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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
The Polish authorities need to sort all that out pronto. It's just more destabilization and distraction we don't need right now.
I'm surprised it's gone on as long as it has. I understand that there are legitimate grievances that EU farmers have with Ukrainian imports but there should be money to smooth that over. It's so strange that the problem is in essence that there's too much food.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
Perhaps it's finally solved...
"Polish authorities intend to take under special control the sections of the roads leading to the checkpoints on the border with Ukraine, and to completely unblock the movement of military and humanitarian aid", - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk
twitter.com/UkrReview/status/1760711176168640544
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
That interview with General Clark was really good. One of the best if not the best interview all categories this far IMHO.
According to him, that Russian Dictator nuclear space device could be a warhead big enough to produce an EMP that knocks out the entire US electrical grid.
He doesn't take it 'further' than that, but yet another warhead could of course knock out the entire EU/UK electrical grid. But a third warhead apparently can't take out a US Carrier Battle Group – so at least there's that...
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
US promises new sanctions on Iran for its support of Russia's war in Ukraine, potential missile sale
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that the U.S. will be "imposing additional sanctions on Iran in the coming days" for its efforts to supply Russia with drones and other technology for the war against Ukraine.
www.politico.com
Ukraine needs more ammunition and EU countries should do whatever it takes to provide it, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell has told ministers.
Countries must send more ammo to Ukraine: EU’s top diplomat
‘Doing nothing is not an option,’ Josep Borrell stressed.
www.politico.eu
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
It depends on the size of the nuke and the height of the orbit – doesn't it?...
And again: Those were General Clark's words – not mine.
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General Clark has been out of the loop for quite awhile now. The US state department was pretty clearly describing an anti-satellite weapon. Could destroying satellites take out the grid? I'm not sure, but hopefully not.
At time it seems to me like :- "We are the mouse still hoping that the kitten is just playing".
Ukraine understands that the kitten wants to become a cat.
I am specifically talking about 3 things here:-
1) It is easy for "command economies" to pivot to a "war economy" and rapidly ramp up production of military equipment. Russia has done that and is also importing from Iran and North Korea. In response the Europeans have struggled to meaningfully scale artillery production and the US is struggling to even get a bill to provide aid to Ukraine passed. Democracies haven't exactly demonstrated an ability to provide a strong, timely unified response.
2) Farmers in many countries are blockading grain for Ukraine for reason of perceived short term self interest which probably are not valid. After all this time we haven't been able to devise a means of Ukrainian grain transiting these countries in a transparent and verifiable manner.
3) A lot of "useful idiots" are working for Russia even when they don't know that they are,. I don't know what is worse here, knowing that you are working with and for Russia, or being too stupid to even know that.
The next 2 years are the hard part of the war Ukraine needs and deserves more support.
Is Ukraine playing this “war of attrition” like a maestro? I’m very optimistic from the way they keep clobbering Russians.
Most military hardware is hardened against EMP damage, so the military can mostly keep going if someone does set off a high altitude nuke. Anyone who did set off a high altitude nuclear device over the US would cause a lot of damage to the US, but the response would be similar to someone sticking their hand inside a yellow jacket nest. To cover the grid across the entire US, it would have to be big enough to do a lot of damage to the grids in Canada and Mexico too.
Mexico hasn't been to war in a very long time and their army is not very well equipped, but they do have a large, young population that can contribute a large number of infantry to a war effort. Since NAFTA their manufacturing sector has grown significantly and those factories could be converted to making war goods.
The US has always had internal divisions. They are very visible now, but they have always been there. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor unified the US more than it has ever been. There was a pro-Nazi contingent in the US in the early years of WW II that was probably close to the same percentage of the population as the MAGA crowd is today. A number of MAGAs today probably had Nazi sympathizer ancestors.
All the Nazi sympathies went away after Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the US. Germany declared war on the US so it could conduct a u-boat campaign close to the US coast, which it did. U-boats were using the lights of Miami to see the silhouettes of targets. A fair number of oil tankers from Texas and Louisiana were sunk along the US coast between Dec 7 and early February 1942.
If someone set off a high altitude nuclear device over the US, the response from the public would likely be as solid as it was to Pearl Harbor.
As to point 1, getting military production ramped up in the western democracies has been difficult. The US ramped up starting in early 1942 by becoming a command economy for the duration of the war. That isn't really possible during peacetime.
Though the Democrats are providing a unified response. I believe every recent bill with Ukraine aid received 100% Democratic support in both Houses except the bill that included border security protections in the Senate. A handful of Democrats voted against that, but I think that was a strategic move. It's a procedural thing, but when a bill looks like it's going to fail, the party trying to get it passed will have one or a handful of people who will vote against it. Then later if it looks like it will pass, the bill can be brought back to the floor for a vote by one of the members who voted against it filing a motion of reconsideration.
The Republicans successfully did this with the bill to impeach the Homeland Security secretary. The Democrats got two members who were out due to illness to come in at the last minute and it looked like it was going to be defeated, so a couple of Republicans switched their vote to no so they could file for reconsideration later. Then a week later when one Democrat was out with COVID and a Republican who had been out for cancer treatment returned, they put it up for reconsideration and got it through, by one vote.
Democrats are also out there telling anyone who will listen what the game is. The one issue the Republicans had some traction for the election on was the border, but they blew it by killing the quite substantive bill that would have gone a long ways towards fixing the problems. The Democrats are reminding people about what they did as well as how they have left our allies out to dry because they are just playing politics.
The problem boils down to one man Mike Johnson who has thus far proven immune to pressure from any quarter than Donald Trump. He is putting his party in an untenable position in an election year. He called a two week recess to escape the pressure being put on him from many angles to pass the Ukraine bill. When Congress comes back, they will have two weeks to pass something to keep the government funded. I expect the government is likely going to shut down and will stay shut down for a while until something changes, like a new Speaker.
There is a way around the Speaker involving a petition. All Democrats have signed it, but they need at least 4 Republicans to sign on. Off the record some Republicans have said they would sign on in a heartbeat if their families were safe. The handful of loud extremists in the House are using terror tactics to keep the rest in line. They are willing to go as far as to publish personal details like home addresses and school addresses on the internet of any Republican and their families who breaks ranks with them. There are violent crazy people who follow these people's commands.
My partner is a lawyer and runs a domestic violence counseling agency. She also does a lot of reports to the court on accused domestic violence perpetrators. Just yesterday one of her counselors was telling her about what happened to a woman he's been counseling a a DV perpetrator. The couple was mutually combative and she got arrested for DV when she threatened to throw a hair dryer in the bathtub when the guy was in there. She's been doing well with treatment and they broke up.
Her ex is a very jealous type and a MAGA follower. When she went to a neighbor's party and was seen talking to a guy, her ex got a number of his MAGA buddies together who dressed up in tactical gear and did a home invasion on her. They handcuffed her, terrorized her for a while, and when they found her gun, they called the police. Because she was a convicted felon, she's not allowed to have a gun, so she got arrested for a parole violation. A friend of my partner who is one of the best defense attorneys in the county got her out and is going after her ex and his friends. This all happened about 2 miles from where we live 2 days ago.
There are some very violent people in the MAGA movement who are looking for an excuse to cause trouble. When Nancy Pelosi (Democrat) was speaker, one of these people broke into her house in San Francisco in the middle of the night and beat her husband with a hammer. The elected Republicans who would like to break away from this crowd are terrified of them. They are harder on their own who break away than they are Democrats who stand against them.
What we have is a political party that is using mafia tactics to keep its members in line. The violent people are a small minority of the party, but there are enough of them that they have the rest terrified.
The Democrats are doing all they can to get the Ukraine support through as well as everything else, but there are limits to what they can do as the minority party in the House.
If the US government shuts down in a few weeks what happens to all the current contracts for expanded weapons production in the US. Will they expect signed contracts to be honored? or will they stop increasing production for missiles and shells?
Government shutdowns are a strange thing. The parks shutdown immediately. Other functions still run but the people don't get paid until the budget is resolved. Production of things like missiles aren't done by the government directly. They're done by defense contractors. I don't know the exact mechanisms for this but they prepare for these things ahead of time. So it would take a very long government shutdown to disrupt the defense industry.
Democrats control 2/3 of the Federal government. Most Republicans in the Senate support Ukraine funding and Republicans hold a tiny majority in the House.
Biden and the Democrats could have compromised much more on the border security - but they didn't giving Republicans a handy excuse.
Biden could have also provided longer range HIMARS and ATACMS from the very start which could have dramatically altered the course of the war from the very start.
There is failure of leadership and failure all around.
Defense contracts already have the money allocated, so they wouldn't be affected. I believe there was a large appropriation for defense in December, so the DoD part of the government probably won't be affected.
Most government shutdowns are partial shutdowns.
There was no compromise possible that the Republicans would have signed onto. The Republicans were happy with the negotiated bill. It was very similar to what Trump asked for in 2018 but they couldn't get through Congress. What happened was Trump told Mike Johnson that he wanted to run on the border being a mess and that the Republicans could not fix the border before next year. Because of that, everyone fell into line and the bill stalled.
Senator Langford from Oklahoma who negotiated the bill with the Democrats is extremely conservative and very concerned about the border. Now because he negotiated with the Democrats he's a pariah in the party and getting death threats.
The hypocrisy is something Biden and other Democrats have been pointing out. It's so wacko it's hard to believe.
I posted an excerpt from the Monty Python Bookshop Sketch a week or so back that sums it up. In the sketch the customer wants a bird watching book, but doesn't want some of the birds in it. The frustrated book shop owner tears out those pages. When he's done the costumer won't buy it because its torn.
Politics is literally that crazy in the US right now. To people who are not paying very close attention it's unbelievable. I do pay extremely close attention and I feel like I'm writing poorly written fiction, but this is actually happening.
I do agree the Biden administration has been overly cautious about sending the weapons Ukraine needs to the war.
I came across this a while back, bookmarked it because I didn't have the time to watch it then, but I'm not sure if I saw it here or came across it somewhere else. In any case, it's a pretty good run down of all the factors that would lead to Russia breaking up and which ones are in play now and which ones aren't.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
New US sanctions against the Russian Dictator and his minions.
...] Today, I am announcing more than 500 new sanctions against Russia for its ongoing war of conquest on Ukraine and for the death of Aleksey Navalny, who was a courageous anti-corruption activist and Putin’s fiercest opposition leader. These sanctions will target individuals connected to Navalny’s imprisonment as well as Russia’s financial sector, defense industrial base, procurement networks and sanctions evaders across multiple continents. They will ensure Putin pays an even steeper price for his aggression abroad and repression at home.
We are also imposing new export restrictions on nearly 100 entities for providing backdoor support for Russia’s war machine. We are taking action to further reduce Russia’s energy revenues. And I’ve directed my team to strengthen support for civil society, independent media, and those who fight for democracy around the world. [...
www.whitehouse.gov
...] Today, I am announcing more than 500 new sanctions against Russia for its ongoing war of conquest on Ukraine and for the death of Aleksey Navalny, who was a courageous anti-corruption activist and Putin’s fiercest opposition leader. These sanctions will target individuals connected to Navalny’s imprisonment as well as Russia’s financial sector, defense industrial base, procurement networks and sanctions evaders across multiple continents. They will ensure Putin pays an even steeper price for his aggression abroad and repression at home.
We are also imposing new export restrictions on nearly 100 entities for providing backdoor support for Russia’s war machine. We are taking action to further reduce Russia’s energy revenues. And I’ve directed my team to strengthen support for civil society, independent media, and those who fight for democracy around the world. [...
Statement from President Joe Biden Ahead of the Two-Year Anniversary of Russia’s Brutal Assault Against Ukraine | The White House
Two years ago tomorrow, shortly before dawn, Russian missiles began exploding near the capital city of Kyiv. Russian troops marched across the border into Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s vicious onslaught against Ukraine had begun. He believed that he could easily bend the will and break the resolve...
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Yep, a sad state of affairs all around. If only there were a few less thick headed political hacks. It's crazy some are so wrapped up in their biases they can't see the forest from the trees.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
First M1A1 Abrams combat footage from UKR?
twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1761016411726463342?s=20
twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1761016411726463342?s=20
