Free Republic

The owner and the police believe it’s a neighbor dispute. Owner was using a drone for some social media shoots. Neighbor who has an ‘operation’ didn’t like it at all, there was a confrontation, next day his crops were dying off.

The ‘operation’ referred to by the owner is probably a weed growing operation (medical marijuana is legal in Oklahoma).

There were only two Trump - Biden debates.

Blackrock doesn’t own both companies.

Dominion’s owner is staple street capital, a private equity firm.

fox is owned by fox corporation, a publicly traded company. Fox Corp has many shareholders, the main one being Murdoch family trusts 39.6%) and many smaller ones including blackrock fund advisors (3%) which means that blackrock mutual funds/etfs/etc hold some fox Corp stock.

That photo is from 2021.

Russia has been using s-300s for ground attack at least nine months now. They were using them heavily for ground targets months ago, less so now. They had a huge amount of s-300s in storage - less so cruise missiles - so it made sense.

S-300 has a very large warhead for a SAM and a guidance system that can be adapted for ground targets, which is why they decided to use it for ground attacks. Original variant was 220 lbs, modern ones are 315 lbs.

The Confederacy ceased to exist.

Finland continues to exist when the USSR’s original plan during the Winter War was to conquer them. Finland won the right to continue to be a sovereign country.

Finland’s parliament also voted 184-7 to join. It was a popular move.

Like you say, it wouldn’t have happened had Putin not invaded Ukraine.

MacGregor is overestimating Ukrainian KIA, just like Ukraine significantly overestimates Russian KIA for propaganda purposes. Even Russia isn’t using MacGregor’s numbers and it’s not like Russia or Ukraine are conservative on estimating the other side’s losses.

In any case the claim that 250k KIA is more than the USA KIA in WW2 is false. The USA had 405k KIA in WW2 of which 290K were combat related. Wounded was 670K. So even with MacGregor’s made up numbers, they’re still less than the USA’s in WW2.

The real casualty numbers for each side are probably something like 60-80k KIA with wounded bringing total casualties to 250k. Which is a lot of casualties.

There’s a gem in Putin’s remarks where he admits Russia has a shell shortage:
“The U.S. produces 14,000–15,000 shells a month...Russia is producing three times as much ammunition as the instigators of the conflict.”

If we include the rest of the NATO countries in his “instigators of the conflict” - even though he mentions only the USA a few sentences previously - then NATO is collectively producing around 28,000-30,000 shells per month while Ukraine is using, according to Putin, 150,000 shells per month.

So Russia is producing 84,000 - 90,000 shells per month but using 10,000 - 20,000 a day -> 300,000 - 600,000 a month. Russia’s 10 to 20,000 a day is down quite a bit from the peak - because they were using too many shells relative to their production and stockpiles.

Russia has a shell shortfall of around 210,000 - 510,000 shells per month. Which means they are drawing down their inventories regardless of what propagandists say. Putin has confirmed it. Those inventories are not limitless although of course neither are the West’s. But at some point Russia will have to reduce its shell expenditure again.

In contrast, NATO’s shell shortfall is 150,000 - 30,000 = 120,000 shells per month.

He said there was a “lack” of ammunition. Not “no ammunition”. It was in the context of any potential offensive actions in the East. They have a “lack of ammunition” for an offensive. He’s been going on about this since the war started since it’s effective when he’s begging for weapons, ammo, shells, etc.

In any case it’s probably deception for whatever the Ukrainians are planning this spring. Just like when we were told that Bakhmut was finally done for, battalions had 100% casualty rates, etc etc. They want russian reinforcements in Bakhmut for whatever they’re planning on doing elsewhere. It doesn’t seem the Russians are falling for some of these stories considering Bakhmut is still not captured and wagners chief keeps going on about not getting resources etc. Since the Russians will also attack elsewhere.

In this war, Russia has visually confirmed losses of 1871 tanks. They’ve lost another 816 armored fighting vehicles, 2226 infantry fighting vehicles, and 311 armored personnel carriers. So Russia has used armor.

Ukraine has plenty of wide, flat terrain. There was plenty of tank warfare in WW2 and tanks have seen action in this war as well. As far as antitank weapons, it’s still possible to use armor and they still do use armor.

We saw much more tank action early on when Russia had the upper hand in movement. We still see it in their attacks but on a smaller scale, there’s footage of it.

Israel gets more aid than Egypt every year. They don’t receive the same amount. Israel current gets 3.8 billion per year as mandated by law, Egypt gets 1.3 billion. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid.

Egyptian treatment of Copts is very bad. In any case, this proposed Israeli law is not a good law.

There is no source, it’s a Russian talking point that started appearing on various sites a few days ago.

It’s usually coupled with a line about how the center is only being held by 500 Ukrainian soldiers who are constantly replenished every four hours as they all become KIA, ie, 2000 Ukrainian deaths in Bakhmut daily. It’s interesting to see how this “four hour” line started appearing.

The language argument is such an incredibly weak one to make. That people mindlessly repeat it is sad. It would, for example, justify the UK (re)annexing large parts of the world. Or the USA doing the same. Or parts of the southwest joining Mexico, Spain (re)annexing much of South America, France the francophone countries, and so on. Many countries that speak English, Russian, Spanish, French, and so on do so because they were once colonized by another country. That doesn’t give the former colonizer any rights to their territory.

Reagan made no such promise. Bush did because that’s when the wall fell and German reunification became possible.

Subsequent to any verbal agreements with Gorbachev, the USSR collapsed. Russians like to go on about NATO and what x, y, z politician assured USSR politicians but the fact is that the USSR does not exist.

Those refugees were caused by Russia’s intervention. This is not a vacuum where the USSR and then Russia are blameless, helpless parties.

Sweden and Finland are joining NATO because of what Russia has done. Russia has only itself to blame for them joining NATO. Russia has made an alliance that was increasingly relevant quite relevant again. Quite the feat for Putin.

This is a strange article. The author uses destroyed vehicles that have been visually confirmed to arrive at his conclusions. Except he misses the easiest point that would reinforce his thesis - he doesn’t even mention that many of the destroyed vehicles would have been mobility kills where many of the occupants escape. Every day there are many reddit posts of drone drops destroying abandoned vehicles. This is curious because if he had understood this, it would mean even lower casualties if you buy his majority of casualties coming from vehicles and equipment thesis.

He also states that: “It is key to note that the artillery is typically targeting enemy artillery and armored vehicles.”. He then states “Given the nature of the conflict, the bulk of the casualties are from the crews of destroyed vehicles and equipment.” This is just false and Vikram - the author of this article - takes the opposite view in other articles.

Artillery is very frequently targeting soldiers in the open, soldiers in buildings, and entrenched soldiers. Something like 80% of the casualties in Ukraine are from artillery and the majority of those casualties are not from artillery hitting vehicles. The author of this article adopts exactly this position in another article of his so it’s not as if he doesn’t understand this. He just takes the opposite position here for clicks.

I think the NYT elements of the story are also made up. I don’t see any such NYT reporting. They then follow this with CBS reporting about Russia being notified of the visit a few hours before.

It reminds me of the supposed Ukrainian casualties posted here that used an ‘according to CNN’ line as the source. Except CNN never said any of it. It’s just made up and people fall for it every time.

Don’t fall for fake news. It’s attributed to CNN but there is no linked CNN source. They’re just made up numbers. This fake was first published by a random Twitter user 4 days ago. Even Wagner’s telegram channel says it’s fake.

The reason they create these fake stories is because even when people point out they’re made up, someone will chime in with ‘but they’re very high in any case’. So the fake stories like this anchor the casualty estimates at a higher level than would otherwise be the case.

It’s also nice for them when someone with some name recognition posts it.

Both UPS and FedEx operate electric delivery vehicles. Both have large orders placed for more deliveries. They don’t operate them outside of densely populated areas since that’s where it makes the most commercial sense. Who knows where the post office wants to put theirs though since it’s the post office. Where they put them probably won’t be commercially viable.

It’s a look back at the start of the war near the one year mark. Because humans like things like one year marks even though day 365 is no more meaningful from day 366. It’s not a media conspiracy to do a story in the start of the war at the one year anniversary to cover up the current relatively static trench warfare - it’s expected.

Look back stories get views particularly when they include human interest components (the soldier smoking a cigarette at the start of the war, the local defense unit man from Bucha, the councilor, etc. They’ll follow this up with a more similar stories and then a ‘where are they now’ one with quotes from the same people to show how their beliefs, tactics, etc changed over time..