U.S. Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

[zraver]

A few thoughts, correct me if I'm wrong:

1. A dirty bomb simply needs to combine radioactive materials and conventional explosives. So, theoretically, any type of nuclear power plant will have the

2. Radiological material can (sometimes?) be traced back to the reactor that spawned it.

So grabbing Ukrainian power plants provides fuel for a false flag attack, no?

Or am I completely overthinking this into a Rube Goldberg lash-up of nonsensical proportions when I should in fact be grabbing Occam's Razor?

The fuel rods stored on site in cooling ponds would need years too cool and the reprocessing to get any materials. Not something you can do with a plasma cutter. Be easier to retrieve commercial/medical materials.

[Albany Rifles]

Breaching a reactor core would be much, much worse. A typical bomb contains what? 5 kilos of fissionable material? I believe modern reactor can contain up to one hundreds tons. Don't have exact figures.) Detonate a bomb over a city and (you guys would no better) about a fortnight or so later radiation levels have dropped enough to permit a degree of normal movement. Perhaps sooner if it rains.

Crack the core of a reactor and you get the gift that keeps on giving potentially for decades if its not capped, constantly replacing radioactive fallout over a much wider area.

Totally dependent on what type of radioactive materiel is used. Some have half lives of tens of thousands of years.

[Albany Rifles]

Regarding COVID 19 origins...guys, there is an entire thread devoted to it. Please restrict to there. Too many threads have gone off the rail lately.

[tbm3fan]

Breaching a reactor core would be much, much worse. A typical bomb contains what? 5 kilos of fissionable material? I believe modern reactor can contain up to one hundreds tons. Don't have exact figures.) Detonate a bomb over a city and (you guys would no better) about a fortnight or so later radiation levels have dropped enough to permit a degree of normal movement. Perhaps sooner if it rains.

Crack the core of a reactor and you get the gift that keeps on giving potentially for decades if its not capped, constantly replacing radioactive fallout over a much wider area.

Point being explosive effects gets you Hiroshima with radiation. With radiation alone you get San Francisco in "on The Beach". So are the slightly slower effects of deadly radiation floating over NATO countries to be treated the same as a nuclear bomb on Bonn and therefore a response?

[TopHatter]

Regarding COVID 19 origins...guys, there is an entire thread devoted to it. Please restrict to there. Too many threads have gone off the rail lately.

I'll be moving the relevant posts over when I get a chance later today.

[tantalus]

https://youtu.be/LQ38wDELA4w

This should fall comfortably within topic (although wuhan lab is casually mentioned)...

[Double Edge]

Look, I find american politics toxic. Its not exactly comfortable when anyone says anything that could remotely be in the same region as what Putin propaganda is slinging.

But didnt Nuland say it was important to keep the labs contents out of russian control?

I am not willing to outright dismiss concerns about a war being fought in any of the many countiries that have legitimate bio research labs, same goes for domestic nuclear facilities.

Another way to thing about this if your favourite politican spoke the exact same words - labs - conerns of war causing an accident - need ceasefire....

She has her own biases and motives and agenda but got to hang your poliitcal enemies when they actually arent making any sense...

What cracked me up about this bio labs affair is the Chinese stating they wanted a multilateral investigation and an independent review

[tantalus]

What cracked me up about this bio labs affair is the Chinese stating they wanted a multilateral investigation and an independent review

Oh man thats a good one

[Monash]

Point being explosive effects gets you Hiroshima with radiation. With radiation alone you get San Francisco in "on The Beach". So are the slightly slower effects of deadly radiation floating over NATO countries to be treated the same as a nuclear bomb on Bonn and therefore a response?

In part it would depend on the scale of the release. Using Chernobyl as a template (and the exclusion zone around it) the ecology of of impacted regions would bounce back relatively quickly. Still the immediate economic costs would be horrendous. Anyway Russia gets westerlies apparently for a couple of month a year at least so large parts of it's own countryside would also get to 'share the love'. As to retaliation? I suppose NATO could give them a choice 'shut all your civil reactors down or we'll return the favor. That's 20% of their generator capacity gone. Rolling blackouts anyone?

[TopHatter]

Americans, from media figures to presidents, have been naive about Vladimir Putin

I'll never not be embarrassed at that image of two Ohioans proudly sporting "I'd Rather Be Russian Than a Democrat" T-shirts at a 2018 Trump rally near Columbus.

It's safe to say that in light of Ukraine, most Americans today wouldn't wash their dogs with such a thing, but the shirts still are available online.

After James Alicie and Richard Birchfield of Delaware were blasted for their T-shirts, they told Cleveland.com that they weren't traitors, but they did like that they were being tagged as "Russian hillbillies."

I'm thankful for having grown up a Cold War kid. Before we could read, our cartoons taught us that the Russian government was never, ever to be trusted. Many of us were toddlers or barely in school during the Cuban missile crisis, which nearly ended the world as we know it, and were young adults when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.

Alicie and Birchfield should have known better. But it's not just been ordinary citizens and washed-up action stars like Steven Seagal who are drinking whatever passes for Kool-Aid in Moscow. It really has been astonishing how naive a parade of American media figures, presidents and politicians have been about Vladimir Putin and Russia.

Red Sparrow
While it remains true that “Politics is the art of the possible,” practically everyone tossed Ronald Reagan's admonition to “Trust, but verify,” out with the bath water, starting in 2001 when George W. Bush rhapsodized of Putin: “I looked into the man's eyes. … I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

That wasn't a soul Bush saw.

It was an abyss.

Joe Biden said he once told Putin, “I don't think you have a soul.” Putin replied, “I think we understand one another.”

Notice he didn't deny it.

Back in 2012, Barack Obama and the Democrats laughed when Sen. Mitt Romney warned that Russia was the world's biggest threat. As president, Obama actually thought Putin might be open to constructive dialogue. Obama all but conceded Syria to Russia, which allowed Putin to help crush all meaningful resistance to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a war criminal who gassed his own people in 2017.

Perhaps the only person Putin hates more than Obama is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose clunky attempt at a diplomatic reset cratered like a bad souffle.

Before she went to jail for being an unregistered agent, you couldn't count on two hands the grinning Republican men who posed for photos with Russian red sparrow Maria Butina, who was escorted around Washington like she was Betsy Ross, once again proving that women don't even have to think of anything new.

The truth is, we Americans are starting to find out just how intertwined we are with those whom we've deemed to be a danger to us. The Kentucky Teachers Retirement System, for instance, just lost $3 million after divesting its 863,000 shares of Sberbank, a Russian bank they invested $15 million in back in 2017.

Meanwhile, back in Columbus, Ohio State University just powered down its Russian-made robots, which delivered food on campus … which begs the obvious question: Who in the hell signed off on Russian robots trolling around an American university?

Mad for Vlad
Ordinary people rely on media to learn about geopolitics, which is deeply complicated. But there are talking heads such as Tucker Carlson misleading his viewers to the point that he's now showcased on Russian state TV for claiming that Putin only has Russia's sovereignty at heart, a position that only changes when such foolishness becomes indefensible.

As a result, we now have Americans wondering whether a strongman would indeed be better than the messiness and push-and-pull of a democratic republic.

But no one's naivete comes close to that of Donald Trump, president-for-life of the Mad for Vlad Fan Club.

Swooning like a preteen at a K-pop concert, Trump has tried to pal round with Putin for decades, repeatedly lauding him as smart and savvy, even a genius.

At the 2018 Helsinki Summit, Trump emerged from a private talk with Putin, stooped and shrunken like the Wicked Witch of the East, then proceeded to choose Putin's lies over his own intelligence community.

While president, he increased Russian oil imports by 39 percent after Obama had reduced them by 22 percent.

Because we've cut off Russian oil imports — and yes, because there's some price-gouging — everything is costing more. There's no denying it's difficult, but it could be much worse. We've already forgotten how cheaper gas in 2020 made it easier for the refrigerated trucks to keep all the bodies cool.

It's still better to dig deeper than to be a pro-Putin Russian.
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[TopHatter]

Trump released a statement full of recycled false claims about NATO as Zelenskyy finished an emotional speech to Congress

Former President Donald Trump released a lengthy statement full of false claims about NATO while praising himself for bolstering the alliance. The statement came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was wrapping up an emotional address to Congress in which he called on the US government to take stronger action to counter Russia's devastating war in Ukraine.

Trump has repeatedly gotten basic facts of NATO wrong or been willfully lying about the alliance he's said was "obsolete" only to later correct himself because he did not know "much about NATO." Most of Trump's new statement repeated previous false claims he's made about the NATO alliance, including that several member countries were "delinquent" and that he was the one who got them to "pay up" in exchange for the US's protection.

"Nobody knew things would happen so rapidly, but NATO was poor and now it is rich, and all of the Fake News commentators that said Trump was tearing down NATO should be ashamed of themselves for telling lies," Trump's statement said.

He went on to say that unlike previous US presidents, "I acted, and acted strongly. I said to them, 'if you don't pay up, no protection.' They all paid up, and paid up quickly."

Contrary to Trump's claims, European members of NATO and Canada had increased their defense spending in 2015 and 2016, before Trump took office. Also, NATO countries don't pay up. They have pledged to spend a certain amount of their gross domestic product on their own militaries, and pay a small stipend to fund NATO headquarters.

And in 2014, two years before Trump came into office, all NATO members reached an agreement to spend at least two percent of their annual GDP on their own defense by 2024.

Trump's assertion that members of the alliance were "delinquent" in their contributions also doesn't add up, because countries decided on their own how much of their GDP to spend on their own defense. In other words, as fact checkers have pointed out, they don't "owe" NATO or the US money.

"There is no ledger that maintains accounts of what countries pay and owe," former Obama administration National Security Council staffer Aaron O'Connell told NPR. "NATO is not like a club with annual membership fees."

That said, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg did give Trump credit for pushing NATO countries to spend more, noting that Canada and European allies added $130 billion to their defense budgets for a total goal of $400 billion by 2024.

Trump "is committed to NATO," Stoltenberg told Fox News at the time. He added: "But at the same time, he has clearly stated that NATO allies need to invest more. And therefore at the summit in July last year, we agreed to do more to step up, and now we see the results."
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He's like a fucking Mob boss demanding protection money....

[TopHatter]

Kremlin: Biden calling Putin a 'war criminal' is 'unforgivable'
The Kremlin on Wednesday said President Biden's comments calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a "war criminal" were "unforgivable," according to Reuters.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the Biden's statement "unacceptable and unforgivable rhetoric on the part of the head of a state whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world," according to Russian state news agency TASS.

Biden on Wednesday called Putin a "war criminal" for the first time, upping American rhetoric and jumping ahead of a legal process that can take years.

"I think he is a war criminal," Biden told reporters at an event at the White House.

The State Department has initiated a process officially designating Putin a war criminal, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday.

Biden's remarks came shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's virtual address to Congress, in which he made an emotional plea for more help.

Zelensky has implored the U.S. and other allied nations to impose a humanitarian no-fly zone over Ukraine, saying, "Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people."

Biden has resisted the move because of concerns that it would trigger a larger war.

The Senate on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution backing a war crimes investigation into Putin and Russian forces.

The bipartisan resolution urged the International Criminal Court in The Hague and other nations to launch an investigation of war crimes committed by the Russian military during its invasion of Ukraine.

The fighting in Ukraine has displaced more than 3 million people since the invasion began on Feb. 24, according to estimates from the United Nations.
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[TopHatter]

Here are the 8 House Republicans who voted against suspending normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus

he House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday to suspend normal trade relations with both Russia and Belarus amid the war in Ukraine.

The Suspending Normal Trade Relations with Russia and Belarus Act, which passed by a 424-8 margin, allows President Joe Biden to increase tariffs on products coming from the two countries and requires the US Trade Representative to seek suspension of Russia's participation in the World Trade Organization.

The legislation must now pass the Senate and be signed by Biden to be enacted into law.

This move comes one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to Congress, and a week after the House also voted to enact tougher sanctions on Russia and ban the importation of oil from the country. Seventeen members of Congress, overwhelmingly Republicans, voted against that measure.

Belarus, though not the primary aggressor in the current conflict, is a close ally of Moscow and has allowed its territory to be used by Russian troops for staging invasions.

While Congress has been relatively unified in calling for Russia to be punished and for the US to support Ukraine, some on the right flank of the party have adopted a different tactic. Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina faced criticism from members of the GOP after he called Zelenskyy a "thug" at an event with constituents.

Here are the eight Republicans who voted against the bill on Thursday:

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
• Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida
• Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado
• Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky
• Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona
• Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina
• Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin
• Rep. Chip Roy of Texas

Most are on the right flank of the Republican Party, and are among the most loyal supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Greene, for her part, bemoaned in a Thursday floor speech that "all we're hearing on the news is Ukraine" and claimed that "Washington seems to care more about sending our sons and daughters to a potential war" than more pressing domestic issues.

Biden has repeatedly pledged not to send Americans troops to Ukraine.

—Acyn (@Acyn) March 17, 2022

Massie told Insider in an email that "this bill allows Biden and future Presidents to sanction virtually anyone they choose anywhere on the globe without Congressional approval," which he later tweeted about as well.

—Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 17, 2022

Boebert told Insider in an email that Congress "keeps focusing on distractions abroad and not our own challenges brought on by Joe Biden at home," adding that she believed the bill had "bad language" that could empower Biden to sanction people who "simply hold traditional views of life and family and restrict access to abortion."

Roy told Insider via email that he would've supported the bill if targeting Russia and Belarus were the sole focus, but he took issue with the legislation because it would "permanently empower the President with the unilateral authority to issue sanctions against anyone who he deems responsible for an undefined 'serious human rights abuse.'"

Insider has reached out to the other House Republicans' offices for comment as well.
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Even now, after all that's happened, there's still no such thing as rock bottom.

[DOR]

Here are the eight Republicans who voted against the bill on Thursday:

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
• Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida
• Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado
• Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky
• Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona
• Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina
• Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin
• Rep. Chip Roy of Texas

Most are on the right flank of the Republican Party, and are among the most loyal supporters of former President Donald Trump.

____________

Even now, after all that's happened, there's still no such thing as rock bottom.

Rock bottom?
They have not yet begun to dig!

[TopHatter]

Rock bottom?
They have not yet begun to dig!

Guess they don't want their allowance cut or something.