Meanwhile, a year ago

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday said he welcomed a NATO statement confirming Ukraine’s eventual entry into the military alliance.

Zelenskiy’s administration has urged NATO to speed up Ukraine’s entry through a Membership Action Plan. Earlier on Monday he told Reuters that he wanted a clear “yes” or “no” from U.S. President Joe Biden on giving Ukraine such a plan.

“NATO leaders confirmed that (Ukraine) will become a member of the Alliance & the #MAP is an integral part of the membership process,” Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7948860/ukraine-nato-membership/

So there’s my source…what are your sources for this apparent widespread opposition to Ukraine joining NATO?

Here’s interesting actual internal polling from Ukraine back in 2009 before a bunch of western backed nazis overthrew the government and caused the population to fracture on political lines.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2010/03/29/ukraine-says-no- to-nato/

You mean he desired an alliance to protect his country from the nation that invaded and annexed Crimea just a few years prior. What an asshole. Wanting to join NATO is the REAL act of war, not invading and annexing Crimea. I'll bet Putin didn't even do that on purpose, probably some military drills that went wrong.

Not sure what your tangent has to do with the claimed premise that Ukraine wasn’t going to join NATO.

But yeah, actually. Joining protective military alliances has been declared an act of war previously; see Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was over the nukes placed in Cuba, not an alliance.
I don't care if Ukraine was wanting to join NATO, they should. Fuck Putin's feelings.
Why are you glossing over the annexing of Crimea? Why do you ignore Russia's past aggression?

There is plenty of disingenuous bullshit on display from both parties really.

Russia talks protecting itself from invasion based on terrain when that terrain is no real obstacle to invasion in modern times.

The West (OK the United States) has broken agreements with Russia by moving into areas they agreed not to move into (see: "I don't see your name on it!", "Do you have the contract? If you didn't get it signed in triplicate then that's your problem.", et. al.)

This war is over oil and gas and money.

NATO saying Ukraine wouldn't be allowed to join would have prevented this. We refused. We wanted to fuck over Russia and we though risking an invasion was worth it.

Russian invasion is obviously not morally justified. It's horrible to bomb people. But it was pretty predicable.

Like Meerkat said, it's a political struggle between two imperial powers over strategic and economic advantage that escalated into a proxy war. There are no "good guys" except the civilians getting bombed.

Acting like this is due to Putin personally being a BAD MAN who HATES DEMOCRACY is about as dumb as believing that Russia had to invade in order to denazify Ukraine.

America invaded Grenada because it was building an airport that was technically big enough for Russian bombers to land there.

And that wasn't right either

Once again, I am going to say this.

Does ANYBODY care about what the PEOPLE of Ukraine wanted? To join the EU and NATO!

https://www.iri.org/resources/iri-ukraine-poll-shows-support-f or-eu-nato-membership-concerns-over-economy-and-vaccines-for-covid -19/


Noam Chomsky's ideas are completely irrelevant. Ashtar Crackersmack (Same person) posting that the US somehow chose this completely ignores the majority will of Ukrainians, which was to protect themselves against this exact eventuality.

The people of Ukraine, in a Democracy, chose to join the EU/NATO. That is what the majority wanted. That is that. They deserve THEIR own control over THEIR own will. Self determinism. Democracy determines the will of the people. That is democracy. Get used to it. Your creepy fantasies about Putin are wrong. He is a newly-demented dictator on year 20 of a long run and has made a mistake about Ukraine by believing his deteriorating intelligence network, half of whom have been executed by now and the other half existing simply to not be next.

Sorry that your idol became the next Hitler!

Guess the views of Ukrainian citizens pre-pro western coup and neonazi militia purges don’t matter. Because anyone not supporting the west is subhuman, and subhumans don’t get opinions.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2010/03/29/ukraine-says-no- to-nato/

Do you support the democratic right of the people in the separatist regions to succeed?

Ok, That's sort of a cheap gotcha. The real answer here is that there is no possibility of autonomy for Ukraine because of their relative national weakness and their strategic importance. Both NATO and Russia will step in to prevent Ukraine from doing things they don't like, and they've both been throwing money around for years there. It's either going to be a client state of one side or the other, or a buffer state.

Putin obviously sucks; he's a standard right wing dictator using nationalism to enrich the elite that support him. The whole situation has sucked for a long time for the people of Ukraine. But it's a pretty standard power struggle between empires. Getting all het up due to hysterical propaganda is dumb, and is the same kind of dumb that got us into Iraq and Afghanistan.

Like, "the next Hitler"?
Bro. Come on, bro. Don't 2003 me bro.

"So there’s my source…what are your sources for this apparent widespread opposition to Ukraine joining NATO?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/us/politics/nato-ukraine.ht ml

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-02-05/explaine r-ukraine-not-joining-nato-so-why-does-putin-worry

The NY Times piece in particular has a variety of links worth following and quotes on why they'd never actually be admitted. I'm not quoting it, because I'd wind up basically quoting the whole thing.


NATO stated as far back as 2008 that Ukraine "would" be admitted "someday",

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato/nato-promises-ukraine- georgia-entry-one-day-idUSL0179714620080403

But even that article from 2008 notes the prospect was dim and it didn't actually lay out a plan for Ukraine to formally join. It's basically just a press release. 14 years later, there was still no actual plan to have Ukraine join.

Also, I know you're going to point out that that link shows Ukrainian support for joining NATO was low in 2008, just like that 2010 poll you linked. But there was that whole 2014 invasion, annexation.


Also, this may be 20 years old, but there was a time when Putin did not give two shits about Ukraine joining NATO, he said so himself:

"Question: Is Russia going to join NATO? What major changes do you foresee in the relations between Ukraine and NATO? And how do you see the pattern of Ukraine-Russia-NATO relations in the future?

Vladimir Putin: Russia does not intend to join NATO. Russia, as you know, is engaged in a very constructive dialogue with NATO to create a new Russia-NATO structure “at twenty”, in which all twenty countries will be represented as nations, each having one vote, and all the issues will be solved without prior consultations, without any prior decisions on a number of issues being taken first within the bloc. You know about these issues and practical consultations have already been completed. These issues are terrorism, humanitarian operations, the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other issues.

I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners."

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21598



"claimed premise that Ukraine wasn’t going to join NATO."

My claim was that Ukraine was never going to realistically be ADMITTED into NATO by the current member nations, which one of those articles links directly to NATO's own website stating that new members can only join by unanimous agreement, which Ukraine never had.

Putin is bullshitting. He made a demand that he knew NATO would never fulfill (never allow Ukraine to join) because it violated their stated policy for admitting new members, and he knew current members wouldn't be admitting Ukraine in his lifetime. Dude just wanted to take the country.

Also, let's point out the irony of wanting to prevent the expansion of NATO when invading Ukraine has caused Finland and Sweden to publicly make statements of either thinking about joining NATO or creating a bigger alliance with it.

Ukraine amended their constitution to enshrine their goal of joining NATO and have been pushing very hard for it to happen. It's reasonable for Russia to seek a real guarantee that this wouldn't happen.

"it violated their stated policy for admitting new members"

bUt iT's OuR pOlIcY!

This policy was put in place in 1994. If amending that policy would have prevented the Russian invasion, it seems like "preventing thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees" is more important than "sorry, this is our policy" like NATO is a vet's office front desk person arguing with a customer about a missed appointment fee.

And, if Ukraine was never going to be allowed to join, why would putting this in writing have been so unconscionable that it was worth risking a war?

I did some more reading and it looks like I was wrong about the 1994 thing, that was just the first round of eastern expansion. My bad!

"Does ANYBODY care about what the PEOPLE of Ukraine wanted?"

Do they want US military intervention? US military aid? If the answer is yes then no, I don't care about what they want. Because they don't understand what they are asking for.

Anyone who took introductory linguistics classes in the 1980s already knows that Noam Chomsky is Hitler.

I don't want to burden anyone with weird conspiracy theories, but I'm convinced that ashtar and Crackersmack are two different peple.

I thought Putin invaded to protect the Ukranians from vaccine mandates.

Crackheadsmack, I didn't say that Ukraine is asking for direct US military aid, I was referring to a poll that showed a clear majority of Ukraine wanted EU/NATO membership.

It's funny how you ask a completely different question then the point of my statement. The point is that the injustice in the past decade has been the forces that have blocked Ukraine from getting what its people wanted. Past tense here -- this is what mattered before this turned into open war.

During an open war, there is little the US or NATO can do directly for them. We know that.

In summary, and as usual for you and your alt accounts MO, you asked a different rhetorical question as a retort to my factual statement. pathetic try at a red herring argument, now that Russia has factually fucked the entire situation up with a bloody conflict.

It strikes me as pretty obvious that placation of dictators leads to dictators taking what they want without fear of consequences. Lot of good placating Putin did. His army is rather pathetic. It is underperforming massively and their losses are making this more and more of a strategic failure daily. However, the risk to worldwide peace is huge. This all might have been averted had the wishes of Ukraine been respected.

Your flimsy accusations of conspiracy or oppression are in a sense, the problem. However, the problem, with 20-20 hindsight of course, is clearly that placating the Russians and stalling NATO membership was the wrong move.

The right move would have been overnight-fast-tracking the NATO membership to grant article 5 immunity abruptly in response and in direct political reaction to Crimea's invasion. The NATO membership would be sold as a "response" to the sudden land-grab and Putin would have appeared overly aggressive if he had continued to react to NATO. But we squandered that opportunity. For years afterwards, Ukranians wanted NATO membership more and more because the imminent threat of another episode just like Crimea was clearly coming, but nobody heeded them.

Had NATO taken a stronger stand instead of an intentionally weaker and placating one, then Putin's forces would only have been able to resist via the camps of separatists in eastern Ukraine. The amount of dissent and violence would have been restricted to local terrorist acts and would not have led to open war years later after Putin prepared for it, and now our current reality of the blind shelling of cities of millions of innocent victims by high grade military equipment.

The only silver lining is that Ukranians are killing Russian soldiers in the thousands, and >2000 deaths have already been verified. The sad thing is that those kids didn't even know that they were going on a weeks-long war for their God-King.

Yeah, if only blah blah blah west taken stronger stance on etc etc etc Putin would have just taped his balls between his legs and bowed down to our supreme western manliness and nothing bad would possibly happen.

Also fuck you for celebrating the death of human beings.

You really have taken all the propaganda deep down your throat and swallowed with a satisfied grin.

Joining NATO means asking for US military intervention. Full stop.

I don't care if they want to join NATO; it is a dangerous relic that shouldn't exist anymore. People are being killed as we speak because of Ukraine flirting with NATO.

Yes, a hot war between NATO and Russia would have been a great idea.

It's amazing how people can look at the history of US military intervention and be like "this time it will be different!" over and over.

like the far left has any money

It isn't about what Noam likes or doesn't like, the point is that this was a very predictable response from Russia to the explicit threat posed by Ukraine joining NATO.

>>>I remember when PoeTV used to have intelligent, nuanced and thoughtful dialogue.

Obvious troll.

I think you mean “faggot”, using the tradition debate vernacular of POE.

Remember when "FAGDANCE" was a popular expression in here? It may have been POE-NEWS, actually. I never heard that term anywhere else, and I miss it. Sorry, but the imagery was delicious. And I'm bisexual, so I should be able to use it.

However, the world is a better place, because normal people don't talk like that anymore. Okay, I suppose that the world isn't really a better place than it was during the Obama years, but I think its good that we don't say so many shitty things. Nevertheless...

Fagdance.

Farewell, old friend.

I’m certain fagdance was used here as frequently as MainPOE early on.

You could say we were all Lords of the Fagdance.



Also realize the irony of video POETV being the unpopular variant of text POE early on but far outliving the original, mirroring the real internet. We were never the special fedora-adorned poet-fags we liked to pretend to be.

We were always fighty-y and dumb, but I do feel like people took things less seriously.

Why does Cracker-Ashtar smack parrot the words of a dictator and call Ukraine joining NATO a "threat?" Since when does NATO threaten and attack anything? It has absolutely no history of military acts of aggression. Ukraine as a "threat" or NATO as a "threat" has always been Putin rhetoric.

Anyway! I already established in every other post I've made that Ashtar and Crackersmack et al are accepting some form of crypto payment from russian sources to post all this shit. Now that there are more laws coming any minute now regulating crypto transactions, are you guys at all nervous about keeping up your misinformation efforts?

О нет, меня раскрыли, и теперь Путин меня посадит в ГУЛАГ.

There's been plenty of thoughtful discussion. Just look at Rafki's comments alone.

Why do people keep insisting there was ever a golden age to discourse in the PoE-verse? There was more people and that was about it. A big chunk was "fag -nt". A big chunk was the future Bo News crowd dog piling everything to shut it down. A big chunk was painfully stupid people even back then like Slagathor and BigBeefBurritosSupreme.

90% of the pointless tripe here comes from one person. It's your own fault if you're still reading Ashtarsmack's comments.

звучит как гомосексуальный танец для меня

Okay, here's a little respect for ashtwinkle, and his pal, cracky the flying squirrel. Tomorrow I will claim that this wasn't me, and that I had been hacked. Perchance, I was Hacked by CrackerSmack?

Crackersmack takes more abuse than I did in the early days, and I took a lot. Whether it is moral resolve, Aspergers, or maybe he's a bot, I know not, but people hated me for not being funny. No one can say that about Crackersmack.

Here's to you, guys, and I'm pretty sure that you are two different guys. Grant you, I've been fooled brefore.

They give us something to do, and they serve the cause of Ukraine by giving their Russian sponsors so very very little for their money. Cheers. Didn't watch the video, these are your stars.

"already established in every other post I've made that Ashtar and Crackersmack et al are accepting some form of crypto payment from russian sources to post all this shit. Now that there are more laws coming any minute now regulating crypto transactions, are you guys at all nervous about keeping up your misinformation efforts?"

Close! I am Waugh's sock puppet and JFK Jr. (Q) pays me in Bored Apes. The goal here is an elaborate scheme to cyberbully/gangstalk JHM, rather than anything political.

Well, you dudes had better pick up the pace, unless you intend to dox my funeral.

Yeah, that was part of the point. This isn't a new situation.

Old POE, like old Simpsons, is overrated.

New POE, like new Simpsons, isn't as bad as everyone keeps saying.