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

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  • #76
    Originally posted by zraver View Post

    Bullshit, you can't use a reactor to make dirty bombs.





    More bullshit, you don't attack reactor complexes. Live rounds came within meters of the control building and physical reactor plants. Its war, you can't control where every bullet and shell lands and the risk even 1:1,000,000 is not worth the risk and violates every tenet of proportional response and discrimination required by the LOAC.
    Not to mention Russia has enough nuclear reactors they can get enriched uranium/plutonium from to make dirty bombs.
    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
    Mark Twain

    Comment


    • #77
      Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post

      Not to mention Russia has enough nuclear reactors they can get enriched uranium/plutonium from to make dirty bombs.
      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?
      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

      Comment


      • #78
        Trump’s shadow lurks over Biden’s support for Ukraine
        Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed an international crisis to the forefront of President Joe Biden’s once domestically focused presidency. It’s also created one of the sharpest policy contrasts yet between Biden and his predecessor.

        Trying to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin at bay without escalating the standoff into World War III, Biden has pushed allies to hold together, resisted calls for more direct confrontation, all while attempting to manage the economic impacts back home.

        The moment has showcased his pledge to reset America’s relationship with the world after four tumultuous years of former President Donald Trump — and heightened his recurring call for democracies to rally together to confront rising autocracies.

        “These are complicated calculations but the overall priority is that Ukraine needs to prevail,” said William Taylor, who was ambassador and acting ambassador to Ukraine under three presidents. “All the steps the Biden administration takes need to be in the name of that goal: to help Ukraine win. Because the outcome of this war will define the world order that is created going forward.”

        Taylor, perhaps more than anyone else in the diplomatic corps, understands how different Biden’s approach is from his predecessor’s. Prior to his retirement in January 2020, he was acting ambassador to Ukraine for Trump, who has been out of office for nearly 14 months yet has shadowed over the current conflict.

        The same Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from whom Trump tried to ply damaging information about Biden’s family, has emerged as a heroic symbol of national strength. The same defense systems, the Javelin missiles, that Trump threatened to withhold in a scheme that eventually led to his first impeachment (at which Taylor was a witness), have been instrumental in defending Ukraine.

        The same alliance, NATO, that Trump lambasted and tried to undermine, banded together and sent weapons to the front, while Europe and the U.S. have unleashed waves of increasingly punitive economic sanctions on Russia. And the same foreign leader, Putin, with whom Trump repeatedly sided over his own government, has been turned into an international pariah.

        Trump’s “America First” foreign policy often turned inward, disregarding traditional alliances in favor of a transactional approach to international relations, which, in turn, often led to cozying up to authoritarians. Some of the United States’ closest allies were left to doubt whether the world’s top superpower could still be relied upon.


        Biden, long an internationalist, has taken a nearly polar opposite approach. He has leaned heavily on the importance of alliances while vilifying Putin for commencing a war that grows more violent by the day as Russian forces kill hundreds of civilians as they lay siege to Ukrainian cities.

        He has also taken public steps to articulate the limits of his approach. Whereas Trump would openly boast about inflicting wide-scale damage on countries — declaring at a U.N. speech that he’d “totally destroy” North Korea and recently telling golfer John Daly that he threatened Putin with “hitting Moscow” — Biden has ruled out the use of American forces on the ground in Ukraine, or the establishing of a no-fly zone, as either of those measures risked a confrontation with the Russian military and a battle between two nuclear powers.

        Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, former director of European affairs for the National Security Council who testified about Trump’s call with the Ukrainian leader, was sharply critical of Biden’s decision to publicly announce the limits to the U.S. response.

        “Mr President, you’re inviting disaster & emboldening Putin. This declaration invites Putin to pursue EVERY means to subdue Ukraine,” Vindman tweeted in recent days. “Of course the American people don’t want a war with Russia, but they also don’t want to watch Ukrainians slaughtered. We must do more.”

        But foreign policy experts have also praised Biden’s restraint and the broader approach. The president has repeatedly made clear what lines he could not cross, both to make sure the public knows the stakes and to ward off GOP criticism. But White House aides have also said that Biden has laid down such clear markers as a means to exhort allies to help with everything they can while also being reassured that the U.S. would not provoke the conflict further into Europe.

        “The Biden administration has instinctively and intelligently realized that the NATO alliance would be their smartest decision,” said James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO. “The Biden team correctly decided not to frame this as Moscow vs. Washington but as Moscow vs. Washington and vs. Europe and vs. the West and vs. NATO. The White House has largely isolated Putin and has done so by making it clear that the United States was a partner for the rest of the world.”

        Biden’s 2020 campaign and first months in office were focused squarely on domestic issues, trying to get the Covid-19 pandemic under control while repairing the economic damage wrought by the virus. But when his attention did turn to international affairs, he worked to establish a clean break from Trump, which often placed the interests of Moscow, Beijing and Riyadh over those of London, Berlin and even Ottawa.

        Biden’s first overseas trip wasn’t subtle. His trek across the Atlantic in June 2021 was meant to reassure allies across Europe that he would prioritize cooperation as he rallied the G-7 and NATO countries to stand together against the rising forces of autocracies. It was implicitly and explicitly a reversal from Trump.

        To underscore that, he capped off the trip by talking tough to Putin in Geneva, a marked break from Helsinki in 2018 when Trump said he took Putin’s word — over the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies — about Russian interference in the election two years prior. Biden’s focus on alliances has been the backbone of the nation’s response to Putin, Taylor said.

        “The commitment the Biden administration has made to the United States’ allies stands in stark contrast to the apparent lack of commitment from the previous administration,” said Taylor, who also served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.


        Trump and his allies have argued that none of the current conflict would have taken place had he been in office, resting their case on the fact that Putin both got along with Trump and feared his unpredictability. Those close to the former president believe that if Trump had been allowed to bring Russia closer into the global fold — he wanted Moscow allowed back into the G-7, returning it to the G8 — that would have quelled Putin’s ambitions. And they assert, without evidence, that Putin would have dared not defy Trump.

        But the Biden administration sees it as just the opposite. It has been unsparing in its assessment that Putin was emboldened after watching Trump strain relations with fellow democracies, threaten to leave NATO and largely let Moscow’s malfeasance go unchallenged. Stavridis, who spent four years as the NATO commander in Europe, said Putin also likely misjudged the United States’ willingness to engage on the world stage after two years of being battered and distracted by Covid-19 while still grappling with the divisions that Trump fostered.

        “The chaos that Trump helped create, the divisiveness of his term, made it seem to Putin that America was broken and couldn’t respond like it has,” Stavridis said.


        While Republicans have attacked Biden for not confronting Putin more directly, such as by declining to help get old Soviet-era jets to Ukraine, they also have largely ignored how portions of their party warmed to Putin during Trump’s term. Instead, the GOP has claimed that Putin was inspired by the chaotic first days of the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer.

        “I think that precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan was a message to people like Putin that America was rethinking our forward-leaning position in the world,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week. “And I don’t think if we cut and run in Afghanistan, Putin would have tried this at all.”

        Though Biden had wanted to wind down the American presence for more than a decade, many NATO allies felt that they weren’t adequately consulted and were horrified by the withdrawal’s bloody beginning. It intensified questions in global capitals about the future of American international commitments.

        Those questions have quieted during the invasion, but they may pick up again as Trump continues to take his first steps back onto the political stage and eye a run for the White House in 2024. Was Biden’s presidency a return to normalcy for American foreign policy or was he an aberration from the Trump approach? And is Biden’s foreign policy holding the international order together, or presiding over a period where American power and influence over authoritarian regimes is on the wane?

        Among those awaiting an answer: China, which Biden has identified as the United States’ greatest rival over the next hundred years, and has cannily mostly stayed out of the fray, offering nominal support to Moscow while wondering what lessons can be drawn for a possible future defense of Taiwan.

        Aware of those doubts, Biden has tried to use the crisis to drive home the idea that the United States was reclaiming its mantle as the leader of the free world. The first battle in the conflict that will define this century, the one between democracies and autocracies, will be fought and won in Ukraine, he’s argued.

        “We see unity among the people who are gathering in cities, in large crowds around the world — even in Russia — to demonstrate their support for the people of Ukraine,” Biden said in his State of the Union address. “In the battle between democracy and autocracies, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security.”
        ________
        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

        Comment


        • #79
          Originally posted by TopHatter View Post

          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?
          Yup, you are spot on. But by seizing the Ukraine plants kind of takes away the suspense. What seizing them does do one thing...it allows Russia to hold Western Europe hostage...if they blow those plants it will...destroy life in the downwind parts of Ukraine and the rest of the fallout blows over Poland, Northern Germany and Scandinavia. It would be in retaliation to Western sanctions.
          “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
          Mark Twain

          Comment


          • #80
            Originally posted by zraver View Post

            Bullshit, you can't use a reactor to make dirty bombs.
            Sabotage it to leak then. Create an incident that gets the Russians blamed and grab headlines with the N word.

            A scare of a leak at the very least causes an immediate evacuation of the area and surrounding region.

            See what happened there ? No Russians. They just scampered away. Magic

            It's not like they don't have experience of exactly such an event occurring in their not too distant past.

            Assume the worst and move to prevent it from happening.
            Last edited by Double Edge; 14 Mar 22,, 17:29.

            Comment


            • #81
              Leaked Kremlin Memo to Russian Media: It Is “Essential” to Feature Tucker Carlson
              The Russian government has pressed outlets to highlight the Fox host’s Putin-helping broadcasts.

              On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson.

              “It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”

              The document—titled “For Media and Commentators (recommendations for coverage of events as of 03.03)”—was produced, according to its metadata, at a Russian government agency called the Department of Information and Telecommunications Support, which is part of the Russian security apparatus. It was provided to Mother Jones by a contributor to a national Russian media outlet who asked not to be identified. The source said memos like this one have been regularly sent by Putin’s administration to media organizations during the war. Independent media outlets in Russia have been forced to shut down since the start of the conflict.

              The March 3 document opens with top-line themes the Kremlin wanted Russian media to spread: The Russian invasion is “preventing the possibility of nuclear strikes on its territory”; Ukraine has a history of nationalism (that presumably threatens Russia); the Russian military operation is proceeding as planned; Putin is protecting all Russians; the “losing” Ukrainian army is shelling residential areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia; foreign mercenaries are arriving in Ukraine; Europe “is facing more and more problems” because of its own sanctions; and there will be “danger and possible legal consequences” for those in Russia who protest the war. The document notes that it is “necessary to continue quoting” Putin. It claims that the “hysteria of the West had reached the inexplicable level” of people calling for killing dogs and cats from Russia and asks, “Today they call for the killing of animals from Russia. Tomorrow, will they call for killing people from Russia?”

              A section headlined “Victory in Information War” tells Russian journalists to push these specific points: The Ukrainian military is beginning to collapse; the Kyiv government is guilty of “war crimes”; and Moscow is the target of a “massive Western anti-Russian propaganda” operation. It states that Russian media should raise questions about Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s state of mind and suggest he is not truly in charge of Ukraine. And it encourages these outlets to “broadcast messages” highlighting the law recently passed by the Russia Duma that makes it a crime to impede the war effort or disseminate what the government deems “false” information about the war, punishable for up to 15 years in prison. This portion instructs Russian journalists to emphasize that these penalties apply to anyone who promotes news about Ukrainian military victories or Russian attacks on civilian targets.

              This is the section of the memo that calls on Russian media to make as much use as possible of Tucker Carlson’s broadcasts. No other Western journalist is referenced in the memo.

              Mother Jones is not posting the full document to protect the source of the material. Here are photos of the memo. The first shows the opening page; the next displays the paragraph citing Carlson.



              Prior to the Russian invasion, Carlson was perhaps the most prominent American voice challenging opposition to Putin. In one now-infamous commentary, he said, “Why do Democrats want you to hate Putin? Has Putin shipped every middle class job in your town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked your business? Is he teaching your kids to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Does he eat dogs?”

              Carlson repeatedly noted there was no reason for the United States to assist Ukraine in its battle with Russia and insisted it was “not treason, it is not un-American” to support Putin. He contended that Ukraine was not “a democracy” but a “client state” of the US government.

              After Putin attacked Ukraine, Carlson ceased his anti-anti-Putin rhetoric and shifted to a new line: that the United States and the West purposefully goaded Putin into launching the war. Carlson said it was “obvious” that “getting Ukraine to join NATO was the key to inciting war with Russia.” He asked, “Why in the world would the United States intentionally seek war with Russia? How could we possibly benefit from that war?” He said he did not know.

              More recently, Carlson mouthed Russian disinformation, and he did so as a new set of Kremlin talking points once again pushed Russian journalists to cite the Fox host.

              On Wednesday, Carlson claimed that the “Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.” He was referring to the Russian allegation that the United States had set up biowarfare labs in Ukraine. But this charge was far from proven. At a congressional hearing, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland had testified that Ukraine possessed biological research facilities and that the US government was worried about “research materials” falling into the hands of Russian forces. This was a far cry from substantiating the Russian charge that Washington was working on bioweapons in Ukraine. But Putin’s regime jumped on the Nuland testimony and cited it as proof of nefarious American activity. Carlson echoed this Russian propaganda.

              A March 10 “recommendations for coverage” memo from the same Russian agency highlights this bioweapons allegation as a top talking point for Russian media, noting the message should be that the “activities of military biological laboratories with American participation on the territory of Ukraine carried global threats to Russia and Europe.” The document goes further, encouraging its recipients to allege that the “the United States is working on a ‘biogenocide of the Eastern Slavs.'”

              The memo lays out the details of this bizarre conspiracy theory: The United States was conducting “experiments with genetic material collected on the territory of Ukraine,” with the “main objective” being “to create unique strains of various kinds of viruses for targeted destruction of the population in Russia.” The United States even had a plan to transmit pathogens “by wild birds migrating between Ukraine, Russia and other neighboring countries.” This scheme included “studying the possibility of carrying African swine fever and anthrax.” The memo claims “biolaboratories set up and funded in Ukraine have been experimenting with bat coronavirus samples.” It cites Nuland’s testimony and says the United States was involved with “military biological laboratories” in Ukraine that “potentially posed a global threat to all of Europe.”

              Carlson had amplified a slice of this Russian propaganda.

              The March 10 memo advises Russian journalists to cite Carlson on another matter: how the economic sanctions imposed on Russia would harm Americans:
              American analyst and Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson called President Biden’s sanctions policy a punishment for the American middle class: “Biden explained that he was going to punish Putin by banning Americans from buying Russian energy resources. But the problem is that markets around the world are already ready for Russian oil, starting with China, India, and Turkey. If you want to get to the bottom of it, just think about who will suffer the most from sanctions? The answer is not on the surface. Middle-income Americans will suffer. The very people who were crushed by Covid restrictions for two years. Now they will suffer from cuts to energy sources… So, the Vladimir Putin who is being punished, is actually American citizens—yes, all of you.”

              The document notes that Carlson’s anti-sanctions argument “can be reinforced with a selection of reports that enthusiastically encourage Americans to tighten their belts in the name of saving Ukraine.”


              As with the March 3 memo, Carlson was the only Western journalist named in this more recent how-to-help-Putin memo. But this edition does point out that the New York Post “writes that it was not anti-Russian sanctions that spurred inflation, but rather the wild spending of Joe Biden himself. President Biden wants to blame Vladimir Putin for the rise in inflation. However, all the fault comes from his policy implemented long before the Ukrainian crisis.”

              The March 10 guidelines contains other false claims for Russian journalists to promote: that US forces had been training Ukrainians to launch an offensive in Donbas this month and that Russia’s attack on Ukraine was an effort to preempt that military action; that the Ukrainians have plans to “use nuclear weapons in some form”; and that the horrific bombing of Mariupol that struck a hospital and a birthing center was fake news. It urges Russian journalists to assert that Russia was being victimized by cancel culture and Russophobia was “on the march.”

              It’s unclear whether these memos had any impact on Russian media outlets, which already were regularly citing and praising Carlson. Pro-Putin media organizations in Russia may not have needed the Kremlin’s recent encouragement to make Carlson a star. RT, the Russian propaganda outlet, embraced Carlson’s defense of RT after social media companies banned RT content. And on Friday, Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a splashy story headlined “Well-known American TV journalist Carlson was outraged by the ‘lies of the United States.'” It was all about Tucker’s on-air (and unfounded) anger over the Nuland testimony and the biolab allegations. In this instance, a pro-Putin Russian media outlet was using Carlson’s disinformation to advance Moscow disinformation. Just like the Kremlin wanted.

              Fox News and Carlson did not respond to requests for comment.
              _________________

              If Lord Haw-Haw and Tokyo Rose had a love child, it would probably look a lot like Tucker Carlson.

              And for those of you keeping track, THIS is why Putin would care about what conservative talking heads in the US are saying. They're just an extension of the Kremlin's propaganda machine and have been for years.


              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • #82
                Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post

                Her spouting Russian talking points is a disgrace for a current US Army Reserve lieutenant colonel. At the minimum she should have hers security clearance pulled. She is a classic example of an insider threat.
                Another dumb as a turnip Millennial. God, anyone, help us...

                Comment


                • #83
                  Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post

                  Yup, you are spot on. But by seizing the Ukraine plants kind of takes away the suspense. What seizing them does do one thing...it allows Russia to hold Western Europe hostage...if they blow those plants it will...destroy life in the downwind parts of Ukraine and the rest of the fallout blows over Poland, Northern Germany and Scandinavia. It would be in retaliation to Western sanctions.
                  Sounds like a nuclear attack to me just without the bomb's explosive effects. Same, same, though.

                  Comment


                  • #84
                    Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post

                    Her spouting Russian talking points is a disgrace for a current US Army Reserve lieutenant colonel. At the minimum she should have hers security clearance pulled. She is a classic example of an insider threat.

                    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...
                    Last edited by tantalus; 14 Mar 22,, 19:57.

                    Comment


                    • #85
                      Originally posted by tantalus View Post


                      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...
                      my issue with her is she is a serving lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve. Her espousing Russian talking points are a violation of everything we are taught concerning security. It is a violation of her oath as an Army officer (the same oath I took), it is a violation of ethics and it is a security violation. She is a classic insider threat...she matches well with Chelsea Manning and so many others who have taken the side of our countries enemies. She should have her security clearance revoked....she is currently assigned to US Special Operations Command...things there are too serious and to secret to have a Russian fellow traveler assigned there.
                      “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                      Mark Twain

                      Comment


                      • #86
                        Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post

                        my issue with her is she is a serving lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve. Her espousing Russian talking points are a violation of everything we are taught concerning security. It is a violation of her oath as an Army officer (the same oath I took), it is a violation of ethics and it is a security violation. She is a classic insider threat...she matches well with Chelsea Manning and so many others who have taken the side of our countries enemies. She should have her security clearance revoked....she is currently assigned to US Special Operations Command...things there are too serious and to secret to have a Russian fellow traveler assigned there.
                        Not seeing that in the specific comments I linked. Its adjacent not aligned with putin talking points.

                        Cant speak too her military backround trumping what she should or should not say as a politican. Ofcourse up to the US military how they conduct their internal affairs and priviliges.

                        As a general rule dissenting and contrarian voices in society should be welcome even if 99% of the time they are uesless (ofcourse thats not how a military should work).

                        Comment


                        • #87
                          Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post

                          Sounds like a nuclear attack to me just without the bomb's explosive effects. Same, same, though.
                          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.
                          If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

                          Comment


                          • #88
                            Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
                            And for those of you keeping track, THIS is why Putin would care about what conservative talking heads in the US are saying. They're just an extension of the Kremlin's propaganda machine and have been for years.
                            I see this all the time with opposition media as well as politicians in my country. And guess what, these characters get airtime in the neighbouring countries

                            And yeah we also come to the same conclusions as you do as to loyalties of these individuals.

                            I'm ignoring them because we will be going down countless ratholes otherwise and i've having a hard enough time with a fluid topic already.

                            They can say whatever they want. There are no consequences.

                            This is the free world we all fight for.
                            Last edited by Double Edge; 14 Mar 22,, 21:53.

                            Comment


                            • #89
                              Russia's bioweapon conspiracy theory finds support in US
                              A Russian conspiracy theory about U.S.-funded biological research in Ukraine is catching on in the U.S. The White House, Pentagon, independent scientists and leaders in Ukraine all dispute the claims

                              Russia's baseless claims about secret American biological warfare labs in Ukraine are taking root in the U.S. too, uniting COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, QAnon adherents and some supporters of ex-President Donald Trump.

                              Despite rebuttals from independent scientists, Ukrainian leaders and officials at the White House and Pentagon, the online popularity of the claims suggests some Americans are willing to trust Kremlin propaganda over the U.S. media and government.

                              Like any effective conspiracy theory, the Russian claim relies on some truths: Ukraine does maintain a network of biological labs dedicated to research into pathogens, and those labs have received funding and research support from the U.S.

                              But the labs are owned and operated by Ukraine, and the work is not secret. It's part of an initiative called the Biological Threat Reduction Program that aims to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or manmade. The U.S. efforts date back to work in the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s program for weapons of mass destruction.

                              “The labs are not secret,” said Filippa Lentzos, a senior lecturer in science and international security at King’s College London, in an email to the Associated Press. “They are not being used in relation to bioweapons. This is all disinformation.”

                              That hasn't stopped the claim from being embraced by some on the far-right, by Fox News hosts, and by groups that push debunked claims that COVID-19 is a bioweapon created by the U.S.

                              The day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an early version appeared on Twitter -- in a thread espousing the idea that Russia's offensive was targeting “US biolabs in Ukraine” -- and was soon amplified by the conspiracy theory website Infowars. It has spread across mainstream and lower-profile social platforms, including Telegram and Gab, that are popular with far-right Americans, COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and adherents of QAnon, the baseless hoax that Satan-worshipping pedophiles secretly shape world events.

                              Many of the accounts posting the claim are citing Russian propaganda outlets as sources. When Kremlin officials repeated the conspiracy theory on Thursday, saying the U.S. was developing bioweapons that target specific ethnicities, it took a few minutes for their quotes to show up on American social media.

                              Several Telegram users who cited the comments said they trusted Russian propaganda over independent American journalists, or their own democratically elected officials.


                              “Can’t believe anything our government says!” one poster wrote.

                              Others cited the claim while parroting Russia's talking points about the invasion.

                              “It’s not a “war,” it’s a much needed cleansing,” wrote a member of a Telegram group called “Patriot Voices” that is popular with supporters of Trump. “Ukraine has a ton of US govt funded BioWeapons Labs that created deathly pathogens and viruses.”

                              Television pundits and high-profile political figures have helped spread the claim even further. Fox News host Tucker Carlson devoted segments on his shows on Wednesday and Thursday to promoting the conspiracy theory. On Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. said conspiracy theories around the labs were proven to be a “fact” in a tweet to his 7.3 million followers.


                              Both Carlson and Trump misrepresented congressional testimony from a State Department official saying the U.S. was working with Ukraine to secure material in the biological labs, suggesting that indicated the labs were being used for illegitimate purposes.

                              It’s not surprising that a biological research center would contain potentially hazardous material, however. The World Health Organization said Thursday that it has asked Ukraine to destroy any samples that could pose a threat if released, either intentionally or accidentally.

                              While the disinformation poses a threat on its own, the White House warned this week that the Kremlin's latest conspiracy theory could be a prelude to a chemical or biological attack that Russia would blame on the U.S. or Ukraine.

                              “Frankly, this influence campaign is completely consistent with longstanding Russian efforts to accuse the United States of sponsoring bioweapons work in the former Soviet Union,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Thursday during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “So this is a classic move by the Russians.”

                              The conspiracy theory has also been picked up by Chinese state media, and was further amplified this week by China's Foreign Ministry, which repeated Russia's claim and called for an investigation.

                              Milton Leitenberg, an arms control expert and senior research associate at the Center for International & Security Studies at the University of Maryland, noted that Russia has a long history of such disinformation. In the 1980s, Russian intelligence spread the conspiracy theory that the U.S. created HIV in a lab.

                              Leitenberg said numerous Russian scientists had visited a similar public health lab in the republic of Georgia, but that Russia continued to spread false claims about that facility.

                              “There’s nothing they don’t know about what’s taking place there, and they know that nothing of what they claim is true,” Leitenberg said. “The important thing is that they know that, unquestionably.”

                              While gaining traction in the U.S., the claims about bioweapons are likely intended for a domestic Russian audience, as a way to increase support for the invasion, according to Andy Carvin, senior fellow and managing editor at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which is tracking Russian disinformation.

                              Carvin noted the Kremlin has also spread hoaxes about Ukrainian efforts to obtain nuclear weaponry.

                              “It’s a rinse-and-repeat cycle to hammer home these narratives, particularly to domestic audiences,” Carvin said.

                              ———

                              Who needs paid Russian Troll Farms when you've got Fox News and the Trump Family working for you for free?
                              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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                              • #90
                                Originally posted by tantalus View Post
                                At some point the american media mainstream (polls seem to suggest much of the non republcian america already open to the idea) are going to have to come to terms with the fact covid 19 probably came from a lab.
                                There's no "fact" that COVID-19 resulted from a lab leak. It is at least a plausible theory, inasmuch as lab leaks of viruses has indeed occurred in the past. But so far there's no solid evidence of a lab leak.
                                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                                Comment

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