BlueOak

That's most of what makes intelligence useful, holding a wider perspective. The further back you are, or the wider your perspective, the more you can see and take into account. This is why allies' or friends' voices are crucial in making the correct choices when you are emotionally too close to a subject. The people making these decisions on a strategic level will have a mind with a capacity greater than mine. Emotion is an excuse, but it's not a very good one for a professional in these positions.

@Karmadhi Apologies for linking the wrong article, I must have had a few open that day with everything going on. Most people did not have time to evacuate the areas under Russian occupation closer to the border, so cities like Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, or Lysychansk have high death tolls. I watched the devastation done to those places in the early days, and the civilians caught up in it. This is why I cannot consider the UN numbers to be serious. Much of those areas were completely wiped out. It is a pro-Russian position to tell anyone to surrender ground to appease the Russians for the second time, in the face of their 8th war in former USSR territories and an aggressive BRICS posture. It's frankly stupid to not acknowledge what that pattern brings. Unless Ukraine is put into NATO, Russia just rearms, reorganizes, and goes again for the third time. This is a clear pattern now, and Putin has repeatedly told us the territory he wants to recover. He'll keep doing so till he's stopped. It is also a reality that if someone can commit terror against a civilian population over two years, threaten nukes, cut off food supplies, and blackmail energy supplies, they will use these tools again if they succeed. It normalizes it for other countries to do so, such as Hamas to blanket target masses of civilians, or Israel to ethnically cleanse an area. As for futile resistance, it hasn't been futile so far, not while Ukraine has had the weapons to defend itself. Ukraine kicked Russia out of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Kherson, now holding the line despite being outshot by artillery 10 to 1. We are not talking about 2 people fighting, and one of them has moved away. That's 40 million people, many of whom live in those areas, and have had family and friends killed, tortured, or conscripted to fight for the Russians. There will be violence in these regions now regardless, because of the assumed, not accepted, change of authority. Authority doesn't shift because someone says that's the border now, millions of people don't just shrug, and say okay Russia, let's go back 30 years to the USSR days. There'll be violence in those areas for decades and a permanent military presence needed along the now-extended border and within the territory itself. Russia is a regressive, backward country run by corrupt despots who spend too much money on their military at the cost of their people. People are leaving en masse because they don't want to live there. Why would anyone outside of Russia want to go back 30 years to the USSR days, especially after all this bloodshed and terror Putin has inflicted on them? Ukraine can take back its territory if America gives it the weapons to do so. They are not doing this, they have cut off weapon supplies because the American government has gone so far right that it now drinks the Russian propaganda. I just wish people would be honest about things, half of America backs Russia, and is in favor of a tyrant. America isn't a democratic leader anymore, it's falling into fascism.

@Ajay0 The Russian military is badly equipped, badly trained, has bad supply lines, daily partisan activity within its borders, has no officer core, increasingly less control over its industries (china buying them up), and little discipline They have numbers, and more weapons now since America is not continuing to back Ukraine - I'm just going to call that like it is. This makes it doubly silly when people try to talk about America being the belligerent factor here. The Russian economy is Chinese. Nobody fights an expensive large war on its doorstep and increases the power of its economy. China is slowly buying Russia up. Again, this is not a terrible result for the West, because Russia has become China's proxy between NATO and China. Do you honestly think Europe, with an economy ten times the size of Russia, is suffering more than Russia domestically? They can't even maintain their dams or infrastructure, outside of the two cities Moscow and St Petersburg that they show off to the world Russia is a decaying country that's had millions of young people leave it and for good reason, it's not a global power, it's a regional power that spends and maintains a military as if it were a superpower. It's an old empire that wants to be bigger than it is (like England used to be), and everyone in this war (at least those of us watching the ground action) has seen how ineffectual the Russians are against a country half its size, who didn't even have much of a military before this country began. People have been telling me for over two years, just wait, just wait, Russia is close. Even out shooting Ukraine 10 to 1, if you believe the reports, they are stuck in the same place they've always been: Throwing mass numbers of bodies into a meat grinder and getting a few hundred meters out of it. @Karmadhi Firstly, thank you for being the first pro-Russian supporter who acknowledges ethnic cleansing regardless of where it happens on a map. I genuinely appreciated someone who didn't try to pretend something didn't happen. Those who are compliant will still be conscripted. In democratic countries, we don't bow down to dictators, we resist them. A dictator is functionally different from a democracy, and the populations are going to resist when they are placed under one. - A miscalculation from Russia is how the local population was going to receive them. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1147082 Even the UN acknowledges 30,000 civilians dead, and 70,000 injured. What's usually known as 100,000 civilian casualties in common reporting. They also acknowledge that the death toll will be higher than this. This is without access to the graveyard that was Mariupol, the cities in the east that were flattened, or taking into account every civilian Russia illegally conscripted in the LPR, DPR to fight their own country, and killed for resisting them in the occupied areas. The Azov Brigade again? That was a few hundred people who were reorganized into a proper military unit before the war, and the leader left the unit. Russia's LPR and DPR militias were active in that region, armed, and given manpower by Russia to cause trouble in the area. Amazingly, people think that out of nowhere, a peaceful region suddenly becomes hostile on its own. - A coup happened, Russia obviously didn't like this and started trying to break those regions away through the militias, which caused a low-level conflict, and when it realized it couldn't, this became one more reason for it to invade.

There are no sensible decisions in this war. Hamas attacks Israel's civilians - Stupid. (Nobody tell me thousands of people were planned and organized without leadership in Qatar or Iran.) Israel ethnically cleanses northern Gaza - Stupid. America and the UK back this up by saying 'oh I couldn't not do' - Stupid Iran's proxies try to disrupt global shipping, drawing in more countries. - Understandable, but stupid. Israel attacks Iran's consulate - Stupid. Iran takes the bait - Stupid I understand why these things are not stupid from the leadership's perspective. That far-right governments' have to appease their far-right population. I understand why the initial attack by Hamas happened. I understand why Israel created a refugee camp in Gaza and reacted out of survival/fear. I understand all of it, but still, with even a small measure of distance, every action here leads one way.

Zero surprise. It's been predictable for months that this would become another regional conflict. Both sides kept pushing it, and the world is so far right-wing that all the governments in power react virtually the same. We have one more chance not to go further. The next few days is going to decide what happens. If it's a regional war, it'll be no surprise that China moves against Taiwan. I'd be surprised if that didn't happen in the next couple of months. For America, this all makes a Trump presidency very likely, and for the rest of the world, making it three ongoing regional wars, which is close enough to call it WW3.

@zazen Yes I would usually wait for further evidence, but this seems directly related to safety, especially for those people in Israel right now who should seek shelter.

@Hardkill Thank you. We should add all the other things that make a presidential campaign successful, such as. Money, backers, a party apparatus, name recognition, an identity that fits the base, an understanding of what issues are trending now, and media coverage. It's one thing to read these things, it's very different to see someone go through the process and attempt it however, that's the value of watching people go through the motions.

It is difficult to find an informative video, as they are all live or just reports. But apparently, a wave of drones is on the way from Iran to Israel, it will take a few hours to get there.

They decide the level of name recognition people get with their coverage. They put the choices in people's minds. Or they don't.

More people should speak up more often. More voices should be heard and debated. That way people would feel listened to, and not suppressed. *Here, for example, the practical reality of running for the president was shown, and it was only shown because Cenk did that.

Nobody gave any Biden challenger airtime, barely mentioning them. This is why there was no challenge to Biden. I am struggling to see why you are defending an anti-democratic process: Not having debates and a primary. I get you want a certain result, so you frame the argument that way, I do that too. Here, I can step back and look at America still slowly sliding off the cliff into fascism, without an attempt to appear democratic. The appearance was worth something to governance because that's all most of us see, and undermining that undermines trust. Practically, choosing from multiple voices/minds is better than two.

Oh the west, let's do the BRICS version? It's always fun generalizing. Do you want dictatorships to keep invading Ukraine, to return to a state where countries keep fighting wars over borders, where China keeps expanding, Iran keeps expanding, and Russia keeps expanding? Where they can threaten nukes, food, and wage wars of terror against populations for us to cave to their demands. Where they silence dissent, and assassinate those who disagree with their worldview. Steal technologies, mess around in elections, and infiltrate our governments? Do you want to return to a time when nation-states fought over land, and petty egoic dictators could slaughter hundreds of thousands of people with no resistance or because their ego got in the way? or Everything the opposite of that? It's a matter of choice. Make no mistake. There is not a single chance Russia is winning. It will continue to throw its population away, be swallowed up by China, and let its influence decay into a shell of its former of its self. BRICS can't admit fault and keeps dragging this on.

Health Back down to 15 stone from 16. (I need to be about 12). I have a heart issue, and am unsure how bad. My vision is affected, but I cannot afford to get it fixed. I run twice a week, and walk every day I can. Sometimes, like now, my knees/ankles are shot, and I need a rest. I have started very limited resistance training again. I usually do a lot of weights, but I have let the muscle and weight come off so I can run because I was up to 17 stone at my peak. My resistance training is press-ups, sit-ups, and rowing currently, with a bit of strength and grip training using free weights. Finances Forever zero, but never in debt. I've got 200 in the bank reserved for ISBNs, which is 170 for 10 or 90 for 1. Price gouging there a bit, if you ask me. Affording food is tough, which is why I have not bought the ISBN's for my novels. Personal development I still don't work in a reliable, consistent manner. I work in sprints, where I do more than most people can understand. I wrote a book in two weeks; it takes some people two or three years. Then I dip into depression, where I am now, probably a 4/10, with some spells lower. If I try to maintain a strict work routine, it's like I am constantly fighting myself every day. With work, I usually end up working myself to near death, taking all the hours I can and then quitting. (Ghosting life in work) Career I plan to start working on freelancing sites and doing copyediting work. I am seeking some financing to do the appropriate Udemy courses. While I have written creatively for thirty years, I am also trying in my own time to give myself the years I skipped out on at university and school, by doing free exercises. I have found Engvid.com's advanced courses quite useful, as well as the more difficult copyediting exercises the New York Times offers online. Part of me will fit this field very well, building it up from home, with a certain logical outcome required from the work. However, creativity, not accuracy, is my strong point. So I have my concerns about the end level of my ability too. I also worry I am doing this for the end outcome, a steady build-up of a client base and money, not because it's what I enjoy doing. However, I am so far in the hole and have been there so long because of my finances, to hell with it. At the least, it'll make me a better writer. My novel is mostly done, but I keep putting off finishing it, or reworking the ending. The urge to write out the concepts has passed, and now I feel I am trying to structure it as a novel, not a story, squeezing it into shape. I keep adding things that I think people will enjoy, like sprinkling chocolate on a cake. Relationships None. No friends anymore, no partner. I told myself I would stop starting relationships because I keep hurting women emotionally. My ghosting and depressive periods meant I always pulled back. Ten years ago, I was again drawing back from a girl I loved, twice breaking her heart by ghosting her. She's an author; every few years I look at her work, and it's bittersweet to see her happy, successful, and living life well. Knowing that I would have kept her from that happiness, shows me that I am not a person who should be involved with anyone. Nobody understands why I ghost as a pattern, and I can't blame them, but I do it with everyone/everything in my life. Self-care Pretty good. Emotionally, and psychologically, I have put in a lot of work over the years to know myself well, and can easily see patterns in others. I don't have the dip in emotional depression I used to have near as often, but it does happen. Usually, when my expectations are built for some reason, even though I know they are a big trigger for a mood swing, sometimes they sneak up on me. Aka finding a job I don't hate, or working for a company I don't despise. Home I'm still stuck in a three-room extension, living out of a box. Life I am increasingly alienated from the wider world's trajectory because I won't give up aspects of life that are thrown away or discarded. I think reality as a whole has shifted into a cold, uncaring mindset, and I refuse to follow it. I see this in day-to-day people and the wider world. I see racism out in the open, bigotry, and hatred normalized. Part of my developing heart issue on a meta-level was 'bigger me' saying, do you want out? I said no and decided to do what I could to correct it. I do know it'll be a long time before I reincarnate here again, so I keep deciding to live the years out to their conclusion, but there are so many other possibilities to reincarnate too. Free time As much as I need right now.

Yes, that is my experience from watching those people I see suffer. After the trauma, cause, event, or trigger, I see two things. Often, giving up something is required to stop suffering or heal, a belief, a pattern, or an emotion, sometimes we are willing, sometimes not. Developing an understanding of why that person suffered can become a priority to them, so they don't experience it again and can help others. I also see some of us, return to the pattern that causes it, out of familiarity and a skewed understanding of 'that's how the world is' or 'that's how I am', and remain there potentially all their lives. Obviously the suffering they experience is not just contained to them, it influences everything in life.

In war, surviving is more important than having families. Fear and bombs don't motivate people to have kids, generally speaking, except just having comfort in their partner's arms. Outside of war in poor environments, children are more common, and there are many varied reasons for this. Ethnic cleansing is where you remove a local population from an area, usually to resettle, but it's the removal that is the point. This happened in northern Gaza, that's a fact. Genocide is the systematic killing of a culture or population, which through starvation Israel has been edging closer to but I've tried to generally steer clear of calling it a genocide due to the numbers involved. Ethnic cleansing fits the current war more, it's not much better, and both are as far-right and insane as it gets. Same as Russia, they have moved out, or conscripted to kill off Ukrainians from the eastern occupied regions, that's ethnic cleansing of a civilian population, and it's been normalized by Russia and especially China, now Israel. Unless people start developing respect for or care for human life it's only going to get worse until they do. People need to call out Russia, China, and Israel for ethnic cleansing, just like they do America and Russia for getting rich off weapon sales. It's lunacy that I have to tell people ethnic cleansing is not something you should be defending, but it shows how extreme right the world has tilted. It also shows how people's bias gets them to attempt to justify Russia or Israel in their ethnic cleansing actions, while hating seeing it happen in the other country.

I agree, I keep making that point but it gets a lot of pushback. It's about balance. As an easy example, if 30 million or 30% of people are in the middle class with a fair amount of collective wealth, then politics will have to represent their interests as well. Money rules politics. So the poor can be ignored, suppressed, or given lip service. Only the people with money need to be engaged with on a practical level, because what can the poor do? Nothing. Suppression has reached the level of the poor never organizing into a collective mass. If a healthy middle class exists, then the average person's interests are closer to being represented by their government. The average person is closer to the middle class than they are to a billionaire. I get people shouting EXTREME LEFT WING VIEW I sit there thinking, what? We've gone so far that advocating for a middle class is now somehow considered socialist. Socialism, for those confused, would be a leveling of all classes, not a hierarchy of classes.

Bomb my home, kill my family and I won't like your country much either. The strategy you are promoting, separating people from Hamas, is not being practiced. Israel is instead strengthening Hamas and Iran by treating the population as Hamas, as you are doing here, repeating the cycle. There will always be an authority in Palestine. No plan is being made for what that will be. Even if Hamas changed the name, the people would still hate Israel. The entire strategy should have been the question: How do we separate Hamas from the people? Then How do we put, encourage, or get an authority in Palestine that isn't a violent gang?

Because all sides want something the others cannot give, force became the only way to settle it. There will likely be no capitulation, just an eventual stalemate where the lines are held. Such large amounts of territory don't change hands overnight, and the death toll for each country won't be forgotten for generations. Russia will be involved in Ukraine for decades now, whatever anyone's judgment of their victories/defeats, reasons, or motivations. What could motivate Ukraine to lose land, not join NATO, and demilitarize? Nobody will agree to that after this war. Russia to give up the land it's taken, or stop Ukraine from joining NATO. Nothing. Europe to stop supporting Ukraine in defending its eastern flank from Russia? Nothing. China or Iran from supplying what Russia needs to keep fighting, or BRICS generally from helping its economy? Nothing. However, the Americans holding up arms shipments are giving Russia a large advantage in firepower, so they may crack the front in an area. The recent attacks across the front didn't make headway, thankfully. The American government has been infiltrated more successfully than most by Russian interests and propaganda. Another thing about democracies that authoritarians have historically underestimated is the level of resistance in their occupied areas.

I've just quoted exactly what I said. I said the man's comment about people ignoring Russia was a lie, and they are straight out of Putin's mouth. There were repeated attempts and talks. He might not like the words or results, as you don't, but to pretend they didn't happen is a lie. I even told you why that was the case. Someone challenging your narrative upsets you like it does Putin, I understand, but when you feel that and get petty, question why rather than insult the person doing it.

No. Here is what I replied to and said: Ritters Quote: We ignored all efforts by Russia to resolve the Ukrainian issue peacefully. - End quote I said: A straight lie from a dictator's mouth. Also known as, I spent decades pulling away from NATO and the EU, fearmongering about them to my people, and when our perspectives don't align (surprise surprise) I attack. - End Quote I did not say talks didn't happen, I said the perspectives are so far apart now they were never going to align. The cultures are so different, that's what happens when two cultures living side by side pull so far apart and cause conflict. Is Russia alone in that responsibility no, but they sure leaned into the hatred.

It's a lie, Putin has engineered the hatred in the Russian population as a way of maintaining control, and then attacked when the perspectives were too far apart. Ukraine offered Neutrality and Putin ignored it. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-offers-neutrality-exchange-nato-style-security-guarantees-russia-talks-2022-03-29/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/30/ukraine-offer-neutrality-meaning-constitution-russia-what-does-neutral-status-country-mean-how-would-it-work

I'm accusing you of using your hatred of America to intentionally avoid talking about a European war. But I see now it's because you really do not understand NATO or Europe. America does not control Europe, this is a delusion on your part. I can't put it nicely I'm sorry. Europe is a jigsaw of different cultures, voices, and perspectives. This is something you, Putin, and Russian supporters can't see. So they always frame their points of view by talking about America, a country that isn't even in EUROPE! They always see one voice, but instead, they are dealing with many, so their perspective is always lacking or flawed. Do you not see how infuriating that is lol. A Reality check: Europe's GDP: $24.02 trillion America's GDP: $26.950 trillion Europe has 751 million people. America has 334 million people. Europe is 10,180,000 km squared America is 9,833,520 km squared I'm not going to bother cutting Russia off of this, but you can estimate, because that's another thing to understand too, this is a continental war between European powers. It's one that's happened before, and likely is going to happen again. The concept of 'the west' to me is relatively new, before this war, I didn't even associate myself with 'the west', I was English, now I've accepted it as a label people use, often incorrectly. Before this war, the NATO power encroaching that you keep telling me about was breaking apart, it was much more nebulous than defined. That's how Europe is, so many different voices pulling it in different ways. To us, it was a treaty, not a single power, a treaty which makes using it for offensive war all but impossible because of all the different competing interests. If you were to focus on the Eastern European region, you'd have a better understanding of the war, but as you've said to me, you think its America that's driving it. When, in fact, we are closer to war because of Eastern Europe now (and I included Russia in this obviously) The further west you go, the less they are involved in the conflict. The further east, the more their security is threatened. As a consequence, you can't even see the war itself, or the reasons for it on the ground.

Scott Ritter as the source. A convicted sex offender, who ran over to Russia to continue to vent his frustrations for a moronic Iraq war, and because he's a degenerate who didn't like being punished for it. Source; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13089135 @zazen 'Ultra-nationalist government?' He means the least nationalist government so far. This is a repeated Russian lie about Nazis, the far right got 2% of the vote in the Ukraine election, much less than Russia's far right is or was. If anything war increases right wing views out of necessity. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_election 'We continued to push for the expansion of NATO to include Ukraine even though a sitting U.S. Ambassador warned it could lead to war.' Countries join NATO out of fear of Russia, something Russia has instilled in them over centuries. This would take an understanding that there are more than two countries in the world, something a Russian puppet like Ritter cannot do. We used the CIA to funnel money and weapons to Chechen rebels to help foment violence intended to break up Russia into component parts. Oh right, so now America is blamed for Russia invading Chechnya twice, and reducing it to rubble, a country over two hundred times smaller than Russia (quick calculation) is supposed to 'break it apart'. Ritter's delusions go into overdrive. We allowed the CIA to build 12 bases inside Ukraine for the purpose of carrying operations targeting Russia. Source for some of these? Other than a man with an axe to grind? I'd be very happy if it were true at this point, better than 18-year-old soldiers fighting out their disagreements. We built a Ukrainian military designed for the sole purpose of fighting Russians. One he got right yes. America and England were two of the few countries outside of Eastern Europe, that could see the Russian pattern of continually invading former USSR countries, even the Ukrainians didn't believe they'd be hit. They trained and prepared an army which ended up being very valuable in pushing the Russians out of Ukraine, without it we'd be in WW3 already. We ignored all efforts by Russia to resolve the Ukrainian issue peacefully. A straight lie from a dictator's mouth. Also known as I spent decades pulling away from NATO and the EU, fearmongering about them to my people, and when our perspectives don't align (surprise surprise) I attack. We used the CIA to create a malignant political “opposition” designed to undermine the Russian government. Aka anyone who speaks against the 'glorious' fragile dictator is killed. We facilitated the genocide of Russians in the Donbas by supporting Ukrainian/German/French non-compliance with the Minsk accords. These regions lived in peace till Russia came. We supplied tens of billions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine in order to sustain a conflict we hoped would lead to the strategic defeat of Russia. Yes, to a stalemate to control and hold the war where it is. You have a warped understanding of the world, General. Russia isn’t at war with us. We’re at war with Russia. Hyperbole. You'll know when WW3 starts.

I can keep pointing them out, but it only fits your narrative to talk about America and NATO. I can keep pointing out how you can't even see Europe, let alone Eastern Europe in your narrative. To consider the region itself, you'd get closer to the other side's position because it'd be closer to where the war is being fought. It's like me telling you about India and all I talk about is China and Brazil NB - I'm not saying you'll agree with me either but your argument would be vastly improved, because it would contain the region that is in focus, as the focus of your argument.