Trump

[BradWhite]

There's always another side to the story. If you've bothered to watch Zelensky's TV series, you'll understand that the whole purpose was to bait and provoke Putin. It almost suggests that he wanted this invasion.

Interesting pictures of the Azov Battalion.

Quote below is from a post by Kostas Antoniadis.

So you watched Trump and Zelensky, two reality tv stars, make a mockery of diplomacy in the oval office, and now you stand with Ukraine? I’m not quite sure what that means.

Does it mean you stand with the banning of 11 opposition parties, jailing their leaders and refusing to hold elections?

Does it mean you stand with the banning of the Russian Orthodox church, founded in 988AD, in Kiev, and exiling its leaders?

Does it mean you stand with prohibiting ethnic Russians living in Ukraine, one fifth of the population, from speaking and teaching their children their language and culture? Or reading and writing their books and newspapers?

Does it mean you stand with the Azov Battalion, the unapologetically far-right, neo-Nazi militia that dominates the Ukrainian military and to who the US Congress blocked military aid in 2018 on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology? The same Azov that in 2019 was designated a Tier 1 group, alongside other “democratic” organisations like the Ku Klux Klan and ISIS, and banned from Facebook completely under their “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” policy but miraculously, had their status reversed the very day Russia launched its “special operation”? Is this who you stand with?

Does it mean you stand with the criminal oligarchs who brought Zelensky to power, and who have subsequently made $billions from the war?

Does it also mean you stand with the most prominent of these, Ihor Kolomoisky, the banking, mining and energy oligarch who bankrolled Azov and who was accused of defrauding Ukraine's largest bank of billions of dollars? The same Kolomoisky whose steel and mining holdings in the US, Ghana and Australia were investigated by the FBI in 2019 who alleged he used his control of Ukraine’s largest retail bank, PrivatBank, to loot staggering sums from Ukrainian depositors, and then used a series of shell companies and offshore accounts to whisk the money out of the country and into the U.S.? Do you stand with him too?

Does it mean you stand with continuing a war that has already cost over 1 million souls, could potentially escalate to WW3 and that has precisely zero chance of being won?

C’mon, be honest. Do you really stand with Ukraine or do you just hate Trump and/or Putin?

[Jaydog]

[Wes Lee Street]

[BradWhite]

But we have no money...

[Phild]

Zelensky disrepectful?????
FFS
Living in Canada now and dealing with all his s**t he’s throwing at us.
51st state / tariffs/ Governer Trudeau.
I guess Musk will be showing up at the White House appropriately dressed in future.

Have understood for many years why Canadians travelling abroad go out of their way to make sure they are not mistaken for them jerks south of the border.

And they get upset at Canadians booing their anthem.
Need to go to some international games in Europe and South America!!!

[Carrick Dave]

Does Trump have small hands or just massive wrists.

One wrist is bigger than the other.

[malcolmw]

Zelensky disrepectful?????
FFS
Living in Canada now and dealing with all his s**t he’s throwing at us.
51st state / tariffs/ Governer Trudeau.
I guess Musk will be showing up at the White House appropriately dressed in future.

Have understood for many years why Canadians travelling abroad go out of their way to make sure they are not mistaken for them jerks south of the border.

And they get upset at Canadians booing their anthem.
Need to go to some international games in Europe and South America!!!

Nice to have another Canadian on here Phil. I'm on Vancouver Island.
Good point about Musk's dress - I hadn't thought of that. Someone else also pointed out to me he is not the founder of Tesla. Nowhere near it. He simply bought in when he fell into money from his Paypal adventure and then screwed the two brilliant engineers who did co-found the company.

I've never seen Canada so united - I've been here over 32 years. Not long after we moved here (from South Africa), Quebec had a referendum on whether to stay part of Canada - not sure if you were here then? The "stay" vote won by 0.1%. That's the closest we've come to the country breaking up - until the sociopathic orange buffoon (SOB) arrived. But I realize now he can never divide Canadians. We're actually a way stronger country than his.

Just watch what Jesse Marsch said in his interview last week.
Come back Jesse - all is forgiven

I saw a great sign last week. For the first time in many decades you could put up a poster saying "He is a total idiot" - and 90% of the world would know who you're talking about

Sad to see the USA crumbling the way it is. I do hope they can come back after this.

[malcolmw]

IMG_0683.jpeg

Yeah - we were the first. All those planes in the air over closed New YOrk airspace landed in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

But tomorrow the sociopath is imposing tariffs on us.

But we're OK - doing a rapid pivot towards the ASIAN countries - a blessing in disguise to become less dependent on the USA.

[malcolmw]

There's always another side to the story. If you've bothered to watch Zelensky's TV series, you'll understand that the whole purpose was to bait and provoke Putin. It almost suggests that he wanted this invasion.

Interesting pictures of the Azov Battalion.

Quote below is from a post by Kostas Antoniadis.

So you watched Trump and Zelensky, two reality tv stars, make a mockery of diplomacy in the oval office, and now you stand with Ukraine? I’m not quite sure what that means.

Does it mean you stand with the banning of 11 opposition parties, jailing their leaders and refusing to hold elections?

Does it mean you stand with the banning of the Russian Orthodox church, founded in 988AD, in Kiev, and exiling its leaders?

Does it mean you stand with prohibiting ethnic Russians living in Ukraine, one fifth of the population, from speaking and teaching their children their language and culture? Or reading and writing their books and newspapers?

Does it mean you stand with the Azov Battalion, the unapologetically far-right, neo-Nazi militia that dominates the Ukrainian military and to who the US Congress blocked military aid in 2018 on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology? The same Azov that in 2019 was designated a Tier 1 group, alongside other “democratic” organisations like the Ku Klux Klan and ISIS, and banned from Facebook completely under their “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” policy but miraculously, had their status reversed the very day Russia launched its “special operation”? Is this who you stand with?

Does it mean you stand with the criminal oligarchs who brought Zelensky to power, and who have subsequently made $billions from the war?

Does it also mean you stand with the most prominent of these, Ihor Kolomoisky, the banking, mining and energy oligarch who bankrolled Azov and who was accused of defrauding Ukraine's largest bank of billions of dollars? The same Kolomoisky whose steel and mining holdings in the US, Ghana and Australia were investigated by the FBI in 2019 who alleged he used his control of Ukraine’s largest retail bank, PrivatBank, to loot staggering sums from Ukrainian depositors, and then used a series of shell companies and offshore accounts to whisk the money out of the country and into the U.S.? Do you stand with him too?

Does it mean you stand with continuing a war that has already cost over 1 million souls, could potentially escalate to WW3 and that has precisely zero chance of being won?

C’mon, be honest. Do you really stand with Ukraine or do you just hate Trump and/or Putin?

So - only question here is - do you support Trump and Putin over the West? I assume from this ridiculous diatribe you posted you do.

You're either for or against Ukraine - no gray areas, no rationalizations. This is a war situation. - which side are you on - the USA and Russia or UKraine, Europe, Australia, Canada? Those are now the two sides.

I don't care - I just want to ensure we can identify you more specifically as Trump's propaganda secretary on this thread.

[Trigger]

So - only question here is - do you support Trump and Putin over the West? I assume from this ridiculous diatribe you posted you do.

You're either for or against Ukraine - no gray areas, no rationalizations. This is a war situation. - which side are you on - the USA and Russia or UKraine, Europe, Australia, Canada? Those are now the two sides.

I don't care - I just want to ensure we can identify you more specifically as Trump's propaganda secretary on this thread.

Yes, good point, they do seem to go all around the houses disguising themselves those Trump lovers.
I'm sick of hearing from the 'Spooners'...."I wish we had someone like him over here"
Then start talking about Farage.

We had no money to fight the facist Hitler off, but we fought him off. Isn't it cheaper to try and stave off WW3 with £2b than a full blown war, that would be quite expensive you know.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a sidenote :

Tango - " look i've got to find a way of handing Putin all of Ukraine, he's got something nasty on me that will ruin me and my family"

Trump arselicker/advisor - " Try talking about taking over Canada, Greenland etc, then just say to all your idiot followers 'this is what us superpowers are ok to do, that way, we get Canada and he gets Ukraine, job done, you can also claim you're the number 1 peace guy and might get that Nobel thing - Try it in Gaza and the West Bank to, Netanyahu will do anything you say and bomb the living daylights out of all those children there, but we can divert the worlds attention whilst he cracks on with that"

Tango - "Put it into action, they're ALL thick as f**k"

[Phild]

Trump couldn’t give a f—k about peace in Ukraine and no more tragic deaths like he claims.
He cares only about pillaging their raw materials.

[Trigger]

A quality read, perhaps even for the Trump RW brutalists -

Despite its chest-beating rhetoric, President Trump’s regime is actually brittle and fated for ineffectiveness, collapse or both.

Americans may be startled by the all-encompassing nature of the regime, but it’s nothing new. History has seen many examples of regimes consisting of an all-powerful leader who makes all the decisions and who is surrounded by sycophantic underlings ruling over weak institutions and using their positions as platforms for self-enrichment.

Such regimes aren’t just run-of-the-mill dictatorships, as dictators don’t always enjoy untrammeled authority and obedience. In fact, Trump’s second administration resembles totalitarian political systems characterized by omnipotent rulers who claim to know everything about the totality of human experience, who aspire to supervise, guide and mold that totality. Unsurprisingly, totalitarian leaders often have revolutionary agendas intended to change everything according to the leader’s taste.

Such regimes look strong, because omnipotent leaders usually project a powerful, masculine image as exceptionally wise, fearless and capable rulers. In reality, their systems suffer from a fatal flaw, one that also serves as the central organizing principle of the regime: hyper-centralization.

The most important contribution to the theory of totalitarian decay belongs to the brilliant Harvard University sociologist Karl Deutsch. In a seminal article published in 1954, Deutsch constructed an ideal-type “totalitarian decision system.” A key function of such a system is “unity of command and of intelligence,” which “requires some machinery either to insure a single source of decision, or a set of arrangements or devices to insure consistency of decisions among several sources.”

Deutsch went on to show how such a system necessarily had a “limited capacity of centralized decision-making.” The result is that the system would be “overloaded with decisions with which it can no longer cope, except at the price of either intolerable delays or an increasing probability of potentially critical mistakes.”

“In the long run,” according to Deutsch, “there is thus perhaps inherent in every totalitarian system of government a tendency either toward overloading of its central facilities for the making of decisions, or toward an automatic corrosion of its original centralized structure and its disintegration into increasingly separate parts.”

In other words, hyper-centralized systems result in poor information, bad decisions, a weakening of the totalitarian ruler and the insubordination of subordinates — followed by the system’s collapse.

Disregard the social-science jargon and notice that Deutsch’s model nicely describes the Trump administration. The putatively omniscient and omnipotent president occupies the apex. Just below him are a score of fulsome yes-ministers too terrified to provide him with correct information or disagree with his views. Existing governmental institutions are being eviscerated by Elon Musk, leaving their remaining employees in exceedingly vulnerable, atomized positions that encourage buck-passing, kicking the can down the road and many other dysfunctional behaviors that merely compound the structural inability of the system to make decisions efficiently and effectively.

The president’s seeming disregard for truth may be due to the fact that he is being told what he wants to hear and not what actually is. How else can one explain such whoppers as Trump’s claim that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity is at 4 percent and not, as polls show, over 50 percent? Or that Ukraine “started” the war with Russia? Sycophants court the ruler’s favor, and they know full well that being the bearers of bad (or accurate) news can get them into trouble.

Unsurprisingly, Deutsch’s model is also an accurate description of Vladimir Putin’s regime. And, as the theory leads us to expect, Putin has managed to devastate the Russian army and economy in just three years, even as he believes, perhaps sincerely, that he has made Russia great again.

The first few weeks of Trump’s rule have already involved enormous blunders. Insulting scores of allies —Canadians, Mexicans, Panamanians, Europeans and Ukrainians — was surely unnecessary, even if one grants that Trump’s absurd demands were justified. Appointing himself chairman of the Kennedy Center may be too much of a challenge for any president, even as it makes perfect sense in terms of his self-image as absolute ruler. Placing all his foreign policy hopes in Putin’s basket is asking for the Russian to make Trump look weak and silly.

Just as Putin has been a disaster for Russia, so too Trump will be a disaster for America. Fortunately, although hyper-centralization may sound like a good idea for a man who believes he is ushering in a golden age, it doesn’t work. Unbeknownst to them, both Trump and Putin are fated to find permanent residence on the ash heap of history.

The other bit of good news is that, since both men are at the cores of the hyper-centralized systems they have constructed, those systems are unlikely to survive in their absence. There is hope for a restoration of democracy in America, and perhaps even in Russia.

[Mick Jones elbow]

You knew it was coming the pause to military aid.
Confirmation the the the orange fellow is a Russian operative .

In all seriousness kicking someone when there down speaks volumes about the man.

[Sean_Nile]

[Sean_Nile]

We get two types of character assassinations on here. They are emotive ad hominem attacks, to make us feel disgust, and if we consider ourselves morally upright, then surely we must condemn these reprehensible leaders.

Zelensky is a corrupt coke head, running around the world with a begging bowl collecting money to siphon off into his personal Swiss bank account... a failed comedian, a dictator who won't hold elections.

Trump is a big orange baby a sociopathic orange ba***rd, a felon, and he is in Putin's pocket because of golden showers in a Moscow hotel.

These are a short summary of the character assassination I have heard on here. These attacks are senseless because they shift the focus from substantive issues to personal attacks, undermining meaningful discussion.

When leaders are reduced to exaggerated caricatures, it prevents a fair assessment of their policies, decisions, and impact. Instead of addressing governance, economics, or foreign policy, (what a moral quandary does the pausing of military aid engender), debates become emotional battlegrounds driven by bias rather than facts. This not only misleads everyone but also obstructs critical thinking by promoting simplistic, one-dimensional narratives.

Additionally, such attacks often rely on misinformation or exaggeration, weakening the credibility of the argument itself. If one dismisses a leader as entirely corrupt or evil, it invites counterattacks in the same vein, leading to a cycle of mudslinging rather than rational discourse.

This approach polarizes discussions, making constructive dialogue nearly impossible, as opponents become defensive instead of engaging with opposing viewpoints. Arguments grounded in reason and evidence are more persuasive than those fueled by personal vilification.

Furthermore, demonizing political figures dehumanizes them and their supporters, Trump supporters become knuckle draggers, Zelensky supporters neo-Nazis from the Azov battalion, fostering division and hostility.

When leaders are painted as irredeemable villains, their policies are rejected outright without proper scrutiny, even when some may have merit. A balanced debate requires acknowledging both strengths and weaknesses rather than resorting to name-calling. Productive discussions should challenge ideas and policies, not attack individuals in a way that stifles debate and we all become willy waggers drowning in our own glorified rhetoric.

[BobHirst]

We get two types of character assassinations on here. They are emotive ad hominem attacks, to make us feel disgust, and if we consider ourselves morally upright, then surely we must condemn these reprehensible leaders.

Zelensky is a corrupt coke head, running around the world with a begging bowl collecting money to siphon off into his personal Swiss bank account... a failed comedian, a dictator who won't hold elections.

Trump is a big orange baby a sociopathic orange ba***rd, a felon, and he is in Putin's pocket because of golden showers in a Moscow hotel.

These are a short summary of the character assassination I have heard on here. These attacks are senseless because they shift the focus from substantive issues to personal attacks, undermining meaningful discussion.

When leaders are reduced to exaggerated caricatures, it prevents a fair assessment of their policies, decisions, and impact. Instead of addressing governance, economics, or foreign policy, (what a moral quandary does the pausing of military aid engender), debates become emotional battlegrounds driven by bias rather than facts. This not only misleads everyone but also obstructs critical thinking by promoting simplistic, one-dimensional narratives.

Additionally, such attacks often rely on misinformation or exaggeration, weakening the credibility of the argument itself. If one dismisses a leader as entirely corrupt or evil, it invites counterattacks in the same vein, leading to a cycle of mudslinging rather than rational discourse.

This approach polarizes discussions, making constructive dialogue nearly impossible, as opponents become defensive instead of engaging with opposing viewpoints. Arguments grounded in reason and evidence are more persuasive than those fueled by personal vilification.

Furthermore, demonizing political figures dehumanizes them and their supporters, Trump supporters become knuckle draggers, Zelensky supporters neo-Nazis from the Azov battalion, fostering division and hostility.

When leaders are painted as irredeemable villains, their policies are rejected outright without proper scrutiny, even when some may have merit. A balanced debate requires acknowledging both strengths and weaknesses rather than resorting to name-calling. Productive discussions should challenge ideas and policies, not attack individuals in a way that stifles debate and we all become willy waggers drowning in our own glorified rhetoric.

Need to warn you Rab, someone has hijacked your account.
You need to get it back now and continue posting ridiculous you tube videos.
You're welcome.

[Sean_Nile]

Need to warn you Rab, someone has hijacked your account.
You need to get it back now and continue posting ridiculous you tube videos.
You're welcome.

Thanks Bob!!!

Time for a new video then.

[Sean_Nile]

Starmer and Macron want Trump to give a security guarantee to any peace deal that is brokered, and Trump is saying America does not want to commit to a prolonged war in Europe. The European working plan for peace seems doomed to failure.

[Mick Jones elbow]

Based on Trumps policy decisions I'll leave everyone to draw their own conclusions

[Sean_Nile]

Based on Trumps policy decisions I'll leave everyone to draw their own conclusions

Centrist dad has already decided that war is good.