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What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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| 🦋 |
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15 | 3.71% |
| 🦇 |
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115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
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12 | 2.97% |
| 🐦 |
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67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
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94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
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14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
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87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
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Frosted Flake posted:I don't disagree with what most of what you're saying, WRT sacred French soil, but - Ukraine may have "saved themselves from having a puppet leader like Belarus"* in Jan-Feb 22, but as the war is going the way it's going, I don't see why we would assume they will ultimately have "saved themselves" from that on top of (and partially because of) the immense amount of suffering, death, and economic destruction . Yeah I feel like realistically the time to negotiate was either after the initial retreat from Kiev or the rout in Kherson; but ofc neither the US nor the Political wing of Ukraine wanted that to happen
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Feb 7, 2024 17:35
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given that the smartest political minds have assured me that russia's invasion is self-evidently full-scale, unjustified and unprovoked it feels kinda weird that interviewing putin is such a terrible thing since if all that is true it's not like he could defend his actions
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Feb 7, 2024 17:36
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Frosted Flake posted:It’s hard to remember now but the reason liberals immediately started signalling, or rather after Boris Johnson talked Zelensky into fighting to the death, that the Russians wanted nothing less than the total extermination of the The Ukrainian people was because that’s the only possible argument to be made for paying so high a price just to lose anyway. 
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Feb 7, 2024 17:41
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👷🏾♂️ Post under construction after my 12 o’clock Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 17:57 on Feb 7, 2024 |
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Feb 7, 2024 17:43
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unedited speech-to-text posting should be grounds for a sixer, sorry but that's worse than wargore
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Feb 7, 2024 17:46
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FF dictate into a note and clean it up later come on man
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Feb 7, 2024 17:48
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Orange Devil posted:No puppet, no puppet, you're the puppet! There isn't a single Ukranian leader since the fall of the wall who can be credibly accused of being a Russian puppet, but that didn't stop NATO and their Ukranian nationalist friends from calling Yanukovych just that, it's pretty funny! Maybe they did the same to Kuchma because he dared pursue some normalization of relations with Russia. Idk.
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Feb 7, 2024 17:55
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Boy you guys would be real embarrassed if I was having a Fetterman episode and needed my online pals to call 911. 🥺 Sorry about that!
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Feb 7, 2024 17:58
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Cerebral Bore posted:given that the smartest political minds have assured me that russia's invasion is self-evidently full-scale, unjustified and unprovoked it feels kinda weird that interviewing putin is such a terrible thing since if all that is true it's not like he could defend his actions You are thinking too hard. Putin is bad. Tucker is bad. Goo goo gaga, bad man bad. Only the New York Times, Washington Post, whatever other favorite media outlet that sold the Iraq War you have, are good. They only tell the truth, like "Stuart Little" Zelensky.
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Feb 7, 2024 17:59
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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/7/ukraine-aims-to-bolster-troops-with-new-lawquote:The parliament tentatively backed the revised draft of the bill on Wednesday. The legislation would lower the age of military service and make it harder to avoid the draft as Kyiv struggles to find enough soldiers to maintain its defences against Russia’s invasion. The bill was also supported by the supposedly Russian puppet party Opposition For Life.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:06
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Jesus christ - the law says that those that serve 36 months of continued service during the war are eligible for separation. Aint no way that someone can spend 36 months in the ukranian side without being killed or hopelessly crippled unless they've been working logistics in the rear all the time. Every survivor talks about how their company or battalion would be mauled and suffer like 90% casualties after a few months.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:13
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SplitSoul posted:Sweden has dropped its Nord Stream investigation, they just can't figure it out, quote:
well, that doesn’t narrow down the mystery very much!
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Feb 7, 2024 18:26
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I went to get coffee and fixed this up: This is something that I started thinking about after I read Christopher Duffy's two-volume book on the history of fortification. Duffy pointed out that there's sort of a cult of, you know, the valiant last stand as a revered defense in European popular imagination, where episodes like the Battle of Thermopylae have taken on really outsized significance. And Duffy attributes this, in part, to logistical practicalities in the age of Vauban and Frederick the Great, where a fortress holding out really only needed to do so until the attacker's ability to live off the land became exhausted, in which case they'd just go home, and wars were expected to end by negotiation. So, a fortress that held out for a campaign season likely would remain in the ownership of whoever had it when peace was eventually negotiated. So, in that instance, the fortresses in the Netherlands and along the Rhine and everything else, their valiant defenses, and forlorn hopes, all of that made sense. There's a practical reason for it. Remember that bit about holding out until enemy logistics or the economic cost became prohibitive, and that wars were expected to be negotiated to a close. But the other thing Duffy suggests is that the Enlightenment, partly because of those contemporary military realities being projected backwards, and into the past, was also when Europeans started defining themselves against others, and looking back into the past for examples of, you know, valiant defenses, or whatever. And he says that some of these battles, Thermopylae most obviously, but I think also the siege of Malta and the siege of Vienna, also took on really strong resonance in the popular imagination. And so, part of what he says is, for the people who identify with the defenders besieged by this great enemy, or whatever, and winning this huge victory through their heroic defense, obviously it seems like the defense alone won a certain sort of war against all odds. And you could say the same thing about the Texan defense of the Alamo, and of course, Finland in the Winter War, as they are remembered, as later expressions of the same idea, which is what got me thinking about this. But he said that's a very European Enlightenment perspective because, when it came to Thermopylae, or rather when it came to Malta and Vienna, the Turks were basically an unknown entity to the Europeans, right? They put themselves, obviously, in the shoes of the defenders. Similarly, when it comes to Thermopylae, everybody identified with the Greeks and not the Persians. But what Duffy is saying is, if you look at the actual history of sieges, more contemporary episodes, right, so here he's an expert on Enlightenment-era warfare, armies were restocked by fortresses, usually what happens is the time and cost for the attacker is just not worth bothering with the defenders. So, in the case of Malta, or in the case of the Greeks at Thermopylae, it really wasn't worth it for the Persian empire, with many other things going on, to focus too much on the Greeks. Like at that point, honestly, it wasn't a worth it for them and, in a real sense, they were able to just go like, "OK, forget it, who cares, we'll leave, fine, we're done with these guys." And obviously, the Turkish defeat in Vienna was a very big grand tactical military victory, you know, the Polish cavalry sweeping the Turkish camp and everything else, but like the Ottoman Empire was so huge that it didn't really matter ultimately, right? The Ottoman empire was still politically stable, wealthy, powerful. It was a setback, but it wasn't the end of the world. The Alamo, the Mexicans had to worry about America entering the war. In the Winter War, obviously, the Soviets had much bigger problems and ultimately, there they prevailed anyway. So, I think what Duffy points to is really interesting . The Enlightenment is the period where Europeans become empires, basically, but they're still thinking of the world in terms of Asiatic despotism and heroic European stands against Asian empires, the Turks and the Persians most obviously, but also the Battle of Tours, where the Moors invaded France. Where again, recent research shows like it was just, it was a big raid, like the Muslims were not planning on conquering France. It was not a civilization defining or battle that, like for the Moors, shattered them or whatever. They really didn't mind that much, but it became— I mean, people are still writing books about, you know, the battle that saved civilization, but not even European civilization, saved civilization generally. The Battle of Tours, where, you know, Charles the Hammer defeats the Moors. Well, yeah, it turns out if you actually look at the other side of the hill, so to speak, from the Moorish perspective, it was a big raid, and they got turned back. That happens all the time. If you're an empire, you send a punitive expedition or raid, whatever, against, you know, the small squabbling peripheral minor polities fringing you, for them to get repulsed can be embarrassing, especially if it's like a large reversal, but it's really not the end of the world. It's not that big a deal. So anyway, let's apply that for a minute to the current situation, okay? So if the idea is humiliating Russia is somehow going to change the geopolitical situation again, it relies on this belief that Russia has some sort of empire, which I know we've talked about, liberals have been pushing that big time. Russia is Asiatic and Russia is an empire, per NAFO, if not NATO. But like Duffy says, it was actually a very big problem in the Enlightenment for the British specifically, but the other European powers generally, to think of themselves as empires because also they defined empire as an Asiatic concept, despotism, and defined themselves as enlightened, they loved liberty and everything else. So in Britain, they always saw themselves as plucky underdogs fighting continental empires instead of as an empire themselves. And even when they went into India, they saw themselves as plucky underdogs fighting, you know, the Mughal Empire. So let's assume that in 2024, Westerners still think of themselves as free liberal democracies, blah blah blah, as contrasted with empires, which is basically how they talk about Russia and China. So, in that case, alright, from that perspective, yes, holding out in a valiant last stand that humiliates the empire makes a good story, right? It does. It makes a good story, but there's no mechanism there for Ukraine to win now. The two things that Ukraine holding out, no matter the cost, were supposed to achieve victory through were sanctions, and then some sort of social crisis caused by Russia mobilizing. Those are the two things that strategists in Washington and Brussels had really pinned their hopes on. If Ukraine can just hold out long enough, Russia will inevitably collapse, to the point where they were talking about Balkanization, regime change in the Kremlin. Ultimately, Russia would collapse if Ukraine can hold out long enough for sanctions and Russian mobilization to destroy Russia from the inside. There is no plan for if that didn't happen. Also there was a third way, which was pitched to Zelensky by Boris Johnson according to those accounts that have started to come out - which was that Western superior weapons were, somehow in and of themselves, going to win the war on the battlefield for Ukraine, if only they could hold out long enough for NATO to provide enough of them. All three have failed, there is no reason for Ukraine to be holding out in grand defensive battles, or fighting the war at all, for that matter. If there is no possibility of victory, what is the point? So, I think most likely, this is what happens when you go to school at Georgetown and think of the world in these terms. You push Ukraine to make a valiant last stand because their victory through doing so is assured, and you do this basically because of echoes of Enlightenment era warfare and ideology. Or, you do it cynically because costing Russia time, lives and money even at the cost of Ukraine is to your benefit.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:30
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Mr Hootington posted:The EU is discussing possible sanctions on tucker for interviewing putin lol Seize all of his assets, liquidate them and give the proceeds to Ukraine. Time to get tough on traitors and tankies.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:30
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Yeah, you usually don’t fight for months in a much better position just for a “delaying action” especially when you are clearly taking high attrition. The Ukrainians tried to keep Avdiivka, it wasn’t a lack of desire but simply resources. They couldn’t defend it like Bakhmut because simply there wasn’t the men left for such a defense (size is a factor obviously but the broader front is quite substantial). Yeah a dude has to be very lucky to make it 36 months and honestly it probably isn’t going to make a major difference. —— Also, a non-Nazi government is Kiev is going to be pretty much the same thing as forcing the entire Ukrainian state to collapse. At that point the Russians can draw whatever border they deem necessary. Zelensky by knocking out his opposition is making it clear it is going to “him or the highway”.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:31
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Starsfan posted:Seize all of his assets, liquidate them and give the proceeds to Ukraine. Time to get tough on traitors and tankies. Swanson frozen dinners are a crime that must be punished, even as generational wealth proceeds.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:32
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Frosted Flake posted:So, I think what Duffy points to is really interesting . The Enlightenment is the period where Europeans become empires, basically, but they're still thinking of the world in terms of Asiatic despotism and heroic European stands against Asian empires, the Turks and the Persians most obviously, but also the Battle of Tours, where the Moors invaded France. Where again, recent research shows like it was just, it was a big raid, like the Muslims were not planning on conquering France. It was not a civilization defining or battle that, like for the Moors, shattered them or whatever. They really didn't mind that much, but it became— I mean, people are still writing books about, you know, the battle that saved civilization, but not even European civilization, saved civilization generally. The Battle of Tours, where, you know, Charles the Hammer defeats the Moors. Well, yeah, it turns out if you actually look at the other side of the hill, so to speak, from the Moorish perspective, it was a big raid, and they got turned back. That happens all the time. this is a great synthesis
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Feb 7, 2024 18:36
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Turks are still mad about Vienna
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Feb 7, 2024 18:37
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:we were talking about Avdiivka as being this year's Bakhmut, being a slow grind of attrition that Ukraine loses in the next few months. Looks like they might have already given up the fight Lol, maybe Zelensky realized he pointlessly lost an obscene amount of manpower in Bakhmut for refusing to order a retreat when it became an artillery shooting gallery from 3 sides and doesn't want to make the same mistake here? Assuming this is true that is...Zelensky up until this point has seemed like a fundamentalist radical that believes in fighting to the last man everywhere. Like those months long incursions into Kherson were loving stupid. Gresh has issued a correction as of 18:39 on Feb 7, 2024 |
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Feb 7, 2024 18:37
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FirstnameLastname posted:lol again at the fat troop and kid with a shortsword inside us all are two freiwilligers
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Feb 7, 2024 18:45
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Gresh posted:Lol, maybe Zelensky realized he pointlessly lost an obscene amount of manpower in Bakhmut for refusing to order a retreat when it became an artillery shooting gallery from 3 sides and doesn't want to make the same mistake here? Supposedly, there may still be some Ukrainians on the other side of the river still, it is a bit hard to tell because the entire swamp head got leveled. It very well be they don’t have the reserves to throw in anymore without taking them from other positions and it is clear they are light on ammo and armor as well.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:46
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Jel Shaker posted:Sweden to drop inquiry into Nord Stream pipeline explosions quote:Ljungqvist told Reuters: “We have a picture of what has happened, and what that picture consists of we cannot go into more detail, but it leads to the conclusion that we do not have jurisdiction.”
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Feb 7, 2024 18:46
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Destroying Ukraine does in fact hurt Russia since they used to be a single political body for centuries.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:50
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I bet if russia had done it they would suddenly have jurisdiction
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Feb 7, 2024 18:52
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Lostconfused posted:Destroying Ukraine does in fact hurt Russia since they used to be a single political body for centuries. Yeah it is a unfortunate war but at the same time, it is probably going to lead to the core of the former Soviet Union reforming in some type of capacity.
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Feb 7, 2024 18:57
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Cao Ni Ma posted:I bet if russia had done it they would suddenly have jurisdiction Or they would at least say "Russia did it".
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Feb 7, 2024 18:59
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Lostconfused posted:Destroying Ukraine does in fact hurt Russia since they used to be a single political body for centuries. Which of course is what this war was all about from the beginning  . I don't see any scenario where Russia settles for anything less than everything east of the Dnieper River which would act as a strong natural barrier that can be heavily fortified, we've seen how hard it is to get armor and heavy weapons across rivers in this war. Russia was invaded many times through Ukraine, most famously by Napoleon and Hitler. Plus, Ukraine(especially the eastern half) is close to Russia's heart...they do want to permanently lose a lot of lands they see as historically theirs to an extremely hostile economic/military bloc. I think the Odessa area is a little more up in the air, but as long as Ukraine/NATO controls the southern coast, Russia's black sea assets will be under threat.
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Feb 7, 2024 19:02
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-OahsvxnXE
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Feb 7, 2024 19:06
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Lostconfused posted:Destroying Ukraine does in fact hurt Russia since they used to be a single political body for centuries. mila kunis posted:Regardless of the military outcome, Ukraine has gone from a friendly country on Russia's border to an open sore with hatred that will last generations. Russia is cut off from Germany and western europe. America's already won the US won in 2014. in 2022 they just got to defeat germany for a third time and destroy the independence of the EU
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Feb 7, 2024 19:07
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Gresh posted:Which of course is what this war was all about from the beginning lmbo if this war ends with China's peace plan of Ukraine divided down the Dnieper and Kyiv split in two.
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Feb 7, 2024 19:11
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mila kunis posted:the US won in 2014. in 2022 they just got to defeat germany for a third time and destroy the independence of the EU
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Feb 7, 2024 19:14
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EU has in fact never been independent, but the leash is being tightened.
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Feb 7, 2024 19:16
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Cao Ni Ma posted:Jesus christ - the law says that those that serve 36 months of continued service during the war are eligible for separation. Aint no way that someone can spend 36 months in the ukranian side without being killed or hopelessly crippled unless they've been working logistics in the rear all the time. 36 continuous months sounds exhausting even if you survive - do we even know if they get leave time?
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Feb 7, 2024 19:16
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Frosted Flake posted:
The great oversight in the liberal conceptualization of history as a sack of potatoes all independent from each other is that Al Aqsa flood and Putin's SMO are essentially tied to the hip. The papered over depletion of military stockpiles and coping over GDP of a gas station of nukes is how Biden's administration is setting up the empire for a deadly fall.
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Feb 7, 2024 19:21
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Biden survived losing Ukraine without much added negativity I think people would be fine if he lost Israel too
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Feb 7, 2024 19:22
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text editor posted:36 continuous months sounds exhausting even if you survive - do we even know if they get leave time? I think they occasionally get rotated out of combat if the unit they are in gets mauled badly enough. I dont know what sort of rotations they are going, but the entire point of the mass conscription Zal wants to do is to rotate people in the front
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Feb 7, 2024 19:23
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euphronius posted:Biden survived losing Ukraine without much added negativity no regular people give a poo poo about maintaining american imperialism in israel or ukraine or anywhere else, they care about their daily life and lovely material circumstances if biden sent everyone five thousand bucks in october he'd win in november by a landslide regardless of whether israel kills every last palestinian in the entire world as it is nobody's getting the pay off that white people were getting in the post-war period so they're back to caring about human rights and poo poo
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Feb 7, 2024 19:29
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yeah I agree
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Feb 7, 2024 19:32
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Jel Shaker posted:it was definitely rape but his whole conspiracy theory that they would use it to extradite him to the death penalty in some supermax in alabama was absolutely spot on Don't be silly. The supermax site is in Colorado, not Alabama.
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Feb 7, 2024 19:47
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euphronius you wile rascal
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Feb 7, 2024 20:13
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