quakerparrot67

Ok, so looking at the actual poll, this is typical media/political spinning. The headline conveniently leaves out that 70% think that the US should either continue or increase aid to Ukraine with the only split being whether it is given with or without oversight. 
The actual question (question 4 of the poll) was "How much of a role do you believe the US should have in helping to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war?" 71% responded with either a major role or a minor role by combining the two choices. The question was not what the headline above says and neither was the answer. Later on question 7, 69% respond that they support the US urging Ukraine to negotiate a settlement to the war. Maybe that is because most people want wars to end? 
In the end a typical poll with wishy-washy questions that can be interpreted to the will of whatever political slant one wants.
edited to add link to poll: https://quincyinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Quincy-Institute_rev-tabs.pdf

So sad that person is an elected official.
Even worse....that that sort of drivel can be spouted and not a thing can be done about it.
 

With no intention to play advocate of sfhand, we have been many times wrong here about the "truth". 
I remember the board being very trigger happy with Iraq 2003 for instance. To their defense they admitted later that G Bush administration was at wrong. 
But we can't undo what happened now. Iraq for me was a pivotal war for the West. This is where the game of post cold war US playing the freedom/democracy bringer reached a dead end. Because of the lies, the bypassing of UN, the Bush cynical rhetoric, the scores of civilian casualties, the failed occupation /reform etc. ISIS was born out of this war, the refugee crisis ignited. Despite the quick win over Saddam, US reputation was seriously damaged there. 
Imo Putin invasion wouldn't happen without US being so damaged in international reputation as a Democracy guarantee power. 2014 and green men wouldn't happen too. I dare to say even Trump wouldn't happen. US just lost focus and steam, started questioning itself, started polarizing etc. 
The truth then was that Iraq was a threat to the World with WMDs and Saddam was an evil dictator (which he was). The war ended Saddam but opened a whole new can of worms and a crack in the western camp that widened with a lengthy and fruitless Afghan campaign. 
Our truth now is that Russia is a military threat to the world, a threat to global democracy and our duty is to smash them to pieces before worse things occur. Maybe that's the right truth but I'm not convinced of the outcome of the path we have taken. I believe what we have in the West as spiritual descendants of Athenian democracy, European rennaisance, French revolution, American revolution etx, is precious and must be protected. If this escalating war ends up destroying all this, then this isn't the right war for us. 
And beneath this war on the surface, there are deeper issues threatening our societies. For me rampant capitalism, privitization of health and natural resources, outsourcing everything to the East,  cultural decay and the widening gap between rich and poor will be more decisive in people not believing or not joining the fight in a possible World War. Talking to everyday people not necessarily well informed about the war, there is a big percentage that secretly wishes Russia will win, not because they like a dictatorship but because they feel that this will deal a blow to a decaying neo colonial system that slowly suffocates their existence. They could be deadly wrong of course. But If you can't convince your own people that this is a system worth defending for, then it's already a lost cause. 
Sometimes celebrating the small Ukrainian victories, the destruction of a spy plane, or sinking a warship seems so insignificant in the greater picture of events that could come. Russia has convinced its people that "evil West is stretching its dirty colonial hand to grab their vast resources" like they did a few times in the past. The more we get involved the more Russians are convinced this is another great patriotic war. For some this is a dead end against a stubborn nuclear power. For others, like most here in the forum, a frontal attack is the only way for West as we know it to survive.
This could be the only truth worth debating maybe. 
 
 

 

Seriously what do they teach kids these days?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology
How hard is it to do a google search and go on a personal learning journey?  But instead I will go troll a forum?  Next he will come back and declare that it was an “honest question” and we are all “sheeple”.  “Jesus was not actually born on 25 Dec!  Thalidomide!  United Fruit Company!  C’mon man, it was the ‘global elitist’ who started this war to distract from fluoride in the water!!”

Well we can’t and probably won’t in our lifetimes.  The “truth” is a floating point of agreement (are disagreement) among humans.  We are essentially a species with brains big enough to invent the big beautiful fictions.  We believe in them so hard that they may as well be true because they create conative impulse.  I don’t believe in God but Holy Wars are still going to happen.
As to the weird string of political conspiracies (John Kettler is that you?).  In my experience in government, conspiracies are the rare exception - and they usually get caught out…that is how we know about them.  Governments leak like sburke after a few beers on a good day.  Most TS stuff is over classified and sitting on 00’s era desktops.  The government can barely get above board things done let alone wage an effective mid/dis information campaign against its people.  The governments that can have to spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy, over a long period of time, to even get close.  Russia tries very hard but we know there are holes in the fence.  Hell even NK is not fully able to fully insulate its population from outside info.
So while people like you are digging bunkers and fitting for aluminum hats, the reality is that governments are big slow moving bureaucracies good at only one thing…protecting the bureaucracy.  
Beyond that I am not sure what Neo/Matrix thing you are really talking about.  The war?  The causes of the war?  The progress of the war?  We will never really know the truth about any of it in some universal truth because no such human truth exists outside of science.  How do I know gravity works like they tell me?  Well go jump off a building.  As to the rest it is best guesses and close enough.  We can see what we can see.
What is really weird is that the Information Age should make it impossible to lie.  One can quickly verify a lie in the ocean of information out there…that was the theory.  But what did we do with that ocean of info?  We saw more lies!  We linked patterns that are not there.  Are you being lied to…definitely.  And what should bake you noodle is that because you are a human being the front and center culprit in those lies are not XYZ…it is you, to yourself.  We lie to ourselves all the time.  We filter, bias, ignore, reject and spin every time you look in the mirror.  We lie to ourselves about everything all the time.  Welcome to humanity.  

What has Hunter Biden to do with russian tanks in Ukraine?

Have you read the thread from day 1? The amount of open source information here - from all imaginable perspectives - is enormous. Historians will be able to make much more sense of this war than any in history. Would that we had this sort of information for the ancient world! Or the Battle of Midway!

What's your point? What have you added?
Humans you gotta love them...

Consider that the USA is not the only country in the world. No matter how little you trust your own government how about the governments of most of Europe? 
Even the French and Germans (Evan neutral Switzerland!!), who were very critical of the war in Iraq are fully onboard supporting Ukraine, supplying more aid per capita than the USA. 
That suggests that the war is real and Ukraine is a partner who can be worked with. Remember the Dutch and Germans complaining about corruption during the eurozone crisis? Not so much with Ukraine (although realistically it does exist)

Meanwhile in clown news, brought to you by our good friend David D aka Secret Squirrel.
I sense a new foreign policy doctrine in the making, lets ignore countries MTG can't find on a map.

Hamas lives in Gaza like royalty and in order to justify their rule, they have to
a) show that they are actively fighting the Israeli Apartheid regime.
b) provoke an overwhelming response with mass casualties.
At the same time the Israeli right-wing needs Hamas in order to justify their own existence and aid in the creation of a proto-fascist bonapartist regime. Both feed off each other and the regular outbursts of violence are a piece of political theatre that would frankly be funny if real people didn't get killed.

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

Interesting visualization of a propaganda projection process. 
 

Well, flip that around - at what point would you prefer a global nuclear conflagration than the alternative?
My partner grew up in part of Soviet Russia which now is not part of Russia. Being part of Russia sucked, absolutely (her father, for a small example, came within a whisker of being 'volunteered' for heroic cleanup duty at Chernobyl), but that's in the rear view mirror now. It wouldn't be though if WWIII had broken out.

Cheap-thing-takes-out-expensive-thing is not exactly a fresh hot take. Kipling was writing about that well over a hundred years ago.
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_arith.htm

What does it say? 

This is so frankly bafflingly short sighted and stupid…but of course it is Putin, the same strategist that came up with a quick invasion of Ukraine. US Intelligence - a nation whose weapons, ammo and data are actively killing Russian citizens - actually handed off actionable intel on this attack before it happened.  What does this say?  Well first off, US Intelligence has penetrated ISIS-K and was willing to risk assets in order to stop a terror attack…even against Russia.  This demonstrates that the US was still willing to prioritize terrorism over its current beef with Russia, and was willing to take significant risks in doing so.
Russia’s grand plan was to 1) ignore the intelligence, and then 2) poop all over the sponsor of said intel.  The reality is that Russia’s pants are down in all this and its @ss is showing.  The Stans are clearly hot and bothered at some level and ISIS-K is exploiting that.  This is the tip of a much larger issue.  So Putin’s grand plan is to burn any cooperation with the US…who are trying and solve his own problem.  And then wire some ridonculous narrative about Ukrainian NAZIs now in league with Islamic extremism, all backed by the CIA.  I am pretty sure those in Russia soft on this whole thing are not suddenly going to be galvanized by a cloudwork that Saddam’s ministry of propaganda could have done better on a cold start Tuesday.
Putins is not a mastermind, he is plate spinning.  At this point the world’s second largest nuclear power is being held together like a bad I Love Lucy skit.  And no one even bother to try and pull the “poor westerner…you simply do not understand the Russian mindset” card…this was about as dumb a damage control play as could have been made.  And no mystical Russian voodoo/goat hypnosis is going to change that.

It's possible you were confused for another poster whose name is five letters and starts with "kra", but that's just a theory.

And now for something completely different...
Italy.
Firefight!


The rarely seen Italian fascists!

 

My favorite light tank of the war.

German airborne amongst the rubble.

This place needs some action!
Normandy.
🇬🇧


US Paras. ❤️  The best at what they do.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/shooting-blast-reported-concert-hall-near-moscow-agencies-2024-03-22/

Quick tinfoil hat take:

Putin secures election 'legitimacy'
Peskov says it's no longer a Special Military Operation, it's a War
Terror attack in Moscow
...
Mobilisation

the greatest nation in the world -- held hostage by lunatics due to the unbelievable cowardice of GOP congressmen & women and a GOP voter base-cult that's so brainwashed it doesn't even know where reality even begins anymore.  Disgraceful and sickening.  

I can fully understand and sympathize with their positions and sentiments.  But lies are lies, no matter who is pushing them.  We either try and hold onto objective truth or we can just become another echo chamber showing one sided war porn and offering weak analysis.  We are challenged enough to avoid our own biases without completely abandoning what this entire thread was supposed to do in the first place.  I oppose disinformation no matter the source.

This actually made me chuckle.
I expect it had no problem making contact with the ground.
 

For those interested in listening in on two world leaders talk about Ukraine before the war. More to follow....