The battle lines are moving pretty fast by Ukraine war standards. Pokravsk and Konstantivka are surrounded. Bilohorovka has finally fallen, tightening the Russian cauldron around Siverisk. The result of these three sieges is that the final 2014 era Ukrainian hardened defensive line through Sloviansk-Kramantorsk-Konstantivka is on the verge of being cauldroned.
Additionally, Kupiansk on the northern end of the eastern defensive line is almost encircled. In the south there’s a slow moving but consistent Russian breakout coming from the Avdiivka-Vuhledar direction.
In far north-central Ukraine, the offensive salient into Kursk has been fully rolled back. Russian troops are beginning to push into Ukraine towards Sumy.
Taking all these things together, it means you could see a complete collapse of the front in about six months.
ABigGuy4U
15d ago
Elections in Ukraine are cancelled indefinitely with US State Department approval, so barring a military coup Zaluzhny can’t force anything through. The State Department might be changing its tune though. The war is going very badly for Ukraine. Budanov was supposed to be the hard-headed butcher that would fight to the last Ukrainian, so if he wants to tap out that means the situation must be very dire. A catastrophic, total Ukrainian collapse would make NATO a lot harder to defend because the Russians would be sitting right on the Polish border. The Balkans would also be at much higher risk. It would be better for NATO to force Ukraine to give up everything east of the Dneiper and freeze the conflict for another ten years. That at least gives Europe time to rearm.
ABigGuy4U
17d ago
Ah there it is. The appeal to Politically Correct “history” that is the final refuge of every anti-human subversive. “The witches abduction of Gunnlaugr in the Eyrbyggja Saga is clearly a premodern attempt to describe an alien abduction!” bleats the graduate student with a research grant sponsored by The Groom Lake Institute for Advanced Aeronautics and Cultural Understanding.
ABigGuy4U
18d ago
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any roles for Extraterrestrial-American actresses. I’m just saying these roles should be where historically and dramatically appropriate. Playing a genetically engineered creature in Morgan? Yes that’s a perfectly reasonable role for an ayy. Queen’s Gambit? It’s a bit of a reach, there were no ayylmao chess grandmasters back then. But given how much covert extraterrestrial involvement there was in the Cold War it doesn’t seem too ridiculous. But we don’t need to go cramming an ayy into a movie set in Scandinavia in the 11th century. It’s intentional human-erasure. And they clearly take special glee in casting her in romantic relationships with Earthmen. It’s about as subtle as a pornography video from PROBED .com.
ABigGuy4U
18d ago
The reason is that most woke stuff kills verisimilitude (think fantasy filled with black people in clearly Northern Europe).
True, all The Pitt’s lecturing about Current Thing is still less immediately risible than getting fifteen minutes into The Northman (a serious movie about Vikings) and seeing an actress that is obviously a Martian.
ABigGuy4U
18d ago
Basically the scenario outlined in Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission where Europeans don’t put up any fight at all and basically consent to their own Islamization.
ABigGuy4U
18d ago
The Warren Commission studiously avoided ever interviewing Jack Ruby because... BECAUSE THEY JUST DIDN’T NEED TO OK??
You didn’t like Bernie, that doesn’t mean that other people didn’t. You probably didn’t think Trump had a snowball’s chance in hell at winning either. If Bernie was so unpopular, why did the Democratic Party have to undertake heroic action every single primary to thwart him? And even if Bernie couldn’t win, it would have been better to let him take his shot, lose bigly, and put the issue to bed for good instead of creating a permanent Lost Cause myth and losing the left wing of the party for good.
ABigGuy4U
19d ago
I think the risk of political violence is going up, but it no longer has the level of public buy-in you would need for a civil war. Especially for the youth, which is the primary demographic you would need for that. Zoomers are too checked out and there’s not enough of them, Boomers are too old, and Millennials finally managed to grab a small slice of the pie and are now just a bit too comfortable. I think the primary danger zone in the United States was 2014 to 2021. I think the chances of civil war in Europe are higher, but the most likely scenario is the Day of the Shed, when all the native peoples of Europe rise up and viciously cuck themselves to death Michel Houellebecq-style.
ABigGuy4U
20d ago
As far a China — I’ve no doubt that most elites or potential elites are on very similar lists.
I’ve wondered about that. I think blackmail schemes might have less value in unfree countries when you can just have your enemies executed for “corruption” or mysteriously fall out a window.
ABigGuy4U
20d ago
Before Trump himself started to act in this extremely and transparently suspicious manner I was under the impression that the Epstein case would ruin the lives of a few connected celebrities and rich donors and add one scandal to the CIA's list. Now I don't know what to believe.
I suspect the blackmail networks are extensive enough that the United States is effectively not a republic anymore, and hasn’t been for decades. The primaries and appointments have been gatekept so that the Presidency and most of the higher level legislative judicial and executive branch positions only go to people that have kompromat on them. That would be too big to reveal and definitely not just another scandal. Trump could very well be on the list, or just scared of accidentally sparking a revolution.
ABigGuy4U
20d ago
Because it makes marriage look like it’s just a long-term form of prostitution. Which I guess for some people it basically is.
ABigGuy4U
20d ago
Evangelicals are even worse — they're pretty much having the liberal kids current liberals aren't.
US Evangelicals are picking up a lot of younger Catholics and young people from the blander Protestant denominations. There are no young Methodists, Presbyterians or Episcopalians: they are all atheists or evangelicals now.
On a global level, evangelical denominations are getting huge inflows from former pagans in Africa and former Catholics in Latin America.
ABigGuy4U
21d ago
If the temple is going to be rebuilt, the site would need to be consecrated with the sacrifice of a red heifer. It has to be a heifer that has no other colored hairs at all. That is very rare. Ranchers in Texas are working with ultra-orthodox groups in Israel to breed a line of such cows to have it ready in case the Dome of the Rock suddenly....goes away.
I’m less concerned about the rare cases of complete psychotic break and more concerned about the rapidly nucleating cult behaviors that are quickly assembling into an actual new religious movement.
ABigGuy4U
22d ago
@DradisPing @OliveTapenade @ChickenOverlord
They are confusing those songs with The Show Must Go On which the band really did write while Freddie Mercury was dying and is very much about that.
ABigGuy4U
23d ago
@Dean @No_one That attack isn’t 10 years in prison. It’s terrorism and attempted premeditated murder of a federal law enforcement officer. Plus obstruction, weapons charges, conspiracy. This is a situation where prosecutors will be going maximally hard. That’s forty years at best and probably life. In the very likely event that one or more officers had died, that would have been the needle.
The problem is that a backup plan means multiple shooters which successful or not is a giant red flag for a conspiracy. Also there was a second attempted shooter just a few weeks later that also almost succeeded.
ABigGuy4U
23d ago
If he was just a compulsive liar, how was he squashing federal investigations and getting sweetheart plea deals where he doesn’t have to serve any time?
ABigGuy4U
24d ago
@2rafa @SecureSignals @Goodguy It was a joint Mossad/CIA project. That’s why he was able to get the the earlier charges dropped on the basis of being intelligence. The way he got rich was by being a CIA money launderer. Trump can’t reveal the list because the American people would react badly if they found out that electoral politics is basically fake and they’ve been living in a dictatorship of the CIA for the past 60 years.
Ok, so what is the casualty total? We don’t know because it’s never been reported. Haaretz said it was 260 as of April 2024. Al-Jazeera said 860 five days ago. I’m sure you can tell me all the reasons those are wrong, but won’t actually be able to tell me a number.
It’s not a breakthrough yet. But Ukraine’s leverage is slowly decreasing and if there ever is a major rapid breakthrough it all goes out the window.
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