Russian Ukraine Invasion

[confused2]

^^^ Fox News aren't reporting it .. AI spoof?

[C C]

^^^ Fox News aren't reporting it .. AI spoof?

Maybe Trump should have AI do all of his speeches. There was another one that Yazata temporarily posted last week on a different topic. My gosh -- I just realized we're going to elect an AI-generated candidate someday. Ya' can't beat 'em.

[confused2]

^^^ Fox News aren't reporting it .. AI spoof?

Maybe Trump should have AI do all of his speeches. There was another one that Yazata temporarily posted last week on a different topic. My gosh -- I just realized we're going to elect an AI-generated candidate someday. Ya' can't beat 'em.

You could have God moving in mysterious ways in the top right hand corner OR .. go for broke .. elect HIM (HER/IT)

[Secular Sanity]

^^^ Fox News aren't reporting it .. AI spoof?

Not AI, but old. Sorry. Thanks for catching it.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...74633.html

[Secular Sanity]

Still concerning though. 

Where's Yazata on this one? 

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qfrSoZexxlw

[C C]

Still concerning though. 

Where's Yazata on this one? 

https://youtu.be/qfrSoZexxlw?feature=shared

Given the number of NK troops deployed to aid Russia, I'm not sure that really warrants being the excuse for the missile and other upgraded privileges granted Ukraine. Of course, there might be more North Koreans on the way, but until they get well over 20,000 -- is the risk really worth it?

I mean, factoring in the timing, too -- it smells like there's another reason or two tucked away in an isolated room, suffering a bad case of backdoor trots.

Why now?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bid...r-AA1uqQ9f

EXCERPTS: Anatol Lieven, the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, pointed to three possible factors:

The “more negative way of assessing this” is that the Biden administration is seeking to scuttle Trump’s promises to end the fighting;

the “more positive” take is that the Biden administration is seeking to strengthen Ukraine’s hand before future negotiations;

and the third alternative is that the policy change was needed to respond to shifting conditions on the ground.

“It’s rare that a decision of this kind is taken simply for one reason,” he said. “My own feeling is that the Biden administration’s decision is a mixture of all these things.”

[...] Officials have told the Post and other US media that the change was largely motivated by Russia’s deployment of about 10,000 North Korean soldiers to the Kursk region as it pushes to expel Ukrainian forces. The move, they said, is meant to deter Pyongyang from sending any more of its forces to aid Russia.

It is no secret that the Biden administration and Trump have vastly diverging views on the future of the conflict in Ukraine.

Biden, a staunch believer in NATO, has promised perpetual support for Kyiv with the aim of eventually expelling Russia from Ukrainian territory. Trump has been sceptical of US aid to Kyiv – and of the NATO alliance as a whole – and has said he will pressure both Ukraine and Russia to end the war.

A Trump campaign adviser this month suggested the screws could be turned on Ukraine to relinquish at least some territory to Moscow as Trump’s ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin further stoke Kyiv’s disquiet.

The timing of the decision in the wake of the election may, therefore, be twofold, said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It may strengthen Ukraine before future talks while upping the political stakes for Trump within his own party.

“Clearly, if the ATACMS, which I suspect will have limited influence in the overall trajectory of the conflict, help in holding off Russian advances in the Kursk region, it would obviously prove to be beneficial,” he said. “There are still a substantial number of Republicans … who believe that defending Ukraine is within the broadest conception of American national interests,” he said.

Therefore, according to Miller, Trump may choose not to undo Biden’s ATACMS decision. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s closest supporters have been unequivocal in their condemnation of the move. They broadly portrayed the shift as a cynical attempt to escalate the conflict as Trump prepares to take office.

[...] But Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, largely dismissed those claims, characterising the latest policy change as in line with previous Biden pivots on the war “with the same philosophy of delay and caution”. The Biden administration had previously slow-rolled before eventually relenting to requests [...] “If Russia escalates, we escalate,” he told Al Jazeera.

"[...] this is still extremely dangerous.”

[Secular Sanity]

Thanks for the info, CC. Seems like a gamechanger but there's not many reports. 

Searching for the latest news, I see that Susan Smith came up for parole. I was wondering why you added that bit.

[C C]

Thanks for the info, CC. Seems like a gamechanger but there's not many reports. 

Good that you called it to our attention, SS. Since Biden is a lame duck (but obviously still capable of exploits), I've got a bad habit of often tuning out whatever his administration is up to these final days.

Searching for the latest news, I see that Susan Smith came up for parole. I was wondering why you added that bit.

Wow. Synchronicity strikes again -- I had no idea.

She was the nearest example of Medea syndrome that I could recall to find a Wikipedia entry for in that moment -- the names of others escaped me (some of which are fathers). And she didn't perfectly fit the usual pattern, because she did it to salvage a relationship with a lover rather than to get back at the dad of the boys.

And yet -- surprise. surprise -- when doing a search this time around, a 1994 article pops-up that actually slotted Smith with the classification (at bottom). And it reveals that she apparently was suing the father for divorce (grounds of adultery).

It didn't dawn on me then that Blind Willie Johnson, the blues guitarist, would have also been a candidate victim. Always thought it was his mother that blinded him, but actually a stepmother: "...it is generally agreed by most biographers of Johnson that he was blinded by his stepmother when he was seven years old, a claim that was first made by Johnson's purported widow Angeline Johnson. In her recollection, Willie's father had violently confronted Willie's stepmother about her infidelity, and during the argument she splashed Willie with a caustic solution of lye water, permanently blinding him." --Early life and career

THE MEDEA SYNDROME (1994)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/l...b0082e046/

"This is the archetypal formula of betrayal and revenge -- and ultimate tragedy. When Susan Smith, the 23-year old South Carolina mother confessed to police that she drove her two sons into a lake where they drowned, she became the nation's modern Medea. [...] As the pieces of this tragic story come out, some of the elements are similar to many divorces. Susan Smith indeed was suing David, the father of 3-year-old Michael and 14-month old Alexander, on grounds of adultery. She had just been rejected by a new boyfriend. Earlier in her life, she lost her father to suicide. She told authorities she was depressed and distraught about the future."

[Syne]

Possible reasons why Trump and JD Vance haven't criticized Biden's aid to Ukraine:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/HbDhCNbeTI0

[Yazata]

Very good hour-long interview by Mario Nawfal of Dmitry Suslov, a prominent Russian academic, a close advisor of Vladimir Putin's, and one of the authors of the new military doctrine that Russia recently announced.

Formerly, the Russian doctrine was to only use nuclear weapons if Russia was under nuclear attack or conventional attack that threatened the survival of the Russian state.

The new doctrine adds defending Russian territorial integrity, which they admit is a significant relaxation of previous nuclear doctrine.

And the new doctrine adds provisions regarding proxy wars fought against Russia. If NATO provides offensive capabilities to Ukraine that Ukraine did not previously have, then Russia will consider their use againt Russia as an attack not only by Ukraine but also by NATO. So Russia currently considers itself to essentially be at war with NATO, including the United States, UK and France. Not just Ukraine.

Suslov says that when these elements of the new doctrine were announced in September, they were meant as a warning to the United States not to escalate further, for fear that things might get out of control.

But then Biden lost the 2024 election, and only days later he, along with the UK PM, authorized Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia using American and British weapons.

The Russians believe that Biden (or the deep-state war-hawks that surround him) hope to push Russia into retaliating for what Russia perceives as US attacks by sinking some US naval vessels or by conventional strikes on US military bases in Germany or the Middle East. The Russians believe that the motivation in Washington is creating a sitution where resulting war-fever in the United States public would make it impossible for the incoming Trump administration to push through any kind of negotiated settlement, which Trump wants and Suslov says Russia wants. Kyiv and the American deep state supposedly hope to prevent a negotiated settlement not on Kyiv's terms. They want to insure against the war ending short of a perhaps-fanciful total Ukrainian victory.

Russia fears that permanent war will lead inexorably towards eventual nuclear war as each side responds to each side's next escalation with an escalation of their own.

https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1859414245126877322