patrick.net

Putin explained his position very clearly.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/03/no_author/vladimir-putin-empire-of-lies-speech-full-february-24-2022/?source=patrick.net

Other side just screams “Putin bad”, which means nothing.

Don’t care either way. But I can understand why Russia doesn’t want NATO missiles on the border or Ukraine having nukes. He’s a very strong leader. Also covered gay/tranny shit as anti human destruction from within.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/24/caitlin-johnstone-12-thoughts-on-ukraine/?source=patrick.net

Some thoughts:

This whole thing could very easily have been avoided with a little bit of diplomacy. The only reason that didn’t happen was it would have meant the U.S. empire taking a teensy, weensy step back from its agenda of total planetary domination. I’ve seen people call it “sad” or “unfortunate” that Western powers didn’t make basic low-cost, high-yield concessions like guaranteeing no NATO membership for Ukraine and having Kiev honor the Minsk agreements, but it’s not sad, and it’s not unfortunate. It’s enraging. That they did this deserves nothing but pure, unadulterated, white hot rage.

Narrative managers have been working furiously to quash all discussion of No. 1, however. Like our good friend Michael McFaul here:

Please don't give Putin propagandists a platform on your media platforms. There is a time and place for hearing two sides of an issue. This tragic moment in European history is not one of them. Do not give false equivalency to voices of evil and voices of good.
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 24, 2022 ...

Look at this.

Kyiv and Kharkiv are being bombed. The largest invasion on our planet since WW2. Republicans are rooting for the Russians. God be with Ukraine and democracy.
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) February 24, 2022

These people actually believe it’s legitimate to call this “the largest invasion on our planet since WW2.” Just snip out all the pages from the history books between 1950 and 2003 to make Western imperialists feel good about themselves. Unbelievable. ...

After the bombs drop and I’m dying of radiation poisoning, with my final breath I’m going to thank U.S President Joe Biden for denying Putin the moral victory of an assurance that Ukraine won’t join NATO.

Probably goes without saying but just in case: anyone who supports any kind of Western military confrontation with Russia is an enemy of our entire species. ...

It sure is a lucky coincidence that Westerners have spent the last few years being persuaded to hate Russia by their governments and media. Otherwise they might not be giving consent to the West’s dramatic response to this act of aggression.

Remain intensely skeptical of all news coming out of Ukraine. Since 2016 the Western empire has been running an extremely aggressive narrative management campaign about Russia the likes of which we’ve never seen before. The news media have been fully complicit in this mass-scale psyop. Watch and wait for hard evidence of every claim made. Recall how snipers were usedduring the 2014 coup in Kiev to kill protesters and pin the blame on the ousted Yanukovych government.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/24/what-putin-says-are-the-causes-aims-of-russias-military-action/?source=patrick.net

Why Putin Went to War
February 24, 2022

Putin said one of the operation’s aims was to arrest certain people in Ukraine, likely the neo-Nazis who burned dozens of unarmed people alive in a building in Odessa in 2014. In his speech Monday, Putin said Moscow knows who they are. Russia said it aims to destroy neo-Nazi brigades, such as Right Sector and the Azov Battalion. ...

In his address on Thursday morning, Putin said the military operation he was launching was a “question of life or death” for Russia, referring to NATO’s expansion east since the late 1990s. He said:

“For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty. It is the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions. They have crossed it.”

Patrick says

Kyiv and Kharkiv are being bombed. The largest invasion on our planet since WW2. Republicans are rooting for the Russians. God be with Ukraine and democracy.

Almost every account with a Ukie flag is a Democrat or a Neocon.

I'm convinced now that the answer to the subject question is indeed "low IQ". Russia is officially a stupid country lead by a stupid cunt.

Whatever else he may be, Putin is not stupid.

Biden, on the other hand...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/23/putin-narrative-ukraine-master-key-crisis-nato-expansionism-frozen-conflict?source=patrick.net

It is crucially important for those who might seek to end or ameliorate this crisis to first understand his mindset. What happened this week is that Putin lost his patience, and his temper. He is furious with the Ukraine government. He feels it repeatedly rejected the Minsk agreement, which would give the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk substantial autonomy. He is angry with France and Germany, the co-signatories, and the United States, for not pressing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to implement them. He is equally angry with the Americans for not taking on board Russia’s security concerns about Nato’s expansion and the deployment of offensive missiles close to Russia’s borders.

To those who say Nato is entitled to invite any state to join, Putin argues that the “open door” policy is conditioned by a second principle, which Nato states have accepted: namely that the enhancement of a state’s security should not be to the detriment of the security of other states (such as Russia). As recently as 2010 Barack Obama put his signature to the principle at a summit of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The summit’s declaration includes a wonderfully idealistic ambition: “We recommit ourselves to the vision of a free, democratic, common and indivisible Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security community stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok”. This echoes Mikhail Gorbachev’s plea, when the cold war division of Europe ended, for Russia and other European states to live together in a “common European home”. We now suffer in the shadow of the thwarting of that dream.

For Putin, Obama’s signing of the OSCE statement is proof of the hypocrisy that goes back to earlier US presidents, who showed the dishonesty of Nato’s “open door” policy by rejecting Russia’s repeated feelers about joining the alliance. In his speech this week, the Russian leader said he had asked Bill Clinton about the possibility of membership but was fobbed off with the argument that Russia was too big. In 2000, during his first weeks as president, Putin was asked by David Frost on the BBC if it was possible Russia could join Nato. He replied: “I would not rule such a possibility out, if and when Russia’s views are taken into account as those of an equal partner.”

George Robertson, a former Nato secretary general, recently recalled meeting Putin during his time at Nato: “Putin said, ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’”

From outside the alliance, Putin has seen it expand continually. He says he does not seek a revived Soviet Union but a buffer zone that would be, as he put it in a long essay last year, “not anti-Russia”. John Kennedy wanted a similar cordon sanitaire when Khrushchev tried to put nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962. Putin suggested on Tuesday that Ukraine should return to the strategy of neutrality that was in the Ukrainian constitution until the “coup” that toppled the Yanukovych government in 2014, and brought pro-US nationalists to power. After all, a majority of Ukrainian MPs then believed that the country’s fragile unity would be more secure if it was not pulled and pushed by rival pressures from Moscow and the west.

Nato’s stance over membership for Ukraine was what sparked Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014. Putin feared the port of Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, would soon belong to the Americans. The western narrative sees Crimea as the first use of force to change territorial borders in Europe since the second world war. Putin sees this as selective amnesia, forgetting that Nato bombed Serbia in 1999 to detach Kosovo and make it an independent state.

Convinced that Nato will never reject Ukraine’s membership, Putin has now taken his own steps to block it. By invading Donetsk and Luhansk, he has created a “frozen conflict”, knowing the alliance cannot admit countries that don’t control all their borders. Frozen conflicts already cripple Georgia and Moldova, which are also split by pro-Russian statelets. Now Ukraine joins the list. There is speculation about what will happen next but from his standpoint, it is not actually necessary to send troops further into the country. He has already taken what he needs.

https://johnmenadue.com/ukraine-shrinks-again/?source=patrick.net

Patrick says

Can any Russian speakers on here confirm the translation? Online OCR didn't work for me.

Looks correct, more or less.

Patrick says

Whatever else he may be, Putin is not stupid.

Right: https://patrick.net/post/1343947/2022-03-04-putin-so-smart

AmericanKulak says

Patrick says

Kyiv and Kharkiv are being bombed. The largest invasion on our planet since WW2. Republicans are rooting for the Russians. God be with Ukraine and democracy.

Almost every account with a Ukie flag is a Democrat or a Neocon.

In fact, this right here is the only place that I frequent and in which I see any non-trivial number of people who openly say positive things about this invasion. Or about Russia for that matter, in light of the invasion.

I speak with people from that part of the world daily. Directly. Without having to go through media outlets. Those invaders are murderous cocksuckers. In light of what's happening in front of our eyes, anyone who genuinely believes fairy tales about Uki Nazis needs their head examined. The real Nazis just crossed the boarder and are currently bombing the shit of other Russians in Kyiv and Kharkiv.

https://tomluongo.me/2022/03/02/opening-salvos-tossed-putin-next-moves-ukraine/?source=patrick.net

Davos has refused to let President Zelensky surrender because if he does then legally there is no more war to sanction Russia with. It’s not Putin’s War at that point, it is a settled conflict and terms negotiated. ...

As Fmr. Col. Douglas Macgregor pointed out on Fox News recently, everything east of the Dnieper River will become part of a new Novorussia, if not part of the Russian Federation.

Clearly this is Putin’s initial goal, the partitioning of Ukraine. He’s moved militarily, the EU and the rest of the West have responded financially. Their hope is to turn Ukraine into a quagmire, a la Afghanistan (per Hillary Clinton’s recent remarks), which they hope Russia will not be able to sustain after being choked off from the global economy.

The financial sanctions regime put in place so far are brutal but also full of holes wide enough for Putin to maneuver within and around because of the well understood facts of Russia’s dominance as a global supplier of life-sustaining commodities for the entire world.

This is an asymmetric war.

There isn’t much farther the West can go financially. They’ve seized Bank of Russia foreign assets, for pity’s sake. What other weapons do they really have in their arsenal which can threaten Russia with?

They have, in effect, executed their nuclear first strike against Russia. Once you’ve gone nuclear, where do you go next? Real nukes? Yes, that’s a possibility, sadly, given the people we’re talking about.

On the other hand, Russia has so far only committed the necessary troops to neutralize Ukraine. So, in this respect, big advantage Russia.

Facts on the ground are facts. Russia has taken territory it can maintain. By not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure, Russia has put itself in a very good position to not face an insane insurgency which the West can finance in the way that it has in past conflicts.

Much of NATO’s in-country assets have been neutralized. And you know this because the propaganda and rhetoric have been so thoroughly crude, cartoonish and strident. Again, ask why the financial and informational war has been so intense?

Is it because the West thinks it’s winning or because it’s trying desperately to pivot domestic populations to solidarity after losing massive credibility during the last year with COVID-19 related lockdowns, vax passes, and the unpersoning of whole swaths of Western society?

Now let’s ask the next question that keeps coming up.

Why has Putin not shut off the gas to a Europe that is rapidly running out of it?

Because to do so would target civilian populations. If he’s not targeting civilians in Ukraine to minimize their anger at being invaded, then why would he use that weapon now against civilians in Germany who hold the key to getting overthrowing the insane politicians and oligarchs who provoked this war in the first place?

It doesn’t make any strategic sense. It also speaks to a kind of confidence in Russia’s military position in Ukraine, thereby lending credence to the reports that Russia is achieving her strategic goals on the ground in Ukraine.

Okay, that’s the lay of the land.

So, what are Putin’s real goals? Like I said at the outset, nothing less than breaking the back of Davos and their agents in the US/UK who have tormented Russia for more than a century.





What does this mean? It means simply that Russia has now, in effect, begun the remonetization of gold for domestic purposes. By removing the VAT on gold purchases Russian citizens can now offset their currency risk with gold and stabilize the domestic monetary situation.

The first step in offsetting financial warfare from the West is allowing the domestic population to be immune to collapses in their currency from foreign actors pulling capital out of the country. Companies doing international business now have an alternative to hold time deposits which are far less volatile than the ruble without penalty. Gold becomes the coin of Russia’s international business. ...

Moreover, Russia has kept the gas flows going to ensure that money keeps flowing into the country to finance further expansion of its gold reserves.

The current shock will abate. Russia is not Iran. It can insure its own tanker fleet. It can deliver the oil. If Iran could survive what Trump did to them, Russia can thrive under this new regime, changing the entire flow of capital around the world. ...

NATO isn’t getting involved in Ukraine even if Ukraine becomes an EU member. They can have the landlocked rump of what’s left over. If Putin is smart, which he is, he will offer the Poles Lviv and Hungary Transcarpathia. The EU gets the dregs.


It’s clear from the wailing and gnashing of the Neocon/Neolibs that they want Putin Milosevic’d for daring to put them in this position. They still dream of overthrowing him. It’s also clear that there are a lot of people who are not down with the willful destruction of the current global economy within the upper reaches of US policy makers and European corporate boards.

This is the real fight for the future and if Davos thinks extreme demand destruction will be tolerated for any length of time over a regional conflict like Ukraine because it’s their ox being gored, then this war, while still raging is, in effect, already over.

Patrick says

Kyiv and Kharkiv are being bombed. The largest invasion on our planet since WW2. Republicans are rooting for the Russians. God be with Ukraine and democracy.
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) February 24, 2022

Eric Swalwell is a spy. He’s a traitor. Kill this fucker.

Eman says

Patrick says

Kyiv and Kharkiv are being bombed. The largest invasion on our planet since WW2. Republicans are rooting for the Russians. God be with Ukraine and democracy.
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) February 24, 2022

Eric Swalwell is a spy. He’s a traitor. Kill this fucker.

He is a piece of shit. Sold the country out for a little Chinese pussy. Fucking loser

This Propaganda Map looks, unsurprisingly, less optimistic for Ukraine


Reports there was minimal fighting in 300,000 person Kherson that was invested today after probing attacks revealed little to no resistance (we did the same in some Iraqi cities, run a strong armored force down a broad main street and see how far it got).

If Kherson was fought for, the SorosMaidan would make sure you knew about every brave stand at every house.

https://youtu.be/iz4KhdoVCyw?source=patrick.net

mostly reader says

I remember vaguely that the "Bush legs" program costed around 50Bil (I could be off on that, don't mind being double-checked). That same program later, at better times, was mocked amongst the Russians and used as an example of "humiliating pay-off".

The chicken legs program was either $5mil or $50mil; i.e. 1/1000 to 1/10,000 the number that you threw up. The tiny amount was the reason why the Russians felt gipped years later for trading away their superpower status. It's a little like: during the 2008 financial crisis, you could get a girl to put out in some European countries (e.g. Greece) for a lunch sandwich. Don't be surprised to see the girl feeling ripped off years later when she is in better circumstances. The purpose of egging on Putin to invade Ukraine (and possibly Romania and Poland later, if not all the way to the English Channel, accomplishing the plan laid out in the book "1984," which the globohomo use as a manual instead of warning) is to impoverish Europeans (and impoverishing Oceania/Five-Eye nations), so they will put out for the globalhomo for the price of a sandwich again.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/ukraine-invasion-nothing-compared-iraq-afghanistan/?source=patrick.net

The frequently heard charge that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine violates ostensibly sacred international “norms” holds no water. No such norms exist — at least none that a great power will recognize as inhibiting its own freedom of action. For proof, we need look no further than the recent behavior of the United States which has routinely demonstrated a willingness to write its own norms while employing violence on a scale far exceeding anything that Russia has done or is likely to do. ...

Russian actions in Ukraine deserve universal condemnation. But as crimes go, Putin’s aggression pales in comparison with the human toll exacted by Saddam Hussein’s US-supported war of choice against Iran. As for the calamitous results of the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the impact of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine rates as trivial by comparison.

America has no right to condemn the invasion in Ukraine until it condemns its own far more violent and completely unjustified invasion of Iraq.

Reality says

The chicken legs program was either $5mil or $50mil; i.e. 1/1000 to 1/10,000 the number that you threw up.

I put that number out there because I remember seeing it in one of the reports. I may have mixed up the columns in the report, and it was a while ago (which I disclosed). I tried to find a source and couldn't. What's your source regarding your number?

https://www.lesoir.be/428052/article/2022-03-04/vladimir-poutine-qualifie-de-fabrication-les-accusations-de-bombardements?source=patrick.net

"The information about the alleged bombing of Kiev and other major cities are just gross propaganda fabrications," Putin assured during a telephone conversion with the German chancellor.

Don't the Germans have decent satellite images which can tell this kind of thing? So you'd think they'd prove Putin right or wrong on this.

https://t.me/greatreject/31650?source=patrick.net

War correspondent Anne-Laure Bonnell, who is in Ukraine, shocked followers "I am not a party and I am not defending Putin, but the truth is that I am close to the citizens, what I am saying is that the Ukrainian army is bombing its own people in the region of Donbass.

That would make sense, because Donbass is a majority Russian area.

Patrick says

That would make sense, because Donbass is a majority Russian area.

There's a lesson to be learned here.

mostly reader says

I speak with people from that part of the world daily. Directly. Without having to go through media outlets. Those invaders are murderous cocksuckers.

Do they have any cell phone footage?

Yes. With authentic voices of people getting bombed. Speaking Russian. Before you ask: I'm not going to post it here. Because GPS tags.

mostly reader says

Before you ask: I'm not going to post it here. Because GPS tags

I can help you remove those with ffmpeg, or I can remove them myself with ffmpeg.

If you run Linux, I can walk you through the process.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/339119/how-to-strip-gps-location-data-from-an-mp4-video-file

ffmpeg works under Windows as well, but fuck if I'm competent with that OS. Probably works nearly the same, but goddamned, I hate that fucking operating system.

mostly reader says

Yes. With authentic voices of people getting bombed. Speaking Russian.

If you want, I can provide a private place to upload them. I have a server.

Or you can upload them to a website,

OR if you send them to me, I will upload them to a website like Bitchute and archive them.

You have them after all, what's the point of having them if you're not going to share them? That's the whole point of recording government bullshit.

Patrick says

https://www.lesoir.be/428052/article/2022-03-04/vladimir-poutine-qualifie-de-fabrication-les-accusations-de-bombardements?source=patrick.net

"The information about the alleged bombing of Kiev and other major cities are just gross propaganda fabrications," Putin assured during a telephone conversion with the German chancellor.

Don't the Germans have decent satellite images which can tell this kind of thing? So you'd think they'd prove Putin right or wrong on this.

Haha, in this world we live, for all we know, Ukraine is bombing Kiev themselves. Do you really put it past them? I don't.

Governments will do anything. They're all run by complete sociopaths.

richwicks says

mostly reader says

Before you ask: I'm not going to post it here. Because GPS tags

I can help you remove those with ffmpeg, or I can remove them myself with ffmpeg.

Can't one just take a screenshot (or snip) of the image while dispalyed on the computer, and send a copy of that? It seems using a screenshot would not have any GPS tags.

HeadSet says

richwicks says

mostly reader says

Before you ask: I'm not going to post it here. Because GPS tags

I can help you remove those with ffmpeg, or I can remove them myself with ffmpeg.

Can't one just take a screenshot (or snip) of the image while dispalyed on the computer, and send a copy of that? It seems using a screenshot would not have any GPS tags.

Usually the phone software asks if the GPS tag should be removed

richwicks says

I can help you remove those with ffmpeg, or I can remove them myself with ffmpeg.

I'm not publishing anything that can be linked to the person/people who made the video. Even "approximately". Or putting it on a server which I don't own. May be after the war.

HeadSet says

richwicks says

mostly reader says

Before you ask: I'm not going to post it here. Because GPS tags

I can help you remove those with ffmpeg, or I can remove them myself with ffmpeg.

Can't one just take a screenshot (or snip) of the image while dispalyed on the computer, and send a copy of that? It seems using a screenshot would not have any GPS tags.

Sure, you can open a window to copy the video being played, but this often reduces quality quite a bit - but it should remove all metadata. Really, video is so goddamned incredible today, it hardly makes a difference, so yes, this would work - provided he has a program do this.

I don't use programs like this though, but I know they are around.

Interestingly - do you know how BluRay was FIRST cracked? Some smartass setup their player to advance one frame at a time, and did a screenshot of each frame, then they (somehow) pulled the audio from it, and took all the screen shots, spliced them together, and reproduced the film. The designers never thought of it.

In under 24 hours all the work into making the DRM for BluRay was for nothing.

DRM is kind of stupid in my opinion. We live in a day and age where you can video tape a 4K television playing a movie and get a very respectable reproduction. You can't prevent copies of any physical media, even with non-physical media it's probably impossible.

mostly reader says

richwicks says

I can help you remove those with ffmpeg, or I can remove them myself with ffmpeg.

I'm not publishing anything that can be linked to the person/people who made the video. Even "approximately". Or putting it on a server which I don't own. May be after the war.

I can help you setup a server and allow you to do it yourself.

I can make a virtual machine, or explain how to set one up.

I use VirtualBox:

https://www.virtualbox.org/?source=patrick.net

You can install a linux distribution, like this one:

https://neon.kde.org/?source=patrick.net

which COMES with ffmpeg.

Virtual machines are only SLIGHTLY slower than the real physical machine today. Modern chips (even consumer grade ones) are built with virtualization as part of them. Have been since around 2010.

Or like HeadSet suggested, just do a screen capture during playback. That would eliminate ALL metadata.

That is, if you're being honest and actually have these videos. The whole point of recording government malfeasance is to expose it in order to stop it. I'll work with you and help you set this up. Fuck, I can even (and will) make a VM, but honestly, I'm technically competent enough to put in a backdoor to any VM I setup, and it's correct to be paranoid and not trust me. If you don't know your way around Linux, certainly you shouldn't trust me, because then you wouldn't be able to detect any bullshit somebody would pull.

Not that I would pull any bullshit, but anybody pulling bullshit would say that.

I have intimated I don't trust what you say. I'm just calling you out. I don't expect you to produce anything.

But if I'm wrong, I'll walk you through even Windows setup of ffmpeg. What OS are you using? I'll find screen capture programs for you, they record live video.

It's a freakish world we live in. I mean, honestly it is. This shit was all science fiction when I was a young engineer, we have gone FAR further than I thought possible in my lifetime. At RCA we had a 10 million dollar machine that could convert NTSC video in REAL TIME to mp2. Now, I can literally do that crap on a $50 smart phone, no shit. Consumers only see the end result, digital data transfer reduced bandwidth transmission to 2% of what it used to be. It's fucking amazing. A film that was stored on a VCR tape, fits on a $2 dongle I bought at a liquor store, with room to spare for 100 more of them, and I can copy it in under 30 seconds - not 2 hours.

Ever see the dumb film Johnny Mnemonic? The character was a courier for information and had his childhood erased to carry data in his brain. You know what his brain stored? 1.5 GB. I have more storage than that on my chip cache. A chip with that storage capacity is now the size of a grain of sand. Even the engineers didn't see this shit coming.

richwicks says

I can help you setup a server and allow you to do it yourself.

Thanks. I'm somewhat hi-tech savvy. Learn to take "no" for an answer.

Are you seriously, SERIOUSLY telling me that you haven't seen such streams? Not from MSM, from common folks. I'm looking at my (admittedly not typical) feed and thinking that everyone around must be swamped with those. If you don't believe them, why would you believe me, someone who you publicly labeled "Habera"?

richwicks says

Sure, you can open a window to copy the video being played, but this often reduces quality quite a bit - but it should remove all metadata. Really, video is so goddamned incredible today, it hardly makes a difference, so yes, this would work - provided he has a program do this.

PowerPoint can do a good screen capture of any video playing on a PC monitor. Maybe LibreOffice Impress can also, but I have not tried that.

mostly reader says

Not from MSM, from common folks.

How do you know they're common folks?

A bunch of guys who look 40-50 on an old Ural took a pic/video? So what, doesn't mean they're not intel/media guys in Vatnik or Track Clothes.

AmericanKulak says

How do you know they're common folks?

Because I personally know them? I thought I made it abundantly clear that I know folks in that part of the world.

P.S. I think I answered a wrong question. To your question: because it's consistent with shoots that I saw from the folks that I personally know.