Ukraine

[dorankj]

I didn’t realize Ray was in charge of those, you’re right, that completely justifies him censoring my posts!

[Rideback]

Meanwhile, this you tube just out from Ukraine where they have adopted Queen's 'We Will Rock You' as their national anthem during the war.
I don't think I've ever seen a more powerful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71nlhNH9YLY

[dorankj]

Never have seen that with Trump/republican/conservative or even personal comments. I can get this at Methownet.

[pasayten]

Yep... and with humor... Love the word/initials censorship feature in phpbb software

[dorankj]

Ah, censorship! Very democratic.

[Rideback]

There's so much more at risk from China than from Russia and because Xi is a much better chess player than Putin will ever be he's looking at layers and layers of complexities. Biden & his team recognize that China & Russia developed new economic ties because of Trump's embargoes, they recognize that China will make decisions based on what's good for China without taking into consideration what the human toll taking place in Ukraine is doing.

China wants to preview how the world reacts, the west in particular, to an invasion, so it can gauge what will happen when it implements its own plans of invasion, into Taiwan.

Dealing with these issues takes a firm understanding of history, of commerce and military strategy, not to mention the new player AI.

[PAL]

Thanks Ken.

[dorankj]

Biden appears eminently qualified to make “Biden look bad”, no Trump or ‘Puti’ needed. He sure told those Chinese how to behave! "Unsavory acronym"

[PAL]

Trump and Puti will do anything to make Biden look bad.

[pasayten]

WATCH: Bill Maher Asks ‘Why Didn’t Putin Invade Ukraine When His Boyfriend Trump Was In Office?’
Tommy Christopher - 3h ago

Comic and pundit Bill Maher asked his panel why Vladimir Putin didn’t invade Ukraine when “his boyfriend” former President Donald Trump was in office.

On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host put that question to guests Max Brooks and Kristen Soltis Anderson, and none of the responses were complimentary to Mr. Putin or Mr. Trump:

MR. MAHER: But I know you were watching our show last week and you heard me say, Why didn’t Putin invade Ukraine when his boyfriend, Trump was in office? I mean, Trump stood with him at Helsinki and defended him over our own intelligence agencies. So I was just asking the question. And maybe you do have an answer. Why not? When Trump was in office, it would seem to be the more logical place.

MR. BROOKS: No, he didn’t invade because he didn’t need to, because you only roll out the tanks when you think you’re out of options. And Putin had a grand asymmetric strategy to dismantle Naito from within. And it was working when the commander in chief of the United States Armed Forces calls Naito obsolete. You are on the road to a fifth column victory, and that’s what he was doing, and it’s a matter of fact we know now in 2018. Thank you. Maybe. Well, we know this, in 2018. Trump wanted to pull out of Naito, and it was John Kelly and John Bolton who had to hold him down like a rabid dog to stop him from doing that. And if Trump had won a second term, he would have done it. But Biden being elected caused Putin’s plan to go up in smoke.

MR. MAHER: We don’t know what he would have done. We don’t know why he did what he did.

MS. SOLTIS ANDERSON: Now it’s rather backfiring…

MR. MAHER: Trump generally did what he wanted not matter who held him down and said, what…

MS. SOLTIS ANDERSON: One of the things that Trump always said, though, was that he wanted Europe to be more in charge of its own defenses, and nobody has done more to advance that cause than Vladimir Putin by doing this invasion. Because now you have a country like Sweden or a country like Switzerland has said, Hey, we’re going to send weapons to Ukraine or countries like Germany has said we’re going to increase our defense spending to a significant portion of our GDP. You’ve messed up as Vladimir Putin strategically that you have provoked them to do the opposite of what this is.

MR. MAHER: What’s so surprising to me about Putin? We always knew he was evil, but nobody ever called him dumb. And now he looks dumb. He looks dumb and not powerful. You know, I honestly, I was wrong. I thought he was not going to invade. I thought it was just brinksmanship. But now like, this could really go so bad for him. I mean, the Russians have had a revolution before. … And when you have the morale of the army, we know is where it is, when you have the economy tanking the way it is. I mean, it looks like they pulled back the curtain and the Wizard of Oz is just this old man with the sound machine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RET6fG_uqP4

[mister_coffee]

What does Asia use?

China has the BeiDou system, and Japan and India have regional systems that use a combination of satellites and ground stations.

[mister_coffee]

Russia still uses RF navigation for their military, however if you are correct and they are using GPS, the US needs to turn off GPS coverage over Ukraine unless the Ukraine military uses it for the weapon systems that we and others give them.

https://spacenews.com/op-ed-russian-thr ... otect-gps/

Russia has had its own satellite positioning and navigation system since the early 2000's, GLONASS. The European Union also has one called Galileo. In practice most commercial-grade GPS receivers used in the west use all three systems.

There are minor technical differences between each system, but on the average they are more similar than different and perform about as well. So shutting down (or degrading) our system isn't likely to make much difference.

My understanding was that unless you had some kind of special permission, private use or even possession of a GPS in Russia was a crime. I do not know if or when that rule changed, but that was certainly the case on the ground in the early 2000s.

[Fun CH]

Russia still uses RF navigation for their military, however if you are correct and they are using GPS, the US needs to turn off GPS coverage over Ukraine unless the Ukraine military uses it for the weapon systems that we and others give them.

https://spacenews.com/op-ed-russian-thr ... otect-gps/

[mister_coffee]

...
From vids I've seen, Russian forces seem well equipped, so not understanding that narrative.

Look at the soldiers who were trapped in the elevator when the build super cut power. All had body armor, AKs and alot of ammo.

What they are lacking is GPS, encrypted radios, and night vision gear. Special forces seem to have some of those things.

Interestingly, at least some Russian Pilots are using American GPS systems in their aircraft:

https://defence-blog.com/russian-pilots ... -in-syria/

That's a Garmin in the cockpit.

[mister_coffee]

[Why would Putin think the Ukrainians would just put down their arms and surrender? How does he think he can occupy a country that doesn't want to be occupied?

More curiously, how did he think he could do that with a poorly equipped and supplied army?

It really doesn't matter if he has more forces, he can't make effective use of them. If the Russian Army can't supply equip the forces already in Ukraine, what makes anyone think they can supply a larger force?

Unless something dramatically changes in the next week or so, the Russians have lost this war.

[mister_coffee]

Apparently there are reports that the Russians are purging top people in the military and foreign intelligence services "due to their failures in Ukraine."

[Rideback]

I fact checked it, it was indeed a jar of tomatoes (they may have been pickled). One of the press was able to talk with her and she showed him the remains of the jar. Cool stuff.

[mister_coffee]

I heard it was a jar of pickles. Great story but hard to know if it is true or not.

The whole night vision gear thing points out an interesting opportunity: the US has gone through two whole generations of night vision tech since the start of the Iraq war. We also learned that anybody equipped with that gear has an enormous advantage against somebody who does not. So equipping the Ukrainians lavishly with night vision gear would likely make it nearly hopeless for the Russian forces on the ground to be able to effectively fight in Ukrainian cities.

[Rideback]

It's been interesting to watch the open source sites. The observation that the Russian trucks are running on Chinese tires that operate poorly in the mud plus that they seem to be poorly maintained was interesting.

Russia's call to Syria to get mercenaries looks like they will be deployed to engage in the street fighting necessary to hold the towns that Russia thinks it has captured. And this is all developing because again the Russians underestimated the will of the Ukrainian people to hold onto their homeland.

If agreement can't be reached to get the fighter jets into Ukraine, Plan B will likely include more drones like Turkey sent over and/or larger ones. They've been effective in a limited way.

I still like the story of the Ukrainian woman who saw a drone outside her window and reached for a can of tomatoes to throw at it. Her aim was spot on, she downed the Russian drone.

[mister_coffee]

The Russians are now moving south of the E40 west of Kiev.

At the same time, at least some weapons (mostly Javelins and NLAWs, apparently) are now reaching Ukraine in significant numbers.

From open-source assessments, Russia committed approximately 7000 vehicles to this fight. Roughly 1000 have been destroyed, disabled, or are otherwise out of the fight.

If the current Russian strategy is to encircle and besiege large cities such as Kharkov and Kiev, we can reasonably expect that in the very best case it will take many months for that strategy to yield any positive results for Russia. Which is interesting because from an operational, political, and diplomatic standpoint they don't have that much time.

Why do I say "many months"? In Iraq in late 2004, when the Americans (with help from the British and our Iraqi puppets) took Fallujah, approximately 10000 American Marines and 1000 British took on around 3500 insurgents. In a city of 400,000. The battle took over six weeks. It seems unlikely that the Russians can take cities 6 to 8 times larger than that quickly. And given that the Russian forces appear to be poorly equipped and supplied as well means it will take even more time.

It is also becoming obvious that most of the Russian army is poorly equipped by modern standards. They appear to lack body armor, night vision gear, GPS or other navigation systems, and encrypted radios. All of those things, and certainly the first two, will be extremely important if they want to successfully prosecute an attack on any large cities.

The US Army is in the process of upgrading to a next-generation night vision system. I can think of a very good place to send our old systems.

Sending very generous amounts of aid right now is likely to have a very high return on investment, both in terms of minimizing the already enormous humanitarian costs of this war and also giving the Ukrainians a fighting chance of winning the war.

[pasayten]

[Rideback]

This article is chock full of information about how exports are dropping in reflection of Putin's invasion into Ukraine
https://gcaptain.com/maritime-sea-block ... ILKxwKlQm0

[dorankj]

Your accusations and invented intentions are meaningless to me, I voice my viewpoint and question false narratives.

[PAL]

Yes, we will not be immune. But as you know, it is all about community here. We help each other.
I find it interesting that food, to sustain our lives, costs. But the system has been set up that way for a very long time.
Trading, bartering, was so good, long ago, but then an exchange system was developed and capitalism came along.
So when we depend on others to produce our food, then of course those producers should get some income or something out of it. We grow gardens here and there is trading going on amongst friends.
I think we can find a balance. If I have too much of something, a food item, or something else even, I will give it away to someone in need. I've reached a point in my life, where I am so lucky and grateful I have everything I need and then some.
Well, digress, I did. But we see the struggling and suffering in Ukraine and other parts of the world. Again, we have so much.

[Fun CH]

This is why it is important to buy local, especially food from the Valley's producers. We have several groups that are growing grains, have eggs, etc. Massive amounts of compost is available.
It does seem like the minute the media mentions higher prices, the next day, everything is up.
This was coming anyway, this war just sped things up.

Local producers are effected by rising prices also and those increased costs will unfortunately mean higher prices for locally produced food as well.