News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]


That's a different discussion.

I was just curious why Ron thinks the Baltics are so important.

For Stalin they were important, so that the Baltic Fleet could not be bottled up in the Gulf of Finland.

But now the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet are in Baltiysk, Kaliningrad.

The Baltic ports, like Klaipeda and Riga were important for Russian exports, but since approx 2000 - Russia has built new railroads that bypass those assh*les.

There's nothing there except millions of senior citizens that will lay down like an anchor on our balance sheet.

After Ukraine - what would truly be nice to have - IMHO - are places like Azerbaijan (a good 15% addition to our daily oil production), Armenia (if we're pissing off Turkey, may as well surround it).


Not so junior, while we still have some things to teach them.

There are not many things left, but there is still the atomic power industry, aircraft manufacture, and of course the military.

Just today, this article was published, which I'm sure will make CMS Neuf laugh:

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News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]


Now I am curious - why is half of Ukraine marginal, but control over the Baltics makes you an instant superpower?

They have a combined population of around 5 million people. 2 million of which are pensioners.

It was that Pole, Bzezinski, who said the following:

"It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire."

Ukraine allows you to project power deep into the continent. It gives you borders with 3 additional EU states. It allows for direct connection to European electricity and pipeline grids. Instead of a Kaliningrad, which is a total liability from a defense point of view, you get a massive beachhead into Europe, with rock solid logistics stretching back into the heart of Russia. You get not 5, but 15-20 million people (if you take only the Left Bank).

Unlike the impenetrable swamps of the Baltics, you get the best farmland in the world.

With the Ukrainian Black Sea coastline, Russia goes from having about as much coastline as Bulgaria or Georgia, to having the longest coastline - longer than Turkey's.

So what's so special about the Baltics?

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]


Really? The way I read it, Trump has washed his hands of this war.


A fact that I'm sure delivers you tremendous joy.

Off-Topic / Whatever happened to ...? [20]

I would hate to die, and then have one of my loved ones inadvertently discover all of Bobko's posts.

Conclusion - must live forever and guard my anonymity.

Polonia / What do Poles think of how they are treated in Germany, in comparison to the Muslim migrants [181]


Yes, but when you have external attack, rape, or murder attached to your already indigenous rates - I feel it is fully normal for the population to ask questions. No?

Like, "Why exactly must we suffer this?"

And if you give them arguments about: "poor demographics", "structurally unbalanced budgets", and "declining labor productivity" - they are not very happy to receive them.

BB is a super nice guy, and he still says these things. This should be a warning sign to others.

Polonia / What do Poles think of how they are treated in Germany, in comparison to the Muslim migrants [181]


I don't like it. But I think it has a right to exist, just as Voodoo, and Rastafarianism, and Hinduism, and other -isms can exist.

I don't think the bad behavior of Muslims, is due to a some fundamental evil within their scripture. I think it has to do with demographics, historical accidents, and bedrock-level encoded behavior in tribal societies - which existed long before Muhammad made his first speech.

Many of my very good friends are Muslims - and they are very intelligent and very caring people.

I think your problem is you are importing the trash of Syria, Libya, Pakistan, etc. Trash is trash - anywhere in the world.

Polonia / What do Poles think of how they are treated in Germany, in comparison to the Muslim migrants [181]


Did you read it all, lol :)

Polonia / What do Poles think of how they are treated in Germany, in comparison to the Muslim migrants [181]


It's just something I feel, sitting here. But if you want links, here's one:

middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/far-right-activists-advocating-palestinians

Trump recently said: "My people are very angry with Israel." That's important. Because Trump himself doesn't believe in anything. He's not antisemitic, and he's not pro-Semitic. He honestly does not give a f*ck about the Jews. But what he cares about is how his "base" feels. And the base is angry.

One of the more prominent people who went on a serious "anti-Israel" bent, was Charlie Kirk - who got shot recently. Ditto Steve Bannon.

The "actual" Nazis of America, have been spending lots of ink discussing Hitler's positive views on Islam, and his plans for the Middle East.

I think Netanyahu inadvertently dialed the clock back to 1935 with his actions.

Polonia / What do Poles think of how they are treated in Germany, in comparison to the Muslim migrants [181]


In America - the real far right - not whatever Democrats want to frame as the far right (but is in reality just moderate conservatism)... has become almost completely Pro-Palestinian.

That is, White Supremacists, or Nazis - in other terms - are now Pro-Palestinian.

Now, they never liked Jews to begin with, but in the post 9/11 world they had made some awkward alliance in opposition to the fanatical Islam.

Just like you BB, their frustrations about the "brownification" and "Islamization" of America, led them into an awkward alliance with Israel.

So then, what happened since October 7th, represents a true 180 in far right views.

It's not that Muslims are "up", it's just that Jews are "down".

Off-Topic / Random Chat Thread [504]

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News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]


While you vomit around here, let me tell you - I am not terribly impressed with the civilization that you have built.

What are you proud of now, as an American living in Poland?

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]


I always thought Kozak was a common thug, and a criminal - that should not be allowed within 100 miles of the Kremlin... but his personal views - as published in the press - have made me reevaluate my opinion of him.

It's too bad, that such a person in Putin's circle is departing.


Many of your pets will die as well.

More deaths for the altar of the God of War!!

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]


Ahaha!

Russia survived worse than CEOs falling out of windows, and still emerged as an arbiter of world affairs.

It happened after the Mongols, the Poles, the Swedes, Napoleon, and Hitler.

The народ ("The People) are as inexhaustible as the Russian land itself - vast, fertile, always renewing.

When called upon - Russians can buckle up and endure what nobody else can endure.

Rest assured - we'll be around for a long time, and will cause you problems yet.

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News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]

Looks to be as if the Russian military is about to begin one of the largest offensives of the war in the coming days, week. More than twice as large as what Ukraine managed to put together for its Summer 2023 Offensive.

Enormous forces have been pulled from the Sumy, Zaporozhye fronts - and entirely fresh units are being transferred.

The concentration of forces around the Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka axis is insane.

Armor quantities that we haven't seen since the spring of 2022. Elite divisions - airborne, marines, and spetsnaz regiments.

Gonna be a hot autumn. Seems like no peace this year.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]


This was pretty upsetting indeed.

I suppose the army's a natural magnet for some sadists. It affords nearly complete anonymity and consequently - impunity from prosecution.

However, the idiots in the video in question decided not just to record the act, but then to post it on social media. True genius!

I think it would be good to identify them, and transfer them to a sturm-battalion.

-//-

Killing a horse senselessly - is simultaneously the most un-Russian and most Russian thing one can do.

In Tolstoy's "Kholstomer" and old and worn out mare is beaten savagely by peasants and collapses. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnilov dreams of a drunken peasant beating to a death a horse with a crowbar in front of a cheering crowd, while the boy Raskolnilov tries to save it.

Both these passages produced a powerful impression on me as a young adult.

Russians combine within themselves infinite brutality and infinitive breadth of soul.

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News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]

Lukashenko cannot be purported to harbor some elaborate plans for preservation of Belarusian sovereignty and his personal power.

He is a puppet - nothing more.

If we stop supporting him, EU forces will quickly swamp the regime and destroy it.

He owes his very existence to the Kremlin's benevolence and strategic calculus. He is a clown, a useful idiot, whom we can rely on to be a dog against Europe.

He has some measure of independence, but largely in economic affairs. Not when it comes to security or foreign policy.

A large reason of why he is not trusted - is that he is simply incompetent.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]


That's funny.

Why would the EU spend 50 years building a trading bloc and currency union, to then just throw it all in the bin and join some half baked upstart organization that is literally decades behind on that front?

The idea is to promote the use of the Euro over the dollar. But how?

There is always a lot of talk in Europe about how they are going to switch to paying for oil and gas imports only in Euros - for example. But that's not how the real world works. Why?

1) The guy that sends you the invoice, decides how he wants to get paid - 99% of the time. This is probably because their costs, debts, and accounting are already in USD. In addition to this, they likely don't want to deal with the currency exchange risk inherent when you get paid in euros, while your costs are in dollars.

2) All the global oil benchmarks are priced in dollars. Figuring out each and every day how much more or fewer euros you gotta send is a pain in the ass. Eventually you will start hedging that risk, and then you're back to where you started, and may as well have been using dollars all along.

So what you have to do, is to convince the Arabs, and the Russians, and the Angolans, and Algerians, etc that it is in their interests to get paid in Euros. For that - you will need at least a few decades of work.

To be interested in getting paid in Euros, you have to be interested in holding Euro assets. That's how the so called "Petrodollar" came to be. America paid the Arabs enormous amounts of dollars, and the Arabs promptly recycled them back into US Treasuries and US stocks (largely bank stocks). The dollars left the US, but only for a second, before coming right back.

There are not enough quality Euro assets to absorb the tens of trillions in demand for US assets that you seek to replace.

You don't have a singly stock market. Meanwhile, the US has the widest and deepest markets in the world. Next - the US owes the whole world a crazy amount of money (US Treasuries), whereas you kinda don't. First of all you don't print enough of that kind of debt, and second you owe it mostly to yourselves. Because the Germans are in charge of your Union - I don't think you'll ever get to those kinda levels.

News / Polish-Russian war? Drones entering Polish airspace. [251]


Oh God...

I gave so many better suggestions...

-//--

They also basically stole one of my names for another mission, to rotate 3 (3!!!) French Rafales into Poland: "Eastern Sentry".

Sourced abcnews.go.com/amp/International/eastern-sentry-natos-response-russian-drones/story?id=125576971

I think Baltic Sentinel sounds much more grandiose than Eastern Sentry.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 25 [1150]


Poland is indeed a more just and free society.

Ukraine's government - meanwhile - has not once admitted that it had been its own anti-air missiles which had slammed into apartment blocks and other civilian infrastructure. Even when the evidence was incontrovertible - being reported on by the likes of the NYTimes and El Pais.

This regime of constant denial and lies, has done more damage to Ukrainian morale than anything we had ever done as overt enemies. The simple result is that the population increasingly distrusts their leaders, and in consequence avoids mobilization at all costs.

Not saying that our government is much better when it comes to lying, but it definitely is better. These past six months especially. Our Ministry of Defense has stopped spreading ridiculous press releases daily that no one takes seriously, and now produces much more conservative ones - but that give a more accurate idea of what is happening.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are still insisting that they shot down 99 out of 100 Shahed drones, and that regardless of weather, combat intensity, or other context - Ukraine kills 1,000+ Russians daily.

Lies will be the end of us - either the Ukrainians or the Russians.

Belousov - when he came into power - promised that lying would be punished, and honesty rewarded. Let's see if it comes to be - so far, big improvement.

History / Poles should apologise to Ukrainians first [487]


You are one brave son of a b*tch.

Relying on Putin's reasonability, is not a bet I thought many people would want to make nowadays.

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Genealogy / Do you consider Gorals, Lemkos, and Silesians Poles? [77]


Probably not.

If one were to base his arguments on modern Russians - then definitely not.

Russians disappear into whatever culture they are immersed into.

Then, when they see Russians on the street, they change the language, and speak in whispers - lest they be identified by their former compatriots.

Of all the diasporas in America - the Russian-American diaspora is probably the weakest and most impotent one - especially when compared to some of our neighbors like Armenians or Jews.

Russians don't like being around other Russians, for some reason.

One of my acquaintances in New York is a Russian, that once complained to me that he stopped going to one Russian Orthodox Church, because it "had too many Russians in it". Now he goes to a Ukrainian church, but is similarly unhappy - for other reasons.

Genealogy / Do you consider Gorals, Lemkos, and Silesians Poles? [77]


I don't know enough Turkish history to argue, or whatever concerns the caliphates. But I do know Roman/Byzantine history rather well, and there I can say you are wrong.

The major Arab client of the Romans were the Ghassanids. Later they became Byzantine foederati.

There is nothing in the histories regarding them being consumed by intra tribal conflict.

Their main conflict was with the Lakhmids, who were Persian clients. In essence, a proxy conflict between the Byzantines and Sassanid Persia.

There was constant Bedouin raiding, but these were neither aligned with the Byzantines or the Persians. They made incursions in border areas, raiding frontier settlements and caravan routes - but never anything that was significant enough for much ink to be dedicated to it.

So this does not support your argument that Arabs were always fighting each other, unless you want to make the argument that Bedouins represent a significant slice of the global Arab population - which they do not.

Genealogy / Do you consider Gorals, Lemkos, and Silesians Poles? [77]


Not so.

They didn't do that while living under the Turks for five centuries.

They didn't do it earlier, under the Abbasids, Umayyads. They didn't do it under the Byzantines, or the Persians, or the Romans.

They do it now, because British boffins drew up ridiculous maps for new countries, where no countries previously existed. This, without taking into account how the rivers flow in the region, who depended on what marshlands, and on what fisheries, or where old tribal divisions lay.

Ditto for Africa.

Now Kuwaitis think themselves to be infinitely superior to Iraqis. Jordanians feel they owe nothing to the Palestinians. Bahrainis hate their own Shia population, etc, and so on.

Nationalism infects the human mind rapidly after the creation of arbitrary borders.

Only empires are able to keep those demons bottled up, and keep everyone focused on working for the greater good - rather than grabbing the fattest piece of the pie for their group.

Genealogy / Do you consider Gorals, Lemkos, and Silesians Poles? [77]


Then they should live with the Poles.

That half, that is on the Right Bank of the Dnieper - they can go and become chłops again to the Poles.

The Left Bank, which was always loyal to Moscow, should be allowed to rejoin with their kin.

Maybe the Galicians would prefer to go back to sucking Austrian dick, instead of groveling before the Poles. That's their problem - who's dick to suck.

Especially all the Greco-Catholic idiots - they can go and join whomever they want.

But it is strange to have Orthodox people live under a Catholic government.

Genealogy / Do you consider Gorals, Lemkos, and Silesians Poles? [77]


I know it may sound funny, but it's what we believe.

One good indicator of some "brainwashing" going on, is what percentage of Ukraine's citizens self report as Russians. In the 1990s, it was around 40%. Now it's less than 10%.

Can you go from being a Pole, to being an American - in under thirty years? I suppose Novichok would say - yes, you can.


Whichever history I am reading - Ukrainians are unable to reply to a simple question:

"Where was Ukraine in the period between the 9th century AD and 1991?"

Was it located underground, or in some heavenly kingdom which us mortals cannot see?

Maybe Ukraine was a state of the soul?

-//-

Smart Ukrainians, who recognize this "problem" with their narrative, claim instead that they are true Russians, while we are some Tatar/Mongol mutants. This at least makes a little bit more sense, but still leaves many issues outstanding.


With a heavy heart, I must admit this is true. You British people have proven this in my mind.

For the Arabs, you drew up all sorts of stupid and imaginary countries like Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, etc... and now they are ready to kill each other over invisible lines in the sand.

When a local elite forms, and begins to feel that they "own" their people, all sorts of stupid nationalisms can arise.

Nobody wants to give the wheel up back to Istanbul or Moscow, after they've had 30-40-50 years of juicing their own people for rents.

Instead - they start spending hundreds of millions of dollars on year round celebrations of "2,000 years of Iraqi Statehood", or building museums around some collection of rocks they identified in the desert - and to which they attach themselves too.

Leave alone, that their grandparents would have thought them very strange for doing such things.

Genealogy / Do you consider Gorals, Lemkos, and Silesians Poles? [77]


We must be reading different histories, because Russia's argument that Ukrainians are a synthetic people is largely based on historical proof.


Of course, because it is 50% borrowed Polonisms.

All the маю рацию, розмовление, дякую, тыждень, рок, шукати, робити, шкода and страва - all these words which we Russians don't understand they learned from the pan overlords.

All a result of the collapse of the Rus state, and Poland's occupation of its former Western territories.

We can't really blame the Mongols for the collapse, because it happened nearly a century earlier than their arrival.