beautifulthailand99

Another Atlantic Council member - they must have had a meeting of "what should we do with these turbulent priests" .This short enough ? https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/19/independent-think-tank-honors-african-dictator-as-global-citizen-ali-bongo-gabon/

In that poorly written short article by Oleg Dunda who is a member of Ukraine’s parliament he even mispells him name which is shoddy,shoddy,shoddy.When I see howlers like that then I am not minded to dig any deeper. Any academic that doesn't toe the party line will find themsleves subject to withering attacks from the estblishment. Just watch my Andrew Marr/Chomsky video posted upthread. Once they have been effectively cancelled by the MSN then some find themslves on more fringey dubious channels as Professors with large egos (most of them do have from personal experience) who are just happy to get their opinions out there. From what I see, he is simply someone speaking on conscience, courage and incorruptible integrity, a rare quality among scholars of his calibre these days, who are mostly slaves to their government, university or think tank masters funding their careers. He has FO money and a stellar previous reputation so he can afford that luxury. Thankfully we still have Professor Mearsheimer as well I'm sure Oled will have a pop at him soon enough. Many moons ago I sourced a Hill video which was leapt on by Sir Brian as a conspiracy site as a gotcha moment (the you tube channel) and then I said it was the part of the Hill and he went quiet. He maybe right or they are desperate for money and take paid inserts from think tanks and their compliant stooges. Serious publications embarking on takedowns of established figures would add we approached Professor Sachs on xxx about the facts presented in this article but he declined to comment. Or some such, as I said shoddy,shoddy,shoddy. https://www.youtube.com/@thehill/videos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleh_Dunda In 1999, he graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk Technical School of Welding and Electronics (programmer-systems engineer). His diploma thesis (practical) was the development of software for the reliability calculation of electronic devices.[2] In 2001, he graduated from the State Institute for Advanced Training and Retraining of Management and Specialists of the Metallurgical Complex (Dnipro) with a degree in Finance. His diploma thesis was the development of financial instruments for managing non-performing loans of a commercial bank.[2]

I don't make bets against the house when the dealer has a stacked deck.

Thanks I was trolled then by the militant Zionist leekern who I follow on X when I opened my morning new sources. He was gloating, funny guy.

https://archive.ph/kntyM “By taking control of Novooleksandrivka, Russia moves closer to threatening the T0504 road, one of the main supply routes for Ukrainian forces further east.” The recent Russian gains leaves them less than five miles from the T0504, which links the Ukrainian-held cities of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka. The road is a critical supply route for Ukrainian forces in the east of the country. If the Russians successfully cut off the highway, dubbed the “road of life”, it would leave the likes of Kostyantynivka and Chasiv Yar, further to the east, in isolation.

Noam Chomsky has died RIP - a true giant amongst our race.

I suspect Brian yours will stand up though I know nothing about you personally !!

The Orc Ruzzian rachsist dictator Putin has been dying on the verge of a coup for 2 and a half years now and uses doubles everywhere so who knows ? The Russian economy has collapsed and the people are rising up. Anybody reading the MSM 2 years ago would confidently be predicting that and from approved sources,probably many here no dount. But here we are now upping the ante each month whilst most the world no longer cares an or has any headroom for a war far away in a country they know little of. Too much Tolkien and not enough history ,Mordor has not fallen. Bahkmut as well as a meat grinder was a diversion so that Suroivikin could build his impregnable lines - the US did warn Zelenskiy that the village wasn't worth the sacrifice in blood and treasure but Zelenskiy and hisunshakeable lawyer Yerman sidekick thought he knew better than seasoned army chief Zalunhyi who he later sacked. It's status pivoted after the dall that it wasn't strategic anyway. And here we are now in another endless war and the west now waving nukes not Putin with Hamish de Bretton Gorodn in the Telegraph threatening that the west could flatten Russia with them.

https://archive.ph/sl8l6

The Wilson Center chartered by Congress has an interesting paper. (ahem Israel , Ulster, Gibraltar, The Falkland Islands etc etc l!) The reason Putin got away with the annexation is most western governments de facto accepted it based on historical truths. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-give-away-crimea-sixty-years-ago Crimea was part of Russia from 1783, when the Tsarist Empire annexed it a decade after defeating Ottoman forces in the Battle of Kozludzha, until 1954, when the Soviet government transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics (RSFSR) to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkrSSR). The transfer was announced in the Soviet press in late February 1954, eight days after the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet adopted a resolution authorizing the move on 19 February Hence, in 1954, Crimea was more “Russian” than it had been for centuries. Although Crimea is briefly contiguous with southern Ukraine via the Isthmus of Perekop, the large eastern Kerch region of Crimea is very close to Russia. The peninsula did have important economic and infrastructural ties with Ukraine, but cultural ties were much stronger overall with Russia than with Ukraine, and Crimea was the site of major military bases from Tsarist times on, having become a symbol of Imperial Russian military power against the Ottoman Turk The BBC used to be much more neutral in its reportage. John Simpson took a lot of flak for this.

You wouldn't be the first - the answer is a firm no. I'm just a retired nobody with a lot of time on my hands who should be sorting out the loft. if I was then Russia has lost if they were paying me to post on a backwatwer to a handful of ageing expats in Thailand then they have truly lost the plot.

This is brilliant the single most important interview for people to see to understand how the individuals involved in a conspiracy don't even realise they're involved because it is systemic - even though their intentions are good - and Marr is not a bad person. He's just the person who's sitting in that seat because he believes what he does - and he has his arris handed to him on a plate. "If you’re interested in facts, I’ll tell you what they are and even give you sources” "Blundering efforts to do good"

I curate a newsfeed attempting to balance the thread with news that others don't want to focus on less it dilute the narative of the binary good vs evil framing of this war. Higher standards are expected from western partners and rightly so and my European taxpayers money is helping in it's small way to settle their bills ,that "and". For my sins I seem to accumulate any number of sad,laughing or confused emojis from anonymous keyboard warriors. I have learnt to grin and bear it - it's my lonely cross to bear, I forgive you all and I'm sure you are doing sterling work over on the Israel threads defending the international rules based order.

NYT Journalists and groups monitoring press freedoms are raising alarms over what they say are increasing restrictions and pressures on the media in Ukraine under the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky that go well beyond the country’s wartime needs. “It’s really disturbing,” said Oksana Romanyuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information, a nonprofit that monitors media freedoms. That is particularly true, she said, in a war where Ukraine is “fighting for democracy against the values of dictatorship embodied by Russia.” https://archive.ph/QjwFj

https://archive.ph/GiAxP

https://www.forces.net/ukraine/russia-threatens-ukraines-main-supply-route-after-conquering-novooleksandrivka-village

So it is !

How to say No to NATO without saying NO. No pressure then. It is 2035 and from the ruins of a radioactive smoking Kyiv - Zelenskiy's emerges from the rubble (ruble ?) saying YES we finally got it ! "First, they got to win this war. We are doing everything we can to make sure they can do that," he said. If this is everything they can do then Ukraine would've been better off making a deal with Rumpelstiltskin https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-got-to-win-war-first-before-joining-nato/

Oh yes the Institute for the Study of War - those people funded by defence contractors, those people. I think I need to take a bath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Study_of_War ISW released four reports on the conflict that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi between September 19, 2011, and December 6, 2011. The series was entitled "The Libyan Revolution" with each of the four parts focused on different stages in the struggle in order to chronicle the revolution from start to finish. ISW president Kagan supported "the Surge" strategy in Iraq and argued for a restructured American military strategy more generally. The Surge: The Untold Story, co-produced by ISW provides an historical account of U.S. military operations in Iraq during the Surge of forces in 2007 and 2008. In 2013, a senior analyst at the ISW, Elizabeth O'Bagy, was fired after it was revealed she did not have a doctorate from Georgetown University, and following criticism of the omission in an op-ed of her affiliation with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based group that supports and lobbies for the moderate Syrian opposition. This generated controversy after O'Bagy's research for the Institute was cited in a U.S. Senate hearing on possible U.S. military intervention in Syria

Personal ancecdotes from folks with relatives / friends/ visits to the 2 countries whilst potentially intrerseting are not really relevant to the debate. I follow a number of different forums on Ukraine one on Mumsnet has 2 Ukrainains that have fallen out completely with close family members in the occupied oblasts that fully support Russia. It really is a slavic civil war in those areas with familes divided by beleifs and one we should have stayed well out of.

Can you support that with a link ?

General Petraus comes to mind. The hopium of 2007. But that was a simple surge not a decisive one.

Bang go the world's religions but then that was the point !

Oh dear good luck with that. China will be quaking at the thought. If the US has spent the last few decades on mercantile expansionsism rather than hugely expensive pointless wars and leaving destroyed countries in their wake , just like Russia , whilst simultaneously fuelling the growth of China's industrial renaissance we wouldn't be at this juncture. Maybe everybody could start by getting rid of their Chinese kit. It would certainly shut me up - there is that ! China,like NATO is gaining invaluable information from the Ukraine's war laboratory gaining vassalage status from a compliant Russia and a potential ally if the West starts the world war they are gagging for as the last gasps of a dying Amercian Empire. There is a "paper tiger" but it's not them.

Literally lost for words.They walk amongst us. https://archive.ph/EBz4i