The War in Europe

You have one thing right.

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If Putin is allowed to take Ukraine then it will be the beginning of the end for a free eastern Europe and of a powerful and united NATO. A free Ukraine is essential for Western security.

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. Now for my 2 cents. Putin responded due to the encroachment of the war into his territory. NATO is not supposed to go on the offense. We didn't like it when Israel did it, even after they were attacked first. We cannot have a double standard and allow Ukraine to do it. Putin will simply shoot back with bigger and bigger rocks. Ukraine needs peace and security...not weapons for an offensive counterattack.

Russia invaded Ukraine you inbred cousin humper. Russia started this. NATO didn't go on the offensive you fucking idiot because there are no NATO troops in ukraine.

You are amazingly consistent. The rest of what I wrote was also correct. There is no sense in that addled mind of yours Encroachment isn't the right word. Russia started the war, which until recently took place almost exclusively on Ukrainian territory with Ukraine playing defense. Now Ukraine has added some offense to the mix and begun attacking Russian territory. NATO didn't go on the offensive. It would be headlines for days if they did. If isn't Israel responding to the Hamas incursion that is drawing objections. It's the genocide, the atrocities, the targeting of civilians. How in your addled mind is Ukraine doing anything to Russian civilians that in any way resembles what Israel is doing to civilians in Gaza and Lebanon? He already is. The west needs peace security, and a free Ukraine is essential for that because it serves as a buffer against Russian efforts to expand their territory and influence.This has all been said by me and others here over and over, yet you just ignore it all and go off in your direction unmoored to reality.--Percy

Are you parroting Putin's talking points that he's fighting "The Ukrainian Nazis" and that he's responding to "NATO aggressive expansion"? Don't you realize that's nothing but propaganda lies creating an excuse for his invasion of and war of aggression against Ukraine in order to annex its territory?"Ukraine used to be part of Russia; we just want it back again." Another example of that was Saddam Hussein's invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the excuse that it used to be part of Iraq before the French and English victors of WWI carved up the former Ottoman Empire's Middle East territory arbitrarily creating new borders; not only did they spin off Kuwait as its own country, but they also lumped three mutually antagonistic ethnic groups into Iraq that only a ruthless strongman like Saddam Hussein could hold together, hence the armed internal strife after we removed him from power (the same with Yugoslavia which only a Tito could hold together and its bloody balkanization after he died). The same with Hitler's "gathering in of the Germans" excuse for retaking former German territories in Czechoslovakia and Poland -- at least that loss of German territory was only a decade old, not 70 years old in Kuwait's case.Like the tyrants before him grabbing territory through naked aggression, Putin is just making flimsy and transparent excuses for his actions which idiot apologists parrot without thinking. As already noted by others, NATO troops are not on the battlefield in Ukraine nor in Russia, but rather Ukrainians and foreign legionnaires (eg, members of the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine such as SCPO Malcolm Nance (ret.)).Second, don't you understand even the most basic concepts of self-defense? It's not just block-block-duck-retreat, but rather you need to include counter-punches to convince the bully that he cannot get away with pushing you back. I'm in Florida right now which has its infamous "stand your ground" self-defense law. What part of that do you refuse to understand?In my karate training, virtually all the moves we were taught and trained in included counter-punches and counter-kicks: block-counter-block-counter-block-counter-counter-COUNTER-KIAI! Even in aikido, which is much more defensive in nature, most moves ended either with having "led the attacker into falling" (we never did any throws, as in judo, but rather would blend with his motion and redirect it into him falling) or in an immobilizing wrist or arm hold. Absolutely purely defensive actions doing nothing more than simply deflecting or avoiding the attack never prevails, but rather must be combined with action to stop the aggressor.A real-life instance was what my son had to do when he was in elementary school. On his way home, a larger kid tried to bully him. In response, my son blocked the bully's attack followed with a "chicken punch" to his jaw (AKA, "chicken wrist" which is a quick close-in jab with the back of the hand next to the wrist; I use the same kind of move, albeit more benign, to push a door closed without getting my hand dirty). Didn't hurt the bully, but it got his attention and let him know he couldn't get away with what he was doing. My son never had a problem with that bully again.As long as Putin knows that he can get away with his aggression with impunity, he will not only continue but will escalate his attacks. You need to hit him back hard to let him know he can't get away with that crap.Ukraine does indeed need peace and security, but neither is possible as long as nobody acts to stop Putin's aggression.

I've just returned from a 5 hour tour of Auschwiz-Birkenau. I suggest you apply for a passport and visit, I suspect you might change your opinion.

You make some good points. I always respect your detailed posts! (I even looked up
Malcolm Nance )I agree with you. Peace through strength. Don't let the bully intimidate you!I'm wondering if Trump can achieve a cease-fire or peace in Ukraine without surrendering one square inch of the land Ukraine had before. If so, they can join NATO officially and begin a long slow healing process.I'm not convinced that Zelensky is Time Man of the Year, but I know that Putin never will be.

Its ironic that a Jewish concentration camp is the focus of your concern.Anyway....you guys make some good thinking points. Putin is a realist. Ukraine is one of the largest "breadbaskets" in the world. Russia needs bread. China needs bread. (and oil and natural gas) So does NATO. I argue that Putin's armies are too weak to attack Europe if they can't even defeat Ukraine. I also hope that Trump represents American interests moreso that Putins interests. The Art Of The Deal must help Americans. (Or else it is not a deal.)Biden dealt with Putin for many years. Less is known about Mr.Trump

Not really, given that Trump's incoming administration is planning on concentration camps. Not camps deliberately designed to be "death camps" (damned Nazis completely tarnished the reputation of concentration camps), even though they tend to become that as the British learned with their camps in the Boer War (Second Boer War concentration camps):

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During the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the British operated concentration camps in the South African Republic, Orange Free State, Natal, and the Cape Colony.

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As the Boers used a 'guerrilla warfare' strategy, they lived off the land and used their farms as a source of food, thus making their farms a key item in their many successes at the beginning of the war. When Kitchener realized that a traditional warfare style would not work against the Boers, he began initiating plans that would later cause much controversy in the British public.

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According to historian Thomas Pakenham, in March 1901, Lord Kitchener initiated plans to deter guerrillas. In a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined by a weekly 'bag' of killed, they captured and wounded Boers. They swept the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas including women and children. Large epidemics of diseases including measles, killed thousands, affecting children the most. It was the clearance of civilians and uprooting a nation that came to dominate the last phases of the war.

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As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy - including the systematic destruction of crops and the slaughtering or removal of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms to prevent the Boers from resupplying themselves from a home base, many tens of thousands of men, women, and children were forcibly moved into the camps. This was not the first appearance of concentration camps, as the Spanish had used them in Cuba during and after the Ten Years' War. However, the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which entire regions had been depopulated.

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Eventually, a total of 45 tented camps were built for Boer internees and 64 additional camps were built for black Africans. The vast majority of Boers who remained in the local camps were women and children. Between 18,000 and 26,000 women and children perished in these concentration camps due to diseases.

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The camps were poorly administered from the outset, and they became increasingly overcrowded when Lord Kitchener's troops implemented the internment strategy on a vast scale. Conditions were terrible for the health of the internees, mainly due to neglect, poor hygiene and bad sanitation. The supply of all items were unreliable, partly because of the constant disruption of communication lines by the Boers. The food rations were meager, and there was a two-tier allocation policy, whereby families of men still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others. The inadequate shelter, poor diet, bad hygiene, and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid, and dysentery to which the children were particularly vulnerable. Due to a shortage of modern medicine facilities and medical mistreatment, many internees died.

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The Confederate POW camp at Andersonville, Georgia, comes immediately to mind, where 13,000 of the 45,000 Union prisoners held there died from disease because of the appalling conditions.Would Trump's minions run their concentration camps humanely? Experience with the first Trump administration tells us resoundingly that they would not. Don't forget that for MAGAts the cruelty is the purpose. Besides, they don't even think that the people they'll be rounding up are human. I wonder how long before they start to refer to them as "rats" like Hitler's Nazis did about the Jews. And don't forget that, like the Nazi camps, Trump's camps won't just be for immigrants (which will include naturalized citizens arrested through Operation Second Look). Other "enemies of the state" like journalists and Democrats will also be imprisoned. And when they've rounded up farm labor and there's nobody to pick the crops, those camps would provide the slave labor needed -- that's what the Nazis used their prisoners for.Regarding Operation Second Look: But, you say, they're talking about deporting, not imprisoning in camps. Logistics, laddie, logistics. You need somewhere to hold them while arranging transport. Plus there are the citizens that they aren't yet able to strip of their citizenship yet, though Trump did have his eye on getting rid of birth-right citizenship anybody could be stripped of their citizenship.Imagine the absolute worst that they could do and then double it. You would still be denounced as a wild-eyed optimist.To quote from Firefly: "We're humped!"

My 9th-grade (1965-65) social studies teacher was a retired Chief Petty Officer who introduced us to Tom Lehrer and Bob Newhart. I think he also compared the "breadbaskets" of the USA and the USSR and the effects that geography had on them.The effects of weather on the growth of crops tend to change from year to year with the band of good growing weather tending to shift by latitude, north and south. Our "breadbasket" extends north and south from Texas to the Dakotas, so even if the weather turns bad it will still be good somewhere in that region; local crop failures will not result in crop failure for the entire country. But the USSR's "breadbasket", concentrated in the steppes that include Ukraine, runs east and west within a narrow band of latitudes, so if they get bad weather and suffer a crop failure, the entire country suffers as well.I don't know what point you were trying to make there. Securing that "breadbasket" under Russian control would be in Russia's interests, just as securing control of Crimea was for guaranteeing naval access to the Black Sea. But neither of those obvious motivations have anything to do with the propaganda "reasons" Putin has presented that that you echoed.And there are other means for protecting those interests other than naked aggression coupled with genocide (ie, he's seeking to eliminate Ukrainians as a different people than Russians with their own language, including by the mass abduction of Ukrainian children in order to relocate them to Russia to be raised by Russian families as Russians). Not in Trump's mind. The only one that any deal must benefit is Trump himself. He literally does not care for anybody other than himself. Not even his own children. So why would you ever think that he would care about us?Well, he does care about Putin and wants to keep his favor. Especially since Putin had basically put him in office. And I'm sure that Putin has been funneling money to Trump, perhaps in part as payment for some of those Top Secret/SCI documents that Trump had stolen (eg, at one point Trump specifically asked for highly classified information about our assets and then an astounding number of those assets started dying (stood too close to a window), getting arrested, or just plain disappearing -- coincidence? Or does Nance's Law apply: "Coincidence requires a lot of planning.").And don't forget Trump's multiple personal meetings with Putin, around three hours face-to-face alone with no other American present (OK, one time Trump had a translator, but he confiscated her notes and swore her to strict silence). One of Jered Kushner's tasks was to set up a back-channel phone link with Putin that excluded all government agencies (ie, no FBI, no NSA, no CIA, no State Dept, no nobody else). And he had several personal phone conversations with Putin while out of office for which he ordered everybody out of his office in order to talk in complete privacy. Repeated direct private communication with Putin with no American witnesses!It should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual of observers that Trump is a fucking treasonous Russian asset. Only a complete fucking idiot would try to deceive himself into thinking that Trump would ever represent American interest over Putin's interests. What? Where have you been since 2016? We all observed exactly how Trump would deal with Putin, exactly as he has always dealt with him!And what we also know is that this second Trump administration will be massively worse than the first one was.

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Graffiti in the opening of The Nasty Girl ("Das Schreckliche Mädchen", better translated as "The Terrible Girl", 1990):

I don't forget your arguments. It does take me a bit longer to really read them and utilize the right words to respond to them. I'm trying to slow down and smell the roses.

If so, a majority of voters are thus complete fucking idiots (to use your words).Why refer to Ukraine (and its people) simply as a "buffer"? How much more valuable are European lives than Ukrainian lives? Are IDF lives more valuable than Lebanese lives?My point is simply this: If we are to in any way take Mr.Trump at his word, we need to assume that he wants to stop the wars rather than accelerate them. If he fails to at least attempt this campaign promise, we need to hold his feet to the fire. The sanctions against Russia are not working.

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My point is simply this: If we are to in any way take Mr.Trump at his word, we need to assume that he wants to stop the wars rather than accelerate them. If he fails to at least attempt this campaign promise, we need to hold his feet to the fire. The sanctions against Russia are not working.

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Leaving aside the fact that Trump is a liar, why should we think he has any more credible plan to bring peace ? He didn’t have any plan to make Mexico pay for the wall, nor did he have any credible plan to replace the Affordable Care Act (nor does he even now, even though he promised such a plan twice in his previous term).And if he does have such a plan for Ukraine why should we think it is anything more than a plan to force Ukraine to surrender on terms favourable to Putin? It certainly doesn’t involve putting more pressure on Russia.Gaza is even worse. Neither Hamas nor Israel show much sign of taking heed of outside pressure to end hostilities. And there’s no sign he’s going to turn up the pressure on Israel - or that he can exert much pressure on Hamas at all.

Ukrainian lives are European lives.Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine is fighting a foreign invading army in its own country. Russia has been launching missiles from Russia into Ukraine for two years now, and you balk at Ukraine suddenly doing the same in order to attack the supplies and troops pouring into their nation? Why?Why are you supporting Russia and repeating their propoganda?

cause he's a very stupid person

...yes, and? Is this a shock to you?