The Ukraine Question

[Poptart]

You mean, have I thought about the fact people have different opinions? Sure, the thought has crossed my mind, that there is always someone out there smarter than me.

Actually I mean in regards to the situation in Ukraine. More specifically, your comment:

I'm sure people genuinely sympathized with the plight of the Ukrainian people, but it's from a position of ignorance. Not understanding the culture of Ukraine, or realizing that there are segments of the Ukranian population that don't actually mind Russian dominion. Obviously migrants and expatriates have genuine thoughts and feelings on the invasion, but I question to what extent the larger outpouring of support for Ukrainian independence was fed by media hype and anti-Putin sentiments.

[xerx]

The story of Babushka Z

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61757667

Most Ukrainians - even in Russian-speaking regions - have not welcomed the invasion, so her brandishing of the Soviet flag was used as proof that its actions have support among local people.

[Capitalist Pig]

Actually I mean in regards to the situation in Ukraine. More specifically, your comment:

Yeah, most people are stupid and don't think for themselves. That's where I was going with that.

[Adam Strange]

An expat explaining how Russians see themselves and the world:

https://wartranslated.com/what-might...ans-worldview/

[RBRS]

I'd argue it was an attack on the public's faith in their institutions. Institutions he was, I'd argue, absolutely right to attack as they are now and have been for many a year actively hostile towards the class of people they are supposed to engineer an advantageous situation.

When dealing with the "American" government you ought to act as though it can and will at all times try to engineer a situation where "Americans" get a better deal than you do if you are a foreign power. That's where the "Art of the Deal" comes in. I mean let's admit a pretty hardcore truth. The best deals are where the deal broker successfully convinced both sides they somehow got one over on their opponent. Persuasion is superior to manipulation in almost all cases. Persuading/Seducing both sides into believing they got one over on the other party is an optimal outcome. If at the end of the day the math ends up in your ​favor so much the better .

I digress however. Trump never tried to distract from objective truth, he just pointed out subjective points that undermined the narrative the PTB were pushing. He's still doing it right now. Hell, the only reason he's not dead (nor any of his directly related family I'd add) is because there is now no way you could tell literally half the population of the USA (and the majority of the world's population if I'm being honest) that some Gamma Ray Burst/Micro Meteoroid Swarm/Etc. event that kills him wasn't somehow engineered by the likes of the WEF and the Bilderberg Group.

There is now no room for the PTB in the minds of the brainless normies to maneuver. I mean fucking hell, people used to view Alex Jones as an outright nutjob. Now, after almost everything he ranted on about in the 90's has been proven true objectively... Yeah, there's that...

Manipulation is entering somebody's mind and changing a part to suit your interests. Turn the TV a little bit to learn, they're master manipulators.

Persuasion = Manipulation

[FreelancePoliceman]

Manipulation is entering somebody's mind and changing a part to suit your interests. Turn the TV a little bit to learn, they're master manipulators.

Persuasion = Manipulation

I wonder why everyone and their mother has an opinion on the Ukraine war, but no one has or had anything to say about the US invasion of Syria -- illegal under both American and international law, by the way -- its military operations there, or its support of "moderate rebels", and still fewer say anything about the genocide in Yemen, conducted with American support. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the largest propaganda machine in human history.

An expat explaining how Russians see themselves and the world:

https://wartranslated.com/what-might...ans-worldview/

So what is it about the American worldview that makes Americans so bloodthirsty?

[Adam Strange]

I wonder why everyone and their mother has an opinion on the Ukraine war, but no one has or had anything to say about the US invasion of Syria -- illegal under both American and international law, by the way -- its military operations there, or its support of "moderate rebels", and still fewer say anything about the genocide in Yemen, conducted with American support. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the largest propaganda machine in human history.



So what is it about the American worldview that makes Americans so bloodthirsty?

The American worldview probably results from the quality of the people who emigrated here. People who couldn't make it in the world in which they were born. The civilized world, for the most part.

For the record, Americans don't have a corner on bloodthirstiness. I read Empire of the Summer Moon, which told the story of the rise and fall of the Comanches. They were pretty bloodthirsty.
After conquering South America and Mexico, the Spanish were moving north into North America, but were stopped dead by the Comanches for 125 years.
When I finished the book and thought about the Comanche's practices and the way they treated their enemies, the thought that went through my head was a phrase from my youth: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
Which shocked me, because I like to think I'm liberal, and my Lakota financial advisor would not appreciate that sentiment.
In any case, American immigrants succeeded, where the Spanish Empire failed, and obliterated the Comanches.

Those dispossessed Scots-Irish are nothing to fool around with.

[rizz]

For those who missed it - ruZZia canceled Lithuania's independence. How weird is that, lol.

[FreelancePoliceman]

An expat explaining how Russians see themselves and the world:

https://wartranslated.com/what-might...ans-worldview/

The American worldview probably results from the quality of the people who emigrated here. People who couldn't make it in the world in which they were born. The civilized world, for the most part.

Do you also have an explanation of the Germans or the British?

For the record, Americans don't have a corner on bloodthirstiness. I read Empire of the Summer Moon, which told the story of the rise and fall of the Comanches. They were pretty bloodthirsty.

Do you really think the bloodthirst of a Comanche warrior is comparable to that of an American university professor who voted for Obama? As I interpret your understanding, Obama voters are responsible for several times the bloodshed as Comanche warriors were.

[VewyScawwyNawcissist]

The American worldview probably results from the quality of the people who emigrated here. People who couldn't make it in the world in which they were born. The civilized world, for the most part.

For the record, Americans don't have a corner on bloodthirstiness. I read Empire of the Summer Moon, which told the story of the rise and fall of the Comanches. They were pretty bloodthirsty.
After conquering South America and Mexico, the Spanish were moving north into North America, but were stopped dead by the Comanches for 125 years.
When I finished the book and thought about the Comanche's practices and the way they treated their enemies, the thought that went through my head was a phrase from my youth: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

they just all happen to be Se egos
x LSI SLE
SEE SLE SEE
ESI LSI x

[End]

Manipulation is entering somebody's mind and changing a part to suit your interests. Turn the TV a little bit to learn, they're master manipulators.

Persuasion = Manipulation

I must now point out something I've had to repeatedly when running into this argument. There is literally no way in hell to avoid Persuading/Manipulating others in interpersonal interactions. Both of you want something out of the "other" as it were. You are going to act in some way to get whatever it is you want and there is no way to avoid it. We are all "trapped at court" and there is, from one arguable perspective, no such thing as a truly "selfless" act.

Ok, say that's true and I'm right about that. The question then becomes "To what end am I and/or the other person trying to guide you or me towards?" There is the negative/sociopathic end of "I want the other person to do whatever it is I want" and then there is the better Eucivic/Christian end of "I want the other person to do something that'll make them happier/better off".

People hate to be "manipulated" because it's usually done from the former perspective. They'd rather be persuaded/seduced because the chances of it being done from the latter perspective are a hell of a lot better. People want persuasion/seduction because it's not hard to see such a figure as actually giving a damn about them and wanting them to be happy. Manipulative little shits on the other hand only value their own happiness and are all too OK with others suffering to attain it.

I need only point towards the methods of such things like the WEF and most governments to illustrate my point. Manipulation with all the subtlety of a semi-truck blaring its horn while barreling towards you at 100 mph. The PTB used to be a whole lot better at the whole seduction/persuasion game. However, Sin makes you stupid and, well, they've been sinning as hard as they can for a very, very long time...

Also, a good video revealing how we're all being manipulated in a very malevolent way by the entities I frequently mention:

[Capitalist Pig]

[Rusal]

It was only a little ago that Sol warned us that infiltrators were planning terrorist attacks all across righteous Russia.


Well, guess who bombed a mall today...

[Adam Strange]

It was only a little ago that Sol warned us that infiltrators were planning terrorist attacks all across righteous Russia.


Well, guess who bombed a mall today...

@Rusal, the finger that points at you is next to three fingers pointing back at them.

Anyway, don't you know that malls are where the worst Nazis hang out?

When I was a kid, I came across this pre-WWII poster by the Gestapo which said that Germany was surrounded by terrorists and had to defend itself. I guess the best way to defend yourself is to invade an adjacent country. And then the next one, and the next, because they are never going to feel safe until there is only one person left in the world. And maybe not then.

My mother used to tell me that it was too bad that my face got in the way of her fist. She and Putin would have gotten along.
She stopped hitting me when I got stronger than she was. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

[Minde]

I hope @Sol is ok and not dead.

[Adam Strange]

I hope @Sol is ok and not dead.

Yeah, I hope he’s OK, too.

[FreelancePoliceman]

Anatomy of a Coup: How a CIA Front Laid Foundations for Ukraine War

For anyone wondering why the West has been uncritically supporting a government that's been shelling its own citizens for years.

[Grendel]

oh look, it's babby's first democracy has always been a sham

yeah buddy i didn't need to wait til i was literate to know humans don't have much autonomy. i figured that out as a child when i realized there were no sidewalks around our sequestered little blocks of land with box-houses on them and so we needed to wait for mommy and daddy to chauffeur us anywhere before we could do anything fun. i figured that out every time i got chased down for trying to elope from class

[Adam Strange]

One of the things I discovered while reading about sanctions against Russia is how dependent Germany is on Russia. Germany buys Russian energy and sells Russia a large part of the output of its formidable machine tool industry.

The two countries are natural economic traders. Each has what the other needs.

Telling Germany that it can’t buy gas from or sell machine tools to Russia is like telling McD’s that they can’t sell food to anyone who doesn’t have a PhD. They might do it, but it’s gonna hurt.


I have machines which run on Siemens software and Heidenhain hardware. German machine tools are hard to beat and pretty much don’t have substitutes. Furthermore, the software can be made to stop working if you don’t pay them maintenance fees every year.

Since Russia is entirely dependent on German machine tools, Germany could turn off every machine in Russia which is presently supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine. But then, they’d lose a big share of the market (those maintenance fees are brutal, let me tell you), and where are they going to get energy this winter?

This situation has caused me to re-evaluate my own company’s dependence on proprietary German software. I’m seriously considering switching over to the Linux ecosystem.

[Adam Strange]

My father volunteered for two wars. He never talked to me about his experiences there, except once or twice in his life.
In his first tour of duty, his position was overrun at night when his unit ran out of ammo, and he was forced to fight with his knife. During his second tour, his position was again overrun and he was shot in the chest with a Russian-produced machine gun and left for dead, but the vest he was wearing slowed the bullets down so the bullets just knocked him unconscious and produced a lot of blood and scars but didn't kill him.

He said that none of the veterans in his unit would bother to learn the names of the new replacements, because they would die so quickly.

He was married before he left for his second war. I think, that's about the time when he began to think that living through the experience wasn't guaranteed.

https://wartranslated.com/intercepte...eal-from-this/

[SacredKnowing]

I’m seriously considering switching over to the Linux ecosystem.

GNU/Linux. Linux is just a kernel. A kernel can't do anything by itself. It needs the GNU userland in order to do anything productive.

[FreelancePoliceman]

GNU/Linux. Linux is just a kernel. A kernel can't do anything by itself. It needs the GNU userland in order to do anything productive.

I respect the autism but saying "GNU" as rms wants it pronounced is a bit of a pain. No one calls Android or Chrome OS just "Linux," and if you replace GNU libs with musl and the coreutils with whatever else, which is definitely possible, the system still works pretty much the same. What people mean when they say "Linux" is generally pretty understandable, ao I think it's fine.
@Adam Strange, unless you need Windows-specific software like Adobe products, maybe Microsoft products depending on what you need and what you use them for, I would recommend making the switch. Mint Cinnamon is what I usually recommend people coming from Windows as it looks and acts mostly the same, but without telemetry and 80-90-% disk usage while idling. My sister knows nothing about computers but loves it and uses it exclusively. When she got a new laptop preinstalled with Windows she asked me to install it for her because she was fed up with having to use Windows again.

[Adam Strange]

I respect the autism but saying "GNU" as rms wants it pronounced is a bit of a pain. No one calls Android or Chrome OS just "Linux," and if you replace GNU libs with musl and the coreutils with whatever else, which is definitely possible, the system still works pretty much the same. What people mean when they say "Linux" is generally pretty understandable, ao I think it's fine.
@Adam Strange, unless you need Windows-specific software like Adobe products, maybe Microsoft products depending on what you need and what you use them for, I would recommend making the switch. Mint Cinnamon is what I usually recommend people coming from Windows as it looks and acts mostly the same, but without telemetry and 80-90-% disk usage while idling. My sister knows nothing about computers but loves it and uses it exclusively. When she got a new laptop preinstalled with Windows she asked me to install it for her because she was fed up with having to use Windows again.

@FreelancePoliceman, I have a machine that runs Debian 10 so I can get used to the operating system in my copious free time. It seems similar to Windows.

I actually don't have any gripes against Windows, other than the garbage that gets loaded with it, but most of that seems to be more or less ignorable. My first experience with operating systems was MS-DOS 6.2 or so, and that ran on a command line, so I'm fairly used to Microsoft products at this point.
My interactions with Apple operating systems have been much worse. I can't stand how Apple hides where files are stored and everything in the system seems to be "Alice Through the Looking Glass". I just avoid Apple, except on my phone, and the only reason I like it on my phone is that it seems to be bullet-proof against viruses.

Anyway, most of the important programs for design and simulation that I use in my business are Windows-only, so I'm stuck with Windows for that part of my life.

However, the machine tool controller area is open. It basically needs real time operating systems, and that means "Not-Windows".

[Adam Strange]

Poland is going to give to Ukraine 232 of its own army's tanks, which are about equivalent to the Russian T-72.

In turn, Poland will be getting about 300 Abrams tanks from the US.
About 8,800 Abrams tanks have been made, and their combat record is that a total of 7 were lost to friendly fire and two were destroyed to keep them from falling into enemy hands.
I've seen these things up close and they are fearsome.

If I were in Moscow, I'd be shitting bricks at the thought of 300 Abrams in Poland. But you know, this never would have happened if Putin hadn't mistaken himself for Tsar Nicholas II.

Incidentally, Ukraine probably won't get Reaper drones any time soon, because Russia can actually shoot down drones. Russia's anti-tank weapons, on the other hand, aren't so great.

[xerx]

The American worldview probably results from the quality of the people who emigrated here. People who couldn't make it in the world in which they were born. The civilized world, for the most part.

For the record, Americans don't have a corner on bloodthirstiness. I read Empire of the Summer Moon, which told the story of the rise and fall of the Comanches. They were pretty bloodthirsty.
After conquering South America and Mexico, the Spanish were moving north into North America, but were stopped dead by the Comanches for 125 years.
When I finished the book and thought about the Comanche's practices and the way they treated their enemies, the thought that went through my head was a phrase from my youth: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
Which shocked me, because I like to think I'm liberal, and my Lakota financial advisor would not appreciate that sentiment.
In any case, American immigrants succeeded, where the Spanish Empire failed, and obliterated the Comanches.

Those dispossessed Scots-Irish are nothing to fool around with.

I'm late to the party, but I'm rereading the thread and wanted to respond anyway.


Throughout this war, a recurring theme has been that Russia deserves to be broken up. I can see why — if I was a Ukrainian who lost his family to Russian shelling, I'd feel the same way.

But the Comanche, Aztec, and Zulu polities certainly didn't deserve to be destroyed, nor did these peoples deserve American, Spanish, and British subjugation.

The United States and Canada don't deserve to be destroyed by a rival, either, even though both countries carried out literal genocide against their indigenous populations. Both have engaged in slavery and imperialism on par with Russia's actions in Ukraine. But breaking up these countries through force, with the consequent destruction of people, infrastructure, and civil society, would only add one more to the pile of humanitarian catastrophes.

And that's putting aside the practical difficulties of forcing Russia's capitulation (Putin would nuke the world before accepting defeat); or whether regime change would lead to the desired outcome (if anything, attempts at regime change have repeatedly failed); or whether its successor states would be happy and free of foreign domination (I predict that they won't be); or whether we have the moral right to reshape another society in the first place (I strongly believe that we don't have that right).

[Adam Strange]

I'm late to the party, but I'm rereading the thread and wanted to respond anyway.


Throughout this war, a recurring theme has been that Russia deserves to be broken up. I can see why — it's hard to not sympathize with the Ukrainians. And if I was a Ukrainian who lost his family to Russian shelling, I'd feel the same way.

But the Comanche, Aztec, and Zulu polities certainly didn't deserve to be destroyed, nor did these peoples deserve American, Spanish, and British subjugation.

Oh, man. Just read the book. The native American tribes which lived next to the Comanche territory hated them, too.

And while you are dispelling ideas of the Native Americans living in peaceful harmony with nature, read "The Middle Ground". There is a very good extract from the book on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Middle-Ground...1815-American/

The United States and Canada don't deserve to be destroyed by a rival, either, even though both countries carried out literal genocide against their indigenous populations. Both have engaged in slavery and imperialism on par with Russia's actions in Ukraine. But breaking these countries up violently, through force, would only add one more to the pile of humanitarian catastrophes.

And that's putting aside the practical difficulties of forcing Russia's capitulation (Putin would nuke the world before accepting defeat); or whether regime change would lead to the desired outcome (if anything, attempts at regime change have repeatedly failed); or whether its successor states would be happy and free of foreign domination (I predict that they won't be); or whether we have the right to reshape another society in the first place (I strongly believe that we don't have that moral right).

I believe that we do have the moral right to eliminate criminal states, including our own, if it comes to that. Some states should not exist. The Comanches slow-roasted captured settler children alive over a fire. The Miami and Seneca tribes engaged in casual torture and cannibalism of their enemies. The Russians do a Bucha in every place they occupy. They were all engaged in wars of extinction against the Other.

My personal preference is to form an attractive society and to let people who agree to its rules, join it and be able to reap its benefits. That is very different from what Russia has been doing for the past hundred years, or what the US has been doing since forever. But somehow, people want to get out of Russia and they want to get into the US, so I'd say that the two sides are not equivalent.

Incidentally, I don't think that the West can break up the Russian Federation. I think that the West can reduce the resources available to RF and let them fall back on their own devices. They wanted an Autocracy and they can have it, but we don't have to support them in their bad habits.
I also believe that the resulting social disasters that their system will naturally produce will cause the districts inside Russia to leave Moscow's Autocracy on their own.

Post Script.

One interesting parallel between the Comanches and Russia is that their societies both ran off of one single resource. In the case of the Comanches, it was buffalo herds in their millions, and in the case of Russia, it is the country's oil and gas reserves.

Chasing the buffalo and deriving all of their goods from the animal led to high attrition in Comanche society, and riding horses all day led to low fertility in the males, so the Comanche were forced to capture people from surrounding tribes and incorporate them into their society. They would raid a group of people and would torture and kill the adults and babies, and would gang rape the teenage girls and if any of them survived this process, then they were tough enough to live the Comanche life. That's why most of the American Indians looked like European settlers by the end of the 19th century.

Russia seems to be solving its declining birth rate problem in much the same way.

The Comanches weren't conquered, but rather the supports for their society were eliminated by killing all the buffalo. This prevented them from living the nomadic and parasitic life that they had been living, and they were then placed on reservations.

So if the world can move away from carbon fuels, maybe Russia can be made to be a better neighbor.

[xerx]

Oh, man. Just read the book. The native American tribes which lived next to the Comanche territory hated them, too.

And while you are dispelling ideas of the Native Americans living in peaceful harmony with nature, read "The Middle Ground". There is a very good extract from the book on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Middle-Ground...1815-American/

I believe that we do have the moral right to eliminate criminal states, including our own, if it comes to that. Some states should not exist. The Comanches slow-roasted captured settler children over a fire. The Miami and Seneca tribes engaged in casual torture and cannibalism of their enemies. They were all engaged in wars of extinction against the Other.

Maybe they were that bad. But two wrongs don't make a right.

[xerx]

So if the world can move away from carbon fuels, maybe Russia can be made to be a better neighbor.

Yes, hopefully.

[Adam Strange]

I believe that it is possible to change human nature, just as is done with turning wolves into dogs, by selecting out the people with the traits you don't want.
The Netherlands has the tallest average people in the world, and they got that way by the process of tall people marrying other tall people.
But there are many ways to filter for particular traits in a population.

Yeah.

So I've been wondering about the constitution of Russian society. After hundreds of years of rule by Tsars, do they prefer Authoritarian rule? Have they become an entire society of Trump supporters, who are more than happy to give up their personal freedom so long as the people in power actively hurt their imagined enemies?

I go back and forth on this question, but I just ran across an article which gives me some hope for the future of Russians. Not Russia, but rather some of the people who live there.

https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/212109

[xerx]

I believe that we do have the moral right to eliminate criminal states, including our own, if it comes to that. Some states should not exist. The Comanches slow-roasted captured settler children alive over a fire. The Miami and Seneca tribes engaged in casual torture and cannibalism of their enemies. The Russians do a Bucha in every place they occupy. They were all engaged in wars of extinction against the Other.

My personal preference is to form an attractive society and to let people who agree to its rules, join it and be able to reap its benefits. That is very different from what Russia has been doing for the past hundred years, or what the US has been doing since forever. But somehow, people want to get out of Russia and they want to get into the US, so I'd say that the two sides are not equivalent.

Incidentally, I don't think that the West can break up the Russian Federation. I think that the West can reduce the resources available to RF and let them fall back on their own devices. They wanted an Autocracy and they can have it, but we don't have to support them in their bad habits.
I also believe that the resulting social disasters that their system will naturally produce will cause the districts inside Russia to leave Moscow's Autocracy on their own.

I think that autocratic states should be broken up too, but not in the course of war or geopolitical confrontation. Otherwise, the newly-independent regions risk being gobbled up by geopolitical rivals, especially if they have resources (which Russia has in spades). Nothing is worse than swapping one master for another (and, on top of that, becoming a chess piece in yet another great power struggle). The Kurds in Iraq and Syria seem to be succeeding, but things aren't always that lucky (and, in any case, they aren't exactly free of their neighbours' encroachment — Rojava's continued freedom is precarious at best).

Instead, break ups should take the form of decentralization, and they should happen as a by-product of strong movements, methodically and with an eye for possible threats. And they should happen to all states, by devolving powers to local governments.

[Adam Strange]

Last night Russian state TV ran a report on the unexpected 'benefits' of having your son killed in Ukraine.

https://nitter.net/i/status/1548992984946974720

[Adam Strange]

Russia is known for copying products from the West, or stealing them outright.

It seems as though someone there is trying to copy the Republican Party and Fox News.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-sa...104546288.html

[Metamorph]

One of the things I discovered while reading about sanctions against Russia is how dependent Germany is on Russia. Germany buys Russian energy and sells Russia a large part of the output of its formidable machine tool industry.

The two countries are natural economic traders. Each has what the other needs.

Telling Germany that it can’t buy gas from or sell machine tools to Russia is like telling McD’s that they can’t sell food to anyone who doesn’t have a PhD. They might do it, but it’s gonna hurt.


I have machines which run on Siemens software and Heidenhain hardware. German machine tools are hard to beat and pretty much don’t have substitutes. Furthermore, the software can be made to stop working if you don’t pay them maintenance fees every year.

Since Russia is entirely dependent on German machine tools, Germany could turn off every machine in Russia which is presently supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine. But then, they’d lose a big share of the market (those maintenance fees are brutal, let me tell you), and where are they going to get energy this winter?

This situation has caused me to re-evaluate my own company’s dependence on proprietary German software. I’m seriously considering switching over to the Linux ecosystem.

Germans are sensible about Russia. Germans are oddly sensible about lots of countries that the US is told to hate by the media.

[Metamorph]

Do you also have an explanation of the Germans or the British?

I'm under the impression that for most of its history, the British Empire and the Holy Roman Empire both mostly operated on soft power. I'd rather be ruled by the British Empire at their height than whatever this is. America on the other hand is not really an empire as far as I can tell. America can't even beat the Taliban. Granted, the Taliban is great at their job of living in the middle of nowhere and fighting all the time.

[Metamorph]

I wonder why everyone and their mother has an opinion on the Ukraine war, but no one has or had anything to say about the US invasion of Syria -- illegal under both American and international law, by the way -- its military operations there, or its support of "moderate rebels", and still fewer say anything about the genocide in Yemen, conducted with American support. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the largest propaganda machine in human history.

People wouldn't be distracted if they didn't want to be. The propaganda Devil can't make anyone do anything, it just facilitates them doing naughty things they want to do they otherwise wouldn't be able to do. Also, it's obvious why no one thinks about Syria. They will not cease from drone-bomb fight nor shall their Uzi sleep in their hand til they have built England in Jerusalem's prophecied beach-resort land.

[Metamorph]

AZOV is on Israel's payroll. You can guess the rest.

Jews as a group are almost certainly not opposed to Nazism. Also, the primary Wolfsangel they used didn't seem to be the Nazi version (non-Nazi versions of symbols does matter unless you're one of those "anything vaguely traditional is trash!" types,) though that hardly matters since lots of them have 1488 tattoos and like sieg heiling anyways.

[Metamorph]

My fear is that we're seeing the creation of our own Al-Qaeda, which was also the creation of a proxy war, masterminded by Western establishments (by notable people like Zbigniew Brzezinski), and cynically exploited to bleed an enemy dry in an eerily similar fashion to how this war is being waged.

No, Westerners must be kept meek even when Saudi Arabians can be exploited. A Western Al-Qaeda is what this is being done to avoid. Westerners in turn are complicit, since the last thing they want to be is anything like those "barbaric mudslimes." So-called turning the other cheek except in certain extremely specific situations is what the current Western identity is built on.

[Metamorph]

For retail and services, how hard would it be for a native Russian company to take over from exiting firms? It's possible that I'm being naive, but it doesn't seem difficult as the staff and mid-level management are already trained to do their jobs. (This is already happening to McDonald's: https://www.theguardian.com/business...d-rebrand-them).

Russia is mostly self-sufficient when it comes to food (https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analy...ucceeding.html). It also has a high-tech sector that could potentially replace Amazon, cloud service providers, anti-virus software providers, etc.

OTOH, WRT the import of finished, high-tech products like assorted semiconductor technology... then yeah, Russia is in a difficult situation.

Luckily for Russia, the Geneva convention forbids sanctions on the export of vital medicine.

Food production is literally Russia's main industry, I would hope they can do that. People aren't just shivering in a blizzard in Moscow in their ushanka hats and begging Siberian reindeer herders and Kazakh horsemen for food in Russia. Also at this point seemingly everyone has their own Silicon Valley, the fourth age of sand must flow. If people think Russia can get starved of resources they have it confused with England or Japan probably.

[Metamorph]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/busi...d-other-goods/

The Kremlin is considering pegging the Ruble to gold........ interesting development.

That is why Russia is vilified. If you have gold you can't have interest because the amount of money you have is anchored to gold. On the other hand, introducing interest into the monetary system makes the value of the currency approach zero. Things are not getting more expensive, fiat money is what gets more worthless because of indefinite interest. That is calculus and I learned it in high school, but math is not bankers' strong suite. It is not sufficient for the war, though. A few other countries do this and don't have a war on them.

[Metamorph]

Yesterday I was talking to a guy in Missouri who owns a company that does work for Boeing (and my company). I said that some people object to the amount of money that the US government spends on defense.

He laughed and said that those people have never been to some of the countries that we have been to. If they had, they’d want the government to spend more.

Yes, we need these bombers that never get finished to defend ourselves against kids who throw rocks.