quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
That said, if you believe we have no business opposing brutal aggression as is occurring in Ukraine, do you believe we have no business opposing any future aggression?

I'm not going to go very deep down this rabbit hole except to say, this is the aspect of this whole thing that pisses me off the most. Trump kept Putin in check for four years without blowing anything up or finding some little po-dunk country to 'use' as a poxy to get into a dick waving competition with Russia on the American taxpayer's tab. We shouldn't be where we are right now, and had that worthless POS in 'our' White House not completely F'd up everything he's touched, we wouldn't be pouring billions into another country trying to stop Putin. And I've got to believe the siege of Taiwan is just around the corner.

^^^ Frankly, it's hard to believe the Chinese and/or NORKs haven't used this opportunity to start something. Especially, the Chinese with Taiwan.

quote:

Originally posted by 2PAK:
^^^ Frankly, it's hard to believe the Chinese and/or NORKs haven't used this opportunity to start something. Especially, the Chinese with Taiwan.

Sit tight it’s coming, once his decline gets a little worse, we’ll be dealing with three fronts with no clue, I’m sure our non-binary policies will slow Rocket Man and Xi.

quote:

Originally posted by 2PAK:
^^^ Frankly, it's hard to believe the Chinese and/or NORKs haven't used this opportunity to start something. Especially, the Chinese with Taiwan.

I sure hope Taiwan has nukes. That's really the only deterrent to China.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would have to completely overwhelm and destroy Taiwan.

^^ It's kind of odd how China didn't actually invade Taiwan when Putin rolled into Ukraine. Maybe the ChiComs are reassessing their chances of success, even with Uncah Ho squatting in the White House.

quote:

Originally posted by oldbill123:
NATO should never have been expanded. We are going to be sucked into a conflict when one of these countries with "little man syndrome" tries to be a tough guy

Oddly enough, the only country with "little man" syndrome here seems to be Russia, and that's going to last as long as Putin does. Given his interference in other countries and habit of sending bombers into our airspace, I don't think that there was ever going to be a way to avoid dealing with Putin in some way or another. OTOH, he's had to work himself up to the point of being a threat to countries like Estonia.

quote:

On a related note. Look how fast the world's governments joined together to lock down their freedoms. It was even faster collaborating against Russia. New world order.

Actually that was happening in the US and Canada without any particular relationship to what Putin did. Opposition is also rising in the PTAs, in the courts, and in the states despite the attempt to use Putin as a distraction. Look at it this way: there's been a grass-roots war against Republican elites for decades now, and it's origins lie in the Republican elites' not having found the brains, balls and backbone to successfully oppose pro-Big Government forces in the Dem party. To claim that the WEF wouldn't be doing what it was doing as successfully if we weren't "distracted" by taking on Putin is silly given that this was an ongoing problem before Putin's "little green men" campaigns began.

At the same time, the Dems and the media are being forced to highlight the evils of big, controlling government in order to condemn Putin. The Dems and the media are going to have a harder time covering up for the expansion of government control here once they've "raised everyone's awareness" of such measures and their implications for peoples' liberties, and people are certainly more likely to oppose that expansion. Heck, people may be learning how to better oppose that expansion by seeing how Putin's efforts to exert control are being opposed.

quote:

Oddly enough, the only country with "little man" syndrome here seems to be Russia, and that's going to last as long as Putin does. Given his interference in other countries and habit of sending bombers into our airspace, I don't think that there was ever going to be a way to avoid dealing with Putin in some way or another.

Interesting... and probably true.
But the biggest threat from Putin is that he will ally with China. It's been said that Ukraine is a proxy war between the US and Russia, but China is the bigger long-term threat.

Is that idiot Biden gonna get us in a war with Russia or China?
He very well may.

But it's been building for a long time...
The Chinese war manual “Unrestricted Warfare” kind of lays it all out there: see below.

Communist China Has Thrown Out The Old Rules of War

Authored by Robert Spalding via RealClear Books & Culture,

When I first read the Chinese war manual “Unrestricted Warfare” in 1999, I thought it was wacky. I was flying B-2 Stealth bombers out of Whiteman Air Force Base in western Missouri and reading a lot about war. As an Air Force officer, I thought it was part of my day job to understand the bigger picture – even though the prevailing attitude in the military was “Just fly the planes.” “Unrestricted Warfare” was one of those books that caused a stir among some military folks because it had recently been translated into English. It had that insider whiff of mystery and secrets, a peek into the mind of the Chinese Communist Party.

Despite that mystique, not a lot of people were finishing the book. For one thing, regardless of its title, no one thought we were ever going to be fighting a war with China, so it seemed like a lot of work for very little payoff. For another, the book itself is not a light read. It is a dense compendium of strategy, economics, social theory, and futuristic thoughts about technology. It imparts centuries of military history, particularly as it relates to the United States, but I already knew a lot of that. It seemed vague and also a little sci-fi, not relevant to a U.S. bomber pilot – even one with a fascination for military history. My mistake.

If you look closely at everything China has done since 1999 – at all aspects of its economic, military, diplomatic, and technological relations with the rest of the world – it’s like watching “Unrestricted Warfare” come to life. One can find other glimpses into the secretive mentality of the CCP leaders, but this one is the single most important book for understanding the China of today. “Unrestricted Warfare” is the main blueprint for China’s efforts to unseat America as the world’s economic, political, and ideological leader. It shows exactly how a totalitarian nation set out to dominate the West through a comprehensive, long-term strategy that includes everything from corporate sabotage to cyberwarfare to dishonest diplomacy; from violations of international trade law and intellectual property law to calculated abuses of the global financial system. As one of the authors stated, “The only rule in ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ is that there are no rules.”

The book is the key to decoding China’s master plan for world domination, which has been progressing more steadily and successfully than most Americans realize – even accelerating in the reign of Xi Jinping. The manipulation of COVID policies, stonewalling the world about its origins, and mounting a massive disinformation campaign to blame the United States are merely recent examples.

So why is “Unrestricted Warfare” so obscure, even to people who study China professionally on behalf of the U.S. government, the Fortune 500, the investment world, the nonprofit world, academia, or the military? It’s not as if the book is some secret document that has never escaped the inner sanctum of the Chinese Communist Party. Just the opposite: The original translation by the U.S. government is in the public domain; you can google it and click on an English translation, for free, in less than a second.

The problem is that “Unrestricted Warfare” is hard to read. While any American can access it, few can understand it. The prose is dense and confusing, even in the original Mandarin, and even more so in that crude, free translation you’ll find on the web. Its insights are clouded by endless repetitions and meandering discursions into military history, cultural theory, and attacks on U.S. policy. The colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, get tangled in semantics and draw on faulty citations and unsourced references. They obsess about the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 to an extent that puzzles Americans who consider that war to be a minor footnote to history. And the authors’ metaphors are so weird to our ears as to seem utterly baffling. Just consider two chapter titles: “The War God’s Face Has Become Indistinct” and “What Do Americans Gain by Touching the Elephant?” Huh?

I mentioned “Unrestricted Warfare” several times in my previous book, “Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept.” I noted that the book was well known to modern-day China scholars but that perhaps because of its strange complexity, Western strategists had failed to connect its strategic vision with the seemingly random actions of China’s misleadingly benign and smiling countenance. Although some of the text is pretty clear: “Using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interest.”

As I wrote at the time, that strategy can justify meddling in all manner of another country’s affairs: silencing ideas or promoting political discord, stealing technology, dumping products to disrupt markets. I was intrigued with the idea of creating an “army” of academics who could be used to gather medical, technological, and engineering information. The list of incursions goes on – and has grown since then.

Consider just a small number of the things the Chinese Communists have done:

Seized on COVID as a weapon to be used to their benefit, not a humanitarian crisis to be solved.
Viewed the climate change issue as a bargaining chip to win them economic concessions from global elites in return for reforms that they never intend to make.
Sponsored corporate espionage on a scale beyond what the United States acknowledges.
Launched unrelenting cyberattacks against Western companies and governments.
Fueled America’s deadly fentanyl drug crisis by allowing illegal smuggling of banned substances.
Used slave labor to produce goods such as clothing for sale to Western shoppers.

Despite all of these actions by the CCP, since publication of “Stealth War,” I’ve encountered skepticism from some readers who simply can’t believe that China has been methodically undermining the rest of the world with a patient, long-term, multidisciplinary strategy. Some even dismissed “Stealth War” as the work of an alarmist.

In the wake of that reaction, I realized how useful it would be to make the Chinese manual of war accessible to American readers so that they can see it for themselves. I set out to write a user-friendly guide that would explain “Unrestricted Warfare” chapter by chapter, adding examples while editing out the irrelevant and distracting parts of the original text. In the process I’ve drawn on history, military strategy, and Chinese culture to explain the context in which “Unrestricted Warfare” was written and then applied. My goal is to show how “Unrestricted Warfare’s” advice to the leadership of the CCP maps with terrifying consistency onto the events of the past two decades.

This book has opened my eyes to how the CCP has essentially sneak attacked us in slow motion. And made me think hard about where they are going next. I hope it can have the same effect on others. I want to share with the men and women in our government, my respected former colleagues, who have to make some important – maybe life and death – decisions about how we deal with the Chinese government in the very near future.

I know it can seem excessive to compare any country with Nazi Germany. But as we rethink our views on China, what other comparison is appropriate for a regime that casually and cold-bloodedly allowed COVID-19 to spread to the rest of the world at the same time it was forcing its Muslim citizens into concentration camps? Hong Kong parallels the takeover of Austria in 1938. And how do you account for the increasingly warlike rhetoric and military movements directed at Taiwan?

Imagine the reaction during World War II if an American company had tried to export its goods to imperial Japan, or if a Wall Street firm had tried to underwrite the bonds of a Nazi arms manufacturer. Unthinkable, right? And yet today countless Americans are still trying to do business with and in China, misunderstanding or ignoring the CCP’s war without rules.

I am deeply concerned that the Biden administration, despite some positive moves, is seriously underestimating the malevolence and power of the Chinese threat. Our adversaries wrote up their long-term plans in 1999 and have been executing them relentlessly ever since. Our leaders have a moral obligation to understand what’s happening, sound the alarm, wake up the country, and inspire Americans of all political stripes to do everything in their power to stop this totalitarian regime.

I also want the average American to have access to this book. It’s time for every influential person in America – policy makers, diplomats, business executives, investors, journalists, scientists, academics, and more – to become part of the resistance to the Chinese Communist Party.

My hope is that by explaining “Unrestricted Warfare” and its consequences, this book will make it impossible for my fellow Americans to continue to deny the reality of our existential conflict with China. The simple, chilling truth is that the CCP is doing everything in its power – mostly via economics, technology, diplomacy, and the media, not yet via military power – to destroy our way of life. To understand that plan, you need to understand “Unrestricted Warfare.” The stakes couldn’t be higher.

* * *

Robert Spalding retired from the U.S. Air Force as a brigadier general after more than 25 years of service. He is the CEO of SEMPRE and the author of “War Without Rules: China's Playbook for Global Domination” (Sentinel, 2022).

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...wn-out-old-rules-war

Wish I could post a link. A short video, if it's real... . Putin calling Tyson Fury a lamp post. Saying he wants Fury to come to Russia and fight him bare knuckles. Tyson responds with,"I'm gonna smash your fuckin' face." . How 'bout that for a message?

Sunday Talks, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal Interview with CBS Margaret Brennan, Cash is Important Because American Taxpayers Need to Fund Our Pensions and Salaries

https://theconservativetreehou...nsions-and-salaries/

Given the scale of the stakes for western government; and given the professed intentions of govt-aligned big tech to control the story; it is almost impossible to have an honest and open dialogue on the internet about what is happening in Ukraine. That said, for those who have been using independent resources to form their own opinion of the events in/around Ukraine, this interview highlights some important aspects.

First, notice how Prime Minister Shmyhal is not the least bit bashful about saying cash is important because American taxpayers, the working American people, have a duty to fund the pensions and retirement accounts of the Ukrainian people, including govt politicians. [03:37] Indeed, much of the financial assistance Joe Biden has been sending to Ukraine (beyond the weapons to support the proxy war) is going toward paying the wages and salaries of corrupt Ukranian leadership.

Let that first point settle in deeply, as we consider how working Americans are being financially destroyed by U.S. monetary/fiscal policy, yet the same U.S. officials wiping out your bank account are funding the bank accounts of people in Ukraine.



Second point. Notice [06:02] how Prime Minister Shmyhal hedges, pauses and thinks about the response to the question of ‘what is victory’, a stalemate or Russian exit? In the U.S. proxy war against Russia, Shmyhal is not the person who can answer that question, only the White House can.


This CBS interview is pure propaganda intended to keep the U.S. audience believing a false premise about the Russian war in Ukraine. The pearl clutching faux empathy from Margaret Brennan is enough to make an intellectually honest person very angry. This narrative engineering effort from the American corporate media is sickening, genuinely sickening.

The level of narrative control in combination with the extreme media promotion of government propaganda is totalitarian in scale. U.S. govt sponsored censorship and the collaboration with on-line Big Brother tech controls have reduced the internet discussion to a series of coded messages, and carefully scripted word assemblies in order to avoid the looming eye of Sauron.

It was only a few decades ago when the former Soviet Union was famous for their propaganda against their own citizens. Now, with the multinational corporations dictating policy to western government via the World Economic Forum, that entire dynamic has flipped.

In 2022 we have even worse media propaganda against the U.S. citizens than Pravda ever attempted over the former Soviet states. At least in the former Soviet Union the propaganda effort was laughed at by the citizens on the streets. If you point out the media dynamic today in America, you become a target for the totalitarian political state and their FBI state police units. It’s remarkable how the dynamic has flipped.

We, the free-thinking American people, are now intellectual dissidents in our own country.

I'm still convinced that Ukraine is one giant A1A Car Wash (the car wash in Breaking Bad owned by Walt) for the Democrats who are laundering more money through there than ever before, now under the guise of "aid".

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
CTH sez...

... it is almost impossible to have an honest and open dialogue on the internet about what is happening in Ukraine.

They're correct on this point.

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
CTH sez...

That said, for those who have been using independent resources to form their own opinion of the events in/around Ukraine, ...

I've been doing just that. CTH ain't one of 'em.

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
CTH sez...

This CBS interview is pure propaganda intended to keep the U.S. audience believing a false premise about the Russian war in Ukraine.

And that "false premise" is... what, exactly? They don't say. Just some amorphous hints at Government/Big Tech/Illuminati conspiracy.

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
CTH sez...

It was only a few decades ago when the former Soviet Union was famous for their propaganda against their own citizens.
...
At least in the former Soviet Union the propaganda effort was laughed at by the citizens on the streets.

Uh huh. But that was then and this is now. Now Putin's propaganda machine is working and most Russian citizens are not laughing at it. They're believing it.

It's true that what's going on in Ukraine is far more complicated than the DNM (Dominant "News" Media) presents it. And there is no doubt all kinds of corruption, foul play, wheels-within-wheels, etc. going on there.

But, right now, the bottom line is Russia is trying to annex all or part of Ukraine for its own purposes. (What part or parts they're trying to acquire changes about every-other-week, so it's hard to say, just now. what that means.) Right now, Putin's military is killing Ukrainians and destroying their country.

That is the bottom line.

And speaking of "almost impossible to have an honest and open dialogue," how 'bout I note another infographic CTH conveniently overlooked?

Total bilateral aid commitments to Ukraine as a percentage of donor Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between February 24 and March 27, 2022, by country


Source: Total bilateral aid commitments to Ukraine as a percentage of donor Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between February 24 and March 27, 2022, by country

And that's one example of why I don't count CTH among my reputable news sources.

All together now... "Second verse, same as the first".

Stage some provocations. Claim that the Russian minority is being oppressed. Then invade Moldova.

Just like Russia has done numerous times before, including Ukraine and Crimea, Donbass, Georgia, etc. before that (And the exact thing Germany did with Poland in 1939.)

From https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-61185469

quote:

Reports of explosions in Russian-backed separatist region of Moldova

Several explosions have hit the state security ministry in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, the interior ministry said on its Telegram channel.

The ministry said the building appeared to have been hit with rocket-propelled grenades, but it said no one was injured.

It comes days after a Russian general suggested Moscow wanted to take full control of southern Ukraine, giving Russia access to the separatist region of Moldova which it supports.

He said there was "oppression of the Russian-speaking population" in Transnistria, a claim which had also been made - without evidence - to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine's defence ministry said the incident was a "planned provocation" by Russia itself to instil "panic and anti-Ukrainian sentiment".

A small Russian-speaking breakaway region, Transnistria borders Ukraine from the west. It claimed independence after the fall of the Soviet Union in a bloody conflict, but is not recognised internationally and officially remains part of Moldova.

^^^ Transnistria (the breakaway state of Moldova) is next so sing it from the rooftops.

There are no good guys or bad guys. This is about money as most wars are. The rest is spin.
Obama runs down the military, Trump borrows a trillion plus to build it back up. Biden gives away the build up material in A-stan and now Ukraine. Next Prez will have to raise the national debt to build it back up.
The tales of morality, bravery, good and evil is just spin.
Wake up and smell the trillions burning

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
(And the exact thing Germany did with Poland in 1939.)

And before that in Austria to a degree, and most notably in Czechoslovakia.
Putin is following Hitler’s playbook as closely as he can, and having similar successes for the same reasons.

I’ll ask it again: As he racks up the successes either by threat or force, when, where, and most important, why does it end? I am still wondering what sorts of answers that those who believe we should just ignore the situation as long as we can get away with it have for those questions. When someone I was talking to about the situation indicated we shouldn’t confront him because he has nukes, I asked if she thought he wouldn’t have nukes in the future as he continued his aggressions and if things would be less dangerous if we finally decided to resist him later than sooner (as Britain and France finally did in 1939). She didn’t have any answers either.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
I’ll ask it again: As he racks up the successes either by threat or force, when, where, and most important, why does it end? I am still wondering what sorts of answers that those who believe we should just ignore the situation as long as we can get away with it have for those questions.

Tell ya what, you're fond of questions, so I'll ask you a couple that are directly related to the ones you asked. What changed when Putin took Crimea? Assuming the US sat the sidelines and did nothing, what would change if Putin took Ukraine? For that matter, what would change if he absorbed all of those small non-NATO states around the Russian border? And no, I won't entertain dialog about Putin rolling into NATO states and across Europe like Hitler, gobbling up everything in his path. I think that's silly given it's rather obvious that Putin/Russia have some serious limitations in terms of military capability and funding given their continuing struggles in Ukraine to take and hold ground.

Share a couple thoughts on those questions please. I'm curious what you think the outcome would be if the US stayed out of all this.

Tho outcome would be better for us. Finically and resources. Less loss of life on all sides.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:... I'm curious what you think the outcome would be if the US stayed out of all this.

As America is weakened to similar mindset and conditions (ability to meet logistic/materiel needs in support) as we were prior to our entry into WWII, the outcome is likely a re-constituted USSR.

A lot of these countries, and Ukraine was a big one, have the resources, manufacturing, and people to rapidly produce warfighting and actual threat to Western Europe.

We are a shadow of former strength in NATO, in spite of the size, and quite a few of the countries in Europe are likely to swing a direction against the West, if it appears the USA has no interest in direct involvement.

A lot of people think there is no way Russia could come back, but history shows that to be folly.

The attitudes of the Russians, and many of the Baltic, as well as Soviet Central Asia would surprise some as to their views on the West, and lack of resistance to a re-constituted USSR.

How many friends does America truly have in this fickle world?

Maybe being born into the Cold War causes me a bit of "flinch", and I won't deny it exists.

No body survives serious threat with a shrug.


I will be happy for people to point and laugh at me in a few decades.