Russia-Ukraine War (Threadbanned in op)

Even back then, without the mass media as we know it, they knew very well the value of Propaganda, and Goebbels was so good at it that to this day, Putin follows it, word for word. Yes, I remember hearing about the orchestra in Terezin.They made propaganda "events" showing Jews enjoying themselves, dancing after work, and on weekends. Then they issued pictures and envelopes to the inmates ordering them to send them to their relatives wherever they were, telling them to come and join them. They caught many with this trick. There's a particularly good article by a man named Mark Ludwig on what went on in Terezin, if you want to google it? The inmates produced masterpieces of music, under the very noses of the Nazis. But unfortunately, Hitler also killed a generation of world class composers and musicians.

TBH, there were so many facists, conspiracy nuts, putinbots, climate change deniers, 'concerned citizens' and terrorist cheerleaders on the ballot that I could only vote to #9…I really couldn't bring myself to give any of these knuckle draggers a preference, even the obvious no-hopers.

Well as the old saying goes, " By their actions ye shall know them!!!" And for sure, even if Putin "win's" in Ukraine (take the definition of win as you will) Putin has dealt Russia a possible fatal blow…and the financial splurge that he is now engaged upon with his war-economy is a last gasp strategy,, war economies spend cash, they do not produce it, and when the piggy bank is empty, that's it, End of Putin's story.

we have been in 1938 since Feb '22

Very slightly off topic for just a minute, god I delighted in exercising my democratic right last night and relished in placing a number against each of the 20+ candidates.

I don’t care if people placed SF or Ming #1 or #23- the fact that we have the freedom to exercise that right is just so precious - and this thread and this war is a great reminder of that - unless people were out of the country, too sick or had work commitments that prevented them voting, really everyone who could have voted should have - we should never take this right to vote for granted - I believe taking the time to vote reinforces our belief system and makes us more aware of the threats around us, such as Russia, China etc

I was going to do that but really for me, it was a lovely way of just wallowing in democracy for a few minutes - and yes, I did relish placing #23 or whatever against my least favourite (of which there were many😀 ) candidate

Imagine they will have to supply a very decent amount of anti air equipment alongside any deployment. The Russians will absolutely make them a priority target.

The relevant point is that if you don't think there's enough decent choice, you too can put yourself forward as yet another utter gobshite and no-one's going to throw you out of a window regardless of what you say about Micheál, Leo, Simon, Ursula or even Vlad.

"Yes Russians still have superior quantities of artillery but that’s not hard when Ukrainians almost got to zero there."

What source do you have for this? The levels of artillery losses in putin's forces have been massive over the course of their invasion of Ukraine and were particularly high on some of the days in recent weeks when they had ramped up offensive actions. I guess by giving away the position of more artillery systems when making more intense attacks they allow the Ukrainians more opportunities to knock them out and while putin may still claim to have huge production capacity for ammunition is there evidence that production of the large caliber artillery pieces required to fire the ammunition is keeping up with the massive losses?

Europe and USA (fat chance) need to learn that it’s not enough to just “prop up the war”- whatever support is needed to push Russia back into its own territory or as close to it as possible is the only way we can move to some sort of truce or peace agreement.

Hopefully France now is planning such support - prolonged war of just throwing equal amounts of ammunition at each other is just not cutting it - Ukraine also have a very tired army and those not yet recruited into it by whatever means, seem to appear very reluctant to do so-

Today's summary

I’ll always thought Putin was a bad guy and war criminal, but after seeing that video now I’m not so sure 🤔

I never realised how cool he was until now. Cooler than a Polar bear eating a Mr freeze.