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[martinuzz]

I agree with what you're saying about how there were different camps and how many people left the camp system healthy and decently fed. If the war and the regime didn't end, would they have left the camp system?

The first group never entered any camps. They were either housed by their German employers, or sometimes housed in small groups near their workplaces just like cheap seasonal labourers get housed now. They were often even allowed free time, as in, go to the pub after work. Their employers knew they wouldn't flee because german occupiers would find them or their families back home. They didn't do camp labour. They worked at your bakery nextdoors, at the tailor shop and at any job were the orignial workers were drafted into the Wehrmacht and had to be replaced during wartime.
Some of the Germans they were sent to work for were bad nazis. Some were justs normal people also trying to get through the war. Some were Germans actually opposing Hitler. A not unsignificant number returned married to the German boss' daughter or a German co worker.

I never said people left the camp system decently fed. They didn't.

[Loud Whispers]

Poor Ukraine, their President Zelensky took the bait and gave US President Trump the excuse he needed to cut aid to Ukraine.

My interpretation of that whole affair was that Zelensky was set up the moment he accepted the invitation to the oval office. Just the way that Vance kept veering wildly off-topic to provocations on his attire or disrespecting the country when Zelensky was just explaining why trusting in Putin without a security guarantee would fail for the same reasons it failed before strikes me as someone in search of a problem. They were always going to try paint Zelensky as an unreasonable man, were probably always going to cut or wind down mil support for Ukraine, but didn't want to lose support from voters by being too obvioud

[wobbly]

Trump has some weird connection/relation to Putin where no matter how you try and look at the situation, it always come back to Trump wanting hus buddy Putin to succeed. Not sure what it is.

[Loud Whispers]

Trump has some weird connection/relation to Putin where no matter how you try and look at the situation, it always come back to Trump wanting hus buddy Putin to succeed. Not sure what it is.

Trump's always been pretty quid pro quo, you help me, I help you. You antagonise me, I retaliate 10x. Putin's always been pretty coy about supporting Trump, e.g. when asked which presidential candidate he thought would be better for Russia, he answered Kamala Harris in a joking way, in a sort of "no shit what do you think?" Kinda tone. And no doubt he knew if he said he supported Trump it'd be plastered on half of America's news networks and hurt his reelection chances. The FBI also found suspicious links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign in 2016 and beyond:

Outreach from individuals with ties to Russia continued in the spring and summer of 2016, when Trump was moving toward—and eventually becoming—the Republican nominee for President. As set forth below, the Office also evaluated a series of links during this period: outreach to two of Trump’s then-recently named foreign policy advisors, including a representation that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails (Volume I, Sections IV.A.2 & IV.A.3); dealings with a D.C.-based think tank that specializes in Russia and has connections with its government (Volume I, Section IV.A.4); a meeting at Trump Tower between the Campaign and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on candidate Clinton that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for [Trump]” (Volume I, Section IV.A.5); events at the Republican National Convention (Volume I, Section IV.A.6); post-Convention contacts between Trump Campaign officials and Russia’s ambassador to the United States (Volume I, Section IV.A.7); and contacts through campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who had previously worked for a Russian oligarch and a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine

So for a long time there's been strong evidence Trump has been doing backchannel meetings with Putin's representatives. Whilst on the other hand you have Zelensky who toured the USA whilst Biden was campaigning; and when Trump told Zelensky to open up an investigation into Hunter Biden or else military aid would be withheld, Zelensky actually instead cooperated with the American FBI, becoming a key supplier of information that was used against Trump's second impeachment. So Putin is in Trump's friendly camp and Zelensky on Trump's shit list

[anewaname]

The young Trump was always a loser in the sense that he lost/squandered money, but his family was wealthy. The relationship with his "father figure" must have been a constant spoon-feed of advice and money.

In the late 90's, Trump was near financial collapse in a way that he could not recover from, so who stepped into the advice/money father figure role then? It was some Russians who redirected new-wealth Russians to buy into Trump's world, and those Russians were a part of the same faction/organization that Putin currently leads.

[Loud Whispers]

The young Trump was always a loser in the sense that he lost/squandered money, but his family was wealthy. The relationship with his "father figure" must have been a constant spoon-feed of advice and money.

In the late 90's, Trump was near financial collapse in a way that he could not recover from, so who stepped into the advice/money father figure role then? It was some Russians who redirected new-wealth Russians to buy into Trump's world, and those Russians were a part of the same faction/organization that Putin currently leads.

The basic gist of what this journalist Craig Unger said was Trump had been in bed with the Russian mafia for at least 30 years before his presidential campaign, and that the russian mafia was essentially embedded in multiple russian state institutions

Craig Unger: You really have to go back 20 or 30 years to understand who the key Russians were, what role they played in the Russian mafia, and how they related to Trump.
The very first episode that’s been documented, to my knowledge, was in 1984 when David Bogatin — who is a Russian mobster, convicted gasoline bootlegger, and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin came to that meeting prepared to spend $6 million, which is equivalent to about $15 million today.
Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob.

Sean Illing: Okay, to play devil’s advocate, can we say definitively that Trump knew who he was dealing with or what he was getting into? Or did he just naively have his hands out?

Craig Unger: Look, I can’t prove what was in Trump’s head, or what he knew or when he knew it. But I document something like 1,300 transactions of this kind with Russian mobsters. By that, I mean real estate transactions that were all cash purchases made by anonymous shell companies that were quite obviously fronts for criminal money-laundering operations. And this represents a huge chunk of Trump’s real estate activity in the United States, so it’s quite hard to argue that he had no idea what was going on.

[heydude6]

Reading that was disheartening. This was published in 2018, but it seems this knowledge never made it into the mainstream. Why couldn’t the democrats have pounced on this when they had the chance? It may have allowed them to win the election.

Anyway, thanks for the book recommendation. There are a few people in my life who need to read something like this.

[martinuzz]

I'll keep repeating it every once in a while.
Trump is the long con. He has been recruited by the KGB back in Cold War days.
Melania is his handler.

[anewaname]

@Loudwhispers
Yes. I read a different article that talked about those Russian links, and heard some "ex-FBI" guy talking on a podcast (about investigations into Trump back in the 90's). But, consider some Russian as a "father figure" for Trump, someone he could turn to for assistance (Where's my Ray Cohen?" and "Russia, if you're listening"), it is all the same as the plaintive "Dad?" that Trump would have done when he was young and needed a bailout.

If the FBI were allowed to make information available before Trump got into politics, it could have stuck, but after he entered politics, it was too late.

@martinuzz
Yeah, Melania is probably not even the daughter of that ex-KGB agent, one could speculate she was an orphan trained by the USSR for her purpose.

[Loud Whispers]

Reading that was disheartening. This was published in 2018, but it seems this knowledge never made it into the mainstream. Why couldn’t the democrats have pounced on this when they had the chance? It may have allowed them to win the election.

Anyway, thanks for the book recommendation. There are a few people in my life who need to read something like this.

I think the democrats did come after him for it. But they called him the Teflon Don for a reason, nothing they threw at him bothered the republican voter base lol. There was a joke Trump said on campaign where he said (on stage) he was so beloved he could shoot someone and no one would care

[Eric Blank]

The sad thing is that's not just a joke; i guarantee you they'd fucking praise him and declare the victim a woke libtard who deserved it somehow and nothing could change their minds. It's like my family is fucking hypnotized by him, I'm willing to bet every other republican is.

Ukraine is in for a real hard time as a result, unfortunately. If there were trustworthy private charities to fund the war effort they'd best be shouted from the rooftops before mentioning them becomes a crime.

[Strongpoint]

Ukraine is in for a real hard time as a result, unfortunately. If there were trustworthy private charities to fund the war effort they'd best be shouted from the rooftops before mentioning them becomes a crime.

Trustworthy is a relative word, but there are plenty of ways to make donations. And they do play a significant role in the war.

But those are good to buy a used car for a unit, tablet for artillery crew, heater for some position, etc... You won't be buying Patriots with those.

[martinuzz]

Not sure if you guys can watch this, it's free public broadcasting but it might be region locked to the Netherlands.
A docu about drones, weapons trade and Ukrainian wounded veterans revalidating and building drones in the Netherlands.
Some of it is in dutch, but most in english.

https://npo.nl/start/serie/vpro-tegenlicht/seizoen-24/vpro-tegenlicht_21/afspelen

[Strongpoint]

 North Korea plans to send "thousands" of short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, says U.S. INDOPACOM Commander Adm. Paparo. These missiles are known to be highly inaccurate and could hit civilian targets


Wonderful.... One correction: civilian targets are usually the actual targets anyway.

[martinuzz]

UK announced a new aid package for Ukriane, including a few hundred thousand drones, anti tank mines and radar systems.