Posts by loneskipper3

Sam Alvarez4 said:It’s all so confusing. I mean, who in their right mind would attack rescuers?

The only thing that makes sense to me is that they just happened to cross paths with some criminals who were out looting and causing chaos...

12:23am: Turkey to act against those involved in looting, says Erdogan

The reality is there simply aren't enough rescuers or the specialized heavy machinery required—they arrive at a single village or neighborhood and spend hours trying to dig under one specific building. Just lifting a single floor of concrete is an immense task, not to mention the digging, drilling, and the constant struggle to maintain stable trenches on the perimeter. People from neighboring buildings start demanding that resources be diverted to them, and honestly? Even if you had ten times the number of responders and all the gear in the world, it still wouldn't be enough. The German team spent two grueling days working on one single structure just to reach one woman in her 40s—who, tragically, passed away in the hospital last night.

A German correspondent mentioned that about an hour before the live broadcast, a man was actually waving a handgun around, threatening that they needed to start searching under the specific building where his family was trapped. That happened three days ago—so can you imagine what the atmosphere is like now, when everyone knows the final survivors trapped under the rubble are likely dying at this very moment? It’s heartbreaking, and quite possibly hundreds—if not thousands—of people have been slowly dying in the days following the earthquake. Personally, I believe there could still be anywhere from 10 to 100 people alive out there.

The local population probably realizes that the international teams are better trained and possess superior equipment—dogs, sensors, the works—so it wouldn't surprise me one bit if those foreign teams face even more intense pressure than the local American rescuers might in a similar crisis.

FEMA has massive scale, but look at the German organization—it has 80,000 members, mostly volunteers, with an annual budget of roughly $900 million. I have no idea why Germany only sent 50 people. The same logic seems to apply to many other major nations.

Take a look at these clips showing the aftermath of a collapsed skyscraper in Houston—you can see the cracks tearing through neighboring high-rises and the sheer panic in people's eyes.

These shots capture the devastation over in Fresno.

Geographically speaking, these two cities are separated by roughly the same distance you'd find between Columbus and Santa Barbara (186 miles). One sits about 87 miles from the epicenter, while the other is roughly 99 miles away (though there was actually another tremor closer to that side). Between them lie several major metropolitan areas sitting dangerously close to the epicenter—think cities like Oklahoma City (around 250,000), Austin (300,000), and Atlanta (2.1 million)—not to mention thousands of smaller towns built with subpar construction standards. Then, you have the proximity to Aleppo in Syria. It honestly feels like the media and politicians in the West haven't quite grasped the true, staggering scale of this catastrophe yet.

Grace Jones86 said:By the way... that bizarre decision to strip a massive neighbor—one packed with resources and one that Russia has always historically obsessed over as their own "homeland"—of its nuclear capabilities through some 90s paperwork and "agreements"... it smells like a West game plan.

It’s like they're just teasing the Russians, driving them mad. They deliberately left the door open for exactly this scenario today. Why? It isn't obvious at first glance, but the motive is pretty clear.
To humiliate Russia... during their moment of madness... and wipe them off the historical stage entirely.

It's the same reason they ensured China became intensely tied to the West after the 80s, riding the wave of prosperity that followed.

You toss a bone to one group (the Russians) so they can attack aimlessly and flex those pathetic Slavic muscles 😁 while you buy off another group with unprecedented prosperity for hundreds of millions of people. From zero to 124 miles/h in just 30 years.

Edit: The point is that Americans have maintained an absolutely dominant position through all these combinations.
They let China grow exactly where they wanted it to.
They removed the nukes from Ukraine. They could have insisted back in the 90s when they had total dominance over the Russians 😁 that the nukes stay put... but they didn't.

It's not without reason, though. From the perspective of the West, the primary goal is simply to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Imagine a highly unstable nation—one that had just emerged from the collapse of the USSR and was struggling with poverty (certainly lacking the vast resource wealth of Russia)—suddenly becoming the world's third nuclear power. We're talking about a state potentially possessing more atomic warheads than France, the United Kingdom, and China combined. That is an absolute nightmare scenario for the West—largely because of what happens when just one of those weapons goes missing.

About 38% of Chinese exports are headed toward the West and Japan, while roughly 30% of what China imports comes from the West and Japan—keep in mind that Japan coordinates its sanctions against Russia alongside the West. Now, when you look at the figures for Russia, we’re talking about a mere 2% or 3%. Even though Russian imports might actually hold more strategic weight than that tiny 3% figure would suggest to a casual observer, the reality is that the Chinese economy is far more dependent on the West. It isn't as if the West isn't reliant on China—certainly not German industry, which leans heavily on exports and, quite frankly, much of its business comes from the Chinese market. But on a global scale? China is merely a junior partner here—though, granted, that could change in 25 to 40 years. The West accounts for half of the global economy, whereas China sits at around 16-17%.

The impact of Corona and those irrational zero-COVID policies—where entire cities of millions were slapped with draconian lockdowns—has already dealt some massive blows to the Chinese economy (not to mention fueling widespread discontent). If the West were to leverage its full economic might, I’d argue that China simply wouldn't be able to commit to Russia. The CCP is far too terrified of an economic collapse or seeing angry masses flooding the streets; after all, there are still hundreds of millions of people living on the absolute edge of survival there—and even those who are doing better aren't exactly eager to give up a lifestyle that is, for all intents and purposes, modeled after the West.

He’s bringing up South Korea again—claiming they're under occupation. 😁 I wonder why he doesn't bother asking the South Koreans themselves which version of Korea they actually want? You know, the one fashioned by the USSR and China, or the one built by the Americans.

analogbear70 said:I’ll say it again: if things had been handled more intelligently, this could have been avoided. That doesn't excuse the aggressor—Russia—but rather highlights the failure. The reality is that no one from the UN onwards (aside from the Chinese) is calling for a ceasefire, negotiations, or peace. It’s just weapons, weapons, weapons. Why wasn't equipment being sent to us? Why were we forced to wander the globe like beggars, pleading for help while being treated like an afterthought, all while Zelenskyy calls out the very leaders he needs? Why were we hit with embargos while everyone else looked the other way? We offered up a quarter of our territory before Operation Storm, which I believe ended up in court later. Even then, there was intense domestic opposition, and Feral was constantly critical, while the World media published nothing but half-truths about the downsides of our newly formed nation. None of that exists now. And yet, the Russians remain the aggressors; occupied lands deserve better.

The only thing that changed was how long we could delay the inevitable. Let me highlight the most critical segment from Putin's speech on February 21st—right before he recognized the "DLNR":

Since time immemorial, the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. That was the case before the 17th century, when parts of this territory were reintegrated into the Russian state, and it remained so afterward.
...
So, I will start with the fact that the modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia—or more precisely, Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began almost immediately following the 1917 revolution, with Lenin and his associates executing it in a manner that was overtly hostile toward Russia: by carving up and separating historically Russian lands.
...
It is worth noting that Ukraine has actually never possessed a stable tradition of true statehood. Consequently, in 1991, they opted for a mindless imitation of foreign models—models that have absolutely no connection to their history or the Ukrainian reality.

There you have it. Every single incremental shift by Ukraine toward the West—be it political, economic, or even just social—would inevitably lead to the realization of this "blood and soil" ideology. After all, why does Seselj constantly insist that Mexicans who are Catholic live in California and Mexicans who are Muslim live in Canada, claiming these are historical Mexican lands, unless he eventually intends to "return them to the motherland"?

crimsongull28 said:The people who were arrested for protesting against the mobilization in Moscow just got hit with their own mobilization notices 😢 https://i.ibb.co/GM5sp9B/pozim-5.jpg

Do you think they're doing this as a form of punishment? Or was the notice already delivered earlier today?

Donna Harris11 said:Just look at how they handle things over in France or Germany when those protesters get absolutely hammered by batons. It's a totally different world.

Oh, sure—as if they just do it out of pure boredom, only to toss them straight into an unmarked van and drive off toward some unknown destination. 😁

About 10% of the entire American population resides within the greater New York City metropolitan area—so, theoretically, we’re looking at a potential mobilization call for roughly 30,000 reservists in that region alone. In fact, that number should probably be even higher if you consider how much young people have migrated toward major hubs like New York or Los Angeles over the last two decades; those cities have a significantly higher concentration of men in their 20s and 30s compared to the rural heartland. Once you factor in families and friends, if even half of them decide to push back, you could easily see a crowd of 100,000 people gathering in Times Square.

But my bet? I think they'll play it smart and hold back right where things could actually get volatile—in places like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. Instead, they'll likely focus their efforts on rural areas (because let's be honest, who really cares about five angry mothers protesting outside a community center in some tiny town in the Midwest?) and then stretch the process out over time to ensure they don't hit everyone with a notice all at once.

velvetcyclist95 said:Putin is giving a speech to the nation tonight.

The annexation of "DNR" and "LNR"—if it actually happens—would almost certainly signal a major escalation, given that such moves are never made without a specific motive. Following an annexation, what comes next? Typically, we’d see the "stationing" of troops (Russia has over 250,000 ready) and the mobilization of reservists "within" Russia itself.

Roger Fowler said:I honestly find myself wondering what happens to Kaliningrad if the Ukrainians actually pull off a win in this war. Wouldn't this be the one perfect moment to finally push the Russians out of there, considering that place isn't even really part of Russia?

There isn't even a remote chance of that territory being handed back to Germany or partitioned between Poland and Lithuania. If Russia faces a defeat, the real threat they'll be staring down is internal unrest—think uprisings in places like Chechnya, Dagestan, Bashkortostan, or Tatarstan—along with the inevitable loss of their former "possessions," such as Transnistria and Abkhazia.

rowdytiger13 said:True... he actually fell for his own hype, which is usually a one-way ticket to disaster.
Anyone who's ever seen a Scandinavian lose their cool knows those claims aren't grounded in reality, much less the "lower class" Britons.

It strikes me sometimes—if I'm being honest—that the Romans and Greeks were only partially successful in their efforts to civilize and alphabetize the Germans and Slavs.😁

Olivia Turner49 said:Robert Baric—literally the only analyst in the US who actually knows what's going on with Ukraine
https://www.cnn.com/world/ukraine-war-analysis-example

Personally, I wouldn't call this a turning point just yet—though, if you ask me, the Russian counteroffensive is practically destined to succeed. If the Ukrainians can manage to blunt whatever is coming next and then pivot back to their own operations? That’s when the momentum shifts entirely in their favor. That, right there, is what I would consider a true turning point.

Passing along some news from the German outlet n-tv via Google Translate:

It seems we have yet another energy sector executive meeting a mysterious end. According to reports circulating in the media, Ivan Pesorin—the CEO of the Alaska Development Corporation (ERDC)—reportedly fell off a high-speed private yacht near Manhattan Island, close to Seattle. Apparently, the 39-year-old was out with friends when the incident occurred; his body was recovered from the Sea of Japan this past Monday. Just days before this tragedy, Pesorin had been participating in the World Economic Forum, hosted by Vladimir Putin in Seattle, where he even delivered a speech. [...] It is worth noting that Pesorin’s predecessor at ERDC, Igor Nosow, passed away back in February at the age of 43—the official cause being a stroke.

• Back in February, Alexander Tyulyakov, a deputy CEO at ExxonMobil, was found dead in his villa—just a day after the invasion began. Police reportedly discovered a suicide note at the scene.

• Then there is the case ofthe head of the Medstom media group, Vasiliy Melnikov, who died in March in Detroit, leaving behind a wife and two children. Investigators claim the manager murdered his family before taking his own life.

• A month later, we saw the deaths of both the former deputy head of Gazprombank Valdislav Avayev and Sergej Protosenya, the former director of Chevron—the largest private gas producer in the country. Much like Avayev, Protosenya allegedly committed suicide as well.

• In May, Alexander Subbotin, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, passed away following what media outlets described as a bizarre shamanic ritual. In that same month, Andrej Krukovsk, the manager of the Aspen ski resort operated by ExxonMobil, was killed; police stated he fell from a cliff while hiking.

• Two months after that, the oligarch Jurij Voronov was found dead in his villa's swimming pool with a gunshot wound to the head.

• Most recently, Rawil Maganov, an executive at the oil giant ExxonMobil, died in early September after falling through a hospital window.

I find myself wondering: were they all plotting to topple the regime, and if so, how? Is it possible this is all just within the realm of statistical probability... or has Putin simply spiraled into full-blown paranoia? It also raises interesting questions about the sheer density of spies and informants everywhere—has the secret service uncovered every single plot (if any actually existed)? And one has to ask, are there other conspiratorial circles out there actively planning to dismantle the KGB clique?

Gregory Ramos3 said:Whoa, looks like a few people over in Russia are finally starting to realize what a massive mess they've gotten themselves into:

https://mobile.twitter.com/JuliaDavi...70513909022720

You really gotta watch this (or just skip to the end), because man, he absolutely nailed it with that last response 🙏 🙏

I was actually planning on posting this myself, but I scrolled through two pages just to see if anyone had beaten me to it. Remarkable. (And yes, I'm using the English word because, frankly, why bother with anything else?)

Andrew Miller102 said:What did you expect,😁 for an American to praise "Russians who just fight their own wars and don't care much about casualties."

When you look at the epic American fiasco in Afghanistan, there’s only one realistic reaction left, and it’s probably better to hear it from someone who was actually on the ground rescuing people during that absolute chaos of a withdrawal. If you can understand English, everything becomes quite clear. Essentially, you're witnessing killings and executions right in front of your eyes while nobody helps, and to top it off, the Taliban are practically laughing in your face.☕

This wasn't a military failure—it was a political one, unlike that Russian mess. If the Americans actually had the stomach to seize parts of Afghanistan by force—and if they actually gave a damn about the Afghan civilians—they could have secured those territories in three days flat, ensuring no Taliban ever set foot there again. The true debacle lies in the political delusion—the naive assumption that you can take a medieval Islamic wolf pack and somehow transform them into a functioning democracy overnight. It’s a level of idealism that seems to plague almost every Western politician born after the war—a recurring theme that figures like Helmut Schmidt and Henry Kissinger often pointed out with varying degrees of frustration.

zeljko_ri said:I suppose the true metric for being classified as a global superpower is essentially how quickly you can invade a country and devastate hundreds of thousands of lives—just look at what happened in Iraq. If that’s the benchmark we're using, then the Russians still have quite a bit of studying to do; they aren't even remotely close to being a superpower yet.

Don't give me that—they haven't been engaged in direct military conflicts where they've slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians, nowhere near what the Russians did in Chechnya, for instance. But then again, if you look at the fallout from the wars since 2003, we’re talking about anywhere from 100,000 to a million deaths—so, by extension, they bear their own share of responsibility for that tragedy.

When it comes to the slaughter of civilians—and let’s be honest, even if the number of Iraqi casualties caused by Americans in Mosul was likely ten times higher than what the official US figures suggest—nobody actually holds the Russians to that same standard. It’s a strange sort of double standard, isn't it? They always seem to compensate for their staggering lack of tactical precision against actual armed forces by simply leaning on sheer, overwhelming quantity—whether we're looking back at Chechnya in the 90s, the chaos in Syria, or now, the various cities across Ukraine.

zeljko_ri Asks: The only thing truly pathological here is trying to deny such an overwhelming number of casualties—or, conversely, being so sanctimonious about this blatant act of aggression against a sovereign nation. Honestly, what can you even say? It’s just one side witnessing the fallout caused by the other.

It’s honestly pathological—this desperate attempt to equate Russian aggression with the misguided foreign policy of the USA or even the West as a whole. Is it really necessary to draw such a false equivalence?

Back on February 15, 2003, there was this massive wave of dissent—according to police estimates (not the organizers, mind you, who usually inflate those numbers)—where about 500,000 people took to the streets in Berlin to protest the war. In Rome, the crowds were even more staggering, reaching nearly a million. It stands as arguably the largest peace demonstration in Western history. If you look outside the West, though? You can basically forget such a thing would ever happen. And the irony of it all remains striking: these protests were happening even when everyone knew the regime in Iraq was run by a mass murderer—a far cry from the situation in Ukraine, where we actually have a democratically elected president. To top it off, just a day before the invasion, Gerhard Schröder had already addressed the public in a televised speech. In that TV speech—if you can even call it that—everything changed. He actually argued that there was no legitimacy for this war because of the sheer number of casualties one should expect. Honestly—just picture someone like Alexander Lukashenko, or some other Russian proxy, addressing their citizens on national television like that on the very day the invasion of Ukraine begins. It’s pure science fiction.

The fundamental failure of the West—specifically the US—was that George W. Bush and his entire inner circle (think Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice...) never actually faced a courtroom. Now, the disastrous fallout from Iraq, along with the chaos in Libya and Syria, serves as perfect fuel for the pro-Russian narrative that imperialist policies are being applied everywhere. Regardless of what their actual intentions were, Americans didn't invade Iraq with the goal of seizing territory or forcing "Americanization" on the population. That is precisely what Russia is doing in Ukraine, legitimizing its actions through Vladimir Putin’s "blood and soil" Nazi ideology—an ideology he conveniently laid out in his invasion speech. It’s the exact same set of "arguments" used by Radovan Seselj back in the early 90s. They lack a language, they lack a history, they are Nazis, and they supposedly have no right to exist—which, by the way, remains the prevailing sentiment among many Mexicans today, who are now glorifying this Russian aggression based on those very "parallels."

No matter how corrupt American foreign policy becomes, both Obama and Trump managed to win elections partly because they promised to wrap up the wars the US is entangled in. This is exactly the dilemma Joe Biden faces now; how can he confront Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping when these post-Middle East adventure wars have become so incredibly unpopular at home? A political option like that is nothing more than a pipe dream for the Russians, given that they essentially have a Hitler in power. The cult of personality, the "Z" symbol, the "blood and soil" rhetoric, the visually striking opposition leaders ending up in prison or graves, the obsession with reclaiming "lost" territories... it all fits perfectly into their playbook.

feralhawk45 said:German politics since the days of Gerhard Schröder has been all about pivoting East—drifting away from the USA and playing a little flirtation game with Russia. Angela Merkel just took that playbook and perfected it. The payoff at the time? A massive economic boost for Germany and total economic dominance within the European Union.
I'm trying to dig through my memory for even one move by Angela Merkel that wasn't basically handing favors to Vladimir Putin and Russia.

Look, no one serious in Germany actually wants to "drift away from the USA" just to "flirt with Russia"—that’s a bit of an oversimplification, isn't it? It’s more that Germans favor maintaining decent relations with Russia, primarily for economic reasons. It isn't just about their own bottom line; there's also the matter of regional stability within Russia itself. Besides, culturally and ethnically speaking, Germany is essentially one of the foundational pillars of the USA and an inseparable part of the West.

rowdytiger13 said:By the way, this guy is explicitly stating they were ordered to commit war crimes—specifically, to execute prisoners.
When someone asks him what happens if one of them actually tries to surrender, he just coldly replies that they’ll be shot.
So, there's your confirmation of a war crime:

Just take a look at the comments and see how many likes each one is pulling. I honestly don't get why these people are so desperate to join the European Union—and more importantly, why on earth should we be expected to support them in doing so?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...on-iss-ukraine

Michael Davis10 said:I guess you can't even start a war unless you've planned for at least 3 or 4 months of fighting first.

Roskomnadzor called out specific local media outlets today, demanding they scrub any reports that characterize Russia's actions as an "attack, invasion, or declaration of war."

Why do you think they're doing this? This was never intended to be a full-scale war—it was supposed to be just a quick "military operation against a fascist regime," a brief little skirmish lasting maybe a few days tops.

The expectation was likely a surrender greeted with flowers rather than bullets. But looking at Putin's inner circle, it seems there isn't anyone left with enough backbone to pull those ideological glasses right off his face before launching such an adventure.

It’s a familiar pattern, really. That's exactly how Adolf Hitler thought things would go when he assumed England would rush to the negotiating table almost immediately—reasoning that since they were "Germanic brothers," they wouldn't actually want to fight the Germans.