War in Europe. It has begun.

[jakelafort]

I am surprised it took him this long to come out with that. The next thing might be ultimatums…if you do not surrender immediately i will do x. If you do not surrender within a day after x i will do y and continue in this vein until there is nothing left of Ukraine.

Stay out of Russia’s way. Stop interfering with their tyranny over their own. Encourage reform from within. Give rewards to those within governments who honor and advocate for civil rights, for diminution of influence of business in government, for universal health care and a safety net, support education that has legit critical thinking and includes realistic examination of human history without permitting the whitewashing of each country’s atrocities…

[jakelafort]

Oh, and i forgot to mention how we need coverage on a nonpartisan basis of each nations doings. Expose the bad shit in each country and make it an international project…

[_Robert_]

Unseen wrote:

Putin declares that any further sanctions or establishment of a no-fly zone will be considered a declaration of war on Russia. What’s next? Probably ANY aid to Ukraine or its people will be considered an act of war. Seriously, is there any way to stay out of warring with Russia?

Don’t worry, Bush Jr looked into his eyes, saw his soul and it was good. This is what happens when a supernation like the US is going down. We are “led by believers” who are basically children. And awe, they don’t get to run the world show anymore.

The executive boards went out of country for cheap labor, we filled our houses with Chinese shit, fought and lost a series of ideological, idiotic and religious foreign wars, neglected alternative energy development, totally botched the pandemic. Our elected morons get paid to pander to special interests and wow, we had a wonderful insurrection, powered by Russians via FB and hosted by our own orange Putin. And now we are gonna save Ukraine, LOL?  Are you fucking kidding me?

[Unseen]

The first casualty of war, aided and abetted by journalists who don’t do basic fact checking. For example, someone show them how to do a reverse image search.

[_Robert_]

Unseen wrote:

The first casualty of war, aided and abetted by journalists who don’t do basic fact checking. For example, someone show them how to do a reverse image search.

 

Maybe we should start with Jimmy Dore..from wiki… there’s more actually…

In a July 2020 video, Dore erroneously said Joe Biden had once “hosted a black face affair with a bunch of rich white people”, showing an altered clip that had been circulating on social media since January which had darkened the face of black singer Jerome Powell.[28][29] The video received over 100,000 views in one day and has since been removed from YouTube.[28]

 

In 2017, Dore argued that the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhun was likely to have been a “false flag”, orchestrated by groups opposed to Bashar al-Assad.[38] The investigative journalism site Bellingcat reported that Dore received $2,500 from the Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees in 2017. The Association is responsible for the Serena Shim Award and is described by Bellingcat as a pro-Assad lobby group.[38] According to Bellingcat, Dore featured Eva Bartlett in “another 2017 conspiracy-theory segment” about Syria.[38]

[Unseen]

@Robert

Unless you can refute anything Dore said in the posted video, all you did was issue a poisoning of the well. So, unless you found anything incorrect in the posted video, your little refutation was beside the point.

The old saying that “The first casualty of war is the truth” remains as applicable as ever.

[_Robert_]

Unseen wrote:

@robert Unless you can refute anything Dore said in the posted video, all you did was issue a poisoning of the well. So, unless you found anything incorrect in the posted video, your little refutation was beside the point. The old saying that “The first casualty of war is the truth” remains as applicable as ever.

I don’t have time to fact check everything I read and see. Maybe you do. I’ll just stick with sources that have proven to me that they attempt to be reliable for decades…like the BBC. That assclown doesn’t make the grade.

[Unseen]

@Robert

List of political comedians (aka “assclowns”): Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, The Smothers Brothers, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Stephen Colbert, Dennis Miller, Lewis Black, and Jimmy Dore.

Here are two of our favorite comedians disagreeing about where the coronavirus came from. One of them is wrong.

We all have the right to be wrong sometimes, including Jimmy Dore.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Unseen.

[PopeBeanie]

Unseen wrote:

The optimism of the warmonger made Mr Putin lazy. He was so sure Ukraine would fall rapidly that he did not prepare his people for it. Some troops have been told they are on exercises, or that they will be welcomed as liberators. Citizens are not ready for a fratricidal conflict with their fellow Slavs. Having been assured that there would be no war, much of the elite feels humiliated. They are horrified at Mr Putin’s recklessness.

I think you’re right, but is it possible that he’s temporarily feigning incompetence, perhaps to suck us and/or NATO into intervening? There’s little doubt that Russia has the power to win the war, given more time, time which he could also use to watch some other Russian oligarchs to fall by the wayside during sanctions, where he could pick up at least some of the pieces they leave behind. Or do all the oligarchs also keep order at home? And how much power do his generals have to revolt?

In any case, yeah, maybe Putin’s ripe for a fall, and in case that’s true, I’m for prolonging sanctions and the war. I do not want to see this megalomaniac and murderer just keep grabbing for more power and riches. Russia has a lot of relatively recent history of leaders who violently wipe out their own people to gain power, don’t they? (I’ve never been great at world history.)

[PopeBeanie]

Unseen wrote:

Here are two of our favorite comedians disagreeing about where the coronavirus came from. One of them is wrong.

Jon’s reasoning is so unsupportable that I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from him when he said this, and only today have I determined that he wasn’t joking. The fact is that no one has any evidence yet of exactly where the virus came from, so most scientists say they have to keep their mind open while believing the probability that it came from the wild. I understand a fair amount of how those probabilities are estimated, and I agree with them.

No one, absolutely no one has enough evidence to declare one way or the other if Covid resulted from a lab leak. (Unless China knows and isn’t admitting to it. I won’t deny that possibility and other possibilities, in the same way I’ll admit I’m technically an agnostic but still choose to fly an atheist flag.)

Meanwhile, while there were even less bits of evidence back in 2021, Trump and Cult 45 were clearly making unsupportable declarations and pointing fingers at China, for political purposes. Those declarations alone “poisoned the well” of their credibility, back then and now. I have a lot of respect for Peter Daszak’s research in Wuhan, who Cult 45 has chosen to smear, again based on nothing more than wild assumptions and political leanings.

Speaking of poisoned wells, I don’t believe that all are necessarily, permanently poisoned, yet I’ll remain suspicious or skeptical.

So the more recent of Jon’s statements perplexes me too, namely his statement that he’s perplexed or disappointed or disgruntled (I forget exactly what he said) about why the virus origin theories are so left vs right political. DUH! Jon’s not really that clueless, is he?

Anyway, this topic is mostly off-topic to this thread, so I’m willing to break this out into its own thread if it attracts enough response. I have virological, immunological, zoonotic, microbiological, and epidemiological experts in the field whom I trust and pay attention to, so I could keep going on and on about it. Say “gain of function”, and I’ll spill.

[Unseen]

$800 billion for the military and nobody says anything. But if you want $800 million for social programs the right-wing “budget hawks” will be all “How’re ya gonna pay for it?!!!”

[Unseen]

Putin’s War Looks Increasingly Insane

The bottom line:

“I’ve watched and listened to Putin for over thirty years,” former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul recently tweeted. “He has changed. He sounds completely disconnected from reality.”

Long-distance psychiatry is not the proudest field of medicine. From a geopolitical perspective, though, whether Putin is suffering from some clinical ailment is less important than whether his actions have come untethered from any rational calculation of his own best interest. Putin’s remarks Thursday suggest that the Russian leader is a madman in the way that counts.

I would say that our best hope is for Russia’s cabinet and the country’s military to turn on him as they realize that they’re dealing with someone who could bring ruin down on Russia and the whole world if he continues to misplay his hand.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg,

While I don’t counsel theft as part of activism against tyranny–it makes resisters the moral equal of the tyrant, wins no minds, and, in the case of Pussy Riot, violates the Punk ethic of DIY (Do It Yourself)–scrounging from your own resources or asking neighbors for Dumpster Divings is perfectly acceptable and cromulent with peaceful resistance to tyranny.

Even if violent resistance is unavoidable, there are still limits to what resisters should do. If civilian property is damaged, resisters should do everything possible to clean up and fix damage and set people whole.

I remember cheering for Pussy Riot when I saw them on TV performing in the Orthodox Church years ago: “Pussy Riot! YAAAAAY!”

(I wouldn’t normally support doing this in a strictly private house of worship, but since the Orthodox Church is just a tentacle of Putin, I thought of it like a protest at the DMV Office.😁)

My Mom, for whom I was caring after a stroke called back: “Stop saying that word!”

I then responded like Issac Hayes on “Shaft:” “I’m talkin’ ’bout Pussy Riot! Can ya dig it?”

Mom, in exasperation of her self-perceived failure to raise me ‘proper’ said: “*Sigh!* Yeah, I guess we can dig it!” 😁

She never kept up with politics and just didn’t understand that taking a stand against tyranny is more important than shock over dirty words.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake,

am surprised it took him this long to come out with that. The next thing might be ultimatums…if you do not surrender immediately i will do x. If you do not surrender within a day after x i will do y and continue in this vein until there is nothing left of Ukraine.

Stay out of Russia’s way. Stop interfering with their tyranny over their own. Encourage reform from within. Give rewards to those within governments who honor and advocate for civil rights, for diminution of influence of business in government, for universal health care and a safety net, support education that has legit critical thinking and includes realistic examination of human history without permitting the whitewashing of each country’s atrocities…

And just how do you propose to get Authoritarians to respect Individual Civil and Human Rights if you surrender to the predations of Authoritarians?

And how do you propose that Citizens be free if Governments can dangle their economic livelihood and health care over their heads?

And how do you expect Citizens to be taught Logic, Reason, and Critical Thinking when Government has a monopoly over education and media?

And why should Ukraine surrender to Putin anyway? The Ukrainians are destroying hundreds of Putin’s aircraft and tanks, slaughtering Putin’s troops by the thousands, then sending out photos of dead troops and the modern equivalent of prank calls, demoralizing and overwhelming Putin’s State media mouthpieces!

Putin’s invasion grinds to a halt: Kyiv claims to have destroyed dozens of Russian helicopters overnight, retaken a city, and killed 11,000 troops while Russians have captured no significant territory sparking hopes Ukraine could win the war
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10585145/Ukraine-war-Zelensky-declares-god-not-forgive-Russians-target-civilians.html

Putin’s Henchmen Rage About Getting Trolled With ‘Endless Photos’ of Dead Russian Troops
Julia Davis Sun, March 6, 2022, 12:44 PM·
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/putin-henchmen-rage-getting-trolled-174455709.html

If you think it’s all right to surrender to tyranny, even without so much as non-violent resistance, then you should learn to sing this song below, in Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Parsi, Esperanto, and any other language your future talkmasters demand of you:

Leadbelly–Pick A Bail of Cotton

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Mwking "Putin's aircraft and tanks" the object of destruction in the sentence

[jakelafort]

Encotunes indites as the Loonys fight:

And just how do you propose to get Authoritarians to respect Individual Civil and Human Rights if you surrender to the predations of Authoritarians?

And how do you propose that Citizens be free if Governments can dangle their economic livelihood and health care over their heads?

And how do you expect Citizens to be taught Logic, Reason, and Critical Thinking when Government has a monopoly over education and media?

And why should Ukraine surrender to Putin anyway? The Ukrainians are destroying hundreds of Putin’s aircraft and tanks, slaughtering Putin’s troops by the thousands, then sending out photos of dead troops and the modern equivalent of prank calls, demoralizing and overwhelming Putin’s State media mouthpieces!

Putin’s invasion grinds to a halt: Kyiv claims to have destroyed dozens of Russian helicopters overnight, retaken a city, and killed 11,000 troops while Russians have captured no significant territory sparking hopes Ukraine could win the war
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10585145/Ukraine-war-Zelensky-declares-god-not-forgive-Russians-target-civilians.html

Putin’s Henchmen Rage About Getting Trolled With ‘Endless Photos’ of Dead Russian Troops
Julia Davis Sun, March 6, 2022, 12:44 PM·
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/putin-henchmen-rage-getting-trolled-174455709.html

If you think it’s all right to surrender to tyranny, even without so much as non-violent resistance, then you should learn to sing this song below, in Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Parsi, Esperanto, and any other language your future talkmasters demand of you:

Authoritarians won’t respect human rights whether there is resistance of passivity. But when there is resistance and it fails the consequences during and in the aftermath are a little awful and then some. Additionally the irresponsibility in risking lives of those outside the conflict is manifest. I doubt anybody predicted the occurrences with nuclear facilities. So the actual resultant harms may not be predictable but harms with potential for insane damage will occur if Ukraine continues to play out as a Nato policy. Leave the Chinese and the Russians to settle these conflicts on their own. There is no way i can see USA tolerating incursions from without if we have similar conflicts. The crisis with Cuba demonstrates that.

Dangle dangle little world, how i wondered what you were, now i dangle too, and do you wonder? Yeah well nice little soundbites at the desirability of libertarianism. Reality and Tunes may not be synchronized. Everything else in life is either compromised or ineffably atrocious without healthcare, a roof and scraps. The angle of the dangle will either strangle or mangle lest one has the basics…

Government, religion and culture have a stranglehold over and are an impediment to reason. (I am not even sure more than a small fraction of humans can think well under ideal conditions.) As it is there are roughly 2 billion Muslims and the degree of mind-bending stupidity is incalculable. Throw in the balance of mindfucking cultism and a healthy percentage of world population is doomed to its birth place like an Indian Untouchable. Additionally there are countless well educated ideologues whose apotheosis of their dogma or ideology is nearly as untouchable as the fallibility of Quran. And then there are the mindless patriots…

It is hard to ascertain the real scoop in Ukraine as to deaths and who fucked whom and how badly. But it promises to get worse.. much worse. It is amazing how cavalier and liberal noncombatants are with the lives of those in the firestorm. Not me. I give greater value to the lives then i do to empty slogans.

It is amazing how this conflict which does not amount to a a leaky piss in a sewer relative to the history of oppression and atrocities is given so much attention. Protests all over…non stop media coverage while Chief Inspector Clousea asks the myriad victims of injustice in other places for a license for his minken. Right in our backyard there have been countless victims of cartels who felt they had nothing to lose by coming to a nation that once promised refuge to the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Instead they were greeted like one would expect in the case of wretched refuse. The civil wars and genocides in Somalia, Rwanda, Darfur and elsewhere get negligible coverage. Nobody crying the blues up and down even though Europeans and Americans could intervene and actually help.

Why is the spotlight on this conflict? Is it because they’re White Christians? There is nothing rational or congruent from my vantage in the reaction from without to this conflict relative to others..

This conflict has a potential precedent when superpowers endeavor to subdue former parts of their nation who have become independent. If you play this scene over and over eventually it will have catastrophic results beyond the inevitable and foreseeable. Change needs to come from within. There is no way in the world that one man ought to have so much influence over so many. It is insanity. North Korea for instance has one asshole who has immense power and terrorizes an entire nation. No need to discuss Putin.. I don’t hold much hope humans will be around for long but if there is any chance we have to care about each other. We need to see each other more as humans than as others in different tribes. We need an honest examination of human history, its failures and ways to ameliorate our state of affairs. It would require a massive grass roots effort. I am not even going to expand on my ideas because i don’t see any realistic path. As i indicated earlier the ideas are chimerical. THE PROBLEM WITH HUMANS IS HUMANS

[Author]

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