cmarshall
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Posts posted by cmarshall
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1 minute ago, vinny41 said:
Until the time comes for war reparations, sanctions will need to be removed in order to pay for war reparations
A number of countries are just waiting for Iran sanctions to be lifted in order to discuss Oil and Gas imports
War reparations? From the Russians? You do have a vivid imagination. Who is going to occupy the Russian Federation and force them to pay reparations?
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5 minutes ago, ozimoron said:Germany has determined to remove it's influence on Russian oil within 5 years. Nobody said immediate. It will nevertheless cripple Russia's economy.
Oil is fungible. Someone will always buy Russian oil like the Indians are doing now. The US despite its efforts was never able to shutdown Iran's oil exports.
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41 minutes ago, tgw said:
Logic subroutine error : 404 logic not found
but anyway: everyone calls Putin a war criminal. Except Belarus, North Korea and China...
it's happening now. just watch.
I'll take that bet.
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3 minutes ago, Hellfire said:So, following you logic, the same should happen when Putin invades Poland, Baltic states and whatever country he will feel like to invade? Again those countries will have “to work out whatever accommodation with Putin that they can”. And where will this cowardly position lead us all in the end? Any ideas?
The Russian Federation has neither the economic nor the military might to match Stalin's in 1945. Putin knows this.
But frankly I don't worry about the Russians attacking yet another country. The rogue nation much more likely to do so is the US, cf. Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), and with eyes on Iran.
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3 minutes ago, tgw said:
Afghanistan and Vietnam would like a word...
So, maybe the Russians will get tired of occupying Ukraine twenty years from now?
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Just now, Bkk Brian said:
Hollywood does not come into it..............
@TheStudyofWar now assesses that Ukraine has “defeated the initial Russian campaign in this war” and that Russia no longer has the forces to take Kyiv and other major cities to force a change of gov’t. ISW believes war will likely descend into “a bloody stalemate.” -@Reevellp
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-19
Same thing happened when the Finns defeated the Red Army in 1939. Subsequently, the Soviets corrected their deficiencies with the result that they still hold the Karelian Peninsula today.
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1 minute ago, Bkk Brian said:Ukraine has already won the first stage of this invasion, you may have missed that........
According to the Hollywood version of the news. To the more sober-minded of us the notion that you are winning when you have a 150,000 strong armed force occupying your country is ridiculous.
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5 minutes ago, ozimoron said:Does China supplying arms to Russia put them in the Chinese alliance?
Absolutely it does. And this is another direct result of the stupid and callous confrontation with Russia that the US has created with its unrelenting expansion of NATO. The main threat to the US is not from Russia, with its economy smaller than Texas, but from China whose economy has been larger than the US's since 2010 on a purchasing power parity basis. The US ought to have been making an ally of Russia against China, but instead has now pushed them into the Chinese camp since there is no where else for them to go. Smart think, US strategists!
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Just now, ozimoron said:
Then, which non NATO country is next? Moldovia where there is already a strong Russian military presence?
It's called a sphere of influence. During the Cold War the US and the USSR acknowledged each other's spheres of influence and mostly avoided confrontations in those zones. When they failed to respect the opponent's sphere of influence such as in Cuba in 1962 all hell broker loose nearly resulting in a nuclear exchange. But then after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the triumphant US decided unilaterally that it had no such similar obligation to respect any sphere of influence of the Russian Federation. The current ongoing destruction of Ukraine is the direct result of the Americans' hubris.
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9 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:
14 years later, so pretty obvious it was not going to happen in the future, even Zelensky said "we could not join, its the truth and it must be recognized"
By the way, no need to go to the wayback machine, its live on the NATO website, its no secret:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm
So, you missed the point about how the US's supplying arms to Ukraine against the Russians already puts them in the Western alliance?
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28 minutes ago, Hellfire said:What is there about Russia that makes it a “great power” or “super power”? Economy the size of Texas? Do you know about any modern technology coming from Russia? Or may be it is a Russian military machine which is basically stuck in the 70s-80s of the past century? What is there so Great about modern Russia and their dictator that the whole world should be submissive to its so called “interests”?
Oh, I know what. Those nuclear bombs inherited by Mad Vlad from his grandfather Joseph Stalin. And then, what is the difference between Putin and another terrorist breaking into the kindergarten with the bomb in his hands and taking hostages? Is that what real power all about? And isn’t it actually the sign of a Great weakness, instead?
One avoids confronting a nuclear power not out of respect, but out of the most justified fear imaginable. If the Ukrainians and the US manage to push Putin into a corner he will use his nukes. Ukraine cannot win. They should realize this, distance themselves from the US, and work out whatever accommodation with Putin that they can. If not the Western media will cheer the Ukrainian heroism until there is nothing left but rubble.
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5 minutes ago, ozimoron said:
What's possible is that Russia will become a pariah nation for decades to come with very little economy to speak of. Biden and other western leaders have made that clear. You seem to be ignoring the pressure on Russia's economy which is already running out of cash.
If the US is disqualified from calling Putin a war criminal there are plenty of other western leaders accusing him of war crimes. Clearly you don't agree that he is a war criminal.
There may indeed be downsides for Russia, but nothing that is going to prevent them from achieving their goal of destroying Ukraine.
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22 minutes ago, ozimoron said:
So you clearly don't respect Ukraine's right to sovereignty. Ukraine has despised Russia since the 1930's famine.
The Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor), took from 7 million to 10 million innocent lives and became a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
edit: I'm not American and have never been there. I agree completely about Iraq but this thread isn't about Iraq and in no way excuses unrelated war crimes.
You are confusing the world you wish with the world you have. In some abstract sense Ukraine ought to be able to align itself with the West if it wishes to, but the simple reality, as Putin is now demonstrating unambiguously, is that it can't, because Putin won't let them. And the West is not going to stop him. So, the Ukrainians' choice is Rubble or Russian; nothing else is possible.
Beyond the Holodomor the Ukrainians bore the brunt of WWII. That still doesn't mean that somehow they are now in a position to defeat the invading Russian army of 150,000 troops. That is not going to happen.
The destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan by the Americans disqualifies them from calling Putin a war criminal.
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37 minutes ago, heybruce said:
You think it's plausible that Putin's goal is to waste a great part of his military, have most of the free world unite against him and bring devastating economic sanctions on Russia in order to have a failed state on Russia's border? You must think Putin is incredibly stupid.
As to your thought's on the goals of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq; I think you are so locked into a conspiracy theory mindset you are unable to be objective.
What I think is that Putin, as he has warned repeatedly, cannot and will not tolerate a neighboring state going over to the NATO/EU side of the enemy. So, he will destroy it. That is his goal and is an effective warning to other similar states belonging to the Russian sphere of influence.
With respect to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have a truly impressive ability to ignore the obvious. When Colin Powell was lying through his teeth to the UN that Iraq had WMD even though the UN inspector reported that they had no such program and that Iraq had participated in 9/11 even though the Baathists and Al Queda were on opposite sides, I, like lots of other people, knew then that none of it was true. And then after they invaded it turned out that there never was any evidence to support any of the American lies. Seems to qualify as a conspiracy to me. And most of the $8 trillion cost of those wars went to the military and defense contractors like Halliburton, VP Cheney's old company that made $40 billion out of the war, much of which came from non-competitive contracts.
But please continue to bury your head in the sand. You'll remain a proud American.
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5 minutes ago, heybruce said:
As the US demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq, winning the peace is much more difficult than winning the war. Even if Russia manages to win the war (there are estimates that Russia lost 10% of its invasion force, killed or wounded, in just a few weeks) it won't be able to win the peace at an acceptable cost.
If Putin is smart he will find an excuse to declare victory and clear out of Ukraine. I don't think he's that smart.
It's quite plausible that Putin's goal is limited to the destruction of Ukraine, which he will certainly achieve. He will annex some parts of Ukraine and leave the rest in rubble. Mission accomplished.
In Afghanistan and Iraq I think the US's goals were actually limited to transferring 8$ trillion to the American military industrial complex, which was a stunning success.
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4 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:
For a long-serving U.S. foreign diplomat, he seems to have a particularly blinkered sense of history:
"Instead, Ukraine punted. It demanded that, in exchange for nuclear disarmament, it would need ironclad security guarantees. That was the heart of the agreement signed in Moscow early in 1994 by Russia, Ukraine and the United States.
In late 1994, the pledges got fleshed out. The accord, known as the Budapest Memorandum, signed by Russia, Ukraine, Britain and the United States, promised that none of the nations would use force or threats against Ukraine and all would respect its sovereignty and existing borders. The agreement also vowed that, if aggression took place, the signatories would seek immediate action from the United Nations Security Council to aid Ukraine."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/science/ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html
Russia reneged on its past commitments with its takeover of Crimea, and now is doing the same again with its invasion of Ukraine.
And your point is that therefore Ukraine will now somehow be able to drive 150,000 Russians troops from its territory?
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56 minutes ago, Adumbration said:
Where does the money come from that is used for these subsidies?
And London to a brick you are a former Government employee.
Because it goes without saying there is not interest but self-interest?
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41 minutes ago, Sparktrader said:
And where did they get the $ from? Oh wait free enterprise.
Mostly individual taxpayers since the share of the federal budge paid by corporate taxes has been declining for decades.
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/corp-taxes-and-federal-budget/
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54 minutes ago, Adumbration said:I am guessing you worked for a Govenment department.
I am guessing you don't know how much the US government subsidizes the heroic private enterprises to whom we owe so much.
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17 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:
How on earth do you know?
Putin does not retain power through popularity, he relies on two things; fear and the transactional support that comes from being useful to the few people who do have the power to remove him.
Public demonstrations indicate fear isn’t working while the decimation of Russia’s economy and the humiliation of its military are certainly going to impact support amongst Russia’s controlling elite.
Whatever Putin’s position was prior to this illegal invasion you can bet your bottom Ruble that it’s a lot more uncertain following the unmitigated disaster he’s hitched his survival too.
So, let's make an experiment to test our competing theories of Putin's popularity and its effect on his longevity.
When the Russian people or the military or the oligarchs overthrow Putin, you win. Until then, I win.
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2 hours ago, Sparktrader said:41,600 usd
No tears
The biggest crooks are all the parasites working in govt. They create nothing.
Free enterprise is what creates things
Sure, like the internet, for instance. Oh wait, that was created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration. Or the GPS app in your cell phone. Oh wait, the GPS was created and is maintained by the military at taxpayer expense for which device makers like Garmin, etc. pay nothing. The development of touch-screen technology was funded by the European CERN as was the first browser. And on and on.
Thank god for free enterprise.
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22 minutes ago, ozimoron said:
An isolationist, Reaganite policy think tank. It's irrational to think that the US' best interests are served by not engaging in foreign policy. The alternative was t sit back and allow Russia to re-establish the Soviet Union by force. NATO is nothing more than a deterrent against fascism.
What you and the others looking for a Hollywood ending have failed to notice is that returning Ukraine to Russian control as it has been for eighty of the last one hundred years has absolutely no security implications for the US.
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29 minutes ago, ozimoron said:
I never claimed it would. If memory served me rightly, you claimed no opposition.
Your memory serves you poorly. There is no significant opposition to Putin in Russia.
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Here's the opinion of former US Ambassador to the USSR, Jack Matlock on the current Ukraine crisis:
Was this crisis predictable?
Absolutely. NATO expansion was the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. In 1997, when the question of adding more NATO members arose, I was asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In my introductory remarks, I made the following statement:
“I consider the administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.” Indeed, our nuclear arsenals were capable of ending the possibility of civilization on Earth.
Joe Biden says Putin is a 'war criminal'
in UK & Europe Topics and Events
Posted
Which is why the Indians are buying Russian oil now then?