Jump to content

rabas

Advanced Member
  • Posts

    4991
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Recent Profile Visitors

20726 profile views

rabas's Achievements

Platinum Member

Platinum Member (9/14)

  • Conversation Starter
  • Very Popular Rare
  • 5 Reactions Given
  • One Year In
  • One Month Later

Recent Badges

9.6k

Reputation

  1. Last line from your referenced article. "Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, has ruled Gaza since splitting with the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2007. The PA exercises limited governance in the West Bank." There's the problem with much of your argument.
  2. I gave no answer but did provide reasons why I and most unbiased people can't. How did you miss all that?
  3. Bad faith comparison. Seeks to establish a false equivalence between disparate entities using a binary view of something with a great degree of variability. Kind of like did you ever lie? So your as bad as Putin. Common tactic in support of hard line terrorists.
  4. Where you're here long enough you may realize that Thai's social distinction between Thai and people from developed Western countries (farang) has a natural historical basis going back to Rama 4 or before. It is not negative by nature and can often be a term of respect or honor. Of course it depends on the person and situation. I'm usually treated quite respectably. But yeah, I don't go running over other people.
  5. Where did I say anything about Russians and Ukrainians being 'different'? TBH you seem to be expressing your own anti West rhetoric rather than addressing my post. We have a few like that here. And yes, I've been to both as far back as the informative cold war. Grew up in cold war Europe and have lifelong very close Russian friends, some I've worked with for decades and still do. My views come from history and Russians. (Don't have a current Ukraine friend but my first wife was Lithuanian if that helps.) Short form: Ukrainians good, Russians good, Putin worse than it gets, and no the West didn't make Putin do all his evil things. And no, most Russians don't like him. If you think so, your'e likely suffering Putin propaganda.
  6. Your assessments are reasonable and I can't argue against either, though I'm a bit more optimistic and like to take the side of Russian citizens. Putin is not without weakness particularly after his Ukraine blunder. Prigozhin would not have gotten so far if he wasn't. Of course, Prigozhin is now dead as Putin doesn't mind blowing innocent people like pilots and stewardesses out of the sky. You're right that there is no quick fix but I don't think Russians need or necessarily want a full Western liberal democracy. Just governance that cares about citizens and develops the economy. Even China can develop its economy. Neither the USSR or Putin ever tried. Nor did they try to develop good relations with the world. But we always come back to he same bottom line, Vladimir Putin is the most hellacious mess the world has seen in a century. Allowing him to get his way in Ukraine is not an option. If we do, the next war will be 10X more costly.
  7. Withdrawing to legally agreed on borders would be the right thing, wouldn't it? Note, any reasonable Russian head of state, other than Putin's mafia, would have spent the last 20 years building Russia's economy and better relations with neighbors. Then Crimea wouldn't be an issue. Russia and Ukraine could use Crimea for mutual defense and benefit. Russia could even become a normal country mutually benefiting the world and its own citizens.
  8. I don't disagree with your analysis of Budanov's motives. I assumed he views Navalny as a distraction from more noble causes. Keeping his name and his wife out of politics in case Putin loses his grip on power makes sense.
  9. "Well it's true continuing this war is just condemning 100s or thousands of young men on both sides to their slaughter. " Got that right. Putin can end it any day of the week he wants. End of story. Meanwhile back at the Black Sea, Russia continues losing its mighty navy to a country without one along with many embarrassing defeats as Putin's undefeatable weapons goes down to superior western technology. I doubt defeating Russia is the goal, just Putin. Russian generals must be very weary watching their heavy strategic losses and their reputation sink with their ships. It was reported that Russian Military Headquarters recently discovered a spy camera, which they turned over to police to investigate. The police gave it to Putin's FSB who said it was theirs. Such is the love between Putin and his military. The military is proud of their history defending the homeland and want nothing to do with Putin's bloody war of conquest.
  10. "It's everywhere, I saw it on the internet", he said. You so far have proven nothing. Maybe a good time to remember the wise words of Richard Feynman: “It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.” There is no quantitative proof, even reliable data, to suggest the vaccines benefits did not far out weigh low levels of side effects, many of which are due to the virus SARS-2 not mRNA technology. [ref1,ref2,ref3] Ref3: "heart, kidney, liver, brain, and gastrointestinal tract." Richard Feynman was a master contrarian but I admire him because he was laser focused on truth.
  11. We have a meeting coming up next week. I'll see what I can do.
  12. True. But the West had neutron bombs. A neutron bomb has a very small 'blast' but puts out a vast burst of invisible neutron radiation that can kill tank crews with little damage to tanks or other major infrastructure. This was done because it was inconceivable NATO would invade Russia thus the battle would be on NATO territory. (You can count on Russia being the bad guy) You can see from Eastern Ukraine that Putin cares nothing for people. The only way to stop him is to demonstrate how he will be defeated.
  13. My condo is in talks with a company to install 5 charging stations in our outdoor parking area, which has some spare capacity. The condo will provide the electricity which we buy at a significant discount. The profit will be be shared between the charging company and the Condo, which will get the lion's share. So the condo association makes money, and, owners get on premises charging. The charging company will use internet marketing to advertise out location to maximize profit.
  14. There has been some question of how many $300M A-50 AWACS planes Russia has left. The correct answer is one functional and five not so functional any time soon or maybe never. Five are graveyard skeletons used for spare parts. Probably not much left in Russia's kleptocracy. I count 5 engines remaining out of 5 four-engine planes, and rust. [more info]
  15. Ask how it's going for Putin. He's the huge problem in the room, always has been. Now is because we didn't do enough before. No other way with Putin.
×
×
  • Create New...