Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Mike]

Give those fuckers no quarter. Anywhere.

[THE_WIZARD_]

The Ukraine & Russia crisis In simple terms for those that have no idea what is going on.

-Ukraine used to be in an abusive relationship with Russia, feeding him, letting him use her car & giving him whatever he asked for until she built up the confidence to call it quits back in 1991

-Since then Ukraine has been working on herself, becoming a strong independent woman with help from friends like France, America, Poland etc. offering her support, loaning her money, & helping her find her way.

-Ukraine has been enjoying being single for 30 years & looking forward to continuing to grow & create new friendships.

-Now Russia being the toxic Ex that it is wants her back, and doesn’t want her meeting new people or creating any new relationships.

-A couple of weeks ago Russia started sitting in the front of Ukraine’s house & when her friends ask him what was he doing there, he said “Oh nothing, just getting a little bit of exercise in, that’s all.”

-After her friends told her that Russia was potentially getting ready to do something bad to her, he said “They’re lying, they just want you to be scared of me & that’s not what it is”

-Yesterday Russia broke into Ukraine’s house, beating her up & “taking advantage” of her while on Livestream & double dog daring any of her friends to do something about it & if they do want the smoke, Russia got that thang on him.

[Obi-Jon]

The US offered to evacuate Zelenskyy from Kyiv. His response? "The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride." I wish Biden had that kind of backbone.

Putin responded to sanctions on Russian TV. Called them "A myth and a figure of speech". Economic pain to the Russian people, which won't be felt for a while, doesn't even enter the equation in Putin's mind. Fine. Why the fuck aren't we airdropping Stingers and Javelins? Give the Ukranians a chance to bloody Russia's face.

Anonymous and other 'black hat' hacker groups have declared cyber war on Russia. We, on the other hand, sit back and do nothing.

Place the bounty to change the Russian regime. The more Putin has to look over his shoulder, the less he can absolute focus on Ukraine.

Our new long range anti ship missile AGM-158C has never been combat tested. Give the Ukranians half a dozen for performance evaluation.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Ukraine's foreign minister says the last holdout against removing Russia from SWIFT (Cyprus) has changed their mind

[Dr. Strangelove]

Ukrainian guy comes across a stranded Russian patrol who ran out of gas. Asks if they want a tow back to Russia. They all laugh

[iam416]

It seems like Putin is going to have a much harder time just taking all of Ukraine. Very good news, though it's still a bad situation.

In completely unrelated news, Asian-Americans have won a Federal anti-discrimination lawsuit against Fairfax County Schools. Those schools moved to almost explicitly reduce the number of Asians admitted to Thomas Jefferson (a nationally reknown HS) by eliminating the admissions test and creating hoochum such as "experience factors". The results were entirely predictable. In this year's class, e.g., TJHS increased the total class size by 64 while reducing the number of Asians in the the class by 56. It's brazen discrimination based on race. It's only a district court win for now, but the Supreme Court has similar bullshit in front of it.

[Dr. Strangelove]

1) If Russia starts using these things, that's very bad news.

2) This particular reporter has been reporting Russian troop movements near the border inside Russia since the start of the invasion. I'm sort of amazed he hasn't been arrested or deported yet.

[Tom W]

Why the fuck aren't we airdropping Stingers and Javelins? Give the Ukranians a chance to bloody Russia's face.

Our new long range anti ship missile AGM-158C has never been combat tested. Give the Ukranians half a dozen for performance evaluation.

I sure hope that stuff like that is happening behind the scenes- remember that just because CNN doesn’t report something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Bur with this dolt in charge, it’s probably not. Sometimes, even a certain someone else’s cockholster would do the right thing.

[Jeff Buchanan]

It seems the Ukrainian government has survived the night if social media posts and reports from journalists on the ground are accurate. Putin's "necessary and special military operation" is reaching a siege point, Kiev being the target of the siege. I've searched for but been unable to find any decent analysis of where things stand militarily between the two sides.

What is obvious is that the Russian operation is huge and involves army division size ground operations with the entire logistic air and sea components in support. WHat is unique about it in recent military history is that nothing of this scope has been attempted by a nation state since Desert Storm that targeted Iraq and Saddam Hussein which, once the actual Russian operation gets post outcome analyzed was probably smaller.

Schwarzkopf, however, got day one results far exceeding what whoever is in charge of the Russian operation achieved. US forces plowed through Kuwait and quickly overwhelmed Iraqi defenses which turned out to be a sieve of deserting soldiers that fled battle positions leaving tanks and artillery pieces as they fled. Civilians were not at all involved in the defense of Iraq. That appears to not be the case with the Ukrainians. A stated objective of the Ukrainian General leading the Army before the invasion started and when he was asked how he thought his outmanned men would do against a large scale Russian invasion he said the goal would to inflict maximum costs to the Russians. You can see this objective being achieved.

This morning, the slow progress of the Russian offensive was characterized in official Russian accounts as a pause to see if Zelenski would negotiate a peace deal. Since he didn't accept the overtures from us, the report went on, we are restarting our military operations.

Videos in Kiev and surrounding cities where Russians claim control, there are more scenes of uniformed Ukrainians patrolling past blown up Russian tanks and APCs than there are flag waving Russian tank commanders driving their tanks to the steps of Kiev's government complex. I'm still being careful regarding the reality of the news sources I'm viewing that are biased against the Russian invasion. Still, the news from around the world suggests the Ukrainian Army's command structure remains in tact, the government is functioning and there is more destroyed Russian military equipment being pictured compared to pictures of blown up Ukrainian civilian houses and apartment complexes, these of little military significance. Lights were still on in Kiev and elsewhere suggesting that Ukrainian infrastructure has survived the first 72h of the Russian invasion. Time will tell if the siege isn't ratcheted up by the Russians and they will ultimately achieve their objectives without destroying Kiev.

But now comes the hard part. Inside Russia there is already mounting protests against Putin's war. Outside Russia, the worldwide condemnation of it is fierce and this morning most EU nations are abandoning their opposition to the killer sanction that would be removal of Russian business access to SWIFT. If the initial Ukrainian resistance persists and as sanctions take hold in Russia Putin may view the ebb of his global standing moving in a direction unfavorable to Russia and himself. In that case, he'll lose the leverage he sought in toppling Zelenski and a more favorable outcome for the free country of Ukraine will be obtained in a future negotiation.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Seeing a lot more footage this morning of captured Russians being shared around on Twitter. Many seem very young to me. Like barely out of high school.

Without being able to read their minds it seems like either Putin and the Russian military thought very green, inexperienced troops could easily pull this off OR they are fodder meant to prod and test the Ukrainians and the hardened troops are being saved for later.

[Obi-Jon]

Russia talking smack and dissing western response. Fine. Western nations should immediately nationalize all Russian assets. Use the funding to pay for refugee costs and arms for the Ukrainians.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-uk...ee59d768b615bd


Start treating Russia like NoKo. We've used space based defense systems to take out 2 ballistic missile tests by NoKo (oops, no we didn't, we don't have that capability, wink wink nudge nudge). Position those systems over Ukraine in case Russia decides to up the stakes.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I deleted my last post about Turkey and the Bosphorus. Zelensky has indeed posted something about Turkey blocking Russian warships from entering the Black Sea but it's worded vaguely enough that Erdogan may not have actually agreed to do it and Turkey has announced nothing as far as I can tell.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Also seeing net traffic reports that Russia is indeed trying to cut off access to pretty much all social media right now (inside Russia I mean). Need to use a VPN or it's next to impossible.

[Obi-Jon]

This woman has some serious brass. Offers a Russian soldier sunflower seeds to put in his pocket so flowers will grow when he's planted in Ukrainian soil.

https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/ukraine/2022/02/24/ukrainian-woman-says-russian-troops-should-carry-seeds-so-flowers-grow-where-they-die/