It would be nice if they would add a checkbox to your tax return about giving money to Ukraine like they have for federal elections.

More importantly, it would be nice to have an option to direct funds to peace talks or to support Russia bringing this conflict to an expedient end.

nortex97 said:

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aggiehawg said:

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NATO existed to counter the USSR. In its fall, NATO should have been back-burnered. Instead, western "leaders" enjoyed having a cooperative club and kept inviting new buddies. Poking your adversary's buttons by adding minor powers isn't strength; it's the reckless hubris of trust-fund-kids.

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By the time of the fall of the USSR, Europe really didn't have much choise but to keep NATO going since they no longer had militaries of their own nor could they afford to rebuild them.

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What they 'could afford' is perhaps contextualized by what they have spent on 'global warming' in the past 10 years, net. They chose not to spend on their own defense, which I respect, but I think it's either wrong or cowardice to say Europe in 1991 could not afford to defend itself long term from the threat Russia might/could pose.

The warmongers are trying to drag us into WW3, which can only end in one way: nuclear annihilation and the suffering and death of all our loved ones. Zelensky, Biden, NATO, congressional and media neocons are insane. And we are insane if we passively allow them to lead us into… pic.twitter.com/aUEdPFAzoy

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) May 21, 2023

She's right.

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Meh, they said this about Reagan too. The entire Cold Ware people used various events to promote the fear of WW3 if we continued.

fka ftc said:

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It would be nice if they would add a checkbox to your tax return about giving money to Ukraine like they have for federal elections.

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Checkbox to lower spending on social programs would save much more. .

fka ftc said:

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It would be nice if they would add a checkbox to your tax return about giving money to Ukraine like they have for federal elections.

More importantly, it would be nice to have an option to direct funds to peace talks or to support Russia bringing this conflict to an expedient end.

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Russia could bring this to an expedient end at any time.

Ain't just Democrats laundering money via Ukraine, chief... 👀 https://t.co/fTDYGHv9Gm

— Trey Felder (@TbirdTr3y_10) May 22, 2023

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Ukraine is nothing but a money laundering operation for Democrats.

Biden is sacrificing billions of taxpayer dollars and countless lives for a pointless war so he can funnel money back to leftist political campaigns.

Shame on Biden for putting his interests ahead of the USA's.

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There is in fact more to the war in Ukraine than 'just' Biden crime family money laundering, but this growing awareness is necessarily bringing the parties to agree it needs to end swiftly.

Several hundred thousand possibly dead, a country depopulated, and the risk of nuclear war from within the former Soviet Union with a proxy war including radiologically dangerous munitions (DU) provided by Nato to an utterly corrupt/amoral 'ally,' and threats to deploy nuclear weapons are…not akin to anything Reagan said/did/managed.

The piano player sure is maintaining a safe distance from Kiev, though. So much for not needing 'a ride.' Perhaps the writers strike has impacted the narrative/speeches too.

I'm still waiting to see the brilliance in our strategy of purposefully continuing to drive China and Iran closer together with Russia. Maybe we should covertly blow up some more multibillion dollar infrastructure projects.

China has just named Russian President Vladimir Putin as the Guest of Honor at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing.

If all you followed was the mainstream media's coverage of Ukraine, you'd probably come to believe that Russia just lost Bakhmut and that China was backing off…

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) May 22, 2023

Will get some "I'm pulling for China" threads from the pro-russia side in the near future?

In German, this loosely translates into, "Let us the Hell out of this Lost Cause! And thanks for blowing up our pipeline, 'friend'." https://t.co/YYV0FleGXI

— Rich Baris "The People's Pundit" (@Peoples_Pundit) May 22, 2023

LOL.

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In 1997, the American State Department laid out a list of five "minimum requirements" for NATO membership candidates, which included "all of Europe's emerging democracies that share the alliance's values and are ready to meet the obligations of membership."

The requirements demand that a prospective candidate upholds democracy, including "tolerating diversity", is "showing progress" towards a developing a market economy, has a military under "firm civilian control", is a "good neighbour" and respects the sovereignty of other nations, and finally is "working toward compatibility with NATO forces".

The State Department said that such criteria did not constitute a firm "checklist", saying that the "key determinant for any invitation to new members is whether their admission to NATO will strengthen the alliance and further the basic objective of NATO enlargement, which is to increase security and stability across Europe."

It is unclear which of the requirements Chancellor Scholz felt that Ukraine has yet to meet. However, even if Ukraine theoretically fulfilled all of them, the country still faces an uphill battle in joining NATO, given that acesssion is dependent upon the unanimous support from all member states.

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LOLOL.

⚡️If you’re gonna invade Russia pretending to be some Russian group not cooperating with Ukraine, at least don’t use American MRAP’s and HMMWV's that have been recently transferred to Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/VSHnfCV41V

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) May 22, 2023

Zelensky did demand 1 percent of 'partner' GDP as aid or WW3 would result.

Considering how Victoria Nuland assured-
Russia on Minsk Agreements-

Lloyd Austin solidifying promise of Ukraine entry into NATO-
Kamala Harris Fail in Munich

Then Frm U.S Amb to Russia-

Michael McFaul explains how U.S. conducts diplomatic policies🤔pic.twitter.com/E3b8Y5PKee

— Lawyerforlaws (@lawyer4laws) May 22, 2023

Forever war! We have always been at war with east/west Asia.

Many people may also not know that more American weapons were sold to autocratic nations last year than under any other president. (Trump held the record previously. They all do it.)

— Jazz Shaw (@JazzShaw) May 22, 2023

Nothing to see here, move right along!

pic.twitter.com/iBRdblQtKL

— Tex_2A  (@Tex2_A) May 14, 2023

Don't worry about any weird things people say about our foreign wars. The NSA/State Dep't//DoJ/FBI/CIA/DoD/DNI/FMIC will keep us all safe!

And THIS TIME, we can trust them to do it honestly, and without breaking the law or using their powers to crush/criminalize political dissent. Foreign Malign Influence Center is exactly what we have needed since 1776. We can't let Trump-Russia get away with (nothing) again.

Good thread on the challenges/impracticality of F-16's for Ukraine (operated from Ukraine by their pilots/crews). 18-25 maintenance hours per flight hour (double the fulcrums)? New runways? No tankers? Sure.

Realistically, it's another PR game, for the optics. 10-20 actually flyable aircraft likely. The combat radius from Poland/Romanian airfields means they wouldn't even reach the Donbas, mainly flying for photo op missions.

As Tyler pointed out elsewhere, Ukraine's future F-16 fleet is likely to be a hodge-podge of F-16 MLUs from Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands. From those, perhaps 30-40 in various states of repair can be scraped up. https://t.co/ff47n8efUn

— Brynn Tannehill (@BrynnTannehill) May 22, 2023

The little foray up to Belgorod with a platoon size element was similar. Not a real military strategy, just a game.

nortex97 said:

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Good thread on the challenges/impracticality of F-16's for Ukraine (operated from Ukraine by their pilots/crews). 18-25 maintenance hours per flight hour (double the fulcrums)? New runways? No tankers? Sure.

Realistically, it's another PR game, for the optics. 10-20 actually flyable aircraft likely. The combat radius from Poland/Romanian airfields means they wouldn't even reach the Donbas, mainly flying for photo op missions.

As Tyler pointed out elsewhere, Ukraine's future F-16 fleet is likely to be a hodge-podge of F-16 MLUs from Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands. From those, perhaps 30-40 in various states of repair can be scraped up. https://t.co/ff47n8efUn

— Brynn Tannehill (@BrynnTannehill) May 22, 2023

The little foray up to Belgorod with a platoon size element was similar. Not a real military strategy, just a game.

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My favorite MiG-29 picture...the lawn dart.

BTW, that pilot walked away from that crash...

Russian pilots have long been notoriously reckless at air shows.

Those pesky separatists must have stolen that from a depot somewhere. I heard that happens a lot around those parts.

Good reminder as to how Obama torpedoed Russian relations with the US over his/GCF's Russian collusion lies:

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Obama even amended his own executive order to extend his powers to sanction, with travel bans and asset freezes on some Russian officials.

Just one problem: The Russians didn't do what the embittered Democrats claimed they were doing -- to Get Trump.

Nothing. They didn't hack the DNC and they didn't collude with Donald Trump to get him elected to the presidency. The charges, the expropriations, the sanctions -- were all for innocent people. Even the Russian state was innocent.

That was what Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse found buried at the bottom of the Durham report.
Sundance laid it out with these details:

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First, John Durham clearly shows in his 306-page report with a 48-page classified appendix, that Russia did nothing to interfere in the 2016 election. The entire Russian Interference operation was a Clinton fabrication, later enhanced by a Federal Bureau of Investigation who used the fabrication as a cover-up justification to hide their surveillance of the Trump campaign.

Second, accepting the empirical, factual, and inherently true reality of the first point consider that President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats to retain the Clinton fabrication and FBI lies. Think about this one carefully, the Obama administration expelled Russian diplomats in order to retain a domestic political ruse! President Obama did this *after* CIA Director John Brennan briefed him about the Clinton fabrication.

There were no Russian diplomats involved; there was no Russian election interference; there was no Russian hacking of the DNC; it was all a fraud created by the intelligence community (IC), FBI and Main Justice to support Hillary Clinton's lies and then cover their own targeting tracks.

Third, Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, with the full support of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, indicted 14 Russian entities under completely bogus pretenses. All of that effort was done to assist the Clinton narrative, cover for Obama and then use the special counsel to cover up the Trump targeting operation. The totally bogus construct explains why the fabricated indictments were sealed in the DOJ National Security Division in perpetuity, thereby keeping the fraudulent construct hidden from public review forever.

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So Obama's wrath was nothing but a fiction to protect the partisan Democrat narrative that they had been promoting about Trump and the Russians, which originated from the embittered political camp of losing Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.

How would you feel about that if you were a Russian, especially now, reading that it was all a political hoax with you the one chosen to be the whipping boy? You got sanctioned, you got kicked out, you got travel bans, you incurred costs, and some "name and shame" all based on lies.

Might you start thinking of the U.S. as kind of a sleazy, dishonest player on the world scene? Would you have problems trusting them? Might you step up your activities against it? It would seem natural.

The Russians, remember, had already calculated by their own devices that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election and the Kremlin was planning for that, so they were as surprised as anyone that the American voters thought otherwise when the election results came in in November 2016.

That they were blamed for the result and sanctioned for hacking and colluding they didn't do, and knew they didn't do, and knew that Obama knew they didn't do, surely must have made them angry.

Russian President Vladimir Putin initially adopted a wait-and-see attitude to see if Trump would set things back to rights, but by March of 2017, three months into his term, Trump had appointed Democrat ally Fiona Hill to be his Russia advisor, and although she was smart enough to generally pooh-pooh the Russia collusion claims in her statements, apparently nothing was done to restore the Russia relations after Obama's partisan fit of pique at Russia's expense.

Net result: By May, Putin expelled 755 American diplomats and staff and expropriated two American properties in retaliation. That was to get the numbers of embassy personnel even, as the U.S had a much bigger official diplomatic presence in Russia than the Russians had in the U.S. That certainly didn't serve U.S. interests to say the least, given that the U.S. must have had a much bigger spy operation going on against Russia than Russia did against the U.S., or, at the least official one which seems most likely.

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It's largely the same faction of politicians pushing the Xiden-Ukraine war hoax/propaganda/lies today.

Oh, and I guess the Russians aren't actually out of tanks.

WAR: Ukraine only has around 200 of its own tanks remaining with around 100 NATO tanks promised. Russia produces 100 new T-90M tanks per month. Just this year they’ve built 500. Costing just $4.5M each and manned by a crew of 3 - they are very efficient. pic.twitter.com/uB3cKCYlav

— @amuse (@amuse) May 24, 2023

nortex97 said:

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Oh, and I guess the Russians aren't actually out of tanks.

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@muse: "Russia produces 100 new T-90M tanks per month. Just this year they've built 500."

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Really? Other than this nameless blogger, can you cite any reputable non-Russian sources to corroborate this claim?

Stormtrooper twitter guys says stuff nortex likes. Who cares if it's BS?

Russia making 100 T-90's per month might be one of the most absurd propaganda claims yet in this war.

benchmark said:

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nortex97 said:

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Oh, and I guess the Russians aren't actually out of tanks.

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@muse: "Russia produces 100 new T-90M tanks per month. Just this year they've built 500."

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Really? Other than this nameless blogger, can you cite any reputable non-Russian sources to corroborate this claim?

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Ummm...he has a blue checkmark so you need to STEP OFF!!!

Teslag said:

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Russia making 100 T-90's per month might be one of the most absurd propaganda claims yet in this war.

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Perhaps they're NEEDING to make that many to replace all the ones that went BOOM already...

Poor dumbass Putin trying to out-Biden Biden.

https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-claims-map-proves-ukraine-not-real-despite-saying-ukraine-2023-5

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Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday cited a 17th-Century map of Europe to back his discredited thesis that Ukraine isn't a real country, a claim that he's used to justify Russia's unprovoked invasion.

But, even on the terms of Putin's thesis, there was a problem: the document clearly marks part of the territory as being "Ukraine."

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Wagner boss says he lost 20k troops taking Bakhmut.

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The head of the Russian private army Wagner says his force lost more than 20,000 fighters in the drawn-out battle for Bakhmut, with about 20% of the 50,000 Russian convicts he recruited to fight in the 15-month war dying in the eastern Ukrainian city.

The figure was in stark contrast with widely disputed claims from Moscow that it lost just over 6,000 troops in the war, and is higher than the official estimate of the Soviet losses in the Afghanistan war of 15,000 troops between 1979-89. Ukraine hasn't said how many of its soldiers have died since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
. . .

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But they were all convicts.

He also says that instead of demilitarizing Ukraine, the invasion militarized the country.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/wagner-boss-prigozhin-says-putins-150151878.html

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Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said this week that Russia has failed to achieve one of its main goals, demilitarizing Ukraine, and has actually made Kyiv's army stronger through its invasion.

"So how did we demilitarize? It turns out that on the contrary, we have militarized Ukraine," Prigozhin said in a video interview now circulating around social media.

Prigozhin, who has in recent months taken repeated shots at the Russian defense ministry and Russian failures in Ukraine, said that Kyiv has gained more troops and more weapons since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
. . .

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Teslag said:

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Poor dumbass Putin trying to out-Biden Biden.

https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-claims-map-proves-ukraine-not-real-despite-saying-ukraine-2023-5

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Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday cited a 17th-Century map of Europe to back his discredited thesis that Ukraine isn't a real country, a claim that he's used to justify Russia's unprovoked invasion.

But, even on the terms of Putin's thesis, there was a problem: the document clearly marks part of the territory as being "Ukraine."

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You are only a sovereign country if you can maintain and defend your borders.

Sorry your wannabe country Ukraine is not capable of that. But their lover's quarrel of the Vleds and Vlads should not be funded with my tax dollars.

So France wasn't a sovereign country in 1940?

Word.

Teslag said:

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So France wasn't a sovereign country in 1940?

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France is your example of a sovereign country? You serious?

But, to educate ya, France was no longer a sovereign country when they became subject to the German authorities.

fka ftc said:

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Teslag said:

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So France wasn't a sovereign country in 1940?

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France is your example of a sovereign country? You serious?

But, to educate ya, France was no longer a sovereign country when they became subject to the German authorities.

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And then became one again when the American tax payer tossed out the invader and secured their borders for them?

Teslag said:

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fka ftc said:

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Teslag said:

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So France wasn't a sovereign country in 1940?

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France is your example of a sovereign country? You serious?

But, to educate ya, France was no longer a sovereign country when they became subject to the German authorities.

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And then became one again when the American tax payer tossed out the invader and secured their borders for them?

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Wait...since the US defended their borders, shouldn't that make them a colony of the US?

fka ftc said:

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Teslag said:

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So France wasn't a sovereign country in 1940?

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France is your example of a sovereign country? You serious?

But, to educate ya, France was no longer a sovereign country when they became subject to the German authorities.

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Or Austria, Belgium, Poland, Albania, Luxembourg, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Yugoslavia, Monaco, Finland...

And then, after the war, Armenia, Azerbijan, Byelorussa, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldava, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, UKRAINE!!!!, Uzbekistan...

**** ton of non-sovereign countries in the latter half of the 20th century...

You are correct, and that is a MAJOR problem for the world.

It's unnatural to have protected states that do not contribute to that protection.

If they want our protection , then they should pay a percentage of their GDP for that protection.

If they don't like the terms, then best of luck to them.

Teslag said:

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I think it's quite clear you have no idea what sovereignty is.

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You're only sovereign until you're not?

Teslag said:

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I think it's quite clear you have no idea what sovereignty is.

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Define sovereignty in geopolitical terms.

Dang, a lot of traffic in here today. I got busy, sorry to have missed the informed discussion.

I do want to again agree with Zelensky in retrospect.

When Zelensky addressed US Congress in December he said, “Just like the Battle of Saratoga, the fight for Bakhmut will change the trajectory of our war for independence and for freedom" pic.twitter.com/sZojFRTNQ8

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) May 24, 2023

Teslag said:

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I think it's quite clear you have no idea what sovereignty is.

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I think I have an actual understanding of the concept. The term itself has had different meanings over the course of at least 500 years.

The Defender Brotherhood of Uke Lovahs defines sovereignty in more recent context by assigning some sort of right of self-determination, though respecting of that right is often provided by absolute sovereigns of which there are a few. US, China, Russia, UK are the clearest of these, with Japan, India, and maybe a couple of others coming close.

So I think it may be you who poorly understand the term and the concept. Sorry your Ukes most assuredly do NOT qualify as a sovereign nation, even when you apply the most liberal standards of the term.

Glad to educate you today. Hopefully you further your knowledge by doing some of your own research.

Teslag said:

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I think it's quite clear you have no idea what sovereignty is.

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It's actually quite clear that you don't.

Sovereignty- A sovereign state is a state that has the highest authority over a territory. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined territory, a government not under another, and the capacity to interact with other sovereign states.

So France circa 1940 was not a sovereign state as it did not meet the requirements.