NATO’s Scorched Earth in Ukraine | Consortium News

Tinkerpeach said:
That isn't going to happen.

This is one of the reasons the Russians are there right now.

Besides, NATO members strongly oppose this as it would lead to nothing but problems.
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Well yeah. Ukraine is at war now.
I can see NATO pressuring Ukraine into giving up the Donbas and Crimea for NATO membership.
Both sides lose something, both gain something, neither completely satisfied.
 
anonymoose said:
Phoenyx said:
anonymoose said:
According to Phoenix only Putin gets to determine what countries are sovereign.
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That made me smile. [snip]
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Me too.
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Clearly for a different reason.

anonymoose said:
Phoenyx said:
So, as to "recognizing the sovereignty of a sovereign state", the very first question you should be asking is, who determines the borders of a sovereign state? Russia decided [snip]

I'm simply pointing out that it appears that Russia considers the breakaway state of Transnitria to be a sovereign state.
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:rolleyes:
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Not sure why you snipped part of the second sentence up there. I suspect you did it to try to bolster your notion that you stated earlier, namely "According to Phoenix only Putin gets to determine what countries are sovereign."

I've never stated that. The complete sentence that you truncated above was:
"Russia decided to recognize the Donbass Republics as sovereign states and called upon its right to protect them from genocide by the Ukrainian army."

I certainly never said that only Putin gets to determine what countries are sovereign. The truth of the matter is that -every- country decides what countries it considers sovereign/legitimate and which ones they don't. Ultimately, I think we might be able to agree that countries should be democratically governed, not forced to follow the dictates of a hostile force. It became clear in 2014 that the Donbass regional governments of Donetsk and Lugansk no longer wanted to be part of the Ukrainian government after the former Ukrainian government had been overthrown in a violent coup, held referendums to become more independent from said government and found the results to be fairly strong to leave become more independent from said government. At the time, Putin actually -discouraged- them from holding those referendums, but once the results were in, he supported their push for more independence. Had the Ukrainian government respected their wishes, I don't think we'd be in the situation we're in today, but instead they chose the way of violence. I think the Ukrainian government is now learning the hard way that violence tends to beget more violence.

As to Transnitria, I did a bit of research right now and I haven't seen any evidence that Russia actually considers Transitria to be a sovereign state. Nevertheless, it's clear that Russia wishes it to continue to have what seems to amount to the status of a sovereign state. It reminds me of Kosovo, which -has- been official recognized as a sovereign state by most countries, even though it used to be part of Serbia until it declared independence in 2008. The main difference between Kosovo and the former Donbass Republics is simply a matter of more countries recognizing it as an independent republic.

I think Kosovo is a good example of how other countries have no problem with recognizing any country they wish to even if other countries are opposed. For a bit of background on the Kosovo situation:

**
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008.[145] As of 4 September 2020, 114 UN states recognised its independence, including all of its immediate neighbours, with the exception of Serbia.[146] However, 15 states have subsequently withdrawn recognition of the Republic of Kosovo.[147][148] Russia and China do not recognise Kosovo's independence.[149]
**

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo
 
Phoenyx said:
Clearly for a different reason.



Not sure why you snipped part of the second sentence up there. I suspect you did it to try to bolster your notion that you stated earlier, namely "According to Phoenix only Putin gets to determine what countries are sovereign."
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Tinkerpeach said:
There is no such thing as sovereign territory

Land only belongs to those that can occupy and defend it
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Phoenyx said:
Agreed,
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That was easy.
 
Phoenyx said:
I think Kosovo is a good example of how other countries have no problem with recognizing any country they wish to even if other countries are opposed. For a bit of background on the Kosovo situation:

**
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008.[145] As of 4 September 2020, 114 UN states recognised its independence, including all of its immediate neighbours, with the exception of Serbia.[146] However, 15 states have subsequently withdrawn recognition of the Republic of Kosovo.[147][148] Russia and China do not recognise Kosovo's independence.[149]
**

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo
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Well if the Serbs weren’t killing children in front of their own parents and conducted their civil war in a more humanitarian manner maybe other countries would not have intervened.
 
Phoenyx said:
No need to use obscene language in a civilized discussion. I haven't heard Prigozhin saying that the Kremlin was lying, but even if he did, you need to consider how reliable Prighozin is as a source of information. He's said a lot of things, some of which sound like he was attempting to pander to the west near the end of his reign as the ostensible chief of Wagner.



He has made it clear was that he couldn't bear to see the people of eastern the Donbass region suffer any longer. He said as much in the speech he gave on the day that he began Russia's military operation in Ukraine. I've quoted this part of his speech before, but just in case you missed it:

**
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:
Here Is the Full Text of Putin’s Speech This Morning, Feb 24, 2022 | paulcraigroberts.org



No, they've proven that they're tired of trying to resolve things in eastern Ukraine by simply talking to western powers, especially now that western powers have publicly stated that they were just pretending to try to work out a deal with Eastern Ukrainians and Russia when the truth was they were just building up Ukraine's army to take eastern Ukraine back by force. They may well have succeeded too if Russia hadn't put a stop to it.



Finland and Sweden don't have nearly as antagonistic a relationship with Russia as Ukraine does. That being said, I strongly suspect that joining NATO isn't doing the people of those nations any favours in the long run.



People like John Mearsheimer have argued that it's NATO membership and the promise of it that has led to the mess in Ukraine that we have now. Mearsheimer had been predicting NATO's aggressive expansion east of Germany would have this effect eventually for years.
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Ukraine was never in an "antagonistic" relationship with Russia until Putin invaded.

Ukrainians and Russians generally considered themselves brotherly Slavs.


Swedes and Finns have more historical reasons to view Russia as a potentially hostile power. Sweden has maintained a powerful military for a nation it's size, and it was primarily designed to counter Soviet naval and aerial incursions. Finland was attacked without provocation by the Red Army in 1940, and was forced to give away strategic territory
 
Tinkerpeach said:
Ukraine is one of the most corrupt nations on the planet.

They are not only the gateway to Europe for drugs but for human trafficking also, their entire government is on the take.

They are the white version of Mexico.
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Thank you comrade Putin but you forget to add your line about the Nazi.

Don't forget the de-Nazification.
 
Phoenyx said:
I think you've said this line quite a few times now. Pretty sure you know that my general rebuttal to it is that Russia's counter to this is that they were protecting both its national security as well as the ethnic Russians which are predominantly in the eastern region of Ukraine. It should come as no surprise that most if not all of the territory that Russia has taken is composed of predominantly ethnic Russian and Russian speakers. Because of this, it shouldn't be surprising that the results of the referendums they held in the 4 regions they have some control of was that they all voted to join the Russian Federation.

If Russia were to leave these territories that voted to become part of Russia, it would be an abandonment of people who now generally consider themselves to be Russian citizens. It's just not going to happen. Furthermore, it's become increasingly evident that Ukraine vaunted "spring offensive" is a bust. It makes a lot more sense that Ukraine accept the fact that it's lost a significant portion of its country to Russia and try to acquire a ceasefire to try to avoid losing any more of it.
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Ahhh yes.

one of Putins infamous 'referendum's' to determine what the people want in an area he is occupying.


Ukrainians Forced to Vote at GUNPOINT in Putin's Referenda


 
Phoenyx said:
... I haven't heard Prigozhin saying that the Kremlin was lying, but even if he did, you need to consider how reliable Prighozin is as a source of information. He's said a lot of things, some of which sound like he was attempting to pander to the west near the end of his reign as the ostensible chief of Wagner...
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Now do Putin.
 
Phoenyx said:
An article I found interesting published a few days ago on Consortium News by Tony Kevin, thought others here might be interested in reading it and perhaps offering a constructive comment or 2. Quoting from it:

**
July 5, 2023

The forthcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius on July 11-12 seems already infected by a strange policy fatalism, writes Tony Kevin.

By Tony Kevin

Hope of a policy breakthrough in Vilnius, Lithuania towards peace in Ukraine, spearheaded by the war-weary East Europeans, seems to have drained away.

There is general acceptance in NATO that the Ukrainian summer offensives in Zaporizhie and again now in Bakhmut have failed to dent Russian defences, with horrific mortality in Ukrainian manpower and enormous destruction of Western-supplied equipment.

The West seems content to let Zelensky go on wasting Ukraine’s increasingly scarce military-age men in a process described by writer Raúl Ilargi Meijer as NATO’s assisted suicide of the Ukrainian nation.

The NATO unspoken strategy seems to be: we know Russia is inevitably winning in Ukraine, but we will make sure we and our Kiev proxies destroy as much as possible of Ukraine’s manpower and national wealth before Russia takes control of the country.

The Kakhovka dam is gone, and what is left of Zaporizhie Nuclear Power Plant seems increasingly at risk of West-assisted Ukrainian sabotage. These two huge assets were the pivots of Ukraine’s industrial and agricultural potential and wealth.

When Russia wins political control over the ruined land of Ukraine, and after it repudiates Western carpetbagging claims to asset ownership there, it will face a huge rebuilding job, comparable to the situation the Soviet Union faced in Ukraine after the 1944-45 vengeful scorched-earth actions by the retreating Nazi divisions.

Meanwhile, Germany under its supine Scholz leadership is de-industrialising, following the loss of cheap Russian gas after the U.S.-conducted sabotage of the Baltic pipelines. German industrialists are taking their capital, management skills and intellectual property elsewhere. France is riven by serious rioting. The EU is distracted and aimless. Western Europe is shrinking in global influence.

In the U.S., only the military-industrial-information complex is doing well. Infrastructure continues to decay. The middle class is eroding and confused. The Democrats are the party of liberal imperialism and the Republicans are still riven between warmongers and America-first nationalist Trumpians. Who knows who will be the next U.S. president, and if he or she can arrest America’s relative decline.

[snip]

There is enough evidence now to satisfy the Global Majority that U.S. regime change and controlling operations in Ukraine since 2013 have been above all cynically aimed at weakening and destabilising Russia. Remembering their own viciously exploited colonial history, the Global Majority are glad these Western efforts are failing.

The Vilnius NATO meeting will produce no new miracles of salvation for the doomed Kiev regime. There will be a lot of tired rhetoric about continuing to defend democratic Ukraine.

Nobody – speakers or listeners – will believe it.
**

Full article:
NATO’s Scorched Earth in Ukraine | Consortium News
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I am pretty much sick of you idiots that support Putin, come to this forum, to carry Putin's water for him!

So that is my comment! And the only response this thread deserves.
 
Tinkerpeach said:
It’s time for robot soldiers
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They're apparently on the way. Just read 2 articles published yesterday discussing Netflix documentary Unknown: Killer Robots that I thought was both interesting and sobering. It may be that the largest danger, at least currently, is not in robots per se, but in what AI can do. An excerpt from one of the articles I read that gets into the potential pitfalls of robots and AI brought up in the documentary:

**
“It’s a cliche but I 100% believe that ‘Freedom is not free’,” says Brandon Tseng, former US Navy Seal and co-founder of Shield AI. His company is now joined in the battle for military supremacy via artificial intelligence. The race is on throughout the US and doubtless Russia and China too to develop autonomous drones and other technology that can allow soldiers to avoid such perilous work as clearing buildings of armed personnel, explosive devices and so on, or which can track subjects over inhospitable terrains and vast areas – oh, and kill people when the need arises. The enemy, obviously. Which they will be able to identify reliably, always acting within the rules of engagement. I mean, there may be tricky moments along the way. Paul Scharre, former US army Ranger and author of Army of None, remembers the unspoken agreement among his men not to shoot when insurgents sent an eight-year-old girl out ahead of them to scout for danger. A robot would have seen her as a legal and legitimate target, but I’m sure these kinks will get worked out in time. (Does anyone know how the racist chatbot that made headlines last year is getting on, by the way?)

Except, of course, how can they be? Unknown: Killer Robots walks us through various inventions (including those headless robot dog-alikes you see far too much on social media), scenarios and ramifications with admirable surefootedness. You sense that its heart lies with the cool guys making all the cool stuff. And it is hard not to be mesmerised by the extraordinary stuff in the offing. To see MIT’s latest dog quickly navigate new surfaces via the infinite raw power of machine learning, or a flight lieutenant with 20 years of combat under his immaculately polished belt be outclassed in a dogfight by a new piece of tech that has been filled with 30 years of experience in 10 months, is to watch a terrible beauty being born. But whenever the film slips into full cheerleading (and jingoistic) mode, it recalls itself and us to duty and turns to showcasing the less telegenic side of things.

By which I mean stories like Sean Ekins’ and Fabio Urbina’s. They “just flipped a 0 to a 1” in their work finding treatments and cures via AI molecules and modelling for underresearched diseases, “pushed go” and returned to their desks later to find their six-year-old Apple Mac had created 40,000 new molecules that would be absolutely lethal to humanity. Only if a bad actor got hold of them, but … anyway, Ekins has barely slept since. “We were totally naive … Anyone could do what we did. How do we control this technology before it is used to do something totally destructive?”
**

Source:
Unknown: Killer Robots review – the future of AI will fill you with unholy terror | The Guardian
 
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