asdfgtr comments

The value of the Russian ruble is cratering.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine the ruble has plummeted from 70 ruble per dollar to approx. 107 rubles per U.S. dollar and is showing signs of further weakness, largely due to the continued pressures from sanctions, a shrinking trade surplus, and their failing invasion. Analysts predict that the ruble will to struggle due to these ongoing issues, including low investor confidence and inevitable economic slowdown.

Misleading title: It's not defense spending.

As Russia's economy collapses, Putin is desperately wasting resources to fund his failing invasion of Ukraine.

More terrorism from a globally isolated Russia.

Putin is getting desperate.

These picks are almost as laughable as Trump TAPPING Kristi Noem for Homeland Security secretary.

In Noem's memoir she lies about meeting Kim Jong Un and admits to brutally killing her 14 month old puppy.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/26/trump-kristi-noem-shot-dog-and-goat-book

@JJE,

More sensible America First picks.

These people have proved their loyalty to the country and the voter's agenda.

Comedy gold comrade!

New court filings point to Matt Gaetz allegedly attending drug-fueled party with 17-year-old girl:

https://www.advocate.com/politics/matt-gaetz-drug-party-allegations

Greenberg’s confession letter, written in late 2020 while seeking a presidential pardon from then-President Donald Trump, provides damning details about Gaetz’s role. In the letter, Greenberg admitted that he and Gaetz had both engaged in sexual activities with a minor, who was 17 at the time.

Greenberg also detailed the financial transactions used to pay the women, including Venmo payments that Gaetz allegedly sent to him to arrange the encounters.

In the messages, Greenberg admitted to arranging sexual encounters for Gaetz and referenced efforts to secure a pardon for both men in the final days of the Trump presidency.

Trump on Elon (from Trump's victory speech):

"We have a new star....a star is born: ELON!"

Trump loves China. His "Trump Bibles" are made there.

Trump’s administration chose to exempt Bibles from tariffs imposed on billions of dollars of Chinese goods. 

https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/best-of-the-week/second-winner/2024/ap-traces-the-printing-of-trumps-god-bless-america-bibles-to-the-country-he-accuses-of-stealing-american-jobs-china/

Check out the manspreading stance of Kim Jong Un in his "wet-look" black PVC jacket.

Kim is flanked by a bizarre collection of elderly North Korean troops that an increasingly desperate Putin needs as cannon fodder to continue his failed invasion attempt.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/north-korea-troops-russia-ukraine-war-kim-jong-un-putin

In 2017, a North Korean soldier who made a frantic escape across the border – barely surviving multiple gunshot wounds from his own side – was found by the South Korean doctors who saved him to have a 27cm intestinal worm and a host of other parasites in his system. His stomach contents reflected a poor diet.

And this for a staff sergeant said to be from the relatively elite border guard. South Korean researchers in 2015 cited elevated rates of chronic hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis and parasites among North Korean defectors.

In 2017, a North Korean soldier who made a frantic escape across the border – barely surviving multiple gunshot wounds from his own side – was found by the South Korean doctors who saved him to have a 27cm intestinal worm and a host of other parasites in his system. His stomach contents reflected a poor diet.

And this for a staff sergeant said to be from the relatively elite border guard. South Korean researchers in 2015 cited elevated rates of chronic hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis and parasites among North Korean defectors.

Check out the manspreading stance of Kim Jong Un in his "wet-look" black PVC jacket.

Kim is flanked by a bizarre collection of elderly North Korean troops that an increasingly desperate Putin needs as cannon fodder to continue his failed invasion attempt.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/north-korea-troops-russia-ukraine-war-kim-jong-un-putin

One of the reasons that Russia is turning to these North Korean troops is that it’s desperate.

Putin has been throwing more and more Russians into a meat grinder of his own making in Ukraine.

Now he’s turning to North Korean troops, and that is a clear sign of weakness.

Given that Russia is losing an estimated 1,200 fighters a day in killed and wounded casualties during its autumn eastern offensive, the North Koreans could be quickly expended on the frontline.

It is not known what the North Koreans will do, though given Russia’s frontline tactics, which remain relatively careless of human lives, it is hard to imagine they would be dispatched into a winter effort to take Pokrovsk or another key location on Ukraine’s eastern front.

Russia needs outsiders because it has failed to halt population decline; its median age is now 40. The country has long relied on migrant labourers to fill the gap, but the pandemic drove down numbers. It was short of 4.8 million workers last year. Perhaps a million young Russians have left because of the war, and the military is competing with the factories that supply it.

Increasingly, Russia is looking further afield. Some migrants are lured into military service by the pay or with the promise of fast-track citizenship. Others are cheated or coerced into joining up. Indian and Nepali workers who thought they were going to work in Russia, Germany or Dubai have found themselves fighting on the frontlines in Ukraine. Around 200 women were recruited from Uganda, Sierra Leone and other African nations to work assembling attack drones in Tatarstan, AP reported this month, where they were exposed to caustic chemicals.

While Russia poses as a friend to the developing world, it relies on expendable fighters and cheap labour from impoverished nations. President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to subsume territory into a greater Russia is underpinned by foreign personnel and workers. That speaks less to the strength of burgeoning alliances, as alarming as they are, and more to fundamental domestic problems that his country faced even before he launched the invasion that has devastated Ukraine and killed so many of Russia’s own citizens.

@Hercolobus,

Anybody can make accusations. How can they prove it happened as claimed?

LOL. The Russian murderers where literally caught on video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqyLB-3-ZzU

@Wick's Pencil

Just more excuses to attack Putin.

World's smallest violin plays.....

@TaiwanIsNotChina,

Well we know some people in the UK got violently ill after a couple of russian stooges passed by and fled the country. Also we know Putin loves his poisons.

Putin's agents murdered a British mother of three young children and left others with violent illnesses.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dawn-sturgess-killed-nerve-agent-novichok-inquiry/

@Antiquesaving,

Harris and her cohorts spent years telling the people how Trump is the greatest evil since Hitler and Stalin

Still waiting for you to provide one example of Kamala Harris saying this.

@Antiquesaving,

Harris and her cohorts spent years telling the people how Trump is the greatest evil since Hitler and Stalin,

Can you provide an example of Kamala Harris stating this?

Nuking hundreds of thousands of civilians save no one. In fact, the nuking was one of the most brutal and cynical atrocities ever committed:

As Brig. Gen. Carter W. Clarke, the officer in charge of preparing MAGIC intercepted cable summaries in 1945, stated:

"….we brought them [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

As the historical record shows, six of the seven US WWII five star officers concluded that the nuking of hundreds of thousands of civilians was unnecessary. As Admiral Chester W. Nimitz stated:

"The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war…."

Truman's own diaries show that he prolonged hostilities until the nukes were ready. We also know that he lied to the US public when he stated that Hiroshima was a "military target".

Prior to nuking Hiroshima, the U.S. military had already obliterated over 60 Japanese cities with napalm and white phosphorous. This conclusively proves that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had little value other than as an opportunity for the US military to conduct nuke testing on human subjects.

In this connection, Paul Tibbets is on record as stating that Hiroshima was set aside as a "virgin" test city. Additionally, the primary targets at Hiroshima were residential in nature with the overwhelming majority of casualties being civilian. In fact, Honkawa Elementary school was mere meters from the epicentre of the Hiroshima nuke strike.

@JJE,

No one lives in Chasiv Yar. Been a war zone for a year and a half.

Anyone clipped there are combatants.

Wrong.

As stated in the article:

Six people were killed, including a 14-year-old girl, when glide bombs struck five locations across the city.

the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, killing thousands of people.......It was a decisive move that helped bring about the end of World War II

Pathetic propaganda still trying to justify an unequivocal war crime.

Nuking hundreds of thousands of civilians save no one. In fact, the nuking was one of the most brutal and cynical atrocities ever committed:

As Brig. Gen. Carter W. Clarke, the officer in charge of preparing MAGIC intercepted cable summaries in 1945, stated:

"….we brought them [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

As the historical record shows, six of the seven US WWII five star officers concluded that the nuking of hundreds of thousands of civilians was unnecessary. As Admiral Chester W. Nimitz stated:

"The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war…."

Truman's own diaries show that he prolonged hostilities until the nukes were ready. We also know that he lied to the US public when he stated that Hiroshima was a "military target".

Prior to nuking Hiroshima, the U.S. military had already obliterated over 60 Japanese cities with napalm and white phosphorous. This conclusively proves that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had little value other than as an opportunity for the US military to conduct nuke testing on human subjects.

In this connection, Paul Tibbets is on record as stating that Hiroshima was set aside as a "virgin" test city. Additionally, the primary targets at Hiroshima were residential in nature with the overwhelming majority of casualties being civilian. In fact, Honkawa Elementary school was mere meters from the epicentre of the Hiroshima nuke strike.

The Modi summit is another in long series of disasters for Putin and his inept cronies.

Putin's weak leadership skills are highlighted my the fact Russia has experienced a series of Islamist terror attacks recently, prompting questions about whether its extensive security agencies have been distracted by the invasion of Ukraine and the internal crackdown on anti-war dissent.

In March, the Afghan branch of IS, known as Islamic State Khorasan Province, claimed responsibility for a mass shooting at a Moscow concert hall, the deadliest terror attack in years, which killed 139 people.

And in June, gunmen opened fire in two cities in Russia’s north Caucasus region of Dagestan, targeting a synagogue, two Orthodox churches and a police post, killing at least 15 police officers and a priest.

This will help Trump shore up the whacko anti-vaxxer vote.

Ukraine has said large numbers of Russian servicemen gave themselves up during the Kursk offensive that began on 6 August.

One 22-year-old Russian PoW – a conscript – said he and others were “simply abandoned by our command”.

Kyiv has developed an increasingly ambitious drone programme and a new drone command. The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces said about 200 critical infrastructure sites had been attacked. All were connected with “military logistics”. They included factories, fuel dumps and refineries.

The strategy appears to be working. Fires have continued to burn at a major oil depot in Proletarsk, a town in Russia’s Rostov oblast, four days after it was struck by drones. Another storage tank exploded. Firefighters have been unable to put out the blaze.

As many as 3,000 Russian troops are believed to be trapped in the Glushkovsky district, which Ukraine is likely to try to seize. Over the past week Ukraine has bombed three bridges and a pontoon across the Seym River. It has also blasted a Russian border post in the town of Tetkino, farther west.

@JJE

a PR exercise........pre-evacuation population 5k

Russian officials say 133,000 Russians have fled.

When Russian troops overran Ukrainian cities in 2022, locals staged mass demonstrations. Near Kursk, by contrast, there has been apathy from Russian locals.

Until now, most Russians have ignored the war, regarding it as something far away. Now, though, the conflict has reached their doorstep.

Russian officials say 133,000 people have fled. Many Russians feel abandoned. Slowly but surely, support for Putin’s “special military operation” is slipping.

So far, the operation has been a stunning success for Kyiv, exceeding expectations. Mobile Ukrainian groups have made rapid progress. They now control about 80 settlements, including the border town of Sudzha. . But Russia has been unable to halt this invasion.

For Putin, this has been a personal humiliation. Hundreds of Russian conscripts – sent in as reinforcements – have surrendered. Ukrainian journalists have toured Sudzha, reporting on humanitarian aid delivery to Russians hiding in basements.