Moonbox

You're probably right that Putin has no choice, but then he also doesn't have a combat-effective army either, so his choice is irrelevant. He can claim and rant about whatever he wants, but the fact is that his rotten regime has yielded a dysfunctional and unmotivated army with shitty equipment that can't hold on to what he's tried to grab. The demented logic of blaming the defending nation for the conflict is...bizarre. Nobody gives a shit about your point because it's absurd. The narrative that Putin has tried to write throughout this conflict is farcical and this is self-evident to anyone outside the Russian information space with a brain. The fact they are still calling it a "special operation" 7 months into the conflict, after thousands of Russian soldiers have died and after their first draft since WW2 is ample evidence of how detached from reality the whole fiction is. The regime is built on lies. My OP explained the problem and we're seeing it play out on the ground. The rationale for the invasion was balogna. The estimates for weak Ukrainian resistance were fantasy. No bioweapon labs were found. Russian soldiers aren't finding Nazis everywhere, nor are they being greeted as liberators. They're not encountering NATO formations. Conscripts are not getting the training they were promised. Russians soldiers are not interested in the fight because they can see better than anyone that the story Putin tried to sell them was horseshit.

As you so often need to remind us, Ukraine is not part of NATO, how are these NATO forces?

Which further erodes the rationale behind the EMA. Though I agree with this post, I do find it curious how the Toronto Star is suddenly a reliable source of evidence for you now that it's telling you something you wanted to hear.

NATO forces huh? ?

Russia's not the same communist state, but it evidently carried a lot of its problems forward and it's certainly not free. Being more free than under the USSR isn't a very high bar either. The proof that Russia is a police state is that Putin's opponents keep getting sent to jail or having accidents, that Russian journalists and political dissidents have fled abroad and that independent media has been forcibly closed. ? Except it is. The retreats from Kiev, Kharkiv and Lyman are evident of things going wrong. Russian propaganda is already setting the stage to explain their imminent retreat from Kherson city. That they had to institute a draft to reinforce their positions, and import shit-tech from Iran so they can spite-bomb Ukrainian cities is about as good an indication as any of where this goes. Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to be reinforced by the NATO arsenal (and captured equipment) and view this war as existential, while the Russian's quite obviously don't have their hearts in it. Yes yes - the bioweapon labs, the evil Nazis, NATO encroachment, broken promises about expansion (that were never made). We've heard it all before! ?

Yeah yeah. Everything is bad. We get it. Your problem? You complain about everything while offering solutions to nothing. It's tedious, pointless baby talk. Show us some concrete ideas and alternatives. Tell us specifically what needs to change in your mind. FYI "Do the bad things less" doesn't count.

No. I have said before I think that was overreach. Clearing the protestors out, like any other disruptive one we see that lasts too long? Yep! How delusional do you need to be to convince yourself of that!? All those trucks were parked in parking lots to the side then? We didn't see people all over the streets the whole time? Nobody was playing street hockey? No streets were closed? No buses were closed? No gridlock? Holy hell man. ?

No, I don't think it does. Though you're making a fair point, calling it martial law doesn't do you any favors. The use of the Emergency Act on the trucker protest was a joke and should never happened. That doesn't mean that the protestors should have been allowed to stay as long as they did, but that's part of the problem. It's absurd that these protests somehow couldn't have been cleared/moved earlier without opting for the nuclear option. ? "but but but BLM and antiiiifa!" This is just lazy whataboutism and deflection. Neither of these were Canadian protests nor did they have anything to do with the Trucker Convoy. The differences among all of the above are stark, but debating them serves no purpose other than to derail the topic and turn it into more culture-war bait. When you say these protests were "tolerated" or "basically accepted" that's pretty vague and misleading, but what I suspect you mean is that the participants weren't getting skewered in public opinion like the Truckers. That's not on anyone but them. The organizers were idiots and whatever genuine concerns (specifically economic) they had were drowned in moronic anger and conspiracy theories that people were exhausted listening to. Problematic. Yes. This is something that Trudeau should probably pay for, and we should get a very clear idea of what on earth went wrong to lead to it.

Blocking off the downtown core of Ottawa. ?

He says, after spending the last 2 years telling everyone we live in a communist/fascist dictatorship. ? The only thing you've accomplished in over 2 years of whining, crying and insulting everyone on this topic is confirming how impossible it is to take you seriously. So while you admit you don't feel safe around big crowds of protestors, you call the fears of Ottawa residents "brainwashed" and "irrational". The fact that you can't go more than a few posts without faceplanting on your own words is very on-brand for you. Even so, your right to protest has limits, as do most of your other rights under the Charter and Constitution.

Large mobs of people making a lot of noise, brandishing F*** TRUDEAU slogans are not places most people feel safe. For a day or two, you'd just avoid it. When it lasts for weeks you can't. Most of these folks didn't think the protestors were evil. They thought the protestors were losers - loud, angry and ignorant losers.

Nope, I'm trying to show you why your logic sucks (as usual). You said we can't selectively choose which charities get favorable tax treatment based on our political views. The NAMBLA example was meant to show you the absurdity of that statement. 66% of Canadians don't "adhere" to Christianity. That number is outdated to start, then most of those who do say they're "Christian" either seldom or never pray or attend Church services. That's why all the Churches are closing, though this point doesn't actually matter. Saying "We are a Christian organization" does not automatically qualify you as a charity for obvious reasons. Just like you wouldn't want to give charitable status to NAMBLA, you'd similarly reject the status for Christian Church of Old Men Spending Time Alone with Young Boys.

It's invaluable advertising for SpaceX. His little fuss was all about making sure everyone knew about his contributions.

Ouch what a zinger ? You didn't answer though. If nobody is allowed decide who and what gets charitable status, then you'd support NAMBLA being a designated charity, right? That's what your logic would dictate, so you must feel that way. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but if that's the case then your earlier statement was pretty dumb. Either way, you've demonstrated your foolishness once again. ?‍♂️

I would understand (though not really agree) with canceling Christmas celebrations at a school, given how explicitly religious the holiday is. The celebrations themselves are almost never religious flavored, but that might make sense in principle? Halloween though? Give your freaking head a shake. This sort of tone-deaf and draconic wokeness is what has made politics so divisive over the last 15 years. A pointless, idiotic measure like this is symbolic of how intellectually bankrupt the "woke culture" or whatever you want to call it can be. When militant wokeness oversteps like this, the loss in credibility makes it so much harder for actually important appeals for equality/inclusivity to move forward.

By that logic, you'd be supportive of NAMBLA Canada having charitable status? ?

I think the Russians are just going to leave. They've already declared martial law and they're evacuating people (forced or otherwise). I'm not even sure they're going to fight for the city. The last thing they want is to have a large contingent of their already stretched and demoralized forces caught on the wrong side of the river.

You know what's more likely? Nobody nukes anyone, because that'd be insane for everyone involved. Putin's impotent bluster and your lame coping are to be laughed at, not taken seriously. Russia is poor. That's not pretend, nor is it up for debate. Nobody called them stupid. You've implied that their low(er) reliance on electronics is intentional/planned, which isn't true. They're poor. They're trying to play superpower with an economy smaller than Canada's. Do the math.

Not a viable scenarios. A large-scale EMP, a neutron bomb or anything like it would trigger a heavy-handed response. If Russia detonated a large EMP over Europe, NATO would not be constrained to an EMP over Russia. The response would be at least equal, but probably greater. The escalation principle is one of the core tenets of MAD. Russia's using analogue technology because they're poor, not because they're smart. ?

I don't really understand what point you're trying to make with this thread....

Who else? Did they threaten anything other than retaliation? That's just how M.A.D. works. Nobody's used them since WW2 because their enemies assure them they'd use them back. The assurance of a no-win scenario is what keeps villains from actually doing it. You only want to talk about these people though, because Putin is stronk good guy! There's lots of bad actors in the world, yes. This thread was about how bad/delusional Putin is though, but thanks for clarifying. Oh I'll make sure to ping you. What's really hilarious is that you still think things are going "according to plan" when Russia had to institute their first draft since WW2 against....Ukraine! The sad Russian army hasn't moved forward in months, has lost territory and now resorts to spiteful civilian bombing because they're not capable of accomplishing anything else. ?

No it wasn't. Feel free to repost the quote and try to explain the context again. We know you can't, but I'll invite you to try anyway...for the 4th or 5th time now! ? This is the best response he can think of, folks. The mature, rational and totally-not-cowardly Nationalist can't even stand by his own words and just defaults to limp and childish insults when confronted with his own contradictory logic.

You keep saying I misquoted you, but I didn't. That's a direct quote. You actually said that! ? I'm going to keep bringing it up every time you try to pretend you're impartial and peace-loving. You're not. You very clearly told us what you want to see here, who you're rooting for and what your perspective is. While you rant and rave about how everyone else is a coward and a liar, you don't even have the courage to own your own words! ?

He says, after previously saying: Derp derp derp. Can't even keep his thoughts straight. Nationerist's logic is that NATO can afford to to send tens of billions of dollars in military equipment to Ukraine, but then they'll freeze to death because gas generators and wood fire are super advanced tech that nobody has yet figured out. Tooootally makes sense. Go look up the siege of Leningrad. Your ignorance of history is consistent with your lack of knowledge and common sense on everything else.

As he's calling people immature little shits, he posts stuff like this. It takes a special type of delusion to square this logic away. As for Russia's "infrastructure" strikes, that's nothing more than the impotent lashing out of a losers who can't manage anything else.