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MaybeACoordinator

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Everything posted by MaybeACoordinator

  1. This is where I jump in with my UN, globally enforced Ukraine-as-giant-DMZ forever and ever plan. I was extremely gratified to see that this was not another shroom-influenced moonbat idea of mine, but one that is shared by Dr John Mearsheimer. Who is that, you ask. Here's who: Here is what he had to say after / during the Crimea crisis: And he reiterated that point on the eve of the invasion: Any fool with a limited grasp of European and Russian history and geography can look at a map and say, “Hey wouldn’t it be better if Ukraine were neutral?” As I've posted already, there could come a time when a free and independent Ukraine faces an existential threat from the west. If so, that possible threat was birthed yesterday, with the first announcement of a significant build-up of German arms since, oh, I would guess about 1934. Because it happens to be where it is, it will always be a bone of contention, a flashpoint, a pawn in the great game of the lives of mightier nations...Take it off the chessboard. Fill it with peacekeepers. Allow for lax banking laws. Make Kiev the New London for shady banking and money laundering -- this would have the dual purpose of enriching Ukraine and making London quaint and bearable again, as opposed to the crass and unaffordable place it's become. Bring in tech startups to the lesser cities....Artists, writers, and trust fund kids could make L'viv or Kharkov into another Paris of the 1930s. Fixing the eastern border of neutral Ukraine would be a bitch but I would recommend rigidly observed local plebiscites. Putin would dislike this plan but it's looking like the best he can do and it will some more appealing the longer any insurgency drags on. The one interested party that hates this plan the most is Big War, Intl., but for once can we tell the War Machine for fuck off before we all die in a stupid nuclear war?
  2. This is next level shit. He is all in.
  3. Last few shows he's been more hardcore pro-Putin than even RT.com. It's really amazing. He's practically jizzing all over himself talking about how Putin hates commies and globalists. He says "it's hard to find fault with Putin" about anything -- he loves the homophobia and the sexism and the nationalism. He really should move there. Vlad would love to have him in his weird squad with Stephen Seagal, Gerard DePardieu, Roy Jones Jr and other misfit toys.
  4. Like most controversial countries, it's way up high in a skyscraper, so you'd end up being one of those people in the street or blocking the entry to the whole building.
  5. You can break down Europe into beer, wine and vodka zones. In the beer zone you've got your hard-working no bullshit types. The wine zone is your smooth operators...suave diplomats. watch them with your old lady....Vodka zone is sentimental, emotional, unpredictable. The difference between Prague and Krakow reflects that division. Lots of beer drunks kinda walking a little funny on their way home after having ten pints of strong beer in an afternoon / evening in Prague. In Krakow I saw a literal heap of drunks passed out on top of each other in a public park on a weekday afternoon. It looked like a football pile-up after a run up the gut only they were all out like lights, snoring away.... Always wear your wedding ring when on the prowl -- shows you are willing to commit.
  6. This has been my belief all along though I was surprised he even approached Kiev. I don't believe he is going to level Kiev. He will fuck up the infrastructure something fierce and then sit there in a siege position waiting for a capitulation. Doesn't seem like it will work but there are also Ukrainian oligarchs willing to sell out Zelensky to get back to business as usual. Which is what the oligarchs in all our countries want, except for Ukraine and maybe other super-Russia-hating countries like Poland and the Baltics. If Putin dares pulling a full-on Grozny on Kiev in front of the entire world that would be a sign he's gone entirely mad, and we'd spiral towards a World War III I think some of y'all a) long for; and b) aren't prepared for. Or maybe that's just the Cold War Kid in me talking who spent years terrified of total thermonuclear war who now has two kids (one who could be called back into the army at their pleasure for the next six years)....Oh yeah, and I live 20 miles north of the strategic petroleum reserve. Somewhere in Siberia there's a warhead with my name on it. Also my kids. Yours too, pretty much wherever you live. I share the glee with the reports of Ukrainian bravery and resilience but I abhor thoughts of widening this war by bringing in NATO or the USA solo because honestly I fear the consequences. All those arms flowing through and from NATO countries have already given Putin the excuse in his own mind to believe that Russia is at war with the west. This is precisely why the Germans sunk the Lusitania in World War 1 -- it carried not only passengers but also arms for the Brits. And if he has gone nuts -- covid dementia, regular dementia, simple megalomania -- all we can do is pray that there is a lone wolf with balls of steel or a cabal in Moscow willing to take him out rather than press the button if things continue going sideways in Ukraine.
  7. Ultimately Russia, sadly, is us. "They are terrible. We will win convincingly." Time for a coaching change.
  8. I am a print media veteran of 20 years -- I love discerning between stripes of reporting. RT fascinates me but does not convince me.
  9. This is starting to remind me of a late period Mack Brown season opener where we were supposed to steamroll Rice or whoever by sixty with Jonathan Gray and Malcolm Brown running for 200 yards each, but at halftime it would be 17-3 and Mack would have to pull out all the stops in the second half just to barely cover. These wins did not herald good seasons, but they did foretell his downfall. May it be the same for Putin.
  10. A) I don't think that's going to happen. B) If it did, of course not. C) Sadistically torturing captives on video is unacceptable. Just shoot them in the head on the battlefield.
  11. I keep going to RT.com and the coverage is not like that at all. They make no positive statements that could be easily refuted. Our site is 100 percent more biased than RT will allow itself to appear to be right now. What's telling is what they are not reporting of refuting, such as the Ukrainian reports of the two downed cargo planes full of special forces. This is all standard war reporting, BTW; even the sinking of my great-grandfather's little minesweeper of Anzio was withheld for months from the media; meanwhile the other side has always done the opposite. We are buying the Ukrainian / Western narrative 100 percent and it's a little concerning to me, as it subtly changes over the last few days, as in, yes this might be taking more time that Putin would like, but I didn't start reading that he expected to be greeted as a liberator beyond Eastern Ukraine or that it would be like when they Soviets rolled unopposed into Prague in '68 until after that was not what happened. Now that it is not what happened, we are supposed to believe that he is shocked and demoralized by that. I don't think that's the case. Maybe a little, but not as much as we are being fed. There is an element of that political internet "Why not done?" meme. Lest we forget, it took us six days to take down Baghdad. No we are not, and I would hope the Ukrainian civil authorities would prosecute those who would commit war crimes. This is the West; that's not how we roll. And nothing would do more to hurt the Ukrainian cause. Flipside to above. Maybe the Chechen units we keep hearing are on the way will commit atrocities but this is about as far a cry from an ethnoreligious bloodletting as you can get. Minus the motive of "You're a Nazi who tried to stab out country in the back," this is practically a Civil War.
  12. My son said the home-schoolers were the worst in his barracks...somehow managed to be the worst soldiers while simultaneously rising through the ranks.
  13. I spent three years pre-career living in England with my future ex-wife living as more or less an ordinary chav in northern England. At the time I was very impressed and envious that you had a national print media that was nakedly partisan, running from the Guardian and Independent on the left through the Times and the Telegraph on the right. (I guess with Economist trying to hold the center of these two flanks.) Because I believed and still believe that "objective journalism" is more a myth than an attainable reality, I thought it would be cool if there were American versions of outlets like these. Naive doesn't even begin to describe how wrong I was. Sorry for the derail, y'all, and SL, if you ever in the wilds of southern Brazoria County, give me a holler.
  14. I've worked in print media for decades and I sometimes read RT as a philosopher and not a fan. Their propaganda skills are very, very strong. You'd be surprised at how much criticism of the government is condoned on there, but it is always thoroughly discredited (to their minds) elsewhere, as with purposefully stupid liberals Fox trots out to get their clocks cleaned on their opinion shows. RT really does allow a wide range of opinions but it's more in the goal of throwing shit against the wall and splintering people into easily controlled subgroups. The goal with this buckshot approach is to kill objective truth in a sea of babble of every persuasion to a degree you don't see here. Or I guess it's more accurate to say that in our mainstream press, the spectrum of printed opinion pieces is fairly narrow -- I'd characterize it as running from moderate left to a slightly more conservative voice on the right. In covering America Russians love to run both extremes. So long as you are radically opposed to what is happening here, they don't care if you think Sanders is a DINO or Trump should be tougher on border issues -- you can get a gig at RT. I've also sampled North Korean propaganda from the source and it's not even in the same universe. It still lives up to an extreme example of the stereotype I think most of us who grew up in the Cold War think media is like under an authoritarian regime. Sample headlines from today; Foreign Personages Pay Congratulatory Visits to DPRK Missions Rodong Sinmun on Revolutionary Features Peculiar to Korean People Anniversary of Chairman Kim Jong Il's Visit to Potato-processing Factory Marked With an occasional classic like this: His Love Touches Heartstrings of All People: I wasn't able to dig up one of their ornery rants against us, Japan, or South Korea today but they are out there and are wildly entertaining, especially if you imagine them coming from College Station instead of Pyongyang. Anyway, what Putin has condoned is like a bizarro version of a free press that winds up being as effective at stifling dissent as in the old days of Pravda and TASS. Within Russia, you have great latitude in criticizing the government's actions, but the third rail is any kind of serious investigative reporting into the finances of the oligarchs close to Putin or the man himself. That's where you need to start building up your immunity to polonium or cease going anywhere higher than the second floor of buildings.
  15. Russian mamas will get the word out come hell or high water. I know they've already been listed a "foreign controlled media" or whatever but they will get the word out.
  16. At the same time a tyrant was doing it to his own people, for one, and another when a bunch of them cast their lot with the Nazis. Which for them was somewhat understandable, if not what they did after they got in the Wehrmacht. I read about a Nazi cossack unit that even disgusted the Nazis with their atrocities in Yugoslavia, some to the extent that they were court-martialed by the Nazis and put to death. Let that sink in. That's how Putin does attempt to other them but it's only got limited appeal and reach. He's saying he wants to de-Nazify Ukraine and he won't be given an unlimited timetable to do it as the bodybags continue rolling in.
  17. This is not going to be a war of extermination. If Putin didn't exterminate the Chechens he damn sure isn't going to eradicate the Ukrainians. This is not a war based on ethnic hatred or even much of one of ethnic difference. Slaughtering Ukrainians willy nilly won't play well in Russia, much less the wider world. Millions of Ukrainians live in Russia. There are probably millions of families of mixed background. Their differences do not rise to the level of Serbs vs Croats or even the Irish vs the Scots-Irish, much less some easily "othered" group like Jews or Gypsies.
  18. My prediction is they will sit this out, as usual, and let their frenemies squabble amongst themselves.
  19. Europe in disarray is a win for Putin -- him at the crosshairs of a Europe/West filled with resolve against him for starting all this shit will be an enormous L, an early 2000s Mack pantsing in Dallas.
  20. To what purpose would that serve? He is a calculating asshole, not a madman.
  21. I get these countries like Estonia and Poland et al feel emboldened to poke the Russian bear right now, because with a neutered Germany at their backs, that's all they have to fear, unless the Swedes get all ornery again all of a sudden. But what about the near-future dystopian scenario of the German economy melting down over some consequence at the end of a long string of possibiliities unfolding right now that leads to the German economy melting down, bringing about the collapse of the EU and likely a global depression. After a few years of this (and with the rest of the WW2 generation dying off), Germany elects let's just say some foolishly nostalgic politicians, who sell the electorate on the idea of "Hitler was not so terrible before the war! We will pour our resources into infrastructure, and it is past time that we assume control of our own security concerns. If the world cannot any longer buy or VWs and BMWs, perhaps we should turn our attention to the rebuilding of our military. We have behaved now for 100 years. We are not your great-grandfather's Reich." And so they retool and refit the auto plants into tank, aircraft and missile facilities. The North Sea coastal ports expand their shipyards. The autobahns and rail system are upgraded. The German economy flickers back to life, and with it, the global economy to a certain extent. Austria holds a referendum in which its people vote resoundingly in favor of a second Anschluss, conditional on their having powers in the expanded German state similar to those of Bavaria today. The Germans hold a referendum as well and it's far closer to 50-50. North Germans are still leery of putting the band back together, but that is now a very real possibility. The Austrians point out in the UN that their referendum was free and fair. Meanwhile this Depression has hit America hard as well. Same in France and the UK, where governments are collapsing every three or four years. All the while Germany is assuring us that they are our friends and just need to get their economy back on track and by the way danke schoen for all those years of having our backs but we are ready to kick off the training wheels now, freunden. We swear it will be different this time.... But would it? So where would that then leave Poland, the Baltics and the Ukraine? Right back where they were in the first half of the 20th Century, caught between hell and high water. I believe it is imperative to enforce neutrality upon Ukraine, and that goes for us as well as them. If I were world dictator, I would give Kiev something like an "Indian casino." Make it a hub for global banking by hook or by crook for oligarchs from both east and west. The hub for global banking. They've earned it. London can reinvent itself again; plus, it wouldn't be so expensive to visit or even live there anymore. Neither Ivan nor the Jerries want to kick over the honeypot. Ukrainians enjoy an unprecedented prosperity. As the German malaise fizzles out they keep their promise after building up a military merely requisite to its position on the world stage. The Russians can get them their gas cheaper and more efficiently. And the world staggers on in peace for another ten years. I think we would be the ones to fuck this up somehow because the military industrial complex would find ways to prevent Congress from diverting all that money we've been sending to act as Germany's big brother to our own badly needed infrastructure upgrades.
  22. Calling them out is a favorite hobby of Willie D of the Geto Boys. Unlike Satchel here (and how do we know Satchel isn't Black, and thereby allowed to use the term?) Willie goes so far as to call the participants -- Candace, Diamond & Silk, Herschel Walker -- the c-word. You know who else used it? Candace Owens, who three years ago posted a pic of Trump and Tupac together for some reason decades ago and captioned it "Liberal logic: 'Tupac was a self-hating, alt-right, Uncle Tom, coon who perpetuated themes of white supremacy." Yes "coon" is a racist epithet but in the context of coon capitalism it should be within the bounds of political discourse here, because it's real, whether we like it or not.
  23. Sounds like Austin....Maye we've found a solution here. Round them up from the woods and underpasses and herd them on to C-130s and give them to Putin as conscripts. Seems like they know a thing or two about how to thrive as a Russian grunt.
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