The world needs to eliminate the Russian government as it presently stands, and sanctions are a first step in reducing their ability to wage war, which is a major part of their toxicity (but not the only part).Originally Posted by xerx
Humans also need to stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
It’s good to know that Russia has a source of wealth which they can use to make their people better-off, once they no longer live under a kleptocracy.
Edward Snowden moved to Russia and used to tweet every day, but he hasn’t been heard from in over a month.
Maybe he’s busy planning a huge information dump from his new home in the free worker’s paradise.
I certainly hope he hasn’t accidentally fallen out of a fourth-story window, or mistakenly imbibed some Polonium tea.
Last edited by Adam Strange; 04-13-2022 at 02:00 PM.
Steven Seagal, that master of subtle intuition, moved to Russia several years ago and Putin granted him citizenship. When asked about Ukraine, Seagal said he views Russia and Ukraine as one family.
I think I’ve met guys like him before. Very often, they are clueless while their wives want a divorce.
LSE, maybe?
Ukrainian refugees in Antalya, Turkey.
They are lucky. Antalya is an absolutely beautiful place.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/statu...CyndrjqIIqAAAA
Well, we'll hopefully find appropriate replacements sooner rather than later. I'm not too worried about North America as the NAFTA area isn't resource poor.
But Europe is a different story. They don't have the resources or even the logistics (ports, alternative pipelines, etc.) to replace Russian fossil fuels. That, in part, is what makes these sanctions so ambitious. Sanctioning the central bank of the world's largest commodities exporter, a former G8 country, has just never been attempted before.
It's surprising what you can do when you see that you are being held hostage by a violent, insane person with the morals of a mafia don.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...rship-in-weeks
But I understand what you are saying when you say that Europe is in a bind. They require imports to survive.
I, personally, believe that WWI was caused by the US reducing food shipments to Europe, as the US's own population grew. Not enough sunlight falls on Europe to grow enough food for them to feed themselves. This is a bad long-range position for anyone to occupy.
Lol. Another reason why Ukraine should join Europe. Russia doesn't need more food and they have a rapidly declining population. Russia just wants Ukraine's resources to sell to someone else.
I need to correct myself: I do not believe people become animals. They might be(come) broken, tortured, detached, calloused, self-absorbed, fearful, greedy, habit-bound, vindictive, etc., but they are still humans. Animals, who are far more complex and intelligent than I think we even know yet, do not live in our human realm of morality. Nature can be brutal and merciless, but as far as I can tell cruelty is an invention of ours.
People committing war horrors need to be held accountable as people. Even more atrocities happen when we dehumanize others.
-------------------------------
The pictures I've seen of the state of things (buildings and landscapes) that the occupying Russian troops leave behind remind me of many homeless encampments. Not that I'd put the homeless in the same moral bucket, but there's something very broken there.
Oh, to find you in dreams - mixing prior, analog, and never-beens... facts slip and turn and change with little lucidity. except the strong, permeating reality of emotion.
Disagreeing with myself again: was talking about this with my husband and he pointed out that some animals are what you'd call cruel, such as wolves, hyenas, and cats. He doesn't know why that is, but he does note that these animals are predators with more advanced (human-like?) social structures and sociability.
Our conclusion was that cruel animals are not that way because they're animals but possibly because they're closer to humans.
One of the things that I think I need to stay "good" myself and not dehumanize people is to carry the both/and in my mind - that humans can be / are absolutely horrible and that they have "eternity in their hearts." (Furthermore, I believe that we were created to be beautiful and good.) It doesn't always give me answers on what to do, but I think it does keep me from some dangerous extremes.
Oh, to find you in dreams - mixing prior, analog, and never-beens... facts slip and turn and change with little lucidity. except the strong, permeating reality of emotion.
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/s...80394220732421
https://twitter.com/walterlekh/statu...02272331157513
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/statu...80793145081862
Holy shit. The Russian Black Sea flagship, Moskva. The flagship. The Ukrainians sunk the FUCKINGFLAGSHIP.
The Russians are now officially the leaders of the clown army and the clown navy.
@Minde, your husband is correct. Dolphins, with social structures and huge brains, have been observed in packs, biting the fins off of fish and letting them drift in the sea without the ability to swim. They seem to be doing this for entertainment, and it demonstrates extreme cruelty, since they aren't eating the fish, but are rather just torturing them.
Perhaps cruelty is a positive feature for use in maintaining social structures, which themselves have superior survival value. Cruelty is the evil that produces a higher good, so to speak.
It has been shown in humans that positive reinforcement alone does not work for behavior modification. There needs to be the potential for negative reinforcement, too.
Yeah.
Russia has the second best army in the Ukraine.
Oh, forgot to mention. This is the same ship which they used to capture snake island.
Poetic.
But will Putin give up, after suffering loss upon loss?
No, not as long as there is no one who can tell him "No."
This is a lesson for companies, as well as governments.
Last edited by Adam Strange; 04-14-2022 at 03:23 AM.
They should mention that as a disclaimer for 'Swimming with Dolphins' therapy.
@Adam Strange
Some possible sanctions (esp. targeting Russian fossil fuels) now being discussed.
https://www.economist.com/business/2...west-wheel-out
One is to impose tariffs on Russian hydrocarbons. Another, emanating from America, is to take a page out of the Iran playbook. When several allies complained that sanctions against the Islamic Republic a decade ago would leave them short of oil, America developed a workaround. Other countries could continue to buy Iranian oil if they pledged to reduce reliance on it over time. The payments went into escrow accounts. Iran agreed to this arrangement in part because it was permitted to use a chunk of the parked money for non-sensitive goods like consumables. “It functioned like pocket money,” says Adam M. Smith of Gibson Dunn, a law firm.
Russia would almost certainly reject such an arrangement. But Mr Smith thinks it could be tempted by sweeteners. One might be to allow it to use some of the cash in escrow to buy high-tech items that have been hit with Western export controls.
A prescient analysis from two days ago: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/ar...-or-irrelevant
@xerx, this is a step in the right direction, but we really need to stop burning hydrocarbons entirely. In planetary science, there is something called the "runaway greenhouse effect", and it happened to our sister planet, Venus.
An army is seldom better than the society that it comes from.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/com...e_payments_of/
India isn't condemning Russia. Russia's (and the Soviet Union's) consistent support for India over Kashmir probably has a lot to do with it. It can count on Russia to veto UNSC resolutions against India. Its weapons sector is also reliant on Russia. So is its energy sector.
If it was an accident and a storm that did in the big ship, why angrily call for harsh retaliation against Ukraine?
Oh, to find you in dreams - mixing prior, analog, and never-beens... facts slip and turn and change with little lucidity. except the strong, permeating reality of emotion.
Never have I seen such an amateur reaction from NATO, they are doing exactly what Putin predicted and wanted. Ironically "the art of war" is such a popular and campaigned book among competitive companies. Guess they usually just go "hey you should read this" and then completely forget about it.
Anyway, why does NATO exist again? (It's a rethorical question)
Does Zelensky sleep?
Putin may have expected a quick, cheap victory over the sub-human Ukrainians, but that's very, very far from what he actually got.
You can lie to everyone around you, but when you lie to yourself, you are in real trouble. Reality has a way of correcting bullshit.
I get that's it's a heated moment, but the ongoing boycott of Russian books, the refusal to play Russian composers, and the boycott of Russian performance artists is wrong—as wrong as the refusal to sell Korans would have been following the September 11'th attacks. It's not only bigoted, it has helped inspire vulgar Kremlin propaganda that the West is trying to undermine "Russian civilization". It reinforces a siege mentality among ordinary Russians as well as a rally-around-the-flag / rally-around-the-leader feeling.
It may be a minor contributor to this effect, overshadowed by things like economic sanctions as well as the Russian state media's direct encouragement of pro-Kremlin opinion, but it's not insignificant.
Last edited by xerx; 04-17-2022 at 09:57 PM. Reason: clarification
Do you have a list of targeted major materials/individuals?
I agree, it doesn't seem to have a purpose, just empty gestures. My guess people want to show solidarity. Businesses at least do it to look good and not lose money for appearing insensitive. Like one restaurant that changed the name of a dish because it sounded like Putin.
Sure.
* Some orchestras refuse to play Russian works: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/t...aine-dhxv09hqp
* The Met banned Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko. Although she was (still is?) a Putin supporter, she had also stated her opposition to the war. It would have been a bigger endorsement of freedom if she had been allowed to perform.
* Carnegie Hall cancelled the Mariinsky Orchestra. The orchestra's director refused to take a stance on the war.
* European Film Awards has excluded Russian films. These were presumably released before the war.
https://www.vulture.com/2022/03/cult...a-ukraine.html
These may seem like small gestures, and they probably are in the larger scheme of things, but they'll be blown out of proportion. And not just by the Kremlin but by ordinary Russians as well, who'll see them as attacks on neutral cultural products.
It can't be avoided to be honest. The state controls a large part of the narrative regardless. I have been exposed to propaganda of all kinds from a young age and still do. Unless people are directly harmed most of them will forget it once diplomatic relations return to normal. It's literal 1984 mentality. If the state/gov say we are no longer at war with Eurasia then for all intents and purposes we are not and people act accordingly. Who do you actually think attends those events? Not your average person. Politics is just dirty.
Moments of shared solidarity tend to define people's allegiances for a long time to come. I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine sees a golden age if they outright win the war
- It's a war, nothing dubious about that. Except it was neither unprovoked nor unexpected. Putin was pushed into a corner and reacted predictably.
- This war is getting disproportionately more attention and negative coverage by western media compared to other recent and ongoing wars, especially where the US is (or sides with) the aggressor.
- The nature and amount of sanctions imposed on Russia are overdone. No one seems to care about how this is affecting ordinary Russian citizens, and how it is going to affect them for years to come...
- The Russian army is neither weak nor unprepared, it is only portrayed as such. Some of the logistical issues are there, but this is mostly because they can afford to have them. And since they avoid civilian causalities as much as they can, they move slowly and suffer more damage.
- I reject all claims of Russia being incapable of taking over major cities like Kiev, simply because there is no evidence of them ever wanting or planning to do that. I think cities were encircled on purpose, to block and intercept the movement of Ukrainian forces, and to expedite evacuation corridors.
- There are too many false assumptions and allegations of Putin spread by mainstream media in order to portray him as the ultimate evil and make people side with Ukraine, which in practice means siding with the US.
- There are no signs of the US wanting or doing anything to stop this war. What it's doing is pushing pro-war propaganda, i.e., manufacturing consent for war, because it wants to keep selling weapons to Ukraine and protract this war for as long as possible.
- Continuing to arm Ukraine won't end the war, it will just prolong it and increase the death toll. Some of the weapons inevitably end up in the hands of Azov and other neo-Nazi formations, which only make things worse.
- Ultranationalists are a real problem and so is the existence and expansion of NATO. This is mainly what led to this war, together with events around the Minsk agreement which Ukraine failed to uphold.
- In reality, this war didn't start when Putin invaded Ukraine, it began in 2014 when US backed a coup forcing democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych out of office. It's all been going downhill since.
- Generally speaking, I sympathize with Putin's perspective and concerns, but I dislike the way he decided to go about addressing them. Ultimately, he is going to be responsible for the carnage and godawful suffering of vast number of people, including Russians. Regardless of what he manages to accomplish in the long run, I don't think this is a fair price to pay. Or that it is morally justifiable.
- And as Chomsky said, the only possible resolution to this war is for Ukraine to accept neutral status, give up on Crimea and withdraw from Donbas. So I'd say let's hope this happens sooner rather than later.
Last edited by Park; 04-19-2022 at 10:36 PM.
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
@Park, who do you think caused this war, and why did they cause it to happen? What do you think is their end goal?
Last edited by Adam Strange; 04-20-2022 at 01:01 AM.
cool delusions dude
Before the thread turns into a pit of excuses and lies for genocidal fucks that scream in indignation as THEY hit you and cause the very problems they tell their acolytes they set out to prevent, let's bring it down to reality once again.
A woman in the East of Ukr that bought the version that Ukr. soldiers were nazis doesn't know where to hide her grandchildren when the soldiers fron her side arrive in the neighbourhood and start raping children and shooting people and she gets to see it with her own eyes. The fool.
A woman in her 80s is raped by Russian soldiers in her village. Just imagine the state she will be in during her final years on Earth. Imagine the many women in her same state.
Sicuramente cercherai il significato di questo.
A basic point that repeatedly goes unmentioned WRT NATO: If affiliating with NATO was meant to deter the violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, that idea has already dramatically failed. Russia invaded before that gradual process could be completed.
And even if Ukraine does win in the end, thousands of Ukrainians will still be dead; Ukraine's infrastructure will still be devastated.
As far as policy decisions are concerned, it has achieved the exact opposite of its stated purpose.
Ukraine was not a NATO member when Russia invaded, and neither Russia nor Ukraine existed when NATO was formed.
So your "if" statement is not even relevant.
What makes you think Russia wouldn't have invaded anyway and/or continued to annex parts of Ukraine? For Putin it's all about restoring the "former glory" and Ukraine is insolent for not simply joining mother Russia.
I think it's difficult to assign one cause to human events, but Kamil Galeev has an interesting take on Russia's motivations.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...455654913.html
I've been trying to decide whether the Russian people have been misled, or whether they have been filtered (bred like wolves into dogs) over the years to be naturally supportive of Authoritarian regimes. One is fixable, like what happened to the Nazi supporters in Germany, and the other probably isn't.*
Galeev seems to make an argument for the latter.
*
Yes, it's basically viewed as a civil war, bringing the "deluded rebels" back into the fold, Ukraine is seen as an integral part of ancient Russia. They have a great history of using this excuse. When USSR captured the eastern finnish city of Vyborg (Viipuri) in WW2, they claimed it was "an ancient Russian city" (hint: nope).
I'm just glad that the family that owned my house in 1941 doesn't return with shotguns to kill my children, rape my wife, and tell me that everything will be fine if I just stop resisting.
Last edited by Adam Strange; 04-20-2022 at 03:45 PM.
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