Scott75

If this is your dumb game... not everyone defines male or female the nonsensical way like you are here arguing for... so, there goes your big argument. First of all, it's not my "dumb game". I'm just pointing out a fact. Secondly, I completely agree that not everyone defines male and female in the way that I and others do. If everyone did, I doubt we'd be having this debate to begin with. You may recall that in the post you were responding too, I was pointing out why your solution of just saying that "men are men" only works if everyone in a given audience agrees what a man is. Since there are clearly a fair amount of people (myself included) that now define men as people who identify as men, your solution won't work if anyone in a given audience has this definition, at least if you'd like to determine a person's biological sex.

One thing I hope you learn one day- personal attacks never contribute to a discussion in a positive way. Your emotions are in control, not you. This is funny coming from a trans sympathizer. You never were in control, my friend. You're fighting for a group of people that deny their true sex - it doesn't get more out of control than that. The issue I was discussing with CdnFox was about his lack of control when it came to insulting people he disagrees with. I'm hardly the only person to point out his flame baiting posts. Radiorum made a good post on some of his many flame baiting remarks in post #502 in this thread. Michael Hardner alluded to CdnFox's unproductive discussion methods in post #549. The writing is really on the wall when it comes to many of CdnFox's posts. As to your assertion that I'm "fighting for a group of people that deny their true sex", you seem to be assuming that all transgender people believe the same things. They don't. From what I've seen, most in the transgender community accept that their biological sex is not the same thing as the gender they associate with, which is why they are transgender instead of cisgender.

Oh look, the loser lefty is accusing others of what he has done himself. Your latest unsubstantiated assertion made me smile. I believe Yoda said it well:

I can believe that. As the old saying goes, When The Student Is Ready, The Teacher Will Appear. I hope that one day, you learn how insulting people isn't the best way to engage in a productive conversation. You're trying to discuss something with someone who doesn't see discussion as an activity different from rock/paper/scissors. To many here, discussion is a zero sum game and if you question assumptions, or are unclear on their points, they will declare that you are 'playing games' and abandon the discussion ... adding " and you know this " to their points. So they simultaneously try to discuss with you and accuse you of being an abject liar. It makes no sense. I started using the IGNORE feature to said people en masse. I do peek at their responses, guiltily, occasionally but it's a pretty effective way for me to focus my forum time on people who actually want to talk. I don't believe I've ever used the ignore feature, though I -have- banned people from threads I've made in online forums where that's possible. It's not here, though, so I weather through it. As to why I don't use the ignore feature, I think it comes down to the fact that I think that even someone like CdnFox can make some very interesting points at times. I think basically it's a matter of filtering out the good from the bad. I've now at least started to not respond to some of his responses to me. As Radiorum so rightly pointed out in post #502, CdnFox is a heavy flame bait poster and it's never good to overfeed such posters with responses. An austere diet is the way to go. The idea being that they'll learn to appreciate responses more if they get less of them.

One thing I hope you learn one day- personal attacks never contribute to a discussion in a positive way. Your emotions are in control, not you. Kid you have nothing to teach me. I can believe that. As the old saying goes, When The Student Is Ready, The Teacher Will Appear. I hope that one day, you learn how insulting people isn't the best way to engage in a productive conversation.

XX chromosomes DOES certainly not, can certainly determine a person's sex and gender. You can think you're a chicken but that doesn't make you a chicken. I dont care how you define chicken. If we can agree that a person isn't a chicken simply because they declare themselves so, how then can a man be a woman simply by declaring it so? It all has to do with how people are defining terms like gender. You clearly want to equate a person's sex with a person's gender, but a significant amount of people no longer do this. Wikipedia gets into all of this in its introduction to the gender term: ** Gender includes the social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of being a man, woman, or other gender identity.[1][2] Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social constructs (i.e. gender roles) as well as gender expression.[3][4][5] Most cultures use a gender binary, in which gender is divided into two categories, and people are considered part of one or the other (girls/women and boys/men);[6][7][8] those who are outside these groups may fall under the umbrella term non-binary. A number of societies have specific genders besides "man" and "woman," such as the hijras of South Asia; these are often referred to as third genders (and fourth genders, etc.). Most scholars agree that gender is a central characteristic for social organization.[9] The word is also used as a synonym for sex, and the balance between these usages has shifted over time.[10][11][12] In the mid-20th century, a terminological distinction in modern English (known as the sex and gender distinction) between biological sex and gender began to develop in the academic areas of psychology, sociology, sexology, and feminism.[13][14] Before the mid-20th century, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories.[3][1] In the West, in the 1970s, feminist theory embraced the concept of a distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender. The distinction between gender and sex is made by most contemporary social scientists in Western countries,[15][16][17] behavioral scientists and biologists,[18] many legal systems and government bodies,[19] and intergovernmental agencies such as the WHO.[20] ** Full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

There is no good argument for mainstreaming transgenderism. Perhaps we should just agree to disagree on that point.

You are the one arguing for changing the meanings and using them. It was not done long before you arrived here either. Your argument at this point is just sad. I did notice a few people in this thread who tried to helpfully point out to you and others here the way the world has changed, and I also saw the attempts of a few others who think as you do try to hide this truth. Terms like gender have more than a single definition. The fact that people have generally stopped trying to get this through to you and people who think like you in this forum only means that people's patience is limited, not that it's not true. You don't like Wikipedia and some dictionaries making this obvious, fine, but it's obvious to anyone who's willing to look.

You certainly assert they are "good" but have no ability to argue that. My reasoning is fairly simple- some people who are born of one biological gender identify as the other one socially. That is not what you are here doing. You are here wanting us to use different definitions of the words to accommodate these delusions. You always want to make this about me, when this issue is so clearly much larger than me. What I've been doing for some time now is pointing out that there's a significant group of people who now define a person's gender as the gender they identify with. I think in your heart, you know this is true. You can rail about it and say that you don't like it, but it doesn't change this fact.

I have already addressed this bad argument of yours. A democrat is not defined as someone who identifies as a democrat. That depends on what definition is being used. As with terms like male and female, the term democrat has more than one defintion. Here are the 3 definitions of the term given by the American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Edition: ** noun An advocate of democracy. noun One who believes in social equality or discounts distinctions in rank. noun A member of the Democratic Party. ** The first 2 definitions are rather nebulous. For the first, I think it'd be hard to find a lot of people who live in democracies who -don't- advocate for democracy. Going by that definition, then, I think we could agree that most people living in democratic countries are democrats. The second might be more contentious. As to the third, as far as I know, any American citizen can register to be a democrat. I looked at the procedures required a bit, but decided it wasn't going worth going through a document on all the steps required to be sure. Feel free to take a look for yourself if you like: https://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Registered-Democrat

[snip] You can't even defend the lousy definition of the terms you want to use. Perhaps we can agree to disagree on this one too. Nope. You are the one here pushing this madness. If you are not interested in defending it, stop. "Madness", eh? Your language betrays your mindset. What I'm concerned about is if it makes sense to continue to try to get you and others here to see certain things that you seem determined not to see.

I have not flip-flopped on anything. Perhaps we should just agree to disagree on this one. There is no agree to disagree. You accused me of something, you can't back it up, its that simple. I've already backed it up, you just didn't notice. If anyone else is intersted in the evidence I gathered on the subject, by all means take a look at the nested quotes in post #394 in this thread, which can be seen here: https://repolitics.com/forums/?app=core&module=system&controller=content&do=find&content_class=forums_Topic&content_id=54465&content_commentid=1765873

You don't seem to care at all about the vast majority of people who define the terms as they actually are and instead want to create a new term for them. You keep on saying things like "the vast majority", but you haven't actually shown me any statistics as to how many people mind trans people just saying that they are the gender that they identify with. The main issue is that there is a fair amount of transgender inequality. Wikipedia has a helpful article on the subject, I'll quote its introduction below: ** Transgender inequality is the unequal protection received by transgender people in work, school, and society in general. Transgender people regularly face transphobic harassment. Ultimately, one of the largest reasons that transgender people face inequality is due to a lack of public understanding of transgender people.[1] Anti-transgender stigma leads to employment discrimination, exclusion from healthcare, and increased risks of poverty and homelessness, which in turn correspond to greater risks of fatal violence.[2] Abuse and murder of transgender people is pervasive;[3][4] in November 2021, "2021 was the deadliest year...of anti-transgender violence in the United States."[5] Those who have died as a result of transphobia are commonly remembered on Transgender Day of Remembrance.[6][7][8] ** Full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_inequality I don't know anyone who has died to to anti-transgender violence, but I did meet a trans man who had a very severe limp. I noticed the limp when a men's group I was in were going for something to eat. When I asked him how he got that limp, he told me he'd been severely beaten for being transgender. So as you can see, there are -very- good reasons why trans people would want to hide the fact that they're trans from most people, as anti-transgender violence is a very real thing.

You have presented no evidence there is any problem with simply calling people male, female, and trans... Some trans people do find the term trans offensive. I found one example in a study: ** “I find the term ‘trans’ to be offensive …” (Jacky) ** Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10121610/ Jacky is a Transgender Male. For me, the more important issue is, why? I think the answer is that it can be used to discriminate against them in various situations. As I've said in the past, if a biological male is considering dating someone and makes it clear to someone, I think at -that- point it would be good for a transgender female make it clear that they are not a biological female, but other than situations like that, I don't think they should have to reveal this by default. Forcing people to say that they are trans is akin to the Nazis forcing jews to wear a distinctive peace of clothing to distinguish them from others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge We all know the dark path the Nazis took after that, nor were the Nazis the only ones to engage in this type of thing as the above link shows. The problem is that some people wrongfully discriminate against people who don't conform to arbitrary ideas of what is "gender normal". I believe you know that I'm currently against minors undergoing hormone therapy and even surgery and I strongly suspect that even many adults who undergo these procedures would actually be better off with -not- undergoing these things, if only society were more accepting of people being more accepting of people who didn't conform to society's views of gender norms. There is perhaps no country on earth that is more extreme about this then in Iran: https://qz.com/889548/everyone-treated-me-like-a-saint-in-iran-theres-only-one-way-to-survive-as-a-transgender-person But there are shadows of this type of thing in many cultures, including western ones.

I agree. We even have advertisements on TV about the problems claiming we lose 20 people per day and that it is a crisis. This is not the issue. The issue is with undocumented immigrants and drugs entering the United States. Trump is probably too anxious to impose tariffs on goods imported to the USA, trying to rationalise it by stating Mexico and Canada need to stop exporting fentanyl into America, and increase border security. These problems have plagued the US-Mexican border for decades. However in Canada, very little fentanyl crosses the border, about 1/1000th of what is seized at the southern border. As for illegals, we have recently seen a surge in undocumented people from India and other places cross the US-Canada border illegally, however even with the record totals in 2023, the problem in Mexico is nearly 25 times as bad. So it really makes little sense to punish both countries equally. Alright, it -seems- that you've backed off claiming that Sheinbaum "said more fentanyl is coming in from Canada than Mexico". I seriously doubt the difference is 1000 times as much as Mexico's fentanyl drug exports, but I can certainly believe that it's a fair amount more. Here's what I was able to find from an article I found online: ** US Customs and Border Patrol recognizes three regions where fentanyl crosses into the country. These regions are the northern border dividing the US and Canada, the southwest border dividing the US and Mexico, and coastal and interior ports of entry. The latter includes international airports like those in Chicago and seaports such as those in Miami. Although there are legal ports of entry throughout the US, fentanyl is primarily trafficked across the southwest border, with 88% of it passing through official southwest ports of entry. ** Source: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-fentanyl-is-seized-at-us-borders/country/united-states/ Personally, I think this notion Trump has that the solution to the United States' drug problems is to impose tarriffs on one or more countries that border the U.S. if these countries don't "stop the flow of migrants and illegal drugs into the U.S." is unrealistic. If he'd said -reduce- the flow of migrants and illegal drugs, and then set a certain reduction in percentage, it might be doable. Imposing tariffs on other countries can certainly have benefits at times, for instance in spurring domestic production of goods, but tying tariffs to how much drugs and/or migrants are entering a country illegally sounds like a particularly bad idea, especially since he doesn't even have a plan on any concrete steps he'd like Mexico and Canada to take.

She said more fentanyl is coming in from Canada than Mexico If Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum said that, she didn't say it in the article you quoted. Below is the part of your article that quotes Claudia Sheinbaum's comment on fentanyl: ** She also noted that Canada has "a very serious problem with fentanyl consumption," more than Mexico, and possibly as a result of some drug-decriminalization measures. ** So she said that Canada has a very serious problem with fentanyl consumption, and that this problem was more serious than Mexico's problem with fentanyl. Absolutely nothing on how much fentanyl is coming in from Canada. So unless you're referring to some other article wherein Sheinbaum actually -did- say that more fentanyl is coming in from Canada as opposed to Mexico, you misunderstood what Sheinbaum said.

I still think that Russia is -hoping- that Ukraine finally comes around and just makes a peace deal. Just today, RT came out with an article wherein Russia's Foreign Minister reitered what would be needed for such a deal. Quoting: ** For a diplomatic solution to be achieved between Russia and Ukraine, “the root causes of the conflict must be eradicated,” he explained. According to Lavrov, the causes include NATO’s eastward expansion and “systematic” violations of the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine by the Kiev government. “Another essential element of the political settlement must be demilitarization and denazification [of Ukraine], ensuring a non-aligned, neutral and non-nuclear status for the territories controlled by the Kiev regime,” he said. No peace deal can also be reached without “recognition of the political and territorial realities, enshrined in the Russian constitution,” Lavrov said, referring to the status of Crimea, which reunited with Russia in 2014, and of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, which officially became part of the Russian state as a result of referendums in 2022. ** Source: https://www.rt.com/russia/608257-lavrov-ukraine-peace-putin/

This is right out of the Russian propaganda playbook. No, this is the truth. But you need to read certain articles, many of which aren't in the mainstream media (though some are). I recommend articles like these: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-truth-about-ukraine-italian-documentary-bombshell-evidence-kiev-euromaidan-snipers-kill-demonstrators/5619684 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 https://off-guardian.org/2022/02/24/timeline-euromaidan-the-original-ukraine-crisis/

yeah, the Donbass is the Russian region but a lot of those Russians are anti-Putin, it's not like all Russians in Ukraine are for Putin the most Russian city in Ukraine is Kharkiv, and the Russians couldn't take it Did they put much effort into takng that one? I certainly didn't hear they had. From what I remember, it seems that -everyone- thought Russia was going to win in Ukraine super fast. Then people started realizing that this wasn't going to happen. Anyway, as I believe you may have said, Russia's intent was never to hold on to all of Ukraine. Perhaps their main goal at first was to simply persuade Ukraine to accept the peace deal they offered in the first few weeks. They also seemed to be overconfident in terms of what it would take to hold on to Lugansk, so they lost a lot of ground there not too long after the war started. By 2023, though, they were more then ready for Ukrane "spring offensive". Barring a nuclear war at which point who knows what'll happen, and not just in Ukraine, I don't see Russia losing much if any more ground in Ukraine again.

The thing with Ukraine, on the other hand, is it was a mixed bag. The Donbass region definitely welcomed Russia with open arms, in fact Donbass Republics were the ones that asked for their help against the western Ukrainian army in the first place. It was something else entirely with western Ukrainians.

For those who are unfamiliar with Austria's annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss

I see you just keep repeating this bogus line... You quoted 3 sentences I wrote. What in them do you think is "bogus"?

except they didn't deploy anywhere near enough forces to occupy Ukraine they didn't even launch an organized combined arms operation to do so what they did, was launch haphazardly into a series of "Thunder Runs" they just took off down the highway towards Kiev, not even prepared for a fight clearly the Kremlin expected it to be a walk over with no significant resistance they apparently expected to just roll into Kiev, depose the government, then roll back to Russia after I think you're right that Russia underestimated Ukraine's will and capability to fight. I -also- suspect they may have thought that faced with Russia's army breathing down his neck, Zelensky would agree to a peace deal and Russia would, as you say, just "roll back to Russia after". It almost happened too. Then the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson persuaded Zelensky not to take the deal. It's the best deal Zelensky could have taken. HIs prospects now are much, much worse. An article on said deal here: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/ukraine-russia-war-peace-diplomacy/

I've never found any one thing that really laid it all out about the Ukrainian situation. We get snippets of all the various aspects of this war from several different "sources", which inevitably means that we're getting a constant mix of BS and lies and exaggerations and omissions and carefully controlled narratives from unvetted sources, or known liars like CNN. Going back as far as 2009, Biden was in Ukraine talking about "Ukraine joining NATO". Then came the infamous carpet-bagging scheme with Hunter, Joe and Burisma, the unilateral firing and hiring or prosecutors in Ukraine by Joe, the Euromaidan Protests - orchestrated by the US gov't, there was the case of US/Ukrainian research that is known to have been conducted on bioweapons in Ukraine, [1] discrimination against Russian-speaking minorities (or even the majority within that region) in the Donbas, [2] separatist uprisings in the Donbas, [3] the annexation of Crimea and Russian support of separatists outside of Crimea, all in quick succession, then the escalation in the shelling of civilian targets in Donbas. Obviously the invasion followed all of that. I think that the Azov Nazi Battalion was formed after the annexation of Crimea, but I don't know exactly who all its various members were committing war crimes for before they officially became a Nazi battalion. Honestly, I'd love to hear a thorough breakdown of all those various aspects of this war, all from the same group of people. Those parts of the story are all important, and it's tough to even place them all in proper chronological order. Some of them overlap, etc. And we read about all of those things from different people with different perspectives (biases) all the time. It's really frustrating. When I started to look into all of this, mainly at the start of Russia's military operation in Ukraine, I too was rather confused as to what was going on. The more I read, however, the more I became convinced that people like Jacques Baud had it right, and that the western mainstream media was mainly in the business of concealing some very sordid facts about the west's culpability in all of this. Perhaps the most sordid of all was the United States' involvement in Euromaidan. The call between then Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was particularly illuminating, as Victoria seemed to in essence be choreographing who would replace then elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Perhaps more importantly, what she suggested should happen actually happened. The BBC wrote an article on it: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 Darker still is the role of what I call the Euromaidan Massacre in creating the conditions for Yanukovych's ouster. I've seen no hard evidence that the U.S. government played a role in it, but the fact that American military operative Brian Christopher Boyenger played a key role in it suggests that it may well have done so. My go to article for a while on the Euromaidan Massacre has been this one: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-truth-about-ukraine-italian-documentary-bombshell-evidence-kiev-euromaidan-snipers-kill-demonstrators/5619684 Some people don't like the Global Research site, but the article actually relies heavily on an Italian documentary on the event. It's also not the only article that brings up said Italian documentary and Brian Christopher Boyenger. Here's another I just found: https://gordonhahn.com/2017/11/17/foreign-involvement-in-february-2014-maidan-terrorist-sniper-attack/ I just finished listening to an article from Mearsheimer on audible.com that was originally published in Foreign Affairs 10 years ago. For anyone who hasn't heard of him, I think Wikipedia's introduction of the man is good: ** John Joseph Mearsheimer (/ˈmɪərʃaɪmər/; born December 14, 1947)[3] is an American political scientist and international relations scholar. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. ** Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer He published his Foreign Affairs article months after Euromaidan and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Even then, he put the blame for the crisis squarely on the West. His article can be seen here: Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault : The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin Here's the introduction to his article: ** According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine. But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine—beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004—were critical elements, too. Since the mid1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labeled a “coup”—was the )nal straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West. ** I don't know where he got this notion that Russia was "working to destabilize Ukraine", but apart from that, I think he was on the nose. Even 10 years ago, the issue of Ukraine joining NATO was clearly something that Russia adamantly didn't want happening. He addresses this too, and I think was quite prescient as to where this would lead: ** One also hears the claim that Ukraine has the right to determine whom it wants to ally with and the Russians have no right to prevent Kiev from joining the West. This is a dangerous way for Ukraine to think about its foreign policy choices. The sad truth is that might often makes right when great-power politics are at play. Abstract rights such as self-determination are largely meaningless when powerful states get into brawls with weaker states. Did Cuba have the right to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union during the Cold War? The United States certainly did not think so, and the Russians think the same way about Ukraine joining the West. It is in Ukraine’s interest to understand these facts of life and tread carefully when dealing with its more powerful neighbor. Even if one rejects this analysis, however, and believes that Ukraine has the right to petition to join the EU and NATO, the fact remains that the United States and its European allies have the right to reject these requests. There is no reason that the West has to accommodate The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral bu!er. John J. Mearsheimer 12 FOREIGN AFFAIRS Ukraine if it is bent on pursuing a wrong-headed foreign policy, especially if its defense is not a vital interest for them. Indulging the dreams of some Ukrainians is not worth the animosity and strife it will cause, especially for the Ukrainian people. **

I imagine Zelensky, the Brits and the Americans would have all preferred it if Putin had just let the eastern Ukrainians get rolled, quite possibly in anticipation of Ukraine and the west then begin to do the same with Crimea and finally with Russia itself, given enough time. Putin suggested that this might well have been the course of events if he hadn't acted with his military operation on February 24, 2022. I have seen only one article that really got into the days before Putin finally decided to start his military operation and they were eye opening for me. This article was written by a former Swiss Military Intelligence Officer Jacques Baud. Here's the most salient passage from his article on this: ** 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. ** I found the rest of Jacques Baud's article to be very eye opening as well, well worth reading the whole thing in my view. It can be seen here: https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/09/former-nato-military-analyst-blows-the-whistle-on-wests-ukraine-invasion-narrative/ It's things like this that lend credence that Russia really didn't want to go into Ukraine and only felt forced to after Ukraine started its attack. Here's a passage from Putin's speech that aired on February 24, 2022: ** This brings me to the situation in Donbass. We can see that the forces that staged the coup in Ukraine in 2014 have seized power, are keeping it with the help of ornamental election procedures and have abandoned the path of a peaceful conflict settlement. For eight years, for eight endless years we have been doing everything possible to settle the situation by peaceful political means. Everything was in vain. As I said in my previous address, you cannot look without compassion at what is happening there. It became impossible to tolerate it. We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us. It is their aspirations, the feelings and pain of these people that were the main motivating force behind our decision to recognise the independence of the Donbass people’s republics. ** Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/statements/67843