Forum search & shortcuts

Ukraine

Posts: 12394
Full Member
 

My guess is that they've been cutting corners for decades on training and maintenance and now they aren't able to sustain the rate of combat operations, probably just old, badly maintained planes failing.


 
Posted : 23/10/2022 4:13 pm
Posts: 1311
Full Member
 

The French Foreign Minister in the tweet on the previous page. That's the lady that Nicola Sturgeon 'allegedly' has the super injunction in place about - they're lovers, fight in a famous Edinburgh hotel where the police were called etc etc.
Not wanting to hijack a really informative and interesting thread though 👍🏻


 
Posted : 23/10/2022 7:36 pm
Posts: 343
Free Member
 

Why would you comment about Sturgeon in a thread about Ukraine? FYI super injunctions are not a thing in Scotland…


 
Posted : 23/10/2022 8:58 pm
Posts: 1361
Free Member
 

Fatmax must be a Russian agent spreading discontent and trying to take down the establishment from their secret base in Crimea


 
Posted : 23/10/2022 9:34 pm
Posts: 0
Free Member
 

In one combination or another, these three super-states are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference. (2.9.22, Goldstein's Manifesto)


 
Posted : 23/10/2022 11:00 pm
Posts: 14487
Free Member
Posts: 14487
Free Member
 

What? I really would prefer the subtitles to be wrong.

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1584054018145685504?s=20&t=q0e7JbGJHh4hhmoJwzvunA


 
Posted : 24/10/2022 8:09 am
Posts: 6745
Free Member
 

I don’t understand the date in the above quote, presumably where it was copied from

It's a book that's considered illegal for the characters to possess in the novel 1984. I guess that the date is when it was "written".
I've googled to get beyond the minute bit that I remember from school,
"However, even though Inner Party members have devoted their lives to establishing Oceania as the universal world power, they use doublethink also in connection with the war, knowing that it is necessary for the conflict to go on indefinitely to keep the structure of Oceanic society intact." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oligarchical_Collectivism


 
Posted : 24/10/2022 8:12 am
Posts: 12394
Full Member
 

To save the googling, Orwell 1984, published 1949.

I read pretty much everything Orwell wrote when I was young. I remember reading or hearing that he originally planned to call it 1948, not 1984. If you read it after reading his earlier stuff, you can see that he is basically describing the world of the late 1940s, especially from the perspective of the highly repressed middle class. Putin's Russia is pretty much exactly what Orwell was describing - everyone self-censors because it's impossible to tell reality from propaganda and questioning authority means risking everything you have.

Unfortunately, a lot of people who have never read Orwell use words like "Orwellian" and "doublethink" without actually understanding what they mean or what Orwell was actually trying to warn about.


 
Posted : 24/10/2022 9:15 am
Posts: 35151
Full Member
 

It must be a strange head space to be in though. I mean if this was US aggression, he'd have no compunction in condemning it, and wouldn't ever think to use oblique quotes from Orwell to try to illustrate it. But here we are, a bizarre illusion must instead be conjured up to explain away Putin's war of aggression and territorial gain on another state.


 
Posted : 24/10/2022 9:34 am
Posts: 5827
Full Member
 

What? I really would prefer the subtitles to be wrong.

Utterly horrific.  Ordinary Russians are being fed a diet of this bile and hate every day, with no moderating voices in their media to counter it. It's no wonder their troops commit atrocities. Russia really is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany.  Margarita Simonyan and RT is Goebbels' propaganda ministry. This depiction of a whole people as subhuman is straight out of the third reich playbook, except this time it's Ukrainians not Jews.  Yeah I know, Godwin's law yada, yada.  But in this case fully justified IMO.

Even if by some miracle there was a true democratic revolution in Russia and a free media, it would take decades to begin to cure the corrosive effects that years of this have had.


 
Posted : 24/10/2022 10:20 am
Posts: 10337
Full Member
 

Subtitles are correct and he appears to have been fired for it


 
Posted : 24/10/2022 10:26 am
Posts: 46148
Full Member
 

Suspicious drones around oil rigs and airports. Perhaps Russia playing more roulette with European energy supplies...

https://www.euronews.com/2022/10/23/fears-grow-as-more-suspicious-drones-appear-above-norways-offshore-facilities


 
Posted : 24/10/2022 4:02 pm
Posts: 13643
Free Member
Topic starter
 

Yeah I know, Godwin’s law yada, yada.  But in this case fully justified IMO.

Unfortunately it's looking like you might be. Those mass graves didn't dig themselves


 
Posted : 24/10/2022 4:34 pm
Posts: 13643
Free Member
Topic starter
 

That drown the children guy 👆 has been kicked off the show

BBC News - Krasovsky: Russia bans 'burn Ukrainian kids' TV presenter
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63378613


 
Posted : 24/10/2022 9:55 pm
Posts: 6745
Free Member
 

Both the UK and US have publicly re-established talks with Moscow in the last couple of days. The bottom line is that neither nuclear, chemical, biological nor dirty bomb plots appear to be any more than bombast


 
Posted : 25/10/2022 7:56 am
Posts: 9297
Full Member
 

Utterly horrific. Ordinary Russians are being fed a diet of this bile and hate every day, with no moderating voices in their media to counter it.

A bit like the Russian equivalent of the Daily Express 😉


 
Posted : 25/10/2022 8:03 am
Posts: 6765
Full Member
 

Bellingcat have outed the Russian missile targeting team.... which may prove to be uncomfortable for them. It also appeared on Twitter

Its a long and interesting read.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2022/10/24/the-remote-control-killers-behind-russias-cruise-missile-strikes-on-ukraine/


 
Posted : 25/10/2022 8:08 am
Posts: 14548
Free Member
 

More rattling of rusty sabres

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63397927


 
Posted : 26/10/2022 3:35 pm
 pk13
Posts: 2734
Full Member
 

How things turn. Russia is now trying to recruit Afghanistan military (that admittedly got training from the west then hung out to dry when we left) to fight on its own behalf.


 
Posted : 26/10/2022 4:57 pm
Posts: 14487
Free Member
 

https://agsi.gie.eu/

Interesting to see the implications of this, to all intents and purposes, there almost no more gas storage capacity available in Europe.


 
Posted : 26/10/2022 5:27 pm
Posts: 1361
Free Member
 

https://agsi.gie.eu/

Interesting to see the implications of this, to all intents and purposes, there almost no more gas storage capacity available in Europe.

Already seeing the wholesale of price falling as demand is lowering due to the full storage, blunting one of Putin's economic weapons. If the US bring online the increased LNG export infrastructure in louisiana soon then Europe could be a lot more protected from the gas shenanigans. One wrinkle is OPEC+ have decided to reduce production to keep prices high. If either europe or asia has a cold winter (or both) then demand for LNG will spike up again, as will prices


 
Posted : 26/10/2022 5:52 pm
Posts: 6745
Free Member
 

Russia is in an argument with the UN over Russian drones that may or may not be from Iran...
The UN imposed conventional weapon sanctions on Iran as part of the ongoing 2015 nuclear agreement to and fro. The UN is going to Ukraine to examine the downed drones to see if Russia has ignored sanctions, which Russia and Iran both deny
Russia says that the UN doesn't have power to investigate, the UN have said that they can and do investigate such evidence.
I'm betting that an official Russian proposal to the UN would be either vetoed or voted against 🙂


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 7:07 am
Posts: 6745
Free Member
 

Russia is getting serious in its defence of Kherson city and their volume of artillery fire has increased.
Rainfall has slowed the Ukrainian advance off-road, which is working in favour of Russian Forces, allowing RF to get their defences dug and resupply moving


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 7:13 am
Posts: 6745
Free Member
 

Some context of Russian Forces during September https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-base


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 7:15 am
Posts: 6765
Full Member
 

see if Russia has ignored sanctions,

Very likely they have both ignored sanctions but both countries are not known for their position on the moral highground...


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 7:44 am
Posts: 0
Free Member
 

thols2

Very good. The official category of Nineteen Eighty Four is 'dystopian fiction', however, as you correctly state Orwell was simply describing what was happening at the time. It's the same as has been happening since, and is happening now. All that's changed is the technology and the amount of control.

'History' (his story) is a collection of hoaxes and half-truths designed to keep the ordinary people on the psychological plantation. This includes wars, and world events / crises. It is all part of the programming. The ordinary man or woman will dismiss anyone saying this as a lunatic / conspiracy theorist because they cannot conceptualise a higher force than 'guvmint'. Or if they can, they do not want to for the protection of their own ego investments.

The ordinary people will reject the truth and will fight you, violently even, to protect the false sense of reality they live in. Like Orwell wrote. They do not want to deal with the cold, harsh reality that is truth, they want 'ignorance is bliss'. The Matrix is relevant here.


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 8:36 am
Posts: 9161
Full Member
 

@pk13 Source for that?


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 8:50 am
Posts: 6745
Free Member
 

@pk13 Source for that?

Widely reported, emphasis on "trying to recruit" without evidence of success. Reported to be Wagner PMC behind the recruitment attempt


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 9:36 am
Posts: 1361
Free Member
 

The Drive / WarZone story on ex-Afghan SOF being recruited by Wagner/Russia

This is slightly chilling

They also told him about receiving offers to take “their families to other countries or Russia, just to keep them safe,” he said.


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 11:16 am
Posts: 91171
Free Member
 

They do not want to deal with the cold, harsh reality that is truth

OR

You don't want to deal with the cold, harsh reality that is the truth, and you're creating elaborate fantasies to explain away the unbearable shitness of things.

Which is it?

I think the original Total Recall film is a better analogy here than the Matrix, because it's far more ambiguous. The Matrix makes all the value judgements for you and leaves you in no doubt as to how things should be.


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 11:26 am
Posts: 2938
Free Member
 

Or don’t feed the troll, he’s trolling other threads too 🤷‍♂️


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 11:49 am
Posts: 12394
Full Member
 

Seriously, how long can the Russian army go on like this before they collapse? Most of them will freeze to death once winter sets in properly.

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1585587514383138817


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 2:08 pm
Posts: 7058
Full Member
 

Tyrant Putin currently making another of those West made me act speeches again.


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 5:05 pm
Posts: 2938
Free Member
 

It’s all our fault 🤷‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️ Mearschmire will be lapping it up like a goood useful idiot 😵‍💫🤔

Meanwhile back in the real world, will the Russian army survive the winter? Collapse by February, or even earlier?


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 6:03 pm
 DT78
Posts: 10066
Free Member
 

Its going to be a pretty brutal winter for ukraine too given they have had alot of their grid destroyed


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 6:06 pm
Posts: 0
Free Member
 

molgrips

The truth is not ambiguous.


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 8:06 pm
Posts: 14548
Free Member
 

@veganrider - who's truth? yours? mine? theirs?


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 8:07 pm
Posts: 7286
Full Member
 

You can't handle the truth man you weren't there.

Is there likely to be a way to post a Xmas present to a Ukraine soldier? Rather than send a load of cards and be forced to buy some unwanted tat for my family i would rather some random guy in a trench gets a box with sox, haribo, a cigar, etc


 
Posted : 27/10/2022 10:15 pm
Posts: 12394
Full Member
 

Its going to be a pretty brutal winter for ukraine too given they have had alot of their grid destroyed

No doubt, but living in a house without electricity is an order of magnitude better than living in foxhole in the snow after your officers stole all your warm clothing to sell for profit, with no food or ammo, and with fires prohibited to stop Ukrainian drones spotting your position.


 
Posted : 28/10/2022 5:31 am
Posts: 6745
Free Member
 

Old-fashioned leaflet drop needed now showing the 1/2 million pieces of Canadian winter kit donated to Ukraine earlier this month


 
Posted : 28/10/2022 7:03 am
Posts: 6745
Free Member
 

Russia threatened action against civilian satellites again in the Thematic Discussion on Outer Space in the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, "Quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for
retaliation" page 2

While Russia has the capability to destroy satellites, it isn't clear how that can destroy 3000 Starlink satellites that can autonomously manoeuvre to avoid space debris


 
Posted : 28/10/2022 7:11 am
Posts: 6765
Full Member
 

Good charity link for Ukranian soldiers.

https://www.comebackalive.in.ua/donate


 
Posted : 28/10/2022 8:27 am
Posts: 13349
Free Member
 

Old-fashioned leaflet drop needed now showing the 1/2 million pieces of Canadian winter kit donated to Ukraine earlier this month

Having had some military experience with kit issue, is that all left boots? 🙂


 
Posted : 28/10/2022 9:19 am
Posts: 35151
Full Member
 

The ordinary man or woman will dismiss anyone saying this as a lunatic / conspiracy theorist because they cannot conceptualise a higher force than ‘guvmint’

Oh good, nothing gladdens the heart more on a wet 'n' windy Autumn morning than a bit of the ole' ultra right wing New World Order conspiracy bullshitter stirring the pot.


 
Posted : 28/10/2022 9:58 am
Page 286 / 496