Scott75

A great point. I strongly believe that the U.S. wouldn't have been nearly as patient as Russia was, trying for 8 years to resolve the issue diplomatically, from 2014 to 2022. U.S. Professor John Mearsheimer predicted what would happen to Ukraine if it continued along its path of following U.S. backed western "solutions" way back in 2015: ** "What's going on here is that the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked and I believe that the policy that I'm advocating which is neutralising Ukraine and then building it up economically and getting it out of the competition between Russia on one side and NATO on the other side is the best thing that could happen to the Ukrainians," he can be heard saying in the video. He said that what the West is doing is diametrically opposite since it is encouraging Kyiv to "play tough" with Moscow. Mearsheimer mentioned Ukrainians are being told that they will become a part of the West. [video of Mearsheimer's speech in original] "We're encouraging the Ukrainians to think that they will ultimately become part of the West because we will ultimately defeat Putin and we will ultimately get our way, time is on our side." The American scholar stated the Ukrainians are playing along and are "almost completely unwilling" to give up and instead want to pursue a hardline policy against the Russians. "The end result is that their country is going to be wrecked. And what we're doing is in effect encouraging that outcome." Furthermore, he suggested that it would be sensible for the West to work to create a neutral Ukraine and in America's interest to bury this crisis as soon as possible. "It certainly would be in Russia's interest to do so and most importantly it would be in Ukraine's interest to put an end to the crisis." ** Full article: https://www.businesstoday.in/world/us/story/ukraine-going-to-be-wrecked-after-zelenskyy-trump-spat-john-mearsheimers-2015-prediction-goes-viral-466448-2025-03-03

I agree on underestimating Russia. The way I see it, NATO, headed by the U.S., thought they could just walk all over Russia. Thus, the U.S.'s decision to play a strong role in "westernizing" Ukraine back in 2014, leading to the elected Ukrainian President fleeing for his life to Russia and a government with Neo Nazi ties was ushered in, with western blessings. It was only then that Russia decided to accept Crimean's request to rejoin Russia. Ukraine's civil war started soon after, with NATO leading material support to it. From what I can see, the absolute last straw for Russia was Ukraine's renewed assault on the Donbass, starting on February 16th, 2022. Even then, Putin initially resisted recognizing the Donbass Republics and promising to help them against the Ukrainian assault, as Russia's Duma (congress equivalent) apparently wanted, but after the assault continued, Putin relented on February 21st, 2022. That could have been seen as Putin's last warning to western Ukraine and its western allies. It went unheeded. As former Swiss Intelligence Officer Jacques Baud implied, Putin was stuck between a rock and a hard place, but it seems clear that generally speaking, the Russian leadership was not happy about this western push to its very border and he went with that wave. Some great quotes from Jacques Baud on the subject: ** On February 17 [2022], President Joe Biden announces that Russia will attack Ukraine in the coming days. How does he know? Mystery… But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the populations of Donbass has increased dramatically, as shown by the daily reports of OSCE observers. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacts and intervenes. We will say later that this is Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries purposely glossed over the massacre of the people of Donbass, knowing that it would provoke Russian intervention. [snip] In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knows that the Ukrainians began to shell the civilian populations of Donbass, putting Vladimir Putin in front of a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem or to sit idle and watch Russian speakers. from the Donbass being run over. If he decides to intervene, Vladimir Putin can invoke the international obligation of “ Responsibility To Protect ” (R2P). But he knows that whatever its nature or scale, the intervention will trigger a shower of sanctions. Therefore, whether its intervention is limited to the Donbass or whether it goes further to put pressure on the West for the status of Ukraine, the price to be paid will be the same. This is what he explains in his speech on February 21. That day, he acceded to the request of the Duma and recognized the independence of the two Republics of Donbass and, in the process, he signed treaties of friendship and assistance with them. The Ukrainian artillery bombardments on the populations of Donbass continued and, on February 23, the two Republics requested military aid from Russia. On the 24th, Vladimir Putin invokes Article 51 of the United Nations Charter which provides for mutual military assistance within the framework of a defensive alliance. In order to make the Russian intervention totally illegal in the eyes of the public we deliberately obscure the fact that the war actually started on February 16th. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as certain Russian and European intelligence services were well aware… The lawyers will judge. ** Full article: https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/09/former-nato-military-analyst-blows-the-whistle-on-wests-ukraine-invasion-narrative/

The forum I was referring to called it a 1 week ban, I'm just using their language. Feel free to take a look at the Admin's post for yourself if you like: https://justplainpolitics.com/threads/scott-has-been-banned-for-rule-2-violation.242275/ I agree, I just think that in this case, the rule stifled an important discussion. Here's the summary of what happened: In this forum, I'd say that there are 2 main "teams", if you will. This is actually true in a lot of forums, including this one- there are those on the right and those on the left. In this particular forum, the teams had nominal leaders. I'm not saying that this was recognized by everyone, but it was recognized enough to make it a thing. The term "Team Owl" had been used for years and I just added its counterpart, "Team TOP". They're both elderly women and they both had those who were nominally on their side. So me kind of being a political hybrid, having some positions on the left and some on the right, and having gotten to know both TOP and Owl as well as some people on their respective sides, I decided I'd try to see if I could patch things up between them. Part of that involved whether or not TOP was a retired teacher. So far, so good. Then, Owl decided to send me a PM talking a bit of what we'd been talking about in forum. I was fine with that- at the time, I had no idea what this would later turn into. I responded, and she got into some things that I certainly hadn't seen her share in the forum. It made me have doubts of TOP's position. Since I was simultaneously talking about TOP's position in the forum, I felt it necessary to bring up that Owl's PMs had made me have doubts. I was also talking to Owl in PMs and had intimated that I had to say -something- of our PM conversation as it had influenced my own position. She said that there was nothing in our PMs that she hadn't or wouldn't share in the public forums and I expressed my relief, as I felt that this was basically clearing me to talk about the gist of what we'd talked about in PMs in the forums. I later found that pretty much everything we'd talked about was already known by TOP anyway. Well, suffice it to say that despite Owl's assurance, she backtracked and decided to report on me. I later reported all of the PMs that I had had up until th at point to the Admins to show them this, but either they didn't read them or they didn't care and I got my 1 week ban. So I decided the best thing to do was to make one final post pointing out that this "no sharing PM info" rule stifled important discussions and to simply stop posting in the public forums there.

Agreed, it can be a rough online world out there, but everyone draws their lines in the sand somewhere and I decided after that week ban that that was my line. Agreed. Sending someone a PM shouldn't essentially classify any information you put in it. It just leads to people abusing this type of rule, to the point that they'll say things in PMs that they wouldn't say otherwise, knowing that if you ever reveal what was said, you can get in trouble.

I didn't say that. I said they reduced their mentioning of Cartel de los Soles from 32 times in the old indictment, to the 2 times that you mention in the new one. Also, that the Trump Administration abandoned the claim that Cartel de los Soles was an actual organization. That charge I haven't looked at yet.

No mention of fentanyl or stolen oil in what you quoted either. Also, as to the "Cartel of the Suns": ** The Justice Department has backed off a dubious claim about President Nicolás Maduro that the Trump administration promoted last year in laying the groundwork to remove him from power in Venezuela: accusing him of leading a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles. That claim traces back to a 2020 grand jury indictment of Mr. Maduro drafted by the Justice Department. In July 2025, copying language from it, the Treasury Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization. In November, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and President Trump’s national security adviser, ordered the State Department to do the same. But experts in Latin American crime and narcotics issues have said it is actually a slang term, invented by the Venezuelan media in the 1990s, for officials who are corrupted by drug money. And on Saturday, after the administration captured Mr. Maduro, the Justice Department released a rewritten indictment that appeared to tacitly concede the point. Prosecutors still accused Mr. Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy but they abandoned the claim that Cartel de los Soles was an actual organization. Instead, the revised indictment states that it refers to a “patronage system” and a “culture of corruption” fueled by drug money. Where the old indictment refers 32 times to Cartel de los Soles and describes Mr. Maduro as its leader, the new one mentions it twice and says that he, like his predecessor, President Hugo Chávez, participated in, perpetuated and protected this patronage system. ** Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/us/trump-venezuela-drug-cartel-de-los-soles.html

Just finished reading an article that bears the name of this thread. It was written by a journalist named Simplicius, who I believe I was introduced to by Michael Hardner here, and I think he really is quite good. Quoting its introduction: ** What do you know? Today in court the Justice Department officially dropped the fake claim that Maduro was ringleader of the fictitious ‘Cartel of the Suns’, which never existed. The theater is not required anymore, you see, now that he’s captured! Convenient how that works, no? [snip] Can this administration and Justice Department in particular stoop any lower? After their Epstein docs “shell games” it was hard to believe that they could or would. That’s all not to mention the fact that the indictment itself now strikes a bit different compared to the accusations levied against Maduro in lead up to his capture, which were used to build him up as the world’s greatest crime boss: The Onion fixed that: But it little matters anymore, as the Trump administration has dropped all pretenses of adhering to any laws, strictures, or moral codes: they have simply declared the US’s right to take whatever it wants by virtue of its superpower status alone. [snip] ** Full article: https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/big-surprise-legal-story-changes

All I really know is that it didn't make sense to me, from an ethical perspective. It was especially vexxing because I had been trying to make peace between what are essentially 2 warring factions in the forum- the woman who PMed me and the woman who she'd been talking about were nominally the leaders of their respective factions. Anyway, looks like it'll all be over soon.

Alright. Well, I generally support countries trying to nationalize their own resources, since they are the ones who live there. Anyway, I decided to take a look at an artciel from a journalist I trust. She definitely wasn't pleased with what happened: 14 Points on Trump Kidnap of Venezuelan President Maduro on the Sixth Anniversary of the Trump Assassination of Haj Qassem | Vanessa Beeley

Lol :-). I got a 1 week ban from the forum a few days ago and I suspect my days posting there are about to end- thinking of doing a farewell post once the one week ban is over. Alright, here's the setup. The forum has a rule that says that you can't share the contents of PMs. Now, in regular circumstances, that rule sounds fine. The problem, in my view, is when someone shares accusations and evidence against another poster. This becomes particularly troublesome when I'd been trying to resolve the problems between the poster who PMed me and the poster she was accusing. I basically let her know that this was a problem and she told me that she hadn't said anything that she wouldn't say publicly. I told her I was relieved, as it would make my job of picking out what to say in public easier. Well, she changed her tune once I did start talking about what she revealed in the PMs in public. It looks like she also reported my posts and long story short, it's what led to my ban. So basically, here's my stance on PM privacy- it's fine, so long as it's not blocking important information from being revealed to relevant parties.

I think your bit about gross exageration is probably the most accurate. I'd also be interested in knowing why Venezuela rescinded the deal.

Hey everyone. So I've been thinking of whether or not to introduce a subject concerning whether a rule in an online forum is fair. I don't mean in the legal sense- I assume that the forum I'm thinking of has a legal right to have this rule. I'm talking about ethically. However, I'm not sure if there's any interest in this type of thing here, so I'll just ask- anyone interested? Oh, another question would be whether or not I can name the online forum in question.

I took a brief look at the video. It seems the podcaster is actually pro Trump. Anyway, I just found that the U.S. just captured Maduro this morning: https://ground.news/article/52af778d-6486-42b4-83a7-c662a56f827d I think it sets another bad precedent, but the U.S. has engaged in lots of those.

He was, when he was running to pick up the democratic nomination. Fortunately, Sanders is still a politician and people like AOC and Mamdani have some of his good qualities.

The Democratic Party has supported a lot of things, including playing dirty when it looked like Bernie Sanders was going to win the democratic nomination. The bottom line for me is that both parties are mixed bags- some good people in both, so you really just have to go through the politicians individually, and whether their stance helps Americans or not can literally depend on the issue being discussed. I didn't hear AOC's speech, but based on what I've heard of other speeches she's made, I think she's probably in the clear, especially if she's talking about social inequality.

I honestly couldn't say. I stopped reading/viewing most mainstream media a while back. My news sources are now mainly substack journalists and some youtubers.

LOL, WWI? At this rate, WWI was won long before Russia will ever win here. As I pointed out to you in a previous post, Russia's taken a lot more ground in the past 2 years than Western Front Advances between January 1915 and November 1916. Quoting my previous post: World War I took around 4 years to run its course. I wouldn't be all that surprised if the same occurs with the war in Ukraine. That being said, I acknowledge that it may last another year or 2 to get to 6 years, kind of like War War II. Barring a nuclear war with the U.S., wherein everyone loses, I doubt it'd long laster than that.

Did World War I take 100 years for the allies to win? With that in mind, take a look at that map comparison from my last post.

Sure... and you guys will keep claiming this. Describe what you mean by losing. Ukraine's been a lot of soldiers from the start of Russia's war in Ukraine and it's also lost a lot of territory since the start as well. Simplicius. a well known anonymous blogger on substack, wrote a long article detailing Russia's response to Trump's peace plan. I'll skip straight to the end, where he points out an interesting comparison: ** An interesting comparison map of WW1 advances over an almost two year period to the advances of Russian forces just over the same most-recent period: ** Full article: https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/putin-lays-final-word-on-settlement

You have been saying that for years now... It's been true since the start. It's just becoming impossible to ignore at this point.

Good article. Another one I skimmed through and thought was quite good from just a few hours ago: https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-111625-overblown-energy-strikes Simplicius' article ends with fairly extensive quoting of an article from the the Independent, this one: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/europe/nato-war-russia-ukraine-soldiers-drones-b2863755.html I'll quote the final lines from the above article: ** Nato’s regular armed forces are rarely, if ever, trained how to treat themselves for long periods with antibiotics and intravenous drips. And, above all, they are unprepared for the potential mass casualties that Nato forces would face in a conflict with Russia. “We almost can’t comprehend the scale of those losses,” says Ed Arnold, a former British Army officer who is now with Rusi. Gangrene among Ukrainian soldiers is commonplace because they are stuck on the front lines for so long. Britain’s biggest mobile field hospital has a capacity of only 80 general beds and 10 for intensive care. In a Ukraine-type war where the UK, and Nato, can expect hundreds of casualties every day, the capacity to cope is just not there. “We should have Ukrainians training [British officers] at Sandhurst (Royal Military Academy) at the moment,” adds Arnold. “There should be a resident Ukrainian platoon, which regularly rotates, giving us the actual download on what’s going on.” ** The final line from Simplicius' article: ** Well, it seems the smart-alecks are finally wising up. **

Yeah, as Professor Jeffrey Sachs says, Nuland is quite representative of the deep state. She started with Bush Jr. and went all the way up to the Biden Administration, wrecking the U.S. relationship with Russia during the entire trajectory. Here's the transcript of the start of an almost hour long interview with him and Professor John Mearsheimer: ** University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs discuss why Republican Dick Cheney feels ideologically comfortable endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris during a conversation at the "All-In Summit" with David Sacks and the other hosts of the "All-In" podcast: ** Full transcript, along with the video: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/09/16/sachs__mearsheimer_there_is_basically_one_deep_state_party_of_cheney_harris_biden_victoria_nuland.html

Page 85, years of you pushing this nonsense now. Even if we buy this version of events that might as well be from the mouth of Putin, the conclusion is not "there goes 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers" Alright, perhaps him saying "there goes 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers" wasn't -quite- right. But the title of the article itself says "10,000 Ukrainian Personnel Encircled as Russians Advance Into Krasnoarmeysk and Kupiansk Cities" and militarywatchmagine certainly isn't a Russian publication- It's American: https://thegunzone.com/who-owns-military-watch-magazine/ There are some good videos on the boondoggles Ukraine has gotten into recently. Here's one focused on Pokrovsk, and it's not from someone who supports Russia, just from someone who recognizes the bad Ukrainian political decisions that led to this debacle:

The U.S. actually played a key role in bringing Russia to the brink of collapse shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union. A good article on that from the National Security Archives: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nato-75-russia-programs/2024-12-18/long-telegram-1990s-whose-russia-it-anyway-toward Quoting the summary of the article: ** Embassy dissent argued against U.S. push for radical economic reform Top political officer predicted U.S. focus on markets over democratic institution-building would turn Russia anti-American and “adversarial” National Security Archive wins release of long-withheld cable through FOIA lawsuit **

Plenty of evidence that the U.S. and other western powers did in fact make quite a few promises. They just didn't make a formal agreement. The National Security Archives has plenty of information on this from declassified documents: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early