It happened in Iraq, but the scale of ukraine's assets are somewhat larger.
Again , the language used. the new definition of 'loan'.

"The facts have changed", Rishi Sunak

Was wondering what was going on with Robert Kennedy Jr's voice but found out the guy has a neurological disorder. Learned something new. Poor guy!

I'd have thought RKJ would not have been a go to on here for pro-russian sources of 'the truth' given his past life of hardline environmentalism but I guess we live in shifting times.

As for 'that truth', its remarkable as this basically an old Lyndon Larouche consiracy theory which has been rehashed to fit a modern day narrative. So a rare case of the truth being available for all to see decades before the issue even happens. What visionaries!

Just for the avoidance of doubt. Blackrock doesn't own 'all' the major US defense companies. Infact it doesnt actually own any of them. The Black rock conspiracy theorists assume that Blackrocks money it uses to buy shares in companies is its own, when in reality it uses money from investment portfolios of its savers, basically anyone who has a 401K savings plan or pension (so basically most people in America). Essentially they invest your money and give it back to you at a later date, thats how your savings grow. Blackrock makes money by charging a pension / savings fee per saver, not from dividends of the shares themselves otherwise it would risk losing money on investments, which in a capitalist free for all, cant be having that! Anyway, the narrative here is that they (blackrock) the deepstate actually wants this war / NATO expansion so that countries have to 'conform' and buy their stuff.

Aside from the small issue that asset firms don't actually make money from how well the company does (you do on your pension plan). The other issue is there is no guarantuee that New NATO country is even going to buy stuff from these companies with Europe having their own defense manufacturers, it's a bit of a gamble financially to basically shadow government half the western world and then find the defense contracts go to your competitors. Sound business that!

Also, it sounds like he doesnt even know his own conspiracy theory. Blackrock is normally targeted because it alledegly uses its proxy voting rights to force through environmental and social issues on the sly, things that RKJ actually supports and have always campaigned for, not starting wars! He shouldn't be drawing attention to this... silly Robert, you'll blow your cover.

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Next we move on the Social arguement of, don't spend %5 of the US military budget we spent anyway on stuff for Ukraine because we have poor people. Sure, why not? Apart from the fact that most parties who object to aid to Ukraine also want to see social welfare lowered.

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Finally moving on the re-construction arguement asides from the blackrock stuff being a false narrative (as explained above). Why does America need loads of Agricultural land which it literally has loads of it anyway? Infact pre-war US agriculture was out producing Ukraine almost ten fold. Seems odd to go to all this effort to create a war when they could just use all this money to buy the US mid-west?

Edited by snytaxx (13 Feb 2024 10.33pm)

So tomorrow marks two years since the start of the latest phase of this conflict, i.e. the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Figured the who, what and the why have been done to death on this thread so thought i'd highlight something a little different. The scale of the conflict and how it compares to other conflicts as have noticed people do love a comparison.

The Human Casualties

This is probably the hardest part to really assess as data from both sides cannot really be relied upon. But for reference:

Russia has admitted to losing 6,000 troops back in the September of 2022. Its highly unlikely this figure is reliable but again to put it into scale. Russia openly admitted to losing almost ten times as many soldiers in 6 months as the UK lost in Iraq and Afganistan combined over a 20 year period. So those who draw parrallels to UK involvement in the middle east are falling way short!

Moving up the scale, the BBC have actually done some interesting work here by verifying deceased Russian servicemen via death certificate, social media and family etc. They have so far verified over 44,000 casualties for Russia. which is about 25% more than US lost in Korea, despite the war so far only lasting for 2/3 the length.

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Continuing up the scale, the US leaked an internal Russian document where by February 2023, Russia was admitted to around 110,000 casualties (dead and wounded) in one year which puts it at about the same level as the US during 12 years of Vietnam or over seven times more deadly than the 10 years the Soviet Union was in Afganistan. So again, those saying 'this is another Vietnam' - not even close.

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Finally you arrive at the US estimates as of December 2023 which gives the figure of 315,000 dead and wounded in 21 months of fighting which approximately compares almost like for like to the US casualties in WW1 and almost 90% of the initial invasion force being dead or wounded.

If you use this figure as a bench mark rate, Russia will have suppassed total US casualties in WW2 in about three years. This is course ignores any Ukranian made claims which puts the figures even higher for reference. It is possible that the US is also lying on this one, but their motive for doing so is less obvious than that of Ukraine so i've run with thier figures for now.

As for Ukraine, the situation is likely similarly bleak. The same US report estimates over 70,000 ukranians dead over 120,000 wounded which is more than the current population of Sutton. It's also likely this figure is higher however it's hard to know just how much higher given the likely exhageration by Russian sources and reluctance to talk about it by Western governments.

Equipment

This one is a little easier thanks to the good people at ORXY with Ukraine visually having lost over 5,000 vehicles and Russia visually having lost almost 15,000. It's still likely the actual loses for both sides are higher as not everything can be visually confirmed.

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In terms of the ability to keep going. Ukraine is heavily reliant on western aid and I cant see that changing. Russia on the otherhand often claims access to vast quanitities of Soviet era stockpiles, essentially the "I can do this all day" argument. The only hole in that reasoning is that those stockpiles are themselves limited. Hilariously enough, some youtubers literally hired a satalite and did their own take on this subject. Turns out you can just hire satalites to do this for you. But long story short, Russia is also on the clock.

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In terms of the value of equipment lost. Russian allededly lost over $34 billion worth equipment in 18 months of war excluding other costs of running a war which takes the cost to $167 billion). While Ukraine managed to lose almost $10 billion worth of hardware in it's failed counter offensive alone during the summer and autumn months of 2023.

For reference, the UK spends about $65 billion on its defence per year.

1066 - the year it all went wrong

Because It's an information war as well as a physical one you can never be certain of what's real and what's an intelligence operation. The Russians could just as easily have made this up as it have been real.

Ukraine have shown themselves more than willing to go after targets but I'll reserve judgement simply because it's impossible to know.

[Tweet Link]

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

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'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)