lived. You don't want to know what the place looks like or what the body looks like a week after death. At least, that's what I've been told.

Bottom line? Either the video was shot 2-3 days later, or it's heavily staged. I'm not interested in guessing which one it is or arguing about it. Reddit is full of thousands of these—both staged and real. In this video, the head and hands should be absolutely swarming with scavengers. Literally swarming.

Let's be clear. Are the Russians committing crimes in Ukraine? Only an idiot would claim they aren't. Scale? I have no idea. I'm not on the ground, so I can't judge. Are Ukrainians committing crimes against Russian soldiers? Should I repeat what I said about idiots? As for scale, I can tell you it's likely a hundred times smaller than the Russian side. Why? Simple. Because the Russians are currently the stronger force.

dustytiger8 said:Did any Russian guard die? If not... then how? How does that work!?

As for the other question... hand grenades would be a fitting method, given the outcome!

Who told you not a single Russian guard died? The Ukrainian side isn't out there blabbing about their losses either. ☕

Found this video:



So, the "fair" American justice system just sentenced a 21-year-old punk for murdering an old man. I guess they learned directly from Putin and the CIA, since we've seen plenty of scenarios like this in Moscow, right? I'm sure there was a promise involved: "confess and you can go home."☕
That's why I said... we'll count up who cut whose head off once the war is over.

goldenowl73 said:So, I was just scrolling through my feed and saw that The Guardian put out this absolutely gut-wrenching story about a head on a pike.

Footage appears to show fresh atrocity against Ukrainian PoW

News Report: Horrific video and photos have emerged that appear to show the head of a Ukrainian prisoner of war stuck on a pole outside a house in the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna, which was captured by Russian forces in May and is close to the current frontline in the Donbas.

Alright, found it. Watched it... looks like some kind of head on a stake filmed in the middle of nowhere. I thought this was a forum for sharing facts, not a place to push Russian or Ukrainian propaganda. ☕
If you want that, go to those pro-Russia or pro-Ukraine sites and talk all you want there. ☕

Melissa Rivera5 said:Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. That's just how it goes, I guess.

I mean, maybe he wouldn't even be in this spot if Putin wasn't out there sending those bald kids off to fight in a fratricidal war. I guess. 😉 Then he could just stay home and harass his own people instead of Putin sending him off to do that in Ukraine. Like I said, and I actually mean this: You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. I guess that's just how it goes..

The Bald Russian was captured within the first month of the Russian invasion. So... ☕

Just checked the facts. Supposedly it’s a 32-year-old Russian facing trial in absentia, but I'd bet anything that kid was tried for something and broadcast on TV. ☕

goldenowl73 said:Some absolutely sickening images just surfaced from occupied Popasna, showing what looks like the head of a Ukrainian prisoner of war impaled on a stake. I’m not going to drop a direct link here because, honestly, nobody needs to see that, but it’s already blowing up all over Twitter.
Even Oleksander Scherbina, the former Ukrainian ambassador, has commented on this. There’s also a video circulating of the same guy’s body, missing both his head and his arms. It’s just... it's hard to even process.

First we saw that horrific footage of the prisoner being mutilated, and now we're seeing this medieval-style execution with heads on spikes. Just when you think the Russian forces couldn't sink any lower or be any more depraved, they find a new way to shock the world.

The reckoning for who committed atrocities and who didn't will come after the war.

Look at the trial of that 18-year-old Russian rapist—kid looks like he just left his mother's side. He just rolled his eyes before facing an American-style court. Then there are the trials for those so-called "mercenaries" (who were clearly under pressure) sentenced to death by the Luhansk People's Republic. I don't doubt their "justice" either. ☕

I haven't seen this supposedly reliable American court prosecute soldiers who clearly executed Russian soldiers in existing videos, or those who intentionally maimed them so they couldn't return to the front. ☕
Luckily, the Americans don't have anyone like Šeks to point fingers...

Then there's the testimony from that British guy near the start of the Russian invasion. Lost in time and space, he tried to join the Ukrainian forces like it was a game of COD. He testified about Ukrainian soldiers placing two dead Russian soldiers at the entrance of their town as a warning. I haven't seen any proactive effort from the courts to investigate his claims. ☕

I can't wait to hear your excuse that the Russians are worse in this regard. Let me answer that now: of course they are. Any army that held dominance until now committed more crimes than the other side. The weaker side didn't avoid them simply because they are better; they lacked the opportunity. ☕

Also, we can say with certainty that the head in Popasna is definitely a Ukrainian POW, that the footage was filmed right there in Popasna—you were there, weren't you?—and that the Russians are the ones doing the mutilating. ☕

Stop with the hearsay in a conflict this brutal. ☕

dustyowl29 said:Russia has always been a playground for criminals.
The most elite hackers out there? They're almost certainly Russian.
The government uses incredibly shady—honestly, borderline scavenger-like—tactics just to get what they want.
You see these kinds of scenarios playing out all over Africa, South America, and beyond...

So what? Every serious security agency has them. You think the DOJ and Olaf don't have them here in the States? They do, they just aren't as capable as the Russians. The DOJ and Olaf use them to break into the encrypted computers of our own suspected ministers. Others in different countries use them to cause damage or try to grab valuable data. The reality is you only hear about how Western institutions were attacked, but what slips under your radar is that Western countries are doing the exact same thing to Russia. ☕

Bryan Booth82 said:Let’s get one thing straight: if we’re talking about who is actually out there committing acts of aggression, it’s the Russians. Period.

That radioactive propaganda coming out of the Kremlin from Putin is getting more absurd by the second. Now he’s claiming there’s no gas simply because we’re missing a turbine? Give me a break! It’s clearly just a desperate attempt to shift the blame. And what do we see in response? The German government, caught up in their own internal media circus, actually sent the Chancellor out yesterday just to pose for photos next to a turbine. They even had the nerve to add a little note claiming that in today's modern world, such a turbine could be delivered incredibly fast—provided, of course, that the "right" country actually asks for it. Is this supposed to be serious political communication or just a choreographed photo op to distract from their own failures? How much longer are we expected to swallow these blatant excuses?

The message was exactly what you’d expect from a dictator sitting in the Kremlin—just the usual routine of manipulation and outright lies. He’s out there spinning this narrative that they are somehow the ones at fault for the breach of gas delivery contracts, all to shift the blame. It’s a transparent attempt to deflect, and his logic is as flawed as it is dishonest. According to him, we need to stop buying gas from Russia immediately, but let's be real: isn't this just another layer of psychological warfare? How much longer are we expected to swallow these excuses when the deception is so blatant?

Let’s be real: the Chancellor’s little photo op posing next to that wind turbine wasn't just a coincidence. It happened on the exact same day that the former Chancellor, Schröder—that absolute sympathizer who loves nothing more than playing into Russian propaganda—dropped his latest interview. And what did he do? He sat there and practically begged for the opening of NS2. Is anyone actually buying this carefully timed political theater?

They jumped on him with an immediate response, claiming that the issue wasn't actually about delivery capacity at all—it was entirely about the carrier! Can you believe the audacity? They're basically shifting the blame onto the shipping company to dodge any real accountability.

Essentially, Putin wanted to use Schröder as a walking piece of propaganda, but it clearly backfired on him. It’s almost comical how he tried to turn the former Chancellor into a mouthpiece for his own agenda, only to have the whole thing blow up in his face. Isn't it ironic when you try to weaponize someone's reputation just to have it used against you? He thought he was playing a masterstroke, but instead, he just handed his critics more ammunition.

I am absolutely losing my mind over this! How can anyone sit there and act like this isn't happening right in front of our eyes? It’s one thing to be skeptical, but we are talking about blatant, undeniable reality here. Are we really just going to shrug our shoulders and pretend everything is fine while the entire foundation shifts beneath us? It's infuriating! I feel like I'm shouting into a void sometimes, trying to point out the obvious patterns that everyone else seems determined to ignore. Is it incompetence, or is it something much more calculated? Honestly, at this point, I'm starting to wonder if anyone is actually paying attention at all!

What's the issue? It seems people forget we're in a proxy war between NATO and Russia. In an environment like this, everyone makes propaganda moves. You don't care about proactive propaganda involving posing by a turbine, but you do care about the other side's proactive propaganda... I don't see a problem with the Germans loading that turbine onto a ship and sending it straight toward Russia. Do I really need to explain how that works? ☕
Then it's on the Russians to deal with that mess... Russophiles call it a propaganda win for Putin, while Biden supporters call it a German victory... in the end, both sides are full of it, and the ones paying the price will be the people relying on the gas for heat. ☕

Terry Hernandez10 said:The G7—that powerhouse group of the world's top economies—is currently weighing a total blockade on the transport of Russian oil to choke off Moscow's revenue streams following their invasion of Ukraine—unless, of course, they implement a strict price cap.

Just as a refresher, the G7 consists of the US, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan.

In a recent public briefing, G7 ministers indicated they are exploring "a comprehensive ban on all services facilitating the global maritime transport of Russian crude oil and petroleum products—except in instances where the oil is purchased at a price agreed upon through consultations with international partners, or even lower."

"While evaluating this and other avenues, we will also look into additional price mitigation strategies alongside these restrictive measures; our goal is to ensure that the most vulnerable nations maintain access to energy markets, including the Russian supply," the statement noted.

Feels like old news to me. One guy on the forum argued that a maritime blockade is basically an act of war, and I couldn't agree more. Even now, Russian oil finds its way to end users thanks to war profiteers running OPEC nations. Despite the sanctions, European products still find a path to Russia through these profiteers. Apparently, war profiteering doesn't bother anyone particularly much. ☕.

Carl Lee27 said:So, those folks over at Yale are out here claiming that the Russian economy is, if I may be blunt, completely and utterly trashed because of all these sanctions. Now, it really makes you wonder who you're supposed to take at their word: should we listen to the "experts" and economists who make this their entire career, or should we trust the people on the street who seem to know that these sanctions aren't actually doing much to Russia—and even if they are, they're mostly just hitting the West where it hurts?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=4167193

Try playing a game with actual players for once. When you talk to Russians, you steer clear of politics. An average Russian isn't going to spout political nonsense, especially since they have no clue who's on the other end of the line, but they will tell you the truth about the economy. For the first month, everyone was saying grocery stores were running empty, but that sorted itself out within thirty days. As for prices? Sure, they’re up, but nothing crazy compared to the rest of the world.
Of course, they want to know what we think of them. My answer stays the same: we aren't talking politics. We're talking economics.

Nathan Thomas12 said:So what, we pulled weapons out of thin air?

Just look at that National Guard armory in Ohio. They lost 200 armored vehicles—about 100 of them were T55 tanks... tens of thousands of small arms, maybe 300 pieces of various artillery... you think we just conjured those up from nowhere? ☕

Ukrainians can't pull stuff out of thin air. They need serious help, not your attitude. ☕

Nathan Evans78 said:It’s a total circus over in the EU right now. ☕

Two Commission officials mentioned that, according to the latest estimates coming out of Brussels, gas savings could top 30 billion cubic meters—even if every single member state decides to lean on those political exemptions.

But over what timeframe?

"Way more, honestly, much more," one Commission official insisted. "But I can't go into specifics."

"It's tough to pin down because we haven't actually seen any hard math yet," an EU diplomat noted.

"The Commission is banking on a 30 billion cubic meter reduction, but frankly, nobody knows for sure and nobody has actually crunched the numbers," another EU diplomat added.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-gas-cut-deal-winter/

I’ll put both my eggs in one basket if these bureaucrats ever realize they should just tell Duke Energy to cap apartment heating at 70 degrees this winter and call it a day. ☕
My neighbor is already complaining about how freezing her place is and asking for advice. When the first elderly folks start dying of hypothermia in their own homes, we'll probably end up blaming some technician at HEPU.

Nancy Gomez26 said:So, if I understand you correctly—you believe we had every right to stop the Mexicans when they attacked us, yet you deny Ukrainians the right to defend themselves, choose their own destiny, or expel their occupiers. I don't grasp why there's a double standard here, but fine, at least we've clarified your position. Though, I suspect the Ukrainians won't find your opinion particularly helpful. Only time will tell.

Read the last sentence. Don't pull things out of context. ☕
We basically tripped ourselves up because nobody was supplying us. I've said it more than once: Ukrainians don't need a lecture on Winston Churchill. They need 1,000 tanks (even old T-55s work; like someone said, if they fire ten rounds before getting blown up, they did their job), 20,000 artillery pieces, and 1,000 planes.

Or do you think good vibes and a dozen roses are enough? ☕

A Russian oligarch living in exile in England mentioned it would have been smarter for the EU to keep trading with Russia. They could have pocketed $200 billion in monthly industrial profits, then easily sent a quarter of that to Ukraine for weapons. How much has America actually provided so far? Maybe $10 billion?

I'm sending a kiss to the Ukrainian girl on the front lines. Maybe that'll help since that's clearly what you think works. ☕

Thomas Walker84 said:Which forum users are we even talking about here??🤔
You must be dreaming.

You guys are acting like Germans in Munich. They had no clue what happened at Dachau. ☕
Fine, whatever you say. None of you ever claimed sanctions on Russia wouldn't hit the US or Europe... not one single person. Maybe I just got too much sun the other day and I'm hallucinating... ☕

Anyway, we're in "great company" now, being targeted by a nuclear superpower. It feels a lot like 1941, when people were saying the exact same thing about being in good company. ☕

Melissa Rivera5 said:All of this is still better than having a war on American soil again. Don't kid yourself; our neighbors would probably jump at the chance for Ukraine to become part of the Russian Federation, and after that, it would be attacks on Moldova and a few other states, especially if Milorad Dodik was hinted that it's time for trouble with full Russian backing. In that scenario, you'd be crying about selling stuff slightly under cost instead of dealing with people claiming "ancestral territories."

Europe simply doesn't have a choice but to absorb some of the fallout to prevent even bigger disasters. Playing nice with Putin and making that epically stupid "it's not our war" argument is exactly the same mechanism used to appease Adolf Hitler. Like, "Oh, if we just give him a little something, he won't go any further." Yeah, right. He'll just stop there. Instead, he concluded he could push as far as the Ural Mountains in the east and Lisbon in the west. We really shouldn't repeat the same mistakes.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. That "just endure a little" rhetoric is exactly what they used back in the communist era when they'd say, "Comrades, we must tighten our belts." How much longer? ☕
Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić wrote a beautiful fairy tale called "Kosjenka and Regoč" where two villages are feuding, and one gets the idea to breach a river dike, which would flood the village sitting slightly lower than theirs. As the water rose, the people from both villages just pulled out their instruments and sang, watching the end come for the other side because the difference in elevation wasn't actually that big. ☕
That's how I'd describe these pro-Russians and the pro-Western crowd. If the superpowers actually wanted to do something, this war would have been over in a month. A few HIMARS and some Howitzers aren't going to change the battlefield; they'll just slow the Russians down. What's being sent is mostly just testing out new hardware. Sure, Russian depots were hit, but what you don't see on CBS is that Ukrainian supplies were hit just as much. Ukrainians don't need dozens of these systems; they need thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of artillery pieces, hundreds of planes... And what are they getting? Winston Churchill quotes. 🤦
And then Johnson coldly claims that brave Ukrainians will stop the Russians. Honestly, you'd want to serve a guy like that a breakfast consisting of whatever caliber he's talking about.
If we hadn't seized the Varaždin military barracks and secured the heavy weaponry we desperately needed, we'd be living through hell right now. Immediately after that, we faced the Slope, the Hurricane, and Papuk 91.

Michael Ortiz68 said:There isn't a single person on this forum who hasn't not been claiming this since the invasion began, regardless of which side they take...

I don't quite get the need to emphasize that you specifically were saying it, because everyone was saying it. Is this some attempt to act like you're uniquely brilliant or 🤷

There’s a massive crowd here claiming the European Union will just replace fuel supplies around the corner. No crisis, right? Looking at the big picture, this is the first global crisis directly engineered by Russia in cooperation with other world governments. ☕

Just like the crowd of users who knew Russia would invade Ukraine. I didn't see it coming. It caught me off guard because I couldn't believe Vladimir Putin would be that much of a scumbag. Whatever, I was wrong. While everyone else gets to say "I told you so," ☕

crimsoncyclist71 said:It’s always a pleasure reading these inspired posts of yours, brimming with useful information, a complete disregard for facts, and especially helpful links. Based on your forum contributions, it's obvious you both are top-tier experts in every field you touch. I actually feel sorry for Russia that such brilliant forum users are siding with them. We should all just stop posting so there's more room for your gems.
☕

So, when most of us objectively said that sanctions wouldn't do much good for the economy or the market, we were labeled Putinophiles, right? And remember how everyone claimed the European Union would quickly replace everything they used to import from Russia? I said it wouldn't happen that fast. Well, we just confirmed that the OPEC countries—who people like you claimed would save the European Union economy—are actually just greedy war profiteers on par with Vladimir Putin. ☕

You know what’s peak stupidity? When half the Western-leaning posters shouted "I told you so" after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Give me a break. You think you're CIA level because you "knew" Russia was going to invade while only Joe Biden was warning them and nobody else? ☕

Look, I'll admit it: I was one of the few calling it straight from the start—that Vladimir Putin is a calculating bastard and that Russia invaded Ukraine. But suggesting we cut them out of global trade without any calculation or analysis? That’s about as smart as a Vlade Vukojević thesis at a community college in Indianapolis. ☕

Take fruit and vegetable farmers in the Midwest, for example, whose products mostly went to Eastern markets. They already had issues back in 2014 with the Russian occupation of Crimea, so they managed by selling to middlemen in other countries who then flipped the produce for a higher price. Now, they'll be forced to sell below cost to war profiteers in OPEC nations, who will then flip it again at an even higher price for the Russian market. What's the result? You destroy local family farms. Our domestic population isn't big enough to buy up all the production, even if we ate nothing but tomatoes, melons, tangerines, and oranges all day long. Lower prices lead to less production, fewer jobs, and shut-down operations. Once production dies, there's no god alive who can easily restart it. We saw this during the COVID crisis when lockdowns hit and oil and gas wells were shut down because demand plummeted. As soon as things returned to normal, gas prices spiked—not because there wasn't enough supply, but because everyone started demanding massive amounts at once. Restarting a well isn't some trivial task. Ask any mining engineer. ☕

As for the posters defending the other side, I'm just fascinated by your "doctorates" from community colleges in Indianapolis and the absolute nonsense that comes out of them. ☕

electricsurfer47 said:Honestly, I'd much rather hear an actual analysis from a pro who understands chemistry and how engines actually run, instead of someone just trying to sound important on the internet.

I usually fill up with the high-end diesel, but sometimes I just grab the regular stuff. I saw on the label that the standard stuff can have over 7% biodiesel in it. I don't really know which one is better... does biodiesel burn less efficiently? Does it make you use more fuel???

I mean, I totally agree that oil companies pull this stuff all the time—they cheat people out of their money by selling products that cost the same but have fewer grams inside. It’s subtle, nothing jumps out at you immediately, but they're definitely playing games to get people to pay more.

Back in the day, I worked at a gas station (back when those big shots at ExxonMobil claimed there were 1,000 of them on the stock exchange; now I hear they're so short-staffed they can barely fill shifts. Can't wait until you finally get served by some tourist speaking a foreign language)☕. So, this info comes straight from a Master's Engineer who worked at the Cleveland refinery (if he lied to me, I'm lying to you, but I'm pretty sure it's the truth). Car parts have a shelf life, just like any other component. After a certain amount of time, you hit "material fatigue." That's why you change filters annually—even if they could technically last two years—to ensure the vehicle lasts a solid 10-15 years without major engine failure. For cars worth over $45k, maybe 20-25 years. In the meantime, you save up for the next one.

The biggest stupidity of the century is the myth that private gas station owners pour water into the fuel. 🤦
Elementary school science tells us that alcohol, gasoline, and similar substances are less dense than water and float ON WATER. So, if some guy pours water into a tank, the first thing entering the car would be pure water, then the gas. You'd notice that immediately if it actually happened. I'd steer clear of any mechanic trying to sell you that story. ☕
Back when the tanker arrived, we used to stick rods into the tanks to roughly measure fuel density; nowadays, they use probes. Sure, back then, paying a student service for labor was... 🤣

Christian Torres3 said:Premium fuel? Yeah, right. Not me.

People with modern engines buy it just because they fell for the biggest marketing scam in history by big oil companies. You take 10,000 liters of basic gas and maybe toss in 4 liters of additives. They call that "premium" fuel ☕

It’s like saying if you use regular gas, your engine life gets cut by a third and you'll deal with constant breakdowns... basically, instead of driving your car for 20 years, you're looking at maybe 14.☕

Give me a break... Did they drop the AC to a comfortable 28 degrees while it's 104 outside? Or maybe they set the cruise control ten miles under the limit? Just more of those ridiculous little tweaks some bureaucrats at a community college cooked up to satisfy some European Union foreign policy agenda? ☕

I haven't noticed anyone driving way under the speed limit, mostly because the cops are constantly pulling me over even when I'm right on the mark. ☕