niall78

I don't see anything in this at all.
Even in WW2 plenty of people sat on the sidelines. Despite popular belief many people made serious money - both legal and illegal- during that war as others died.
Plenty of people who were drafted or volunteered made sure they weren't anywhere near the fighting end. Over 50k US active servicemen AWOL in the European theatre during the war.
Self-preservation is hardwired into humans. I don't judge because I've never been there.

My Grandad was white feathered during WW2.
He was castigated by quite a few folk in Doncaster a northern industrial town in Yorkshire.
But what those doing it didn't know was he was an electrician and he was refused when trying to join up and had to serve maintaining the electrics in the vital factories in the area. My grandmother never forgave those that attacked him and spat at him, they had their son's dying and saw him as a draft Dodger.
That young lad you mentioned could better serve his country being back home. He can serve behind the front lines...
In fact Ukraine should be looking at what was done by the UK to encourage folk to fight during WW2, it was as vital as any fighting done as if you don't have the recruits you can't fight...
 
 

Before we comdemn him from afar, let's remember he is 18, would he have somewhere to live? Where is his family home, is it still standing, is it in occupied territory? Would he be given a job in the army immediately?  Would it help support the rest of his family (in Germany)?  Can he help Ukraine in other ways?  Maybe he should have help abroad to renew his passport maybe not, but surely we can commend bravery of some without handing out white feathers to the rest.

Agreed Canada and most other NATO members could and should do more. But these guys below should show that Canada indeed was and is part of NATO.
 
Fallen Canadian Armed Forces Members - Canada in Afghanistan - Canadian Armed Forces - History - Remembrance - Veterans Affairs Canada

About the influence of Russia & China into German politics: both the number 1 & 2 for the upcoming vote for the EU parliament of our local fascist party AfD are under the suspicion of taking Russian money. Additionally, the head of the office of #1 has been detained for being a Chinese spy.
And people still vote for them: they get about 15-30% (depending on state). If we had only two parties, I guess the political landscape wouldn't be much different than in the US.

your attempt to play the both-siderism game is pathetic and shows an incredible amount of ignorance, both in historic and in current events.  What Gingerich did was completely unprecedented.  What McConnell did was completely unprecedented.  And Trump is off the charts for breaking both norms and laws.  ANd where on the left are the insane ones that are wielding power?   Where's the dem Matt Gaetz?  MTGreene?  American democracy is on the brink and it is due to one side and one side only.  Guess what --  Biden won't attempt to throw the country into a civil war to unlawfully try to cling to power.  Trump's been doing that for last 4 years, including a full on mob-coup attempt that left people dead.  So just WTF are you even talking about?  Clearly you've been watching Hannity or some other bull**** monger and now you are parroting their bulls--t.
So stop watching Fox & newsmax.  It makes you look like a damn fool.
Oh, and please respond by telling me how it's the dems fault the GOP held up UKR aid for 3 months.  Dems aint the ones on Putin's payroll.  
 

On the topic of democracy (democracy indexes, democratic backsliding and the like) I can actually contribute with more than my typical "expert amateur's" opinion since poli sci is my academic background.
The Economist Democracy Index appears to be from 2021 (based on Norway's and Sweden's scores of 9.75 and 9.26 respectively). That year Switzerland dipped down below 9.00, which changed its colour in the map @The_Capt posted. It might be a colour vision thing @kimbosbread? Personally I know that my red-green colour vision is in the dumps, and I cannot make out any distinction what so ever between the colours assigned to 8, 7 and 6 in that map. That still places it as a full democracy though.
It should be noted for the Economist Democracy Index's use of the term "Flawed democracy" doesn't mean that it's not a democracy, undemocratic or the like:
In the case of the USA, this likely refers to issues such as voter turnout, gerrymandering, first-past-the-post and the virtual two party system, civil rights, etc. Emphasis on "likely" though, because the Economist Democracy Index is based on anonymous scoring from undisclosed experts, so no one can say with certainty what particular aspects influenced a state's scoring.
 
V-dem is in my experience the preferred democracy index, notwithstanding any personal bias (it's from my alma mater). What makes the most difference (going by the examples cited here) though is how you measure democracy: Visual Capitalist choses to measure shares of the global poluation as opposed to number of states. This leads to statistical oddities/misrepresentations of the scale of democratic backsliding, since states are entities: if say State A and State B have become democracies whereas State Z has become an autocracy, that's a net increase in democracy, regardless of the fact that State A & B only have a combined population of say 20 million whereas State Z has a population of 1 billion. That's how Visual Capitalist arrives at the dire conclusion of "2010 Democracy: 50.4% vs 2021 Democracy: 29.3%".
India alone being reclassed from "electoral democracy" to "electoral autocracy" is behind a not insignificant portion of that change: the number of people living in electoral autocracies increased by 1.76 billion between 2010 and 2021 (India's population today reaching 1.41 billion). The remaining net global population which has shifted from "liberal/electoral democracy" to "electoral/closed autocracy" is "only" 0.7 billion. I.e., one single country falling back into autocracy is behind a smidge over 2/3 of that shift.
 
If we were to look at states instead (the typical poli sci method and arguably the more accurate measurement), we get this more positive picture:

Between the end of the Cold War and 2022, liberal democracies have remained virtually the same, more than half the world's closed autocracies have gone the way of the dodo, and electoral democracies and electoral autocracies are tied at 32.58%: back in 1990, electoral autocracies were almost 30% ahead of electoral democracies, and a staggering 36.84% of the world's states were closed autocracies. Closed autocracies were by far the most common form of government in the world when the Cold War ended: today its the opposite, it's the least common.
 
That was an argument against Visual Capitalist's measurement of democracy. Democratic backsliding is accepted among most experts, but there's not much certainty as to whether or not this will turn out to be a lasting development or if it's simply a symptom of many politically and socially underdeveloped/unprepared states which were democratised when the Cold War wrapped up simply having reverted to forms of government which are more in line for what could be expected of them.
 
 
Edit: I was going to write a brief reply. Instead I wrote more here than I've gotten done on my thesis during the last two months combined. FFS...

Here's the thing though - generally - at its best - the West as part of its advantages over more totalitarian  places -  has come to represent toleration  of a whole lot of things which are not necessarily the end of Human Civilization as many  who oppose such toleration seem to think . The West is not going to fall because of trans gender rights or any other sub group of people wanting to express themselves how they feel . Its going to be because of war ,   resource scarcity and global changes to our economic systems due to our continued mis use of the planet .

So why do it and then expect no response!!!
🤔 
Defence doesn't include mass murder of innocents.
I'll just leave it there...

Havent seen the news here yet but russia officially ended Armata development, citing its high cost as  mine clearing vehicle

Don't judge the Western Navies based on Russian Navy incompetence.
Let's look at Russian ship Caesar Kunikov

What protection does it have against small boats? Two twin 57 mm (2.2 in) DP guns

It is old Soviet tech, and most likely it does not work properly. If it works at all.
What else does it have? Well, guys like this.

This is absurd. It's no surprise that his tin can is now submersible (or at least what remains of it).
Now, let's look at Type 45 Destroyer because it is the main escort of the White Elefants.

What does this fellow have?
Two DS30B rapid fire cannon

Two Phalanx CIWS

By the way, here Phalanx fires at surface target
Two .50 Cals

It is already impressive but here is more. 
T45 usually have at least one helicopter

The name of the helicopter is Wildcat, and it can carry up to 21 LMM missiles. 

When this boi gets into the air, the swarm attack stops.
Is that all? Nope - as soon as vodka hits the fan 30mm will get their own LMMs

This is how LMM works (different mount)
The swarm of small boats is not a new threat. Western Navies have been preparing to counter it for a long time. But RU Navy haven't since difficulties of dumb Western Navies do not apply to superior Russian Navy and do not impede my thieving activity. Now RU chickens come home to roost.
Do not be dumb and do not be corrupt is the main lesson we can get from RU Navy drone debacle. 

Regarding Trump, hi from Latin America (Argentina) land of great football and sometimes populist egomaniacs...
I´ll just paste something I wrote in January of 2017 on another forum:
"Coming from a country with it´s fair share of populists in it´s history, let me tell you a couple of things about what will happen:

First: it´s not about policies, it´s not about facts, now it´s only about power and how to keep it

Second: the only thing that will be rewarded is loyalty, it may or may not align with skills, it doesn't matter any more

Third: it´s not about liberal and conservative, It´s not about democrat or republican, now it´s about trump or anti trump, there will be no middle ground to hide, both coalitions will have members of previous coalitions, those won´t matter much anymore, more republicans will be on Trump´s coalition because he was elected as one of course

Fourth: his only objective is reelection, and after that a third mandate, and a fourth and so on, to this end he will push any policy he deems useful, left wing or right wing, won´t matter, he sometimes will be align with former liberal/democrat ideas, he will take ownership of anything that promotes him, claiming it was his idea all along

Fifth: any source of check and balances will be targeted as traitorous, anti american, etc., this includes the press, other parties, the supreme court, whatever, anyone he sees as a member of the anti trump coalition is now a target, for now of rhetoric only, time will tell how far he will be allowed to go, and don´t think for a second there is something he won't do, or that he has any moral limit, he doesn't

Good luck trying to rationalize his government into anything other than an ego trip

His only weak point is succession, like every populists he hates the idea of giving power up, to anyone, even his children, he won´t groom a successor and get mad every time this point comes up

I sincerely hope current checks and balances work, but I´m not optimistic, lots of people will come under the spell, it´s tough times for anyone that can´t escape facts, reason, science, for those are now the enemies of the US government."
 
Not spot on in every point, but It came close to happen the first time around, now he has evolved and learned, it will be worst.
The paradox is that it was in the hands of Republican Senators to impeach and keep him out of office for good, they failed.
 
 

Nah it will not. If Trump get elected he can delay decision makings and troop deployment enough to get Europe tangled in a war alone. I don't understand how an idiot like Trump can compete in the race to white house but i'm not American.
The whole russian strategy is to isolate the USA, and i cant understand how are they that successful with it. It almost feel like you guys wanna lose the next major conflict of the human history.
NATO is a sheet of paper only held together by trust. If you guys betray that trust than you global hegemony will be lost. As soon as peoples around the world get a whiff of cowardliness from the USA they gonna look for other partners. Everything that makes you live on the level of standards that you accustomed is based on your country's hegemony. Once things go down they go down quick.
 
I don't know what you guys doing on the other side of the sea but everything seems messier by the week.

Zaluzhny actually admitted that he didn't deliver when in his Economist interview he called it his own personal mistake that he underestimated Russia's ability to regenerate force and resist the Ukrainian offensive this summer. With the fate of the nation at stake, I think it's pretty clearly Zelensky's role to decide if Zaluzhny should stay on the job and the latter making public statements about what should be done in opposition to the administration he serves isn't making that any easier. What politics there is *should* be in Zelensky's corner. Zaluzhny...like MacArthur as mentioned above...is inserting himself into that arena and will have only himself to blame if that gets him fired. 
Note: I say all of the above while liking and respecting Zaluzhny but generals don't get to call the shots in the kind of government I want to support. 
 

Sounds like they could use a MRBC - Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission! 😉
An independent supranational organization that serves as the Sphere-wide official registrar for all legal mercenary units. Google it. 🙃 

This needs to be repeated until the end of time. The idea that the next generation is spoilt, incompetent and incapable of handling what their forebears could might sound convincing if it weren’t for the fact that every single generation throughout history seems to have believed it.
And yet, the world continues to spin.

"Drug"?
What a monster.

Hopefully we'll get another person of reason and sound judgement who also thinks earth is 6000 years, amongst the many wise beliefs of mike johnston.  But maybe we'll get an improvement as the current speaker is somewhat flawed as he thinks the earth is round and goes around the sun.  
American taliban.  

You are clearly either delusional or this is just a deliberate campaign of mis- information - I'll be blocking you going forwards .

Ok so let's end all this horsesh#t.  The great thing about the US is that they put everything out to the public.  No other nation on earth is as transparent.  So here is what Miller actually said:
https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-january-4-2024/
First as to "no more money"
"QUESTION: Thank you. Let’s discuss Ukraine a little bit. How long will the latest package that you guys have sent already in December will give operations until they run out of funding again?
MR MILLER: I will let Ukraine speak to that because that pertains to – and my colleagues at the Pentagon may have some additional insight to offer on this. But ultimately, that’s a question to Ukraine to speak to because it goes to their rate of expenditure and other really military questions.
But I will say that we do need Congress to act. We are out of funding here. We know that we need to continue to support Ukraine. They need – they rely on this assistance. They rely on it to continue to fight what is a brutal Russian assault that continues, even over the – that continues every day. And so it’s important for Congress to act to continue to fund this democracy that is continuing to defend itself."
That is all about pushing Congress to act.  Inside DC baseball, not a US intent to cut off all funding.
As to current state of the war:
"QUESTION: And would you say that, given the latest developments, that the war is turning in Russia’s favor?
MR MILLER: No, I wouldn’t say that at all. I think people forget oftentimes the actual stakes of this war and what Vladimir Putin’s actual goal was, and what Ukraine has actually achieved and what it continues to achieve. Remember that Putin launched this as a war of total conquest where he wanted to take over Ukraine. He wanted to throw the government out of power. He wanted to subsume Ukraine inside Russia. Not only was Ukraine able to prevent that from happening, which everyone sort of takes for granted now but it was very not – it was very much not a settled question at the start of this war – they have managed to retake around half of the territory that Russia seized in the opening weeks of the war.
And even in the past few weeks, they continue to make battlefield gains. Remember the – over the last summer we were talking about the difficulty when Russia pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, and it looked like Ukraine wasn’t going to be able to continue to export grain. Well, because of advances that Ukraine made to open a Black Sea lane and expel the Russian fleet from certain parts of the Black Sea, they are now able to continue to export grain, which is critical to their economy.
So there are going to be battlefield developments back and forth, where you see each side gaining or losing territory. But when you look at the ultimate stakes of this war, it’s quite clear that Ukraine is going to exit this war independent, strong, with an improved economy, and looking west when what Russia wanted at the outset was not just a Ukraine that was looking east but Ukraine that was actually part of Russia."
Boy this sounds familiar...because some on this thread have been saying it all along.
And as to the statement that has some people running around like the panicky idiot in a bad plane crash movie:
"QUESTION: As long as it takes?
MR MILLER: As long as it takes. That does not mean that we are going to continue to support them at the same level of military funding that we did in 2022 and 2023. We don’t think that should be necessary because the goal is to ultimately transition Ukraine – to use the language that you repeated back – to stand on its own feet and to help Ukraine build its own industrial base and its own military industrial base so it can both finance and build and acquire munitions on its own. But we are not there yet, and that is why it is so critical that Congress pass the supplemental funding bill, because we are not yet at the point where Ukraine can defend itself just based on its own. And it’s why that it continues to be important for Congress to support Ukraine and continues to be important for our European allies and others throughout the world to support Ukraine."
From a State Dept talking head no less.
Oh, ya that totally says that "Ukraine is totally cut off and will have to build its own tanks from here on out."  You know we should totally freak out now and point to every Russian leg twitch as a major victory, while screaming "Ukraine is doomed!!" From the heights of the thread.
So "yes" I am saying the US will backstop a Ukrainian MIC as it plans for a transition away from tactical handouts to long term strategic sustainment...just like they did in South Korea.  But hey you wanna be "soundbite panic guy" on the thread, go right ahead.  
 

Chelyabinsk most famous for the large meteor back in 2013 injuring over a thousand people with an explosive yield of half a megaton.
 

Shocking….considering you were likely walking thru a Haitian neighborhood.
https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/9018-ct16_TOR_EthnicOrigin_Haitian.pdf

They did that add a year ago. Truly maximum cringe...

Ok, lets put all the rest of that uncited nonsense to the side.  I mean your theory of us "pushing" Ukraine into this war is frankly breathtakingly obtuse and directly from the red-hat camp.  I mean after this you can go back to whatever conspiracy websites you call home.
But let's just pull on this one singular thread.  So for once, I am calling on you...the kevinkin replacement we seem to get in various versions on this forum to actually prove your point beyond your own keyboard.  You state opinion like it was fact and frankly are spewing pro-Putin lines as though they are gospel.
"How is Ukraine losing this war?"  "How is Russia winning it?"  Feel free cite MacGregor.  Your position is that Ukraine has somehow "lost" by not achieving goals set out in the Summer '23 offensive.  What were those goals?  How do those goals determine the outcome of the war?
The Ukrainian military has already won this war.  Unlike whatever HBO/Hollywood narratives you subscribe to, wars rarely end in totals.  Victory parades and Johnny marching home.  The end somewhere in the middle.  In this case we have outlined repeatedly how Russia totally failed to achieve both their stated strategic objectives, and their most likely true ones.  Ukraine has achieved it major strategic objective...it still exists and is able to resist.  It retook roughly the same area of land as the size of freakin Ireland from what was supposed to be the second largest army in the world.
The Russian military is in tatters.  Blown all to hell.  They are still twitching but until I see an actual RA offensive that does not look like glorified leg humping, they are basically only good for holding the line.  NATO got Finland and will get Sweden.  Ukraine is in talks to join the EU.
So basically the Macgregor crowd - of which I am placing you - are now crowing because the UA was unable to re-take back those last few acres of the strategic corridor.  That is not only incredibly sh#tty given the loses they took in that effort, it is desperately trying to rejuvenate a broken narrative.  This war could freeze right where it is.  Ukraine could become like Korea, split.  And history will judge this a major Ukrainian victory.  
Actually, change that.  Don't even bother to try and prove your point because I already know what you are going to say- I have heard it a dozen times over now.  "Ukraine lost (yay!), we were right all along about US isolationism and the world will be such a better place if we stayed out of it altogether.  Oh and look who is blocking funding to Ukraine to keep them in the fight and then blaming everyone else because 'they are losing the war'"
Ok, we are done here...ignore.  

So the only provocative action a nation state can do is post nuclear weapons?  That is a straw man if there ever was one.
And here is a question for you - why should the fear and intimidation go one way?  Is Russia willing to be incinerated over Finland?  Are they hooked into some secret drug that makes deterrence impossible?  Seriously, this Everyone Else Powerful We are Weak is starting to sound awfully political….certain specific political.