What is Putin up to?

Military News and current conflicts. Middle East, Syria, Ukraine, etc.
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wadinga
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Re: What is Putin up to?

Post by wadinga »

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your approval of my efforts to keep things in touch with reality. It is clear Putin realizes the value of using high-profile "mouthpieces" with their own (different) personal agenda to destabilize faith in unbiased established news sources amongst the people of the world. The latest Russian claim "they're going to use a dirty bomb on their own territory and claim we did it" is frankly laughable.

As for something even nastier than Putin emerging, it is usually the nature of ruthless dictators to eliminate any such rivals. There was no clear successor to Stalin, and neither Himmler nor Goebbels had Hitler's vile leadership charisma.

It is depressing than the internet has super-enabled that concept so often attributed to Winston S Churchill "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its trousers on."

Apparently, it can be traced back as far as Roman poet Virgil, in the form Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum tranlated as ‘Rumour, than whom no other evil thing is faster.’

Virgil didn't know about the internet, but he did know how human nature just loves to believe in the "secret information" they get outside established, verifiable channels.

Johnathan Swift born 1667, who was something of a futurist, might have been imagining the unregulated Internet when he wrote:

“Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”
The original interview[19] audio[20] was altered to piece together words that Kerry spoke at different times during the debate, falsely making it sound as if he said, "I personally raped for pleasure." When the falsehood was exposed by a reader of Johnson's blog, Johnson deleted the article without apology.[21]
source wikipedia


All the best

wadinga
"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today!"
Steve Crandell
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Re: What is Putin up to?

Post by Steve Crandell »

The damage some of these people can do is worse than in the past because they can achieve a much wider audience now. I thought of Alex Jones. Even though he is being punished for the horrible things he did to those people who lost loved ones, he just continues on and is rewarded for it. And there are many others like him. Seemingly all you have to do is get on the internet and begin spewing out lies and if you are amoral enough you can make quite a bit of money at it by appealing to people's insecurity.

It looks like Putin is setting the stage for his own use of a dirty bomb. I can't imagine why he would want to do that unless he thought he was losing the war and he wasn't ever going to gain control of the land he was going to contaminate. Maybe he is just trying to picture his enemy as being just as ruthless and inhumane and brutal as he is himself, so he doesn't look so bad.
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Dave Saxton
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Re: What is Putin up to?

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wadinga wrote: Thu Oct 20, 2022 2:24 pm

For European economies it has been convenient and cheap (but extremely dangerous) to become reliant on Russia for energy supplies. No wrangling at home with Green Parties or populace about oil and gas exploration and production or siting wind/solar farms or nuclear plants, just buy the final products from Russia and let them sort all that difficult/risky/expensive stuff out in their house. A bean counter's perfect solution. My career in the oil and gas business started just after the Arab countries cut off the world's supplies because they didn't like the West being friendly with the Israelis. Hence North Sea and Norwegian O&G and massive expansion in the Gulf of Mexico. Does any of this sound familiar? Sooner or later the bean counters take over again and the "lets offload all the risky, costly and difficult stuff onto somebody else" market-driven attitude becomes the norm and the prime requirement for governments to guarantee energy security for their people goes out the window. Until the next time excrement and aerofoil intersect.

This is not the place for climate debate.....
Sure about that. This conflict and the circumstances which allowed it to come to pass is intertwined with this new pagan religion. It's like the middle ages all over again. From GB news:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LDV5sD5QZc

A transcript here: https://www.gbnews.uk/opinion/a-green-a ... ver/404894
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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wadinga
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Re: What is Putin up to?

Post by wadinga »

Hi All,

Apparently, the wayward former popular TV historian Neil Oliver has also said on GB News (a non-mainstream news channel)
On GB News, Oliver spoke on the subject of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying "I'll be honest. I don't know what's happening in Ukraine. I don't understand it either" and "I do know that I don't trust Putin, or our government, or Europe's governments, or the governments of North America either. I certainly don't trust any of them to tell the truth".
He has also speculated about who might have blown up the Nordstream pipelines with a clear implication it was done solely to benefit US gas sales. See earlier for the exposure of the bogus "US helicopter did it" stuff peddled by Russian sources.

As someone who has chronicled and analysed historical conflicts for most of his career, Mr Oliver should be able to figure it out instead of gravitating to "global conspiracy theories".

Tinfoil-hat pronouncements should be on the "any other subjects" thread as the brutal reality of what is happening now, in Ukraine, is what concerns us here.

The recent concentration of Russian attacks on power infrastructure in Ukrainian cities shows Putin is prepared to freeze to death those he once claimed to be liberating. His attempts to portray what his army is doing in another independent country as another "Great Patriotic War" must be obviously bogus to the dumbest Russian conscript. Russian soldiers have turned on their government before.....

All the best

wadinga
"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today!"
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Dave Saxton
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Re: What is Putin up to?

Post by Dave Saxton »

What, y'all think Putin and Xi would not take strategic advantage of the West's pathological self enslavement to a superstition?
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
Byron Angel
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Re: What is Putin up to?

Post by Byron Angel »

A lot of EU and UK citizens will also spend this winter shivering, thanks to Boris, Ursula Van der 'Lyin', Herrs Halbeck & Scholz, Macron, Trudeau and, above all, the Biden regime. What impresses me the most about this entire tragedy is how raptly people feed on this ridiculous western propaganda campaign, but have no idea whatsoever about what transpired in the ethnically Russian Donbass region of Ukraine since the 2014 Maidan coup.

Gullible types think that Putin just woke up on the 24th of February and decided to invade Ukraine and risk starting WW3. Consider the possibility that your mass media may be been lying through their teeth to you. Do some independent d@mned homework on your own, gentlemen.

Remember "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland? Was the British Army sent in to persecute innocent Irish or was there ..... more to the story?
Why did the "Collective West" immediately rally to provide ~150 BILLION DOLLARS in cash and arms (not to mention numerous mercenaries) in less than a year to a Ukrainian regime considered by general acclaim to be the most corrupt nation in Europe. It is an exercise in regional sectarian strife that has been shamelessly propagandized into a "Putin plot" to conquer the world. The West was not remotely as interested in Rwanda when the Hutus exterminated about ONE MILLION Tutsis. Nor have they been interested in the the conflict in Ethiopia - 600,000 dead. Or Nigeria, where Boko Haram have been responsible for the deaths of about 350,000 people. But, somehow, Ukraine is being billed as vital to world peace. Wake up and smell the coffee, folks. What Ukraine is really vital to is the health of the bank accounts of the Deep State.

We are all being played for suckers.

B
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wadinga
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Re: What is Putin up to?

Post by wadinga »

Hi All,
Gullible types think that Putin just woke up on the 24th of February [2022] and decided to invade Ukraine and risk starting WW3
Nope, that's just the other shoe falling. He "woke up" much earlier.
On 27 February [2014], Russian armed forces without insignias seized the building of the Supreme Council of Crimea and the building of the Council of Ministers in Simferopol. Crimea belonged to Russia again.
Sky History

He panicked when his puppet Viktor Yanukovych started to lose control and ran to him for protection on 22nd February, 2014 so he annexed Crimea on the basis of a referendum held under Russian control where the only two voter options were for reuniting with Russia. (Or being shot or arrested, presumably.)

What has been happening in Donbass and other disputed areas has been monitored www.ohchr.org/en/countries/ukraine/our-presence Russia's non-co-operation with this UN body despite its membership of the Security Council, speaks volumes.

Though they have no place on this thread the other tragic conflicts referenced are of little World consequence because the Hutus, Boko Haram and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front do not have nuclear weapons or Novichok like the madman in the Kremlin.

As for climate change denial please keep this under the appropriate thread.

I've done my homework, does anyone know about the previous failed attack on Nordstream? :cool:

All the best

wadinga
"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today!"
Byron Angel
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Re: What is Putin up to?

Post by Byron Angel »

Thank you, Wadinga.
You just made my point for me.

B
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wadinga
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Re: What is Putin up to?

Post by wadinga »

Hi All,

Having disposed of the alternative "reality" sources Larry Johnson and Scott Ritter, alleged audio evidence falsifier and convicted sex criminal, respectively, we move on to the shoot down of David MacGregor and John Mearsheimer.

After his appearance on Fox News (a well known source of liberalist ideas) MacGregor as a military strategist was challenged over his pronouncements four weeks into Russia's invasion.
"The battle in eastern Ukraine is really almost over, all of the Ukrainian troops there have been largely surrounded and cut off. You have a concentration down in the Southeast of 30 or 40,000 of them, and if they don't surrender in the next 24 hours, I suspect Russia will ultimately annihilate them."
Shows what he knows. When even Fox News challenges your extremist assertions.
That interview ultimately prompted Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin to fact-check MacGregor and say he sounded "like an apologist for Putin."
John Mearsheimer has written a book on lying "Why Leaders Lie" so might be something of an expert. His position is that liberal democracy has no business suggesting itself as a model for other countries, and the US has "interfered" too often, often with grim results. This has lead him to argue that Ukraine should be isolated and left to be assaulted and absorbed by Russia. This attitude has been enshrined as "realism".

set a Professor to challenge a Professor.
Mearsheimer’s determined promotion of his controversial view is hard to understand. Whether it is motivated by his attachment to the realist theory, a taste for provocation, or even some proximity to Russia’s interests is hard to tell. Nevertheless, his account has limited explanatory power and little scientific value. It inter alia leads to theoretical inconsistencies, relies on cherry-picking of official statements made by a serial liar in international relations, sets double standards when assessing available evidence, and uses rhetorical gymnastics to address unfavourable new realities. What is enrobed in a scientific cloak is punditry with far too serious real-life consequences. It plays into the hands of Russian propaganda, which the Kremlin does not hesitate to instrumentalise. Mearsheimer clearly does not realise or care how socially detrimental his questionable claims are.
Filip Kostelka is Professor and Chair in Political and Social Change at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute.
Instrumentalise as in weaponise: The Russian Embassy in London retweeted Mearsheimer's words as support for Russia's claims. Which came first , the chicken or the egg?

In comparison shooting fish in a barrel is quite hard: they move about in a slithery way and refraction means they aren't always where they appear to be.

How embarrassing must it be for Russia to pay for Iranian built drones to destroy Ukrainian power systems to try and freeze the population into surrender? The country that was first in space with Sputnik and Gagarin going cap in hand elsewhere for low level remote killing technology. Luckily these things are easy to shoot down, but the problem is in the numbers, just like the "experts" above whose questionable ideas proliferate around the world via the Web, often spread by those who should know better.

All the best

wadinga
"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today!"
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