sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

ML and Cal88 advocated for the US allowing Ukraine to accept ceding the Donbass to Russia to avoid bloodshed months ago.

---

Still don't know why people think this is about what the US will "allow." It has to be the Ukrainians who are willing to cut a deal.

---

Zelensky takes his orders from Washington and NATO, people like Nuland have been the colonial viceroys of Ukraine since 2014, picking leaders and placing cabinet and other leadership positions with their people. This is well documented.

There is a radical domestic element, the Azov/Bandera militia crowd, that Zelensky doesn't fully control though. Zelensky has used them, ratified and amplified their supremacist nationalist ideology, in a 180 degree turn from his original electoral platform of peace and inclusivity with the Russian minority (which he is a part of, being a russophone himself).

But essentially, NATO can still steer his policies or pull the plug on Zelensky's government anytime it wants.

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

IMO the problem with this thread right now is that not very much has changed in the Ukraine War all winter, as many of us could have predicted would be the case in the cold season. That leaves the floor open for a lot of supposition and guesswork, which the likes of 88 and ML are more than happy to provide.

My attitude is to wait and see what happens in the spring. Maybe we'll have a situation where it's better to cut a deal and let Putin keep the Donbas (however distasteful that may be). Or maybe we won't. None of us really know.

And yes, it's pretty clear that Russia is getting a lot less than what they wanted here. The remaining question is how much less.

---

ML and Cal88 advocated for the US allowing Ukraine to accept ceding the Donbass to Russia to avoid bloodshed months ago.

---

Still don't know why people think this is about what the US will "allow." It has to be the Ukrainians who are willing to cut a deal.

---

For America haters, the U.S. is the man behind the curtain for everything bad in the world. We are nowhere to be seen for everything good in the world. It's just geopolitics in the internet era.

dajo9 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

IMO the problem with this thread right now is that not very much has changed in the Ukraine War all winter, as many of us could have predicted would be the case in the cold season. That leaves the floor open for a lot of supposition and guesswork, which the likes of 88 and ML are more than happy to provide.

My attitude is to wait and see what happens in the spring. Maybe we'll have a situation where it's better to cut a deal and let Putin keep the Donbas (however distasteful that may be). Or maybe we won't. None of us really know.

And yes, it's pretty clear that Russia is getting a lot less than what they wanted here. The remaining question is how much less.

---

ML and Cal88 advocated for the US allowing Ukraine to accept ceding the Donbass to Russia to avoid bloodshed months ago.

---

Still don't know why people think this is about what the US will "allow." It has to be the Ukrainians who are willing to cut a deal.

---

For America haters, the U.S. is the man behind the curtain for everything bad in the world. We are nowhere to be seen for everything good in the world. It's just geopolitics in the internet era.

---

Probably true. However, criticizing U.S. policy in Ukraine doesn't make one an America hater.

blungld said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

What is your opinion on the use of depleted uranium shells in Ukraine?

---

My opinion on everything is that your bias and disingenuousness is not worth replying to.

---

Why personalize and infantilize the debate. My intent here is not to score gotcha points. I have a bias, and so do you. At some point though, there has got to be some common ground, assuming you do care about the welfare of Ukrainians.

The issue of the UK providing stockpiles of depleted uranium shells is extremely troubling, and is the most important item in this war right now, given the incredibly grave long-term consequences on the health of Ukrainians for generations to come.

It also has important repercussions on the conduct of the war itself, constituting a big escalation, as DU ammunition amounts to WMD dirty bombs. The radioactive fallout from DU use in areas like Basra Iraq have had health and environmental consequences similar to those in Hiroshima.

dajo9 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

IMO the problem with this thread right now is that not very much has changed in the Ukraine War all winter, as many of us could have predicted would be the case in the cold season. That leaves the floor open for a lot of supposition and guesswork, which the likes of 88 and ML are more than happy to provide.

My attitude is to wait and see what happens in the spring. Maybe we'll have a situation where it's better to cut a deal and let Putin keep the Donbas (however distasteful that may be). Or maybe we won't. None of us really know.

And yes, it's pretty clear that Russia is getting a lot less than what they wanted here. The remaining question is how much less.

---

ML and Cal88 advocated for the US allowing Ukraine to accept ceding the Donbass to Russia to avoid bloodshed months ago.

---

Still don't know why people think this is about what the US will "allow." It has to be the Ukrainians who are willing to cut a deal.

---

For America haters, the U.S. is the man behind the curtain for everything bad in the world. We are nowhere to be seen for everything good in the world. It's just geopolitics in the internet era.

---

This Ukraine conflict has made that quite clear. It's actually been a good clarifying event, to help me separate the people who actually have leftist, anti-imperialist principles from the people who just think "America bad."

dajo9 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

ML and Cal88 advocated for the US allowing Ukraine to accept ceding the Donbass to Russia to avoid bloodshed months ago.

---

Still don't know why people think this is about what the US will "allow." It has to be the Ukrainians who are willing to cut a deal.

---

For America haters, the U.S. is the man behind the curtain for everything bad in the world. We are nowhere to be seen for everything good in the world. It's just geopolitics in the internet era.

---

Being opposed to misguided, wasteful and destructive US foreign policy does not make one an "America hater", this kind of smear has been used since the Vietnam War by neocons or misguided patriots who are easily swayed by war propaganda against people opposed to useless, destructive wars and hegemonic foreign policies.

You don't have to be an "America hater" to call out acts of state terror like blowing up Nordstream.

Cal88 said:

---

dajo9 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

oski003 said:

---

ML and Cal88 advocated for the US allowing Ukraine to accept ceding the Donbass to Russia to avoid bloodshed months ago.

---

Still don't know why people think this is about what the US will "allow." It has to be the Ukrainians who are willing to cut a deal.

---

For America haters, the U.S. is the man behind the curtain for everything bad in the world. We are nowhere to be seen for everything good in the world. It's just geopolitics in the internet era.

---

Being opposed to misguided, wasteful and destructive US foreign policy does not make one an "America hater", this kind of smear has been used since the Vietnam War by neocons or misguided patriots who are easily swayed by war propaganda against people opposed to useless, destructive wars and hegemonic foreign policies.

---

I agree that destructive wars and propaganda are bad, but the thing is that it's also bad when Russia does it.

I wish Ukraine and NATO had authentically worked to make peace in the Donbas (was our CIA there?) and worked to make Minsk and Minsk 2 work. This has been an issue since 2008, possibly even 2004.

I wish NATO didn't cross the redline of Ukraine that even President Obama respected. I wish they spent more time advocating for ethnic Russians in the Donbas, than training an offensive military of 600,000.

I wish a powerful peacemaker would have called up Putin when he was amassing troops at Ukraine's border. (They knew what was coming, they wanted it.)

Seeing that failed, I wish Boris Johnson (NATO / USA) wouldn't have stopped the peace negotiations of Israel's PM Bennett.

I also wish that we had a capable leader who could listen to the recent peace plan offered by Chairman Xi. Our country rejected it near instantaneously, not Zelensky or Putin.

movielover said:

---

I wish Ukraine and NATO had authentically worked to make peace in the Donbas (was our CIA there?) and worked to make Minsk and Minsk 2 work. This has been an issue since 2008, possibly even 2004.

I wish NATO didn't cross the redline of Ukraine that even President Obama respected. I wish they spent more time advocating for ethnic Russians in the Donbas, than training an offensive military of 600,000.

I wish a powerful peacemaker would have called up Putin when he was amassing troops at Ukraine's border. (They knew what was coming, they wanted it.)

Seeing that failed, I wish Boris Johnson (NATO / USA) wouldn't have stopped the peace negotiations of Israel's PM Bennett.

I also wish that we had a capable leader who could listen to the recent peace plan offered by Chairman Xi. Our country rejected it near instantaneously, not Zelensky or Putin.

---

But there's nothing Russia could have done differently, of course.

We -NATO- knew exactly what Russia's red lines were, and deliberately crossed them, with the goal of weakening Russia by using Ukraine as proxy warriors.

It's not like an unprecedented move, it's practically SOP in the Great Game of geopolitics, as outlined in several policy papers, from Zbignew Brzezinski to the Rand's latest papers. The same playbook has been used with Chechnya in the 90s and Georgia in the 00s.

Consider Taiwan, if we egg them on to declare independence, keep arming them and break with the One China policy that has been in place since Nixon, China will go to war on Taiwan. Their red lines here are as clearly defined as Russia's.

Things could get interesting in our own backyard as Mexico under AMLO is signaling his intent of joining Brazil and Argentina into the BRICS alliance...

Biden could stop the war with one phone call, where he would tell Russia that Ukraine will be left as a neutral country, along the same lines Finland and Austria were since the 1950s.

Eventually as this attrition war keeps grinding, Ukraine is going to reach its breaking point, and negotiations will start, with Ukraine and NATO in a weaker position, and hundreds of thousands more deaths, when all of this could have been avoided and a settlement reached last year before the start of the war, or shortly afterwards in Istanbul. Terrible waste...

Except Putin will be holding all of the cards. He also will likely want to de-Nazify Ukraine (which could be ugly), and have a pro-Russian leader during the transition. America and Europe will pay to rebuild what remains.

Pragmatically, does Ukraine cease to be a nation when you wipe out most of the men between 17 and 55? Does the Ukranian church allow bigamy? Do millions more Ukranian women of marriage age flee the country to Poland, Europe, or America?

Instead of Ukraine saving 80% of their country, ethnic heritage, and acknowledging Crimea as Russian, they lose 50-70% of their country, lose Odessa, and become another Latvia?

Bigger disaster than Vietnam?

Cal88 said:

---

We -NATO- knew exactly what Russia's red lines were, and deliberately crossed them, with the goal of weakening Russia by using Ukraine as proxy warriors.

It's not like an unprecedented move, it's practically SOP in the Great Game of geopolitics, as outlined in several policy papers, from Zbignew Brzezinski to the Rand's latest papers. The same playbook has been used with Chechnya in the 90s and Georgia in the 00s.

Consider Taiwan, if we egg them on to declare independence, keep arming them and break with the One China policy that has been in place since Nixon, China will go to war on Taiwan. Their red lines here are as clearly defined as Russia's.

Things could get interesting in our own backyard as Mexico under AMLO is signaling his intent of joining Brazil and Argentina into the BRICS alliance...

Biden could stop the war with one phone call, where he would tell Russia that Ukraine will be left as a neutral country, along the same lines Finland and Austria were since the 1950s.

Eventually as this attrition war keeps grinding, Ukraine is going to reach its breaking point, and negotiations will start, with Ukraine and NATO in a weaker position, and hundreds of thousands more deaths, when all of this could have been avoided and a settlement reached last year before the start of the war, or shortly afterwards in Istanbul. Terrible waste...

---

Shorter version: everything is America's fault.

Dajo had you pegged a long time ago.

sycasey said:

---

Shorter version: everything is America's fault.

Dajo had you pegged a long time ago.

---

Not "everything", just the hegemonic foreign policy, as in Vietnam, Nicaragua/El Salvador, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc., and as practised in its current extreme form along the lines of the Wolfowitz Doctrine.


This time around, the well had been poisoned with Russiagate, building on a long cultural legacy of Russophobia, which moved a large center-left domestic constituency into the pro-war camp.

There are strong grounds for rejecting this kind of policy, from the basic concern for lives lost by the million halfway around the world, to the impact of being the world's hegemon on domestic welfare.

Who is still going to buy grain from Ukraine when the soil is contaminated with Uranium? The breadbasket of the world will become a cancerbasket. It’s evident that the west has no interest in helping Ukraine. All they want is contain the Russia / China plan of a multipolar world.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 23, 2023

Cal88 said:

---

sycasey said:

---

Shorter version: everything is America's fault.

Dajo had you pegged a long time ago.

---

Not "everything", just the hegemonic foreign policy, as in Vietnam, Nicaragua/El Salvador, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc., and as practised in its current extreme form along the lines of the Wolfowitz Doctrine.


This time around, the well had been poisoned with Russiagate, building on a long cultural legacy of Russophobia, which moved a large center-left domestic constituency into the pro-war camp.

There are strong grounds for rejecting this kind of policy, from the basic concern for lives lost by the million halfway around the world, to the impact of being the world's hegemon on domestic welfare.

---

So in other words: everything. Even a war that Russia directly started on its own.

You're lost, brother.

movielover said:

---

Pragmatically, does Ukraine cease to be a nation when you wipe out most of the men between 17 and 55? Does the Ukranian church allow bigamy? Do millions more Ukranian women of marriage age flee the country to Poland, Europe, or America?

---

Russia certainly has experience with this kind of thing. Prussia ceased to exist after the Russian army came through.

Moral high ground - depleted Uranium

According to Russia propagandist and chat room provocateur Scott Ritter, around 2000 Russia saw the horrible effects of depleted uranium shells in Kosovo and Iraq. Babies born with deformities, etc. So they banned uranium shells. (Around 12:00 or 13:00 in the below clip.)

The UK is now sending them to Ukraine, which means the US and NATO have condoned the action. And Russia may respond.

So yes, Russia has the moral high ground here.

Estimated deaths

Ritter claims:
- 320,000 KIA Ukranians
- 80,000 Russians

Petraeus goofy interview (short)

At the end of this podcast. John Stewart more logical, noting we're everywhere, all over the world. Patraes talks about keeping "spinning plates" in the air.

Ritter: he lied about Afghanistan and Iraq.

https://www.youtube.com/live/KYik0hUCrso?feature=share

movielover said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

The model and precedent here would be Yugoslavia, which ceased to exist as a nation, and was broken up into several pieces by NATO.

Ukraine could be broken up into 4 pieces.

---

That was a conflict I stayed out of, though I recall a friend saying, "We bombed the wrong side."

Kiddie porn guru Bernie Ward on KGO was cheerleading our bombing campaign.

---

Another stupid war that should have been prevented.

Cal88 said:

---

movielover said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

The model and precedent here would be Yugoslavia, which ceased to exist as a nation, and was broken up into several pieces by NATO.

Ukraine could be broken up into 4 pieces.

---

That was a conflict I stayed out of, though I recall a friend saying, "We bombed the wrong side."

Kiddie porn guru Bernie Ward on KGO was cheerleading our bombing campaign.

---

Another stupid war that should have been prevented.

---

Most all of these wars are gahddammed stupid, which is why I have humbly proposed that we put the women in charge of "defense" (in all countries). Men might be okay with this, if we were plied with plenty of beer, football and boxing/MMA

You mean like Victoria Nuland, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton?

I prefer Maggie Thatcher; the movie on her life was a hatchet job.

I agree. I foolishly bought into the war with Afghanistan. I've been skeptical of everything since, including 'evil' Ivan Drago.

movielover said:

---

I prefer Maggie Thatcher; the movie on her life was a hatchet job.

---

Thatcher never would have waged war.

https://www.history.com/.amp/news/margaret-thatcher-falklands-war

Common sense & Panda mask.

European leaders are starting to go to Beijing to discuss brokering peace in Europe. This is a momentous shift.

But where else would they go? China has positioned itself incredibly smartly as the only great power out there interested in peace.https://t.co/UIVUHvDeWK

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 24, 2023

24 years ago today, NATO began its illegal war against Yugoslavia.
When the media criticized the bombing - NATO bombed the media outlet. When China criticized the bombing - NATO bombed the Chinese embassy. Then a criminal tribunal was set up that would not investigate NATO. pic.twitter.com/j2y7yLT3ag

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) March 24, 2023

in January 2014, Maidan insurrection in Ukraine expanded to regional riots which included occupation of government offices. ALL of the riots were in "historical" Ukraine, none in Novorussia, which had been part of Russia and only included with Ukraine in 1922. pic.twitter.com/xcErhWUXw7

— Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) March 21, 2023

most of Ukraine was part of Russian Empire until World War 1, except for western Ukraine which was part of Austria-Hungary Empire. pic.twitter.com/wP7fLBwfCa

— Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) March 21, 2023

movielover said:

---

24 years ago today, NATO began its illegal war against Yugoslavia.
When the media criticized the bombing - NATO bombed the media outlet. When China criticized the bombing - NATO bombed the Chinese embassy. Then a criminal tribunal was set up that would not investigate NATO. pic.twitter.com/j2y7yLT3ag

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) March 24, 2023

---

Yugoslavia didn't exist 24 years ago. It had already broken itself up.

What NATO was doing there was trying to stop the Serbian genocide in Kosovo.

sycasey said:

---

movielover said:

---

24 years ago today, NATO began its illegal war against Yugoslavia.
When the media criticized the bombing - NATO bombed the media outlet. When China criticized the bombing - NATO bombed the Chinese embassy. Then a criminal tribunal was set up that would not investigate NATO. pic.twitter.com/j2y7yLT3ag

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) March 24, 2023

---

Yugoslavia didn't exist 24 years ago. It had already broken itself up.

What NATO was doing there was trying to stop the Serbian genocide in Kosovo.

---

Yes, they do the same thing to Hillary by lying that she caused the Libyan civil war even though that was well underway by the time Obama/Hillary intervened to prevent a massacre by Ghaddafi. It's all to attack liberals who are staunch opponents of autocracy.