News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


For the past 100+ years - we could not simply decide to kill people suspected of drug smuggling.

I mean... it happens in Afghanistan... in the Philippines... but not in the so called "developed" countries it does not.

What's more - we do not violate someone's sovereignty and declare war on them, to kill criminal elements within their country.


Of course not.

When I was a young kid, witnessing Afghanistan and Iraq, I would ask God: "Will the Americans be one day punished for this? Will they regret it?"

For the longest time it seemed like God would not punish America. That every crime... it could just wash away.

But now, twenty years later, you will not find a single American who thinks that those events were a good idea. It poisoned their country, and their politics. They are to this day dealing with the toxicity of what they had done, and how it affected not just the world but themselves.

As much sin as they committed over there, did they absorb back home - which blackened the soul of the country.

They let the demon out of the box, and achieved nothing.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]

In addition to the above, you have to bear in mind that:

1) Cuba supplies Venezuela with Cuban intelligence officers who monitor the population for seditious behavior. The Cubans are supposed to be some of the best in the world at this job.

2) Russia and China both control important oil production operations in the country.

3) Iran and North Korea have little to lose, and much to gain - by developing leverage over the United States through supporting Venezuelan resistance. America will begin offering them candies to stop their help.

4) Mexico, Columbia, and Brazil all have socialist leaders in power at this moment. The Colombian president has called Trump a murderer. The Brazilian president has claimed that Trump "acts as a small time crook".

I don't think these three leftist presidents will watch passively as America invades their neighborhood, and begins to play policeman.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]

@Bratwurst Boy

You bring up some good points.

But there are counterarguments also...

1) Venezuela has very difficult topology, and huge rainforest cover. In Colombia, FARC managed to lead a guerrilla war against the Central Government (supported by the USG) for nearly thirty years by basing themselves in the jungle.

2) Venezuela has an enormous coast line, and long borders with neighboring countries. Supplying Venezuela with weapons and ammunition is much easier than doing so for Iraq or Afghanistan. Some of the world's most important narco-traffic routes pass through Venezuela, which should you give you a sense of smuggling potential.

3) Chavez and Maduro have raised two whole generations of Venezuelans who know nothing except Chavista rule. He may be a bus driver, he may be uneducated, he may be a crook... but he's not stupid. Even if the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans are cynically opposed to the government, they still have several millions of regime loyalists that they can rely on.

4) The amount of money and resources available to a Venezuelan government in hiding would be significantly larger than what the Taliban or Saddam loyalists and Islamists could rely on. They could feed themselves on narcotraffic, on oil smuggling, on people smuggling, on precious stone smuggling, and so on.

5) Russia and China were too weak to get involved in Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the past twenty years much has changed...

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


My feeling is more that Venezuela will collapse like a house of cards - if the Americans just kick the door in.

I say this based on the corruption, poverty, and massive brain drain that Venezuela has experienced to-date.

It's hard for me to imagine that the people will fight for Maduro, if America manages to signal its intentions in clear and fair terms.

If America is just going in to change the government, and then leave immediately after - it could be a big success.

-//-

If America comes to stay... I think it will be just as bad as Afghanistan and Iraq, or maybe even as bad as Vietnam.

Reports in the press, however, indicate that Trump may actually indeed be planning to "stay", because he is mesmerized by Venezuela's oil reserves (the largest in the world), and rare earths.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


Good enough for me!


You... make it difficult to argue with your points.

Humans know human things, as God knows divine things.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


In war-era Leningrad, people allowed their children to eat themselves. In addition to being eaten by their children, people ate dogs, cats, tree bark, and dessicated mud from the banks of the Neva.

For some strange reason - all this misery produced no impression on Comrade Stalin - and did not force him to reach out to Nazi Germany sooner than he wanted to.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


WRONG


Ho ho ho ho ho!


WRONG


WRONG

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


I go through an "amplitude" with Alien.

But he's a German Pole, so I thought he might have a unique perspective on blowing up pipelines.

But... just more silly jokes.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


Mhmm...

It seems legal scholars and prosecutors take an even dimmer view of the Warsaw District Court judge's extravagant legal innovations.

From the Guardian:

Nevertheless, the rejection of the extradition request is highly unusual between EU member states, said Kai Ambos, a law professor at the University of Göttingen, who questioned the "non-legal reasoning and the almost political ingredients" of the judge's decision.

"It's just one page saying it's a just war of Ukraine against Russia. For various reasons this is not convincing. It's not really a reasoning, it's just an affirmation," said Ambos.

Source: theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/03/the-nord-stream-riddle-echoes-of-mistrust-ripple-through-europe

He went on to say:

If you want to argue that this was an act of war, you would have to establish that the pipeline is a military target, which is not the case. It's a civilian target, so you cannot just attack it," he said, adding that he believed Germany did have jurisdiction because the yacht allegedly used in the attack was rented in Germany.

Nice!

It appears that 1 page decision by a Polish judge was... lacking in some regards.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]

Kania, for you:

dw.com/en/italian-court-approves-extradition-in-nord-stream-case/a-74509848

Italy's appeals courts held up the earlier decision to approve extradition.

Poland is alone again, in not cooperating with German police investigation.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


It's not happening.

It's too late.

It is year three of this war between our countries - and yet nearly every Ukrainian child watches Russian TikTok and YouTube. Every Ukrainian teenager listens to Russian music, and studiously copies Moscow slang.

They lost their children.

Once we have your kids, there is nothing you can realistically do.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


If you would read some Ukrainian papers, watch some Ukrainian television, and immerse yourself a bit in their cultural scene - you would quickly see they're actually quite paranoid about the fact that they may be living through "Round 4" of partition.

That is, it's not just Bobko's wishful thinking.

The same symptoms are slowly emerging that "sunk" their independence ship in the past... so there's some reason for them to be paranoid.

The closest parallel to what is happening in Ukraine now, is what was happening to them in their last period of independence 1917-1921. Throughout the first half of that period, Imperial Germany was their main sponsor. Then Pilsudski's Poland and the countries of the Little Entente.

What sunk them then, was:

1) Unfortunate dictatorial tendencies from Petliura and Skoropadsky (Hello Zelensky and Yermak).

2) Constant political infighting triggered by turf wars over who controls the flows of money Western governments were donating to support the fight against the Bolsheviks.

3) An alienated populace that viewed their leaders as puppets in the pocket of Western capital. This manifested in a nearly total refusal to mobilize and pay taxes.

4) Clashes between Western and Eastern Ukrainians, who came from completely orthogonal cultural origins. Moscow played on these differences expertly, and to such an extent, that both sides would send embassies to Moscow with offers of betrayal in exchange for support.

-//-

Where there are two Ukrainians - there are three Hetmans.

This has always been their weakness, even as they call us slaves. Our slavishness has held our great country together, while their rowdy and freedom loving ways have always led them to doom.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


When they made an alliance with the Poles, we warred with the Cossacks for 38 years before finally breaking them.

We fought with them for another two years, when they stabbed us in the back and allied with the Swedes during Peter's reign.

Quite recently we fought with them for nearly four years, after some of them figured that the collapse of the Russian Empire was a good opportunity to "hop off the train". Kicking and screaming... but they were brought back home.

-//-

It's not our first rodeo, sluggin it out with the Hohols.

The West should listen to Putin when he states that this is an existential battle for Russia, where cost and time are not material.

Listen to him - and do a deal. End this stupid war.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


How can we believe you, when you already "called" the collapse of the Russian economy in 200 other instances within the past 3 years?

Is this the same as Putin, who is about to die "at any moment" from Stage IV cancer for the past 3 years?

-//-

Russia will always have money for war.

There is a Russian joke:

Son: Papa! Papa! They've raised the prices on vodka - surely you will drink less now!

Father: No son, it is you who will have to eat less from now on..

Life / Wszystkich Świętych (All Saints Day) // Dzien Zaduszny (All Souls day) [106]


Hahahaha!

The same thing I am always thinking when someone makes me watch some stupid horror film.

I don't want to be some Karen ghost, hassling civilians.

I want to drink with Hitler and Stalin, and never get hungover.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


You are telling me you would actually watch a Russian video if I posted it?

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 17 [660]


Oh dear...

That's a great electoral platform.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]

@Novichok

One feels the worst for the wounded, because rarely does anyone want to bother with taking them prisoner.

It's a huge physical effort to transport them, and the entire time you are liable to get killed by the drones of their friends.

Instead, what typically happens, is that anyone who discovers the wounded immediately make them a permanent part of the past.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


Depending on who you ask, they are either still fighting or already withdrawing.

Russian soldiers have penetrated nearly every district of the city.

Escape routes for AFU are shrinking by the hour.

If the personnel manages to get out by walking on foot throughout the night, the equipment and the ammunition will certainly have to be abandoned.

The wounded will likely be abandoned as well.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


What will you ask me now, once Pokrovsk is taken?


Well... in front of Pokrovsk you had one of the densest urban agglomerations in Ukraine.

Behind it is nothing but fields, for a good 40-60 kilometers, until you start hitting the larger population centers of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

In addition to this, the fields beyond Pokrovsk lie at a lower elevation than the city. Plus - Pokrovsk is a city with many high rises - which means Russian antennas will broadcast significantly farther than they can now, further crippling Ukrainian rear logistics.

Finally - as a reminder to everyone - the environs of Pokrovsk contained Ukraine's largest anthracite coal mining operation, on which their entire metallurgical industry depended, as well as Ukraine's largest lithium deposit.
-//-

It's not just Pokrovsk and Mirnograd which are about to fall, but also Kupyansk and Lyman.

Kupyansk is arguably a bigger deal, since it allows Russia to once again threaten Kharkov. We had lost it in 2022, during the Ukrainian Kharkov Counteroffensive.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


Yes he is correct.

Russians (as a whole) suffer from a certain megalomania and feeling of mission.

But so do Americans, and not just now (when they are a world hyper power), but even when they were a tiny country focused primarily on its frontier. Some say the Puritans made them this way...

So do Chinese, who call themselves the only proper rulers under Heaven.

So Maf's comparison to Jews and Gypsies does not offend me.

Poles are the same way. That's why I love them.

Nobody gives a **** about the "square" nations of Netherlands, and Belgiums, and Switzerlands - who suffer from no psychological problems and live quietly and mind their own business.

People only love the psychopathic countries like England, and Russia, and France - that feel they know exactly how everyone else should live. That's fun. That's drama. That's sexy.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


As we Russians say - "to whom, and how?".

What I realize, and what you realize, and... what matters... can be three different things.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


You realize you just wrote an ode to Russians, as practically no Russian could write himself?

Thank you for this text.

You have earned your Russian History Ph.D.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


Ok... I misjudged you.

You are actually a Russian patriot, but of a different vintage than Torq.

I will listen more carefully to you now.

I thought previously that you're animated only by a pure racial hatred towards Easterners.

Off-Topic / Random Chat Thread [676]

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Off-Topic / Random Chat Thread [676]

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Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 17 [660]


He's the next mayor. Only a miracle can help Cuomo now.

As Maf and Kania say - as a Russian I'm naturally inclined to be very deferential towards pedigree and status.

Thus, how can I not support the son of a former governor, and a former governor himself, versus... some overeager upstart?

Cuomo saved my ass during Covid, so I feel I have to close my eyes also to his sexual harassment problems.

Alas, family, loyalty, and tradition means nothing to voters in NYC these days...

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


Meaningless.

In the last days of the war, nearly the entire "cream" of Germany's scientific class began escaping into what would become the western occupation zones.

The most important physicists and chemists in Berlin, Leipzig, and Dresden nearly all fled. This is how we missed people like Von Braun, and Heisenberg.

America took nearly all the top tier talent - as I wrote above. The USSR got second rate folks, like plant directors, metallurgists, chemists, and draftsmen. Basically infrastructure and mid-level industrial experts who hadn't been mobile or foresighted enough to flee.

-//-

In a fundamental sense - America got "system level innovators", while Russia gained reverse-engineering talent and production know-how.

Comparing by simple numbers of people "taken", gives you a wrong sense of what was going on.

Everyone important in the eastern universities, had known by May/June that if they fell into Soviet hands it could be a very long time before they would be allowed to return home. In the event, the last Germans were only allowed to go home in 1958.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]

Another fun fact - Dugin was kind of at the root of the movement in Ukraine, which eventually bore Azov.

Now, of course, Dugin calls them a "satanic inversion" - an apostate offspring of Eurasianism that turned against its parent civilization.

He thinks... Western influence "corrupted" the Slavic unity he imagined.

But whether he likes it or not, Biletskiy for many years considered Dugin a guiding light.

-//-

Russian nationalism has a hard time coexisting with Ukrainian nationalism. Which is why the Bolsheviks correctly identified it as a cancer.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [936]


Yes, they carry on the torch of the 19th century Slavophiles and Pan-Slavists. Like Aksakov, Pogodin... And the old Eurasianists which appeared after the Revolution, attempting to explain how Russia collapsed to Bolshevism (like Prince Trubetzkoy, and Vernadsky).

It's not new.

Even in the times of Ivan the Terrible, there were people attempting to argue that Russia represents a unique axis in the world - a blend of Tataro-Mongol militarism, and Byzantine merger of church and autocracy.


They are not simple dummies who didn't study well at school. But they are lazy.

Dugin went through an evolution, as wide spectrum as the evolution Russian went through between 1989 and 2025.

Like the young Viktor Orban, Dugin was an unapologetic liberal. Was part of the underground Soviet intelligentsia, mixing with artists, poets, and philosophers. Read forbidden texts, and listened to Western punk rock.

Then something happened to him in France, where he met Alain de Benoist, the founder of the European Nouvelle Droite.

So... it is pretty funny when people say Russian money is fueling Marine Le Pen.

Right politics did not come to France from Russia, but from France to Russia.

Further - when Russia's reformers were designing the power vertical of Russia in the early 1990s, they borrowed primarily from two systems. The French and the American - because they felt that the Uber-Powerful presidencies of France and America fit Russia's cultural and historical profile.

Putin is a big fan of De Gaulle and Mitterrand.