How do you get anything productive done when most of your time is spent insulting others? You must be a EST-hole.
Ukraine and Only Ukraine. If it isn't about Ukraine then fuck off
- Thread starter d'ranger
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mikewof
mikewof
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That was the diplomatic release from France's IAEA extension, they are obviously not going to voice their concerns about Britain, they are being "diplomatic" AND Britain and France already signed their nuclear research treaty for the sites at Aldermaston and Valduc, neither country wants to shit on that. Along with China, Britain has been most aggressive with expanding their nuclear arsenal, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...arsenal-set-to-grow-for-first-time-in-decades
The whole point of the NPT is to put the nuclear race behind us and for Britain not to add operation to their 40-some non-operational nukes to "catch up" with France.
While I understand your desire to minimize Britain's encroachment on the value of the NPT, it isn't as ignorable as you suggest. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has nearly ripped Britain a new asshole on their current moves against the NPT. Before you get stars in your eyes over France's milquetoast press release, read what has come out of Switzerland and without the British distractions: link. When Britain lowers transparency of their IAEA mandated inspection process and then reverse their Article 6 obligations, this isn't just "updating" their arsenal, it is expanding it. Per Article 6, they are supposed to reduce their inventory, while Russia, USA, and France are doing that, which then leaves China to flout their Article 6 obligations because Britain is doing the same thing, which is exactly what ICAN brought up! Making the formerly 60-some unoperational nukes operational by splitting up some existing cores is not just card shuffling, it is expanding their nuclear arsenal.
If you think that this is my "cognitive disfunction (sic)" then it might help to be as critical of your own country's nuclear ambitions as I am critical of the USA's nuclear policy. We have not decreased our arsenal fast enough, we have not committed enough resources to Russia to pull cores for disarmament, we have not tied Most Favored Trade status with China to IAEA results. And worst of all, the USA has refused to take a leadership and economic position to get Pakistan and then India compliant and signed with the NPT. That you are unable to look with a critical eye at your own nation's nuclear policy, and instead use a press release as a jingoistic ethical release, instead suggests a dysfunction.
As for the Russian textbooks, the British physicists use them too, it ain't just the Yanks, Chinese and Indians.
Keith
Super Anarchist
War May Be Distant in Moscow, but in One Russian Border City, It’s Real
Military trucks and armored personnel carriers spray-painted with the letter Z rumble through intersections, and groups of men in camouflage walk the streets and shop for military goods like thermal underwear. Refugees pour in from territories in Ukraine that were recently lost to the enemy.
The sounds of nearby explosions have become regular occurrences in Belgorod, 25 miles from the Ukrainian border, and anxious store owners call the police reporting imagined bomb threats, a sign of the paranoia that is starting to spread. Residents express fear about what will come next, with some even speculating that Ukrainian troops could take a step they have avoided for nearly seven months and enter Russian territory.
“It is as if they are already here,” an ashen-faced woman told a merchant at the city’s central market, after the boom of an explosion.
President Vladimir V. Putin has tried to keep life as normal as possible for most Russians as he conducts his war in Ukraine, and to make the hostilities a distant concept. But with Ukrainian forces now on the offensive, residents of Belgorod feel as if the war has come to their doorstep.
“There are so many rumors, people are afraid,” said Maksim, 21, a merchant at the market.
He was selling thermal underwear, camouflage jackets and other sporting goods that once went to hunters and fishermen but are now being bought up by soldiers and their relatives. Like most other residents interviewed for this article, he declined to provide his full name out of fear of retribution.
The mood at the market, a warren of stalls selling clothes, home goods and military gear, was tense. Though the city of Belgorod is not being directly attacked, Russia’s military air defense is intercepting missiles in the distance. The sounds of the explosions ring out, and in the Komsomolsky neighborhood, homes and property are being hit by debris.
On Monday, a teachers’ college, a shopping center and a bus station were conducting evacuation drills as officials assured worried local civilians that the drills were planned in advance. The regional administration is evacuating towns and villages along the border as they come under Ukrainian shelling. Denis, a local businessman, recently paid someone to dig an 11-foot bomb shelter in his yard.
Many residents of the city fear the risks to their safety are growing.
“We feel scared, and it is especially hard when you work with children,” said Ekaterina, 21, a kindergarten teacher who said a shell fragment fell onto the school early this week. “The children start running around screaming ‘missiles’ but we tell them it is just thunder.”
While most residents of Belgorod support the government in Moscow and the war effort, some express frustration that the rest of Russia is still living as if it isn’t waging a full-scale war.
“How are they not ashamed!” shouted a middle-aged woman named Lyudmila, from the Komsomosky neighborhood.
“In Moscow, they are celebrating City Day, while here blood is being spilled,” she said, referring to a citywide celebration last week honoring the founding of the Russian capital, which featured fireworks and the grand opening of a large Ferris wheel by Mr. Putin. “Here everyone is worried about our soldiers, while there everyone is partying and drinking!”
Even those who support the war effort privately expressed frustration that the Kremlin insists on calling it a “special military operation,” when they can see that it is a full-blown war. Many wonder if there will be a draft, and if so, how soon.
Refugees arriving from Ukraine are also driving home the reality of the war.
Thousands of people from eastern Ukraine have arrived in recent months, especially last week as Ukrainian troops retook territory in the northeast that had been held by Russian soldiers. Some were worried about living under the control of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv, while others, especially those who had acquired Russian passports or taken jobs in the occupying administration, feared being treated as collaborators, according to activists who are helping them leave.
“They were trying to live their lives, working in hospitals, in schools, stores, but that side understands this as collaborating with occupiers,” said Yulia Nemchinova, who has been helping refugees in Belgorod. Ms. Nemchinova, who holds pro-Russian views, left her native Kharkiv, just across the border, in 2014 after her husband had legal trouble with the Ukrainian authorities.
But she also said that many people felt shocked and effectively betrayed by a Russian army they saw as liberators, but that was now on the run in the face of a sweeping Ukrainian offensive.
“They were promised: Russia is here forever,” Ms. Nemchinova said.
While journalists and investigators are uncovering evidence of atrocities and human rights abuses committed by Russians during occupation, the people who recently fled to Belgorod say the retreating Russian army told them to leave because of potential retaliation.
In interviews in Belgorod, people who fled from territory recently retaken by Ukraine said they feared that when the Ukrainian army entered the local administration building, soldiers would find the lists of people who had accepted jobs or humanitarian assistance from the Russian interim administration and mete out punishments for collaborating. People were also scared because Ukraine passed a law punishing collaboration with the occupying authorities with 10 to 15 years in prison.
A woman named Irina said her boyfriend, a former Ukrainian border guard, had his personal information posted in a Telegram group purporting to name collaborators.
“There’s no going back there,” Irina, 18, said in an interview at a clothing bank where newly arrived refugees were collecting clothes and food. Her mother and sister remained in their village, and she said she hoped the Russians reoccupied it soon.
In Belgorod, a city of 400,000, fears about Ukrainians on the other side of the border would have been unheard-of a decade ago. For years, Russians in Belgorod regularly traveled the 50 miles to Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second biggest city, with a prewar population of 2 million — to party, dine and shop. Many families are split across the border.
“Belgorod was in total shock,” said Oleg Ksenov, 41, a restaurant owner who has spent the past months evacuating people from battlefields in Ukraine and bringing them to Russia. “We just love Kharkiv.”
Viktoriya, 50, who owns a cafe and bakery in the city, said that Kharkiv was a “megapolis” in the minds of every Belgorod resident.
“We had a joke: If you want to meet people from Belgorod, go to Stargorod restaurant in Kharkiv on the weekend,” she said.
The relationship worked both ways. In the years after Russia instigated a separatist war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Ukraine imposed stricter laws about speaking Ukrainian, and not Russian, in public. That prompted Russian speakers from Kharkiv to travel to Belgorod to watch movies in Russian, said Denis, the businessman, who is 44.
Now the two cities are effectively separated by a front line.
“It is a tragedy of tectonic proportions,” he said. “It touches every person from Belgorod. Every family is connected with Ukraine.”
His aunt Larisa had just arrived over the weekend from Liman, a city in the Donetsk region that was occupied by the Russian army at the end of May. Since then, it has had no electricity, gas or running water, and she said more than 80 percent of the housing stock was destroyed.
Earlier in May, a missile — she didn’t know from which army, though she blamed Ukraine — hit her apartment building. Then, at the end of the month, the Russians arrived.
“I was waiting for them with so much happiness,” Larisa, 74, said in surzhik, a dialect that is a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian.
Now her home is the scene of heavy frontline fighting. She said she has trouble walking, and struggled to get to the basement every time the air raid siren sounded.
As the fighting grew closer, she said, she knew she had to get out, because she didn’t want to be governed anymore by Kyiv and was scared.
Mr. Ksenov, who was born in Kharkiv but made Belgorod his home more than a decade ago, has dedicated his time to helping civilians flee from Ukraine to Russia. He worries about what will happen to the people from border regions of both countries in the long term.
“This slaughter will eventually end,” he said of the war, in an interview in his restaurant, which has plywood covering the windows in case of a bombing.
“But who will we be? How will we look one another in the eyes?”
Military trucks and armored personnel carriers spray-painted with the letter Z rumble through intersections, and groups of men in camouflage walk the streets and shop for military goods like thermal underwear. Refugees pour in from territories in Ukraine that were recently lost to the enemy.
The sounds of nearby explosions have become regular occurrences in Belgorod, 25 miles from the Ukrainian border, and anxious store owners call the police reporting imagined bomb threats, a sign of the paranoia that is starting to spread. Residents express fear about what will come next, with some even speculating that Ukrainian troops could take a step they have avoided for nearly seven months and enter Russian territory.
“It is as if they are already here,” an ashen-faced woman told a merchant at the city’s central market, after the boom of an explosion.
President Vladimir V. Putin has tried to keep life as normal as possible for most Russians as he conducts his war in Ukraine, and to make the hostilities a distant concept. But with Ukrainian forces now on the offensive, residents of Belgorod feel as if the war has come to their doorstep.
“There are so many rumors, people are afraid,” said Maksim, 21, a merchant at the market.
He was selling thermal underwear, camouflage jackets and other sporting goods that once went to hunters and fishermen but are now being bought up by soldiers and their relatives. Like most other residents interviewed for this article, he declined to provide his full name out of fear of retribution.
The mood at the market, a warren of stalls selling clothes, home goods and military gear, was tense. Though the city of Belgorod is not being directly attacked, Russia’s military air defense is intercepting missiles in the distance. The sounds of the explosions ring out, and in the Komsomolsky neighborhood, homes and property are being hit by debris.
On Monday, a teachers’ college, a shopping center and a bus station were conducting evacuation drills as officials assured worried local civilians that the drills were planned in advance. The regional administration is evacuating towns and villages along the border as they come under Ukrainian shelling. Denis, a local businessman, recently paid someone to dig an 11-foot bomb shelter in his yard.
Many residents of the city fear the risks to their safety are growing.
“We feel scared, and it is especially hard when you work with children,” said Ekaterina, 21, a kindergarten teacher who said a shell fragment fell onto the school early this week. “The children start running around screaming ‘missiles’ but we tell them it is just thunder.”
While most residents of Belgorod support the government in Moscow and the war effort, some express frustration that the rest of Russia is still living as if it isn’t waging a full-scale war.
“How are they not ashamed!” shouted a middle-aged woman named Lyudmila, from the Komsomosky neighborhood.
“In Moscow, they are celebrating City Day, while here blood is being spilled,” she said, referring to a citywide celebration last week honoring the founding of the Russian capital, which featured fireworks and the grand opening of a large Ferris wheel by Mr. Putin. “Here everyone is worried about our soldiers, while there everyone is partying and drinking!”
Even those who support the war effort privately expressed frustration that the Kremlin insists on calling it a “special military operation,” when they can see that it is a full-blown war. Many wonder if there will be a draft, and if so, how soon.
Refugees arriving from Ukraine are also driving home the reality of the war.
Thousands of people from eastern Ukraine have arrived in recent months, especially last week as Ukrainian troops retook territory in the northeast that had been held by Russian soldiers. Some were worried about living under the control of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv, while others, especially those who had acquired Russian passports or taken jobs in the occupying administration, feared being treated as collaborators, according to activists who are helping them leave.
“They were trying to live their lives, working in hospitals, in schools, stores, but that side understands this as collaborating with occupiers,” said Yulia Nemchinova, who has been helping refugees in Belgorod. Ms. Nemchinova, who holds pro-Russian views, left her native Kharkiv, just across the border, in 2014 after her husband had legal trouble with the Ukrainian authorities.
But she also said that many people felt shocked and effectively betrayed by a Russian army they saw as liberators, but that was now on the run in the face of a sweeping Ukrainian offensive.
“They were promised: Russia is here forever,” Ms. Nemchinova said.
While journalists and investigators are uncovering evidence of atrocities and human rights abuses committed by Russians during occupation, the people who recently fled to Belgorod say the retreating Russian army told them to leave because of potential retaliation.
In interviews in Belgorod, people who fled from territory recently retaken by Ukraine said they feared that when the Ukrainian army entered the local administration building, soldiers would find the lists of people who had accepted jobs or humanitarian assistance from the Russian interim administration and mete out punishments for collaborating. People were also scared because Ukraine passed a law punishing collaboration with the occupying authorities with 10 to 15 years in prison.
A woman named Irina said her boyfriend, a former Ukrainian border guard, had his personal information posted in a Telegram group purporting to name collaborators.
“There’s no going back there,” Irina, 18, said in an interview at a clothing bank where newly arrived refugees were collecting clothes and food. Her mother and sister remained in their village, and she said she hoped the Russians reoccupied it soon.
In Belgorod, a city of 400,000, fears about Ukrainians on the other side of the border would have been unheard-of a decade ago. For years, Russians in Belgorod regularly traveled the 50 miles to Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second biggest city, with a prewar population of 2 million — to party, dine and shop. Many families are split across the border.
“Belgorod was in total shock,” said Oleg Ksenov, 41, a restaurant owner who has spent the past months evacuating people from battlefields in Ukraine and bringing them to Russia. “We just love Kharkiv.”
Viktoriya, 50, who owns a cafe and bakery in the city, said that Kharkiv was a “megapolis” in the minds of every Belgorod resident.
“We had a joke: If you want to meet people from Belgorod, go to Stargorod restaurant in Kharkiv on the weekend,” she said.
The relationship worked both ways. In the years after Russia instigated a separatist war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Ukraine imposed stricter laws about speaking Ukrainian, and not Russian, in public. That prompted Russian speakers from Kharkiv to travel to Belgorod to watch movies in Russian, said Denis, the businessman, who is 44.
Now the two cities are effectively separated by a front line.
“It is a tragedy of tectonic proportions,” he said. “It touches every person from Belgorod. Every family is connected with Ukraine.”
His aunt Larisa had just arrived over the weekend from Liman, a city in the Donetsk region that was occupied by the Russian army at the end of May. Since then, it has had no electricity, gas or running water, and she said more than 80 percent of the housing stock was destroyed.
Earlier in May, a missile — she didn’t know from which army, though she blamed Ukraine — hit her apartment building. Then, at the end of the month, the Russians arrived.
“I was waiting for them with so much happiness,” Larisa, 74, said in surzhik, a dialect that is a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian.
Now her home is the scene of heavy frontline fighting. She said she has trouble walking, and struggled to get to the basement every time the air raid siren sounded.
As the fighting grew closer, she said, she knew she had to get out, because she didn’t want to be governed anymore by Kyiv and was scared.
Mr. Ksenov, who was born in Kharkiv but made Belgorod his home more than a decade ago, has dedicated his time to helping civilians flee from Ukraine to Russia. He worries about what will happen to the people from border regions of both countries in the long term.
“This slaughter will eventually end,” he said of the war, in an interview in his restaurant, which has plywood covering the windows in case of a bombing.
“But who will we be? How will we look one another in the eyes?”
LeoV
Super Anarchist
Convincing Russian civilians now to work in occupied areas will be much harder now they know Russia is not there forever and could leave them behind for time in a Ukrainian jail.
LeoV
Super Anarchist
Russian government launches budget sequestration after biggest revenue collapse in 11 years.
The finance ministry has told ministries that funding is being cut by 10% after a hole of 1.5 trillion rubles in the budget formed over the summer.
Source Moscow Times.
The finance ministry has told ministries that funding is being cut by 10% after a hole of 1.5 trillion rubles in the budget formed over the summer.
Source Moscow Times.
How long before Pootie falls out a window? Asking for a friend.
Left Shift
Super Anarchist
Bingo.
I haven't run into an EST-er bunny since a former friend proudly graduated from his "training" and promptly:
Got divorced,
Was voted out of his practice by his partners
Lost all of his clients
Lost most of his friends
And was proud of it. All due to his acquired personna of general assholery and smug superiority.
And Mikey has all of the symptoms.
Olsonist
Disgusting Liberal Elitist
It could happen but I don't think Vegas will be taking any prop bets on it. Putin has been spending billions each year for 20 years building a personal security apparatus without rival for exactly this eventuality. It is within quantum mechanical possibility in some parallel universe but it is very very unlikely.
A palace coup is unlikely because of there is no palace. His cabinet is kept at the end of a table likely with guns pointed at them. Moreover, replacing Putin with his number two is like replacing Stalin with Beria.
Rogue faction within his security. Unlikely. Paulie doesn't sell out Vito on account of moral pangs. Putin's Paulies are well paid.
External faction getting to Putin. Again, his personal security apparatus is massive and dwarfs our Secret Service.
Lastly, he's been executing literally anyone who could even think about this.
Mark_K
Super Anarchist
I think losing the Kharkiv oblast may be survivable. However losing Zaporizhia would mean losing Kherson and Crimea. That could shake out to be a black matter for the king that led them to it.
Ex Machina
Super Anarchist
It doesn’t bode well though . If “normal” soldiers are doing horrendous things to children and civilians . The prisoners who aren’t “dissenters“ will go ape shit
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P_Wop
Super Anarchist
Putin does regular purges of his security apparatchiks. Early in the summer he apparently 'replaced' about 1,000 of them. He is very close to being untouchable.
EDIT: As Olsonist points out above.
EDIT: As Olsonist points out above.
d'ranger
Super Anarchist
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https://www.livemint.com/news/world...empt-here-s-what-happened-11663226350239.html
Evidently an unsuccessful attempt on Putin. In Ukraine Zelensky goes to the front. In Russia front comes to Putin.
Evidently an unsuccessful attempt on Putin. In Ukraine Zelensky goes to the front. In Russia front comes to Putin.
phill_nz
Super Anarchist
pulling 'facts ' out of your ass again
you should learn how to research properly
85 ( mostly yet to be seen in court ) hardly justifies the statement does it
I had a friend who was, basically, just one of the guys. He was having a few problems and somehow thought EST would fix him up. They tuned him up so much he became an EST trainer. General consensus was he would have been better off doing a few tabs of acid.
mikewof
mikewof
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If there was even one prisoner, it wouldn't be "bottom of the barrel." And there are about 250k Russian prisoners that are in for nonviolent crimes like smoking weed or doing coke. If you agree with the OP then so be it, I don't.
And your numbers are wrong anyway, there were over 300 political prisoners in Russia before the invasion, and about 400 now.
mikewof
mikewof
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If you keep following me around like this, you'll need to at least buy me a drink.
Keith
Super Anarchist
Whos up next?
Keith
Super Anarchist
barfy
Super Anarchist
- 5,143
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This fella thinks the damn is going to cause some problems. It's the end of summer, hopefully 3 days of high water on the Davydiv Brid bridgehead won't make a huge problem. I can see it slowing momentum overall but as the Kherson front is one of attrition and corrosion I don't see it as badly as he does. (from my armchair). I expect the next move from the Ukrainian forces to be expedited rather than delayed because of this.
