Free Republic

Its quite amazing really. They are in a position where they should be de-escalating and, in proper Machiavellian style, looking reasonable... someone may be fooled after all. But no, it’s psycho time again.

Am I the only one thinking, what was in that Sputnik shot? S-protein surge having mind-altering consequences? Aggression threshold lowered? Just a conspiracy theory.

Except that KI is nearly useless in a nuke war fallout scenario. It only protects your thyroid against I131, which is commonly produced in a civilian reactor accident, but not necessarily the most common or prevailing radioisotope in a fallout case.

Those hyping it are snake oil salesment.

You will likey succumb to the acute radiation sickness from fallout before you get your thyroid cancer.

Staying below ground in a radiation shelter for weeks/months, having a supply of food/clean water is key to survival. No amount of KI will reduce the sieverts you accumulate if you stay above ground.

>> How far past expiration are Potassium Iodide tablets still good?

They are pretty much useless in a nuclear fallout scenario regardless. They only protect your thyroid against accumulation of very specific radioisotope (I-131) and don’t provide any protection against anything else, like the ambient gamma radidation level. None whatsoever.

KI is only useful in a civilian reactor accident scenario. Anything else is hype and snake oil.

There are real radioprotective compounds, but they are not generally available to civilians, even their names are hard to find in open literature in the West. Surprisingly, Russian civil defense textbooks mention a few.

They never gave up on the idea of civil defense, like we did by the end of 1960’s. Every apartment building built until hte 90’s had a fallout shelter. Real useful to the Ukrainians in cities now.

I'll wade in.

As an ethnic Jew, not religious, who was born and grew up in Ukraine before my family emigrated to the USA in the early 90's, there are many nuances to this story, that are not quite obvious to the casual American reader.

The thing is, the Ukrainian Nationalists tend to celebrate the heritage of their WWII predecessors, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army who early in the war were co-belligerents with the Nazis in hope to liberate Ukraine from the Communists and Stalin. Early in the war they participated in the Holocaust, hoping to win favor from the Germans. However, Hitler did not intend to give them Ukraine even as a 3rd Reich aligned puppet state, so eventually they fought against the Nazis as well, and also against the Soviets and both Soviet-aligned and Nationalist-aligned Poles. They conducted ethnic cleansing against the Polish civilians in Volynia in 1943. They continued an insurgency against the Soviets well after the end of WWII.

Because of my own heritage I could never embrace these historical figures as "heroes" in a sense that many ethnic Ukrainians do, but yet I understand that there isn't much choice for the Ukrainians - the choice is either the Nationalists (as controversial as their legacy may be), or the Soviets, whom the post-Soviet Ukraine repudiated. Its Red vs. Red-Black. I understand that in many cases the brutality of these militias was them trying to match the brutality of Stalin.

If you look at Central and Eastern European history, you will find that many anti-Communits of that era were ideologically Fascist or closer to National Socialism. The Euro-Right was an is unlike the American Right.

Again, modern Ukrainian Nationalists lionize these WWII insurgent figures (hence, the imagery) but there aren't any other historical role models for Independent Ukraine, unfortunately.

Zelenskiy was forced to make (an uneasy?) peace with the Nationalists (probably a lot of internal cringe fest going on) because of pragmatism, besides, these guys will fanatically fight the Russians.

Having said all of the above, Putin's claim to "denazify Ukraine" is simply an excuse. If not for the Nationalists, he would find something else. Right now Russia is desperately trying to spin a story that Ukraine was trying to make nuclear weapons and the invasion pre-empted the attack by Ukraine on Russia, because an earlier narrative that Ukraine was waiting to welcome the Russian with flowers, fell apart.

Putin is extremely cynical and wants to rebuild the USSR / Russian Empire.

Whether he wins or loses in Ukraine, Putin is going to get exactly the opposite of what he intended - more NATO on his doorstep.

I have a hard time telling if this is satire or not.

Let’s assume it is not and the author is putting out feelers to test the waters with the idea (like they did with so many more radical things - feel first, then plead, then aggressively push, then finally normalise)

This is what pure unabated Trotskyism is, to those who read up on it. Many people don’t realise that Stalin, as brutal as he was, actually did the world a favour when he had Trotsky killed and many of his fellow traveler hard-left commies during the Great Purges.

They were pushing for many radical post-trans-humanist social experiment stuff in the 1920’s following the Russian Revolution, like ending marriage and having “communal wifes”, ending the family and having children raised from birth to join a cradle-to-grave Work Army.

Stalin was many things but he wasn’t going to abolish the family. As bad as he was, had Trotsky won, it would have been so much worse.

” If the state comes for my children you will need heavy equipment just to remove the shell casings lying at my feet”

They plan to disarm the population first, before they come.

>> Better to stop the Russians in Ukraine than to have to oust them from
>> Europe again.

Oh please, not the ridiculous domino theory crap again.

Russia is not the USSR. It is not exporting Communist ideology around the world anymore. And it’s not trying to rebuild the Warsaw Pact.

I highly doubt they have designs for Europe either.

Should have listened to George Kennan who at the end of the Cold War warned that a colossal mistake was being made by expanding NATO eastward and not engaging Russia.

>> Better to stop the Russians in Ukraine than to have to oust them from
>> Europe again.

Oh please, not the ridiculous domino theory crap again.

Russia is not the USSR. It is not exporting Communist ideology around the world anymore. And it’s not trying to rebuild the Warsaw Pact.

I highly doubt they have designs for Europe either.

Should have listened to George Kennan who at the end of the Cold War warned that a colossal mistake was being made by expanding NATO eastward and not engaging Russia.

>> Most of those Jews that came from Europe were Socialist Bundists, not >> Zionists. And Bundists hate Israel.
>>

Even the Bundists were not left wing enough for the Bolsheviks . Let’s also not forget that the Bolsheviks killed or drove into exile virtually all other political parties, including more moderate leftists (such as Julius Martov)

Most of the ethnically Jewish Bolsheviks were eliminated during the purges in the 1930s and in the 1940s following WWII, when Stalin’s policies turned openly antisemitic towards the end of his rule.

” Nearly all those Russian Bolsheviks move to Israel as the Right-Of-Return Zionist policy. But they only use that as a pretext to get into the USA. That’s why we have so many left wing communist Jews in America.

What utter nonsense. Most Soviet emigre Jews are anti-leftist and socially conservative. Their American leftist brethren come from an earlier immigration waves predating the Russian revolution. Remember there was a moratorium on immigration from that part of the world for the 1920’s up to 1965.

Excellent read! Bookmark!

New Year is a very big family celebration in Russia. Orthodox Christmas was never commercialized like NY was.

>> What then, is the unifying ethos and ideology of the United States, if it is
>> no longer Christian, Western, certainly not White?

Well, there is a cure for that. But no one on here, yours truly included, will like it or wish to hear about the cure.

"Excuse me for noticing a trend. I guess I’m not supposed to notice"

But you could have chosen your words more carefully. I guess I'm not supposed to notice that "born liars" sounds a lot like the racial antisemitism of the Nazis.

>> Another born liar taking the eternal dirt nap

Sounds like a dog whistle for da Joos, looking at your posting history and other similar comments.

That’s treading into Völkischer Beobachter territory and is not a conservative position.

>> Dumb dumb dumb!

Ukraine absolutely did not have a free hand in this. It’s fantasy football to think they had real agency at that time. Being a fledgling, politically unstable and extremely corrupt ex-Soviet republic, it was made an offer it could not refuse. If Kravchuk, the ex-Soviet boss and 1st president of the independent Ukraine refused, he would have probably be toppled by a joint US / Britain / Russia ops and someone more agreeable would sign in his place.

There was concern in the West the nukes could end up on the market for the highest bidder, like Iran. So everyone at the time was happy with the arrangement.

Are these native Dutch rioting, or perhaps more recent arrivals?

"Step one would be to return the Polish territory taken by the Ukraine at the end of World War II."

Probably as soon as Poland returns the German areas that Stalin alloted to it.

"Most of the folks there are Catholic, and it would be a good fit."

ROFL. The same Greek-Catholic folks who are, then and today, some of the most outspoken Ukrainian Nationalists? They same folks who took an active part in an insurgency going against the Poles prior to WWII and during the war, massacred up to 100K Polish civilians? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia Sure they hate the Russians (#1 enemy) now, but Poles were always #2 on that list.

” So what’s the reward system for China to destroy their best customer? Don’t understand.”

Because race, ethnic/nationalist identity and aspirations always trump economic concerns? We are not merely consumer units, something the West has collectively forgotten. At the turn of last century experts used to make a point that WW1 was impossible because the European powers had too much to lose interns of mutual trade if war broke out. China may be devastated as the result of the conflict and they go back to the Mao way - the command economy, labor camps and ration cards. The have no qualms about brutally crushing any internal unrest with tanks. But if we cease to exist as the result of the conflict, they get to rebuild and expand in Asia and the Pacific. The only thing that would stop them is MAD and knowing we will not hesitate to use it.

”And they don’t want justice, they want vengeance. We have devolved into mob rule.”

Look no further than the former Yugoslavia as to what happens next.