Why are we rushing to defend Ukraine? [merged threads]

[millefleur 5,047]

3 hours ago, Mike E said:

Bleed Russia and China dry.

I don't see anyone calling for sanctions on China. Given how dependent the developed world is on China, that will be a hard call for anyone to make. I'll wait and see if it happens. We've never sanctioned China over slavery, exploitation and other human rights abuses yet, not sure why it would change now.

 

[TBoneTX 45,571]

7 hours ago, millefleur said:

how to get rid of liars, cheaters, etc

Here, vote straight Republican in 2022 & 2024.

Thereafter, vote straight non-RINO Republican.

Most of problem solved.   

[Mike E 11,741]

1 hour ago, millefleur said:

I don't see anyone calling for sanctions on China. Given how dependent the developed world is on China, that will be a hard call for anyone to make. I'll wait and see if it happens. We've never sanctioned China over slavery, exploitation and other human rights abuses yet, not sure why it would change now.

 

China has to prop Russia up while  Russia is fighting in Ukraine.  Russia bleeds lives.  China bleeds cash. 
 

Recall that China barely had enough cash to fund North Vietnam and the Viet Cong.  It’s efforts to fund a parallel insurgency in Thailand fizzled for lack of cash. 
 

China has more cash today, but Russia is a more populous  country today than Vietnam was in the 1970s, with bigger expenses due to expectations of the Russian people of 2022 of higher standard of living than Vietnamese in 1972. 

[millefleur 5,047]

Zelensky again today. Here we go again.

 

[Dashinka 24,628]

13 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Here, vote straight Republican in 2022 & 2024.

Thereafter, vote straight non-RINO Republican.

Most of problem solved.   

No really sure that group of politicians are immune from lying either.  Besides, the lying in government is not isolated to just the elected officials, the bureaucracy is also rife with lying political actors. 

[TBoneTX 45,571]

17 hours ago, Dashinka said:

the bureaucracy

Decentralize/relocate it throughout the U.S., with no moving-expense allowance for any current employee.

[TBoneTX 45,571]

Comments on this amazing article, please:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/tell-me-how-ukraine-ends/

[Dashinka 24,628]

4 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Comments on this amazing article, please:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/tell-me-how-ukraine-ends/

Probably the closest analysis to what is actually happening.  All this handwringing of Putin trying to re-establish the Soviet Union, and how he is going to continue into Poland, the Baltics, Romania, etc. seems over the top and ignores the civil war that has been ongoing in Eastern Ukraine for the past eight years or so.  

 

On another note, it is fairly rich of the US to demand China supplies no support for Russia while ourselves and Western Europe are sending in military support regularly.  One wonders why there was a missile attack on the military base in Western Ukraine, I assume this is a major staging point for these military shipments.  All the pundits saying this is only 10 miles from the Polish border seems to be over-the-top (wasn't there a military drone already found in Croatia that supposedly came from the Ukraine battlefield).  As @millefleur already stated, the Ukraine government (and by extension NATO/US/EU) has stoked the ire of Putin over the past eight years with their ethnic war in the Donbas region, and though this does not excuse the invasion, it has more to do with the Russian strategy than a potential re-emergence of the USSR.

[Mike E 11,741]

6 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Comments on this amazing article, please:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/tell-me-how-ukraine-ends/

I agree with most of it, but

 

Not actually on the menu is another Afghanistan-like (U.S. or Soviet version) insurgency. What Putin is doing is an old school war to grab territory, not changing allegiances among the Taliban. This time his supply routes are short, his troops fighting the modern battle they trained for, albeit outside Kiev and not in the Fulda Gap. Unlike Afghanistan, Ukraine has cities dependent on modern infrastructure, and cities are easily encircled, starved out, or just leveled.

 

The IRA bled the UK dry for decades with a few dollars raised in Boston each year.
 

AQI, ISIS (each backed by Saudi rich folks) and Iran-backed-Shia militias bled the USA dry in Iraq.  
 

Russia and the west were losing in Iraq/Syria to ISIS until Trump and I suspect they are losing again with Trump out of picture.  
 

I think Ukrainians backed by billions of dollars from each year from the west can bleed Russia dry even faster.  
 

I do agree the NATO alliance broken as Europe is too dependent on Russian CO2 producing energy and really the sun doesn’t shine all than much in Northern Europe to make solar energy practical.  Europe declared methane a green gas to hit its fake zero CO2 targets. 

 

 

[Dashinka 24,628]

3 hours ago, Mike E said:

I agree with most of it, but

 

Not actually on the menu is another Afghanistan-like (U.S. or Soviet version) insurgency. What Putin is doing is an old school war to grab territory, not changing allegiances among the Taliban. This time his supply routes are short, his troops fighting the modern battle they trained for, albeit outside Kiev and not in the Fulda Gap. Unlike Afghanistan, Ukraine has cities dependent on modern infrastructure, and cities are easily encircled, starved out, or just leveled.

 

The IRA bled the UK dry for decades with a few dollars raised in Boston each year.
 

AQI, ISIS (each backed by Saudi rich folks) and Iran-backed-Shia militias bled the USA dry in Iraq.  
 

Russia and the west were losing in Iraq/Syria to ISIS until Trump and I suspect they are losing again with Trump out of picture.  
 

I think Ukrainians backed by billions of dollars from each year from the west can bleed Russia dry even faster.  
 

I do agree the NATO alliance broken as Europe is too dependent on Russian CO2 producing energy and really the sun doesn’t shine all than much in Northern Europe to make solar energy practical.  Europe declared methane a green gas to hit its fake zero CO2 targets. 

 

 

How the EU declares methane a "green" gas is amazing.  Methane is a way more powerful GHG than CO2, and there is no way there is no leakage between production and usage points.  Also, regardless of the sunshine level in Northern Europe, they simply do not have the space for the large solar farms that would be needed.

[Mike E 11,741]

14 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

 .  Also, regardless of the sunshine level in Northern Europe, they simply do not have the space for the large solar farms that would be needed.

When you think about what solar does and what plants do, you realize they do the same thing: convert sunlight to energy. 
 

And when you have to install enough solar to (attempt to) replace fossil and fission energy you realize that you won’t have any plants to produce food and timber. 
 

If you want mass famines then converting  crop land into solar farms is how you get famines.  
 

Adding solar energy to land that nature has optimized for growing food is weird.  Unless Europe fracks or fissions it is going to depend on “dirty” energy from unfriendly places or places that like Alberta and North Dakota that get its woke electorate all up in arms. 
 

The USA at least has vast wastelands that are bleached with sunshine.  But there are ecosystems of flora and fauna in our deserts and plains that will have to be sacrificed.  
 

Solar makes sense on a planet with 800 million people, not 8 billion.  

Edited March 15, 2022 by Mike E

[millefleur 5,047]

14 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

How the EU declares methane a "green" gas is amazing.  Methane is a way more powerful GHG than CO2, and there is no way there is no leakage between production and usage points.  Also, regardless of the sunshine level in Northern Europe, they simply do not have the space for the large solar farms that would be needed.

The problem is nuclear energy is very controversial in Europe because of all the borders and small countries overlapping with each other. It becomes very hard to find a spot to build a plant where a neighboring country doesn't protest/NIMBY about it and cries "Chernobyl" or "Fukushima" and then they go in circles about what the better solution is. Europe's disunity often is what gets in the way for them to come to continent-wide solutions and then they just go in circles and nothing gets done. I guess the methane thing is just an example of "greenwashing" and trying to sell it to their constituents that way.

 

5 minutes ago, Mike E said:

When you think about what solar does and what plants do, you realize they do the same thing: convert sunlight to energy. 
 

And when you have to install enough solar to (attempt to) replace fossil and fission energy you realize that you won’t have any plants to produce food and timber. 

Germany tried to do an outsourced solar farm in Morocco, spent tons of money on it and it failed. There's a lot of backlash that this looks like neocolonialism with Europe just setting up shop in Africa again and exploiting/stealing resources (while investing little back into the country) and also the political instability/cultural differences don't help either. Solar on a mass scale for Europe just makes no sense, they're going to have to find something else. Same goes for wind farms, on a mass scale it also causes destruction/disruption to the environment and will not be able to provide enough.

[Dashinka 24,628]

24 minutes ago, millefleur said:

The problem is nuclear energy is very controversial in Europe because of all the borders and small countries overlapping with each other. It becomes very hard to find a spot to build a plant where a neighboring country doesn't protest/NIMBY about it and cries "Chernobyl" or "Fukushima" and then they go in circles about what the better solution is. Europe's disunity often is what gets in the way for them to come to continent-wide solutions and then they just go in circles and nothing gets done. I guess the methane thing is just an example of "greenwashing" and trying to sell it to their constituents that way.

 

Germany tried to do an outsourced solar farm in Morocco, spent tons of money on it and it failed. There's a lot of backlash that this looks like neocolonialism with Europe just setting up shop in Africa again and exploiting/stealing resources (while investing little back into the country) and also the political instability/cultural differences don't help either. Solar on a mass scale for Europe just makes no sense, they're going to have to find something else. Same goes for wind farms, on a mass scale it also causes destruction/disruption to the environment and will not be able to provide enough.

Another scramble for Africa by the imperialist Western Europeans?  No wonder Europe is so interested in the Ukraine.

 

Edited March 15, 2022 by Dashinka

[millefleur 5,047]

3 minutes ago, Dashinka said:

Another scramble for Africa by the imperialist Western Europeans?

Yes but it's actually already happening. The new scramble for Africa is China mining stuff like cobalt and other resources needed for tech/batteries. I recently saw a depressing but very good documentary about that. Colbat is essential for lithium batteries for electric cars, so there's another incident of "greenwashing" that nobody wants to talk about.

 

 

 

[Ban Hammer 13,419]

10 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Comments on this amazing article, please:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/tell-me-how-ukraine-ends/

pretty much echos my thoughts on it all.