Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
A throwaway comment on the radio yesterday said Putin's approval had risen 12% because of this. Don't know how trustworthy that is, but it doesn't augur well for any swift overthrow hopes.
Yes, all the reports I’m reading say that Russian state propaganda INSIDE Russia is working very well. They all believe this is a defensive move against nasty Ukrainian fascists. And of course people rally to the flag in any war, even one as rubbish and wicked as this (even Iraq had majority support in the UK at one point)
I am a bit blue today. After a horrible plague, a horrible war? It feels like this is a new pattern in human affairs. After decades of things generally getting better, now they are generally getting worse, and this will continue for some time
Yeah Russian bloke on r4 yesterday saying the urban young get unbiased news off internet, everyone else watches and believes official TV. Including Putin, spend s hours watching himself apparently
You can get unbiased news on the Internet?
They're all reading PB and nothing else, obviously
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
A throwaway comment on the radio yesterday said Putin's approval had risen 12% because of this. Don't know how trustworthy that is, but it doesn't augur well for any swift overthrow hopes.
Yes, all the reports I’m reading say that Russian state propaganda INSIDE Russia is working very well. ...
The reports you're reading from Russia say that Russian propaganda is working very well?
No, from the Financial Times, today
“The shift in [the Ukrainian woman’s] view has alienated her from her mother, who lives in Moscow and receives her news about the war from Russia’s state-run TV channels.
“She says — just be patient and wait it out, it’s just a little ‘special operation’,” Gurkalenko said. “She said Ukraine had let in fighters from the west who were going to attack Russia. She has no idea what’s going on here.”
Ties of friendship have also broken. Olga Sitkovska, 34, another resident of Kharkiv who has now fled the city, exchanged angry texts this week with a Russian friend she met on holiday in Turkey in 2016. “She started to send me propaganda videos, saying: ‘You see, in Ukraine Russians are suffering and Putin must come to their aid’,” said Sitkovska, a local TV presenter.
“I said, ‘I’m in a bomb shelter, why are you sending me these’?”
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
A throwaway comment on the radio yesterday said Putin's approval had risen 12% because of this. Don't know how trustworthy that is, but it doesn't augur well for any swift overthrow hopes.
Yes, all the reports I’m reading say that Russian state propaganda INSIDE Russia is working very well. They all believe this is a defensive move against nasty Ukrainian fascists. And of course people rally to the flag in any war, even one as rubbish and wicked as this (even Iraq had majority support in the UK at one point)
I am a bit blue today. After a horrible plague, a horrible war? It feels like this is a new pattern in human affairs. After decades of things generally getting better, now they are generally getting worse, and this will continue for some time
Yeah Russian bloke on r4 yesterday saying the urban young get unbiased news off internet, everyone else watches and believes official TV. Including Putin, spend s hours watching himself apparently
LOL, I'm afraid not! Thanks for the link though. With regard to how hard 21stC schizoid man is to play, apparently when they played it live in Hyde Park, all the other bands present couldn't believe it.
I've got some confidence in Zelenskiy. He could have said "retribution", here, which is already feeling like the strong temptation in some western societies.
Versailles was all about the reparations. Apart from the bit about disarming Germany so they couldn't fight another war....
And yes, the Germans could have paid it - it was less of an economic burden than they imposed on the French in 1870.
The problem was that the military elite, who'd been selling "we are about to win" up until 10 minutes before the refs whistle, switched (seamlessly) to "we were robbed".
Back to the Balkans, one thing you *don't* get in Serb Ultra Nationalist circles is "We were wining, but". They know they lost.
As usual, absolute fecking nonsense from you.
My favourite scientist, Wilhelm Rontgen refused to patent his discovery of X-rays because it was a medical gift to all the world. He was a great internationalist.
After WW1, though a Nobel prize winner and formerly a very distinguished & wealthy scientist, he was reduced to gathering nettles for nettle soup in post-War Bavaria. Many other starved to death.
There was a huge famine in Germany after WW1, which claimed half a million deaths. The country was bankrupt.
The famine was caused by the continuance of the blockade, not the Versailles treaty.
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
A throwaway comment on the radio yesterday said Putin's approval had risen 12% because of this. Don't know how trustworthy that is, but it doesn't augur well for any swift overthrow hopes.
Yes, all the reports I’m reading say that Russian state propaganda INSIDE Russia is working very well. They all believe this is a defensive move against nasty Ukrainian fascists. And of course people rally to the flag in any war, even one as rubbish and wicked as this (even Iraq had majority support in the UK at one point)
I am a bit blue today. After a horrible plague, a horrible war? It feels like this is a new pattern in human affairs. After decades of things generally getting better, now they are generally getting worse, and this will continue for some time
Yeah Russian bloke on r4 yesterday saying the urban young get unbiased news off internet, everyone else watches and believes official TV. Including Putin, spend s hours watching himself apparently
I wonder if the Republic of Ireland's policy of strict neutrality and refusal to countenance membership of NATO could have some bearing on the talk about a border poll and unification.
Yes, Northern Ireland was taken out of the EU. But are people there content to be removed from NATO?
Just a thought. Not seen it mentioned anywhere.
Indeed, the UK would only use Trident to defend UK cities or at most NATO cities, nobody else.
The Republic of Ireland is less at risk from Putin than other non NATO members nearer Russia like Georgia or Finland but nonetheless being outside of NATO's umbrella is a risk
Eh? We would not use Trident to defend UK cities, and we would CERTAINLY not use it to defend foreign cities, NATO or otherwise. You know how Trident works (or is meant to work) and what it's for - why are you making up this line?
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
Yes that is true it does give succour to those who want or need it. I am just concerned about the old echo chamber element of twitter. We can't condemn it when we disagree with its nature on the one hand, and cite it as a key element in the fight for truth on the other.
I wonder if the Republic of Ireland's policy of strict neutrality and refusal to countenance membership of NATO could have some bearing on the talk about a border poll and unification.
Yes, Northern Ireland was taken out of the EU. But are people there content to be removed from NATO?
Just a thought. Not seen it mentioned anywhere.
Indeed, the UK would only use Trident to defend UK cities or at most NATO cities, nobody else.
The Republic of Ireland is less at risk from Putin than other non NATO members nearer Russia like Georgia or Finland but nonetheless being outside of NATO's umbrella is a risk
Eh? We would not use Trident to defend UK cities, and we would CERTAINLY not use it to defend foreign cities, NATO or otherwise. You know how Trident works (or is meant to work) and what it's for - why are you making up this line?
Of course we would.
The whole point of Trident is it is the UK's defence of last resort
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
Me.
As I've said to you since you started making this ridiculous claim, Western diversity of thought and challenging ourselves to become better versions of ourselves is our greatest strength, not a weakness.
Looking at the hollowed out weak and corrupt failure that Russia is and you will see what happens when nations ossify around "strength" and "unity". It is an unmitigated disaster.
For as long as the West challenges itself more than its enemies challenge us, we will be in a very strong position.
The young toppling statues is no different to 1960s hippies and counter-culture challenging their elders preconceptions.
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
2 relevant pieces of folk wisdom
1. The race is not always to the swift not the battle to the strong, but that's where the smart money is
2. A good big un will always beat a good little un
Sadly
3. A crap big un will very often beat a good little un. The Winter War of 1940 was a very rare counter example.
I've got some confidence in Zelenskiy. He could have said "retribution", here, which is already feeling like the strong temptation in some western societies.
Versailles was all about the reparations. Apart from the bit about disarming Germany so they couldn't fight another war....
And yes, the Germans could have paid it - it was less of an economic burden than they imposed on the French in 1870.
The problem was that the military elite, who'd been selling "we are about to win" up until 10 minutes before the refs whistle, switched (seamlessly) to "we were robbed".
Back to the Balkans, one thing you *don't* get in Serb Ultra Nationalist circles is "We were wining, but". They know they lost.
But you also have to look at emotion versus rational calculation, and what led the process. The non-German powers after 1918-19 weren't particularly interested in whether Germany could sustainably pay it in the long-term or not.
Because they could.
That they didn't want to, that they'd rather put the money into rearming themselves, is an entirely different matter.
Hmm. We, Clemenceau in particular, inflicted on Germany a settlement, the perceived humiliating nature of which became a hugely effective rallying cry for that country in the run up to WWII. You may think that was a masterstroke; we will never know but my view is that it did more harm than good.
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
2 relevant pieces of folk wisdom
1. The race is not always to the swift not the battle to the strong, but that's where the smart money is
2. A good big un will always beat a good little un
Sadly
But we are discovering the big 'un was standing on a box, the little 'un in a trench.....
And that massive Russian convoy? Wouldn't exactly class that as "swift".....
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
Me.
As I've said to you since you started making this ridiculous claim, Western diversity of thought and challenging ourselves to become better versions of ourselves is our greatest strength, not a weakness.
Looking at the hollowed out weak and corrupt failure that Russia is and you will see what happens when nations ossify around "strength" and "unity". It is an unmitigated disaster.
For as long as the West challenges itself more than its enemies challenge us, we will be in a very strong position.
The young toppling statues is no different to 1960s hippies and counter-culture challenging their elders preconceptions.
"Ossify" is a great word. To make something rigid and inflexible. That's kind of what statuary does. People who think that statues = history are unknowingly plugging into a view of history as material, fixed, singular, authoritative, and elevated. Real history, good history, is narrative, dynamic, complex, democratic, and humble. Statuary is not history, it is more symbolic of power than anything. A statue reduces a complex life, sometimes a complex society, to an ossified moment, and trends towards the primitive. Statues symbolise eternity, and eternity is a lie.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
I think it's becoming ever clearer, if it wasn't already, that they've been merrily chucking money at both sides to sow division and weaken us internally and internationally.
There's a Russian term, 'maskirovka', which refers to military deception. It was used to great effect during WW2 (perhaps most notably before and during 1944's Bagration, which crushed Army Group Centre) and it seems to have been a key part of Russian doctrine ever since. Essentially you get your opponent on the back foot by confusing the hell out of them. Overload them with info, confuse them, baffle them, tie them in knots. So they can't discern your real intentions. The Allies did something similar before D-Day with Patton's phantom army group and the like.
They just modernised it and moved it to twitter and political and pressure group funding. We've been tied in knots, in endless internal wrangling over myriad issues and causes. So has the US. I don't know enough about the gilets jaune thing in France but that looks like a potential candidate too.
We've been collectively played and our institutions and politicians, across the political spectrum are complicit, and tainted.
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
A throwaway comment on the radio yesterday said Putin's approval had risen 12% because of this. Don't know how trustworthy that is, but it doesn't augur well for any swift overthrow hopes.
Yes, all the reports I’m reading say that Russian state propaganda INSIDE Russia is working very well. They all believe this is a defensive move against nasty Ukrainian fascists. And of course people rally to the flag in any war, even one as rubbish and wicked as this (even Iraq had majority support in the UK at one point)
I am a bit blue today. After a horrible plague, a horrible war? It feels like this is a new pattern in human affairs. After decades of things generally getting better, now they are generally getting worse, and this will continue for some time
I'm keeping abrest of Russian propaganda, and it's probably working. The truth is that there are people in the east of Ukraine sympathetic to Russia. How many there are is up for debate, but the Russian reporters are finding them.
There has been a debate raging among the membership of a global, although German-based, non-profit foundation of which I'm an (mostly inactive) member on whether or not to publicly make a statement of support for Ukraine. A Russian member, living in Russia, whom I've worked with in the past and considered sane (although we've never discussed politics) posted a rant about Western intereference in Ukraine, the West-sponsored coup that toppled the democratically elected pro-Russian leader, NATO threatening Russia etc etc. Even he stated that Ukraine's government is not Nazi, but described them as extremists oppressing the Russian peoples of the East. To be clear, I think most/all of what he posted is complete nuts, but I haven't previously thought him to be nuts, so I assume the propaganda there, not just now but over the last decade or so since Russian interference in Ukraine, has been quite effective.
The propaganda is all pervasive - the last independent TV station was shut down recently.
Here's a thread describing what they're pushing to the kids.
About to start: the Russian education ministry's Russia-wide "online lesson" about "why the liberation mission in Ukraine was necessary." The version I'm watching is on the Ministry's page on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook clone. Not sure if it's also streaming elsewhere. https://twitter.com/ichbinilya/status/1499308474563534849
I wonder if the Republic of Ireland's policy of strict neutrality and refusal to countenance membership of NATO could have some bearing on the talk about a border poll and unification.
Yes, Northern Ireland was taken out of the EU. But are people there content to be removed from NATO?
Just a thought. Not seen it mentioned anywhere.
Indeed, the UK would only use Trident to defend UK cities or at most NATO cities, nobody else.
The Republic of Ireland is less at risk from Putin than other non NATO members nearer Russia like Georgia or Finland but nonetheless being outside of NATO's umbrella is a risk
Eh? We would not use Trident to defend UK cities, and we would CERTAINLY not use it to defend foreign cities, NATO or otherwise. You know how Trident works (or is meant to work) and what it's for - why are you making up this line?
Of course we would.
The whole point of Trident is it is the UK's defence of last resort
Exactly. It's a revenge weapon after someone has nuked us, to make them refrain from nuking us. It doesn't defend against conventional invasion - we wouldn't nuke someone to prevent them from invading us, because then they'd nuke us. And being occupied is preferable to being nuked. Unless we were being invaded by a non nuclear power I suppose. And we would DEFINITELY not nuke anyone for invading someone else, that would be stark staring mad.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
Me.
As I've said to you since you started making this ridiculous claim, Western diversity of thought and challenging ourselves to become better versions of ourselves is our greatest strength, not a weakness.
Looking at the hollowed out weak and corrupt failure that Russia is and you will see what happens when nations ossify around "strength" and "unity". It is an unmitigated disaster.
For as long as the West challenges itself more than its enemies challenge us, we will be in a very strong position.
The young toppling statues is no different to 1960s hippies and counter-culture challenging their elders preconceptions.
Yes, but with all due respect you’re a cretin
Ooh sick burn.
If you are looking at this conflict and thinking "we need to be more like Russia, that will make us strong" then it'd be an insult to cretins to compare them to you.
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
Yes; hangovers aren't great for Leon's clarity of thought (such as it is to begin with).
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic West may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too, as have the chances of either far left or far right making progress both here and elsewhere, such as the coming French election. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
We may even, eventually, get rid of the clown, once people turn their minds back to 'what was all that for?'.
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
Yes that is true it does give succour to those who want or need it. I am just concerned about the old echo chamber element of twitter. We can't condemn it when we disagree with its nature on the one hand, and cite it as a key element in the fight for truth on the other.
We can't? Surely, we disagree with what it claims is the truth?
I have to confess that I struggled with jazz. Have some sympathy there. Then discovered jazz fusion (later Miles Davis etc)...and jazz inflected rock such as elements of King Crimson. There are riches there.
When I was in the 6th form, a friend came into school one day with an album that had just been released called "In the court of the Crimson King". He lent it to me saying how amazing it was. The next day I gave it him back and told him I thought it was rubbish. He asked me how many times I had listened to it, and I said, "Once was enough!"
He gave it me back and told me to listen to it at least twice more. The first time I listened to it that evening, I still didn't get it. But I did what he said and played it again, and this time I thought there was something in it. So I played it a third time and decided it was brilliant. I still think so - one of the greatest albums of all time. But I've always been grateful to Brian for persuading me to persist with it.
When my dad, who wasn't into rock but was a big jazz fan, heard me playing it, he got into it too.
Sad that Ian McDonald died recently. Robert Fripp's lockdown videos with his wife were fun though.
The King Crimson catalogue is pretty extraordinary. Fripp, although by all accounts, a very difficult and exacting bandmaster, drove the various formations into all sorts of areas. All the albums bear replaying although the three from the 80s are quite poppy and song-based, due to Adrian Belews' input (fresh from Talking Heads and working with Bowie).
BTW, "21st Century Schizoid Man" could have been written for Vlad.
Cat's foot iron claw/ Neuro-surgeons scream for more/ At paranoia's poison door./ 21st century schizoid man.
Blood rack barbed wire/ Politicians' funeral pyre/ Innocents raped with napalm fire/ 21st century schizoid man.
Death seed blind man's greed/ Poets' starving children bleed/ Nothing he's got he really needs/ 21st century schizoid man.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
I think it's becoming ever clearer, if it wasn't already, that they've been merrily chucking money at both sides to sow division and weaken us internally and internationally.
There's a Russian term, 'maskirovka', which refers to military deception. It was used to great effect during WW2 (perhaps most notably before and during 1944's Bagration, which crushed Army Group Centre) and it seems to have been a key part of Russian doctrine ever since. Essentially you get your opponent on the back foot by confusing the hell out of them. Overload them with info, confuse them, baffle them, tie them in knots. So they can't discern your real intentions. The Allies did something similar before D-Day with Patton's phantom army group and the like.
They just modernised it and moved it to twitter and political and pressure group funding. We've been tied in knots, in endless internal wrangling over myriad issues and causes. So has the US. I don't know enough about the gilets jaune thing in France but that looks like a potential candidate too.
We've been collectively played and our institutions and politicians, across the political spectrum are complicit, and tainted.
During the Cold War, the KGB spent lots of time and money funding every "counter" organisation they could find - even ones which were Trotskyite or even quite right wing. Quite of few of the organisations didn't know this - one technique was to buy huge quantities of the newspapers such outfits printed.
Another was a wave of small donations. In quite a few cases, they simply corrupted the treasurers of the organisations - no-one questions if the bank is full...
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
A throwaway comment on the radio yesterday said Putin's approval had risen 12% because of this. Don't know how trustworthy that is, but it doesn't augur well for any swift overthrow hopes.
Yes, all the reports I’m reading say that Russian state propaganda INSIDE Russia is working very well. They all believe this is a defensive move against nasty Ukrainian fascists. And of course people rally to the flag in any war, even one as rubbish and wicked as this (even Iraq had majority support in the UK at one point)
I am a bit blue today. After a horrible plague, a horrible war? It feels like this is a new pattern in human affairs. After decades of things generally getting better, now they are generally getting worse, and this will continue for some time
Yeah Russian bloke on r4 yesterday saying the urban young get unbiased news off internet, everyone else watches and believes official TV. Including Putin, spend s hours watching himself apparently
You can get unbiased news on the Internet?
Lol!
Only on PB, Dixie.
Well you >can< get unbiased news, though it takes a great deal of effort.
Difference is that it's open to every bias. State propaganda TV, not so much.
I've got some confidence in Zelenskiy. He could have said "retribution", here, which is already feeling like the strong temptation in some western societies.
Versailles was all about the reparations. Apart from the bit about disarming Germany so they couldn't fight another war....
And yes, the Germans could have paid it - it was less of an economic burden than they imposed on the French in 1870.
The problem was that the military elite, who'd been selling "we are about to win" up until 10 minutes before the refs whistle, switched (seamlessly) to "we were robbed".
Back to the Balkans, one thing you *don't* get in Serb Ultra Nationalist circles is "We were wining, but". They know they lost.
But you also have to look at emotion versus rational calculation, and what led the process. The non-German powers after 1918-19 weren't particularly interested in whether Germany could sustainably pay it in the long-term or not.
Because they could.
That they didn't want to, that they'd rather put the money into rearming themselves, is an entirely different matter.
Hmm. We, Clemenceau in particular, inflicted on Germany a settlement, the perceived humiliating nature of which became a hugely effective rallying cry for that country in the run up to WWII. You may think that was a masterstroke; we will never know but my view is that it did more harm than good.
My view is that there would have been a rallying either way because the issue is simpler: Germans didn't accept that they'd lost and they would lose again. If you think you've been 'robbed' or 'betrayed' and another push will see you over the line, then why accept the last result however humiliating or not it is?
Even without Versailles, I suspect WWII would still have happened, as people simply were not willing to accept peace at that stage.
Its worth remembering that some of the Axis Powers in WWII were Allied Powers in WWI - Italy and Japan were victors in World War I so didn't join the Axis in WWII because they were humiliated by Versailles.
I've got some confidence in Zelenskiy. He could have said "retribution", here, which is already feeling like the strong temptation in some western societies.
Versailles was all about the reparations. Apart from the bit about disarming Germany so they couldn't fight another war....
And yes, the Germans could have paid it - it was less of an economic burden than they imposed on the French in 1870.
The problem was that the military elite, who'd been selling "we are about to win" up until 10 minutes before the refs whistle, switched (seamlessly) to "we were robbed".
Back to the Balkans, one thing you *don't* get in Serb Ultra Nationalist circles is "We were wining, but". They know they lost.
But you also have to look at emotion versus rational calculation, and what led the process. The non-German powers after 1918-19 weren't particularly interested in whether Germany could sustainably pay it in the long-term or not.
They actually did quite a few calculations on what the Germans could pay. Which is why the final numbers were much lower than the French originally demanded, for example.
The priorites were political, cultural and emotional, though, understood as entirely moral. And over time these simply had political, cultural and emotional effects.
I wonder if the Republic of Ireland's policy of strict neutrality and refusal to countenance membership of NATO could have some bearing on the talk about a border poll and unification.
Yes, Northern Ireland was taken out of the EU. But are people there content to be removed from NATO?
Just a thought. Not seen it mentioned anywhere.
Indeed, the UK would only use Trident to defend UK cities or at most NATO cities, nobody else.
The Republic of Ireland is less at risk from Putin than other non NATO members nearer Russia like Georgia or Finland but nonetheless being outside of NATO's umbrella is a risk
Eh? We would not use Trident to defend UK cities, and we would CERTAINLY not use it to defend foreign cities, NATO or otherwise. You know how Trident works (or is meant to work) and what it's for - why are you making up this line?
Of course we would.
The whole point of Trident is it is the UK's defence of last resort
Exactly. It's a revenge weapon after someone has nuked us, to make them refrain from nuking us. It doesn't defend against conventional invasion - we wouldn't nuke someone to prevent them from invading us, because then they'd nuke us. And being occupied is preferable to being nuked. Unless we were being invaded by a non nuclear power I suppose. And we would DEFINITELY not nuke anyone for invading someone else, that would be stark staring mad.
Not necessarily.
If the Russians had invaded and captured the whole of continental Europe (let us assume the French President had decided not to use his nukes) the UK PM would have a choice.
He could threaten to launch a Trident nuclear missile on Moscow if the Russians invaded the UK in the hope they would think twice. Or he could stick to using conventional forces but with the likely outcome that the UK would fall to the Russians within a few weeks (unless we could win a Battle of Britain 2)
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
Yes that is true it does give succour to those who want or need it. I am just concerned about the old echo chamber element of twitter. We can't condemn it when we disagree with its nature on the one hand, and cite it as a key element in the fight for truth on the other.
We can't? Surely, we disagree with what it claims is the truth?
We certainly do. But that brings me back to the point of taking a snapshot of twitter on the Russian invasion and making conclusive statements as a result. A photo of a disabled tank (or beat up armoured column) in the context of the overall war tells us nothing. Certainly not enough to say - you see, Russia is suffering/Ukraine is doing this or that... Which many on here have been doing.
For sure it might be useful for morale purposes but it is misleading because we have no idea what is actually happening.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
I think it's becoming ever clearer, if it wasn't already, that they've been merrily chucking money at both sides to sow division and weaken us internally and internationally.
There's a Russian term, 'maskirovka', which refers to military deception. It was used to great effect during WW2 (perhaps most notably before and during 1944's Bagration, which crushed Army Group Centre) and it seems to have been a key part of Russian doctrine ever since. Essentially you get your opponent on the back foot by confusing the hell out of them. Overload them with info, confuse them, baffle them, tie them in knots. So they can't discern your real intentions. The Allies did something similar before D-Day with Patton's phantom army group and the like.
They just modernised it and moved it to twitter and political and pressure group funding. We've been tied in knots, in endless internal wrangling over myriad issues and causes. So has the US. I don't know enough about the gilets jaune thing in France but that looks like a potential candidate too.
We've been collectively played and our institutions and politicians, across the political spectrum are complicit, and tainted.
Yes. And in the noble interests of transparency and truth (all I ever seek) it is clear that Russian & Chinese bots and trolls stoked Brexit, and the Leave campaign, and they infiltrated YES in indyref (see the lingering pro-Putinism from Farage and NATO-hating Scot Nats)
But their greatest victory has been Wokeness. It is not a sign of our “diversity and maturity” that we have violent mobs pulling down statues, or insane race riots across American cities sending murder rates spiralling. It is a sign of western societies being undermined by clever enemies, knowing exactly which buttons to push - white guilt and race hate. Etc
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
Yes; hangovers aren't great for Leon's clarity of thought (such as it is to begin with).
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic west may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
I don't really understand what 'regime change' means in this context. Putin has made constitutional changes in Russia to ensure that he can stay in power forever etc., so those would be reversed (along with his own departure), but other than that, what regime change are we talking about? Dissolving the Russian parliament? Dispanding its army and security services? Installing a permanent pro-Western Government whether or not that's what the Russian electorate actually wants? What?
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
Me.
As I've said to you since you started making this ridiculous claim, Western diversity of thought and challenging ourselves to become better versions of ourselves is our greatest strength, not a weakness.
Looking at the hollowed out weak and corrupt failure that Russia is and you will see what happens when nations ossify around "strength" and "unity". It is an unmitigated disaster.
For as long as the West challenges itself more than its enemies challenge us, we will be in a very strong position.
The young toppling statues is no different to 1960s hippies and counter-culture challenging their elders preconceptions.
This is true up to a point, and I agree that the strength of the west is through its continuous reinvention. But that doesn't mean that all change is good. For example, trying to shut down debate by outlawing various opinions is counter productive and undermines the whole system of continuous reinvention. We saw a lot of that over the past 2 years.
I've got some confidence in Zelenskiy. He could have said "retribution", here, which is already feeling like the strong temptation in some western societies.
Versailles was all about the reparations. Apart from the bit about disarming Germany so they couldn't fight another war....
And yes, the Germans could have paid it - it was less of an economic burden than they imposed on the French in 1870.
The problem was that the military elite, who'd been selling "we are about to win" up until 10 minutes before the refs whistle, switched (seamlessly) to "we were robbed".
Back to the Balkans, one thing you *don't* get in Serb Ultra Nationalist circles is "We were wining, but". They know they lost.
But you also have to look at emotion versus rational calculation, and what led the process. The non-German powers after 1918-19 weren't particularly interested in whether Germany could sustainably pay it in the long-term or not.
Because they could.
That they didn't want to, that they'd rather put the money into rearming themselves, is an entirely different matter.
Hmm. We, Clemenceau in particular, inflicted on Germany a settlement, the perceived humiliating nature of which became a hugely effective rallying cry for that country in the run up to WWII. You may think that was a masterstroke; we will never know but my view is that it did more harm than good.
My view is that there would have been a rallying either way because the issue is simpler: Germans didn't accept that they'd lost and they would lose again. If you think you've been 'robbed' or 'betrayed' and another push will see you over the line, then why accept the last result however humiliating or not it is?
Even without Versailles, I suspect WWII would still have happened, as people simply were not willing to accept peace at that stage.
Its worth remembering that some of the Axis Powers in WWII were Allied Powers in WWI - Italy and Japan were victors in World War I so didn't join the Axis in WWII because they were humiliated by Versailles.
It was the economic trauma of the late 20s/early 30s that opened the door to the extremists.
Also worth remembering that fascism was born in Italy, because of the financial and emotional trauma of its WWI experience, which was at least as bad as the north European trenches but far less well known.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
I think it's becoming ever clearer, if it wasn't already, that they've been merrily chucking money at both sides to sow division and weaken us internally and internationally.
There's a Russian term, 'maskirovka', which refers to military deception. It was used to great effect during WW2 (perhaps most notably before and during 1944's Bagration, which crushed Army Group Centre) and it seems to have been a key part of Russian doctrine ever since. Essentially you get your opponent on the back foot by confusing the hell out of them. Overload them with info, confuse them, baffle them, tie them in knots. So they can't discern your real intentions. The Allies did something similar before D-Day with Patton's phantom army group and the like.
They just modernised it and moved it to twitter and political and pressure group funding. We've been tied in knots, in endless internal wrangling over myriad issues and causes. So has the US. I don't know enough about the gilets jaune thing in France but that looks like a potential candidate too.
We've been collectively played and our institutions and politicians, across the political spectrum are complicit, and tainted.
Yes. And in the noble interests of transparency and truth (all I ever seek) it is clear that Russian & Chinese bots and trolls stoked Brexit, and the Leave campaign, and they infiltrated YES in indyref (see the lingering pro-Putinism from Farage and NATO-hating Scot Nats)
But their greatest victory has been Wokeness. It is not a sign of our “diversity and maturity” that we have violent mobs pulling down statues, or insane race riots across American cities sending murder rates spiralling. It is a sign of western societies being undermined by clever enemies, knowing exactly which buttons to push - white guilt and race hate. Etc
And yet the West is stronger than ever, while Russia is humilating itself on a global stage.
You're just a doddery old fart in your thinking, past versions of you would be saying counterculture and hippies in the 60s were a sign of the decadent west and weak versus the USSR. Yet the West won the Cold War and the West is turning the tables on Russia today.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
Me.
As I've said to you since you started making this ridiculous claim, Western diversity of thought and challenging ourselves to become better versions of ourselves is our greatest strength, not a weakness.
Looking at the hollowed out weak and corrupt failure that Russia is and you will see what happens when nations ossify around "strength" and "unity". It is an unmitigated disaster.
For as long as the West challenges itself more than its enemies challenge us, we will be in a very strong position.
The young toppling statues is no different to 1960s hippies and counter-culture challenging their elders preconceptions.
This is true up to a point, and I agree that the strength of the west is through its continuous reinvention. But that doesn't mean that all change is good. For example, trying to shut down debate by outlawing various opinions is counter productive and undermines the whole system. We saw a lot of that over the past 2 years.
BR is best ignored when he gets into his trendy vicar routine. Just let him be 'down wiv da kidz' for a while, makes him feel young.
Interesting little thread about the impact of an inadequate / corrupt maintenance regime for military trucks on their performance in mud in the Rasputitsa mud season.
This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir-S1 wheeled gun-missile system's right rear pair of tires below & the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
Yes; hangovers aren't great for Leon's clarity of thought (such as it is to begin with).
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic west may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
I don't really understand what 'regime change' means in this context. Putin has made constitutional changes in Russia to ensure that he can stay in power forever etc., so those would be reversed (along with his own departure), but other than that, what regime change are we talking about? Dissolving the Russian parliament? Dispanding its army and security services? Installing a permanent pro-Western Government whether or not that's what the Russian electorate actually wants? What?
Dictators that f**k their countries up big time tend to be exited from office, regardless of the constitutional small print.
Here's one, do we allow able bodied men between the ages of 18 - 60 from Ukraine into the country ? Zelensky himself has specifically made it a crime to leave the country for men between these ages with the general call to arms.
I wonder if the Republic of Ireland's policy of strict neutrality and refusal to countenance membership of NATO could have some bearing on the talk about a border poll and unification.
Yes, Northern Ireland was taken out of the EU. But are people there content to be removed from NATO?
Just a thought. Not seen it mentioned anywhere.
Indeed, the UK would only use Trident to defend UK cities or at most NATO cities, nobody else.
The Republic of Ireland is less at risk from Putin than other non NATO members nearer Russia like Georgia or Finland but nonetheless being outside of NATO's umbrella is a risk
Eh? We would not use Trident to defend UK cities, and we would CERTAINLY not use it to defend foreign cities, NATO or otherwise. You know how Trident works (or is meant to work) and what it's for - why are you making up this line?
Of course we would.
The whole point of Trident is it is the UK's defence of last resort
Exactly. It's a revenge weapon after someone has nuked us, to make them refrain from nuking us. It doesn't defend against conventional invasion - we wouldn't nuke someone to prevent them from invading us, because then they'd nuke us. And being occupied is preferable to being nuked. Unless we were being invaded by a non nuclear power I suppose. And we would DEFINITELY not nuke anyone for invading someone else, that would be stark staring mad.
Not necessarily.
If the Russians had invaded and captured the whole of continental Europe (let us assume the French President had decided not to use his nukes) the UK PM would have a choice.
He could threaten to launch a Trident nuclear missile on Moscow if the Russians invaded the UK in the hope they would think twice. Or he could stick to using conventional forces but with the likely outcome that the UK would fall to the Russians within a few weeks (unless we could win a Battle of Britain 2)
You seem to be able to analyse almost any scenario, other than a realistic one.
On he subject of useful work for our forthcoming Ukranian friends has anyone considered training them up as tube drivers ? Helps Londoners, the treasury and the Ukranians. Edit: Obviously a "scheme" which I'm sure some would take up...
Станьте водієм труби, пропонується повне навчання Станьте водителем метро, предлагается полное обучение
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
Yes that is true it does give succour to those who want or need it. I am just concerned about the old echo chamber element of twitter. We can't condemn it when we disagree with its nature on the one hand, and cite it as a key element in the fight for truth on the other.
We can't? Surely, we disagree with what it claims is the truth?
We certainly do. But that brings me back to the point of taking a snapshot of twitter on the Russian invasion and making conclusive statements as a result. A photo of a disabled tank (or beat up armoured column) in the context of the overall war tells us nothing. Certainly not enough to say - you see, Russia is suffering/Ukraine is doing this or that... Which many on here have been doing.
For sure it might be useful for morale purposes but it is misleading because we have no idea what is actually happening.
We have a far better idea than we did with past conflicts, when all we had to go on were the reports of the embeds. When commercial satellites operators can post details of troop movements, you can't hide armies of hundreds of thousands. Similarly, there is a cacophony of voices online from Ukraine; if a town has fallen, or been successfully defended, it's news online sometimes hours before mainstream media reports.
We might have a very cloudy, or misguided view of what's happening, but to say we have no idea is just wrong.
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
Yes; hangovers aren't great for Leon's clarity of thought (such as it is to begin with).
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic west may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
I don't really understand what 'regime change' means in this context. Putin has made constitutional changes in Russia to ensure that he can stay in power forever etc., so those would be reversed (along with his own departure), but other than that, what regime change are we talking about? Dissolving the Russian parliament? Dispanding its army and security services? Installing a permanent pro-Western Government whether or not that's what the Russian electorate actually wants? What?
Dictators that f**k their countries up big time tend to be exited from office, regardless of the constitutional small print.
That tells me nothing about what you mean by regime change.
I've got some confidence in Zelenskiy. He could have said "retribution", here, which is already feeling like the strong temptation in some western societies.
Versailles was all about the reparations. Apart from the bit about disarming Germany so they couldn't fight another war....
And yes, the Germans could have paid it - it was less of an economic burden than they imposed on the French in 1870.
The problem was that the military elite, who'd been selling "we are about to win" up until 10 minutes before the refs whistle, switched (seamlessly) to "we were robbed".
Back to the Balkans, one thing you *don't* get in Serb Ultra Nationalist circles is "We were wining, but". They know they lost.
But you also have to look at emotion versus rational calculation, and what led the process. The non-German powers after 1918-19 weren't particularly interested in whether Germany could sustainably pay it in the long-term or not.
They actually did quite a few calculations on what the Germans could pay. Which is why the final numbers were much lower than the French originally demanded, for example.
The priorites were political, cultural and emotional, though, understood as entirely moral. And over time these simply had political, cultural and emotional effects.
Indeed. But the problem was not so much that Versailles crippled the German economy, as the gap of perception - the Allies saw that Germany had lost. The Germans saw that they had been cheated at the peace table.
I once read an account of young chap from Germany who, in the early 20s visited the Devastated Zone inside France - since the war had been nearly entirely fought in France and Belgium there was no equivalent in Germany. His realisation that this was what Versailles was about was interesting. Not that he agreed, but he understood why the French (and British) had acted the way they did.
I have to confess that I struggled with jazz. Have some sympathy there. Then discovered jazz fusion (later Miles Davis etc)...and jazz inflected rock such as elements of King Crimson. There are riches there.
When I was in the 6th form, a friend came into school one day with an album that had just been released called "In the court of the Crimson King". He lent it to me saying how amazing it was. The next day I gave it him back and told him I thought it was rubbish. He asked me how many times I had listened to it, and I said, "Once was enough!"
He gave it me back and told me to listen to it at least twice more. The first time I listened to it that evening, I still didn't get it. But I did what he said and played it again, and this time I thought there was something in it. So I played it a third time and decided it was brilliant. I still think so - one of the greatest albums of all time. But I've always been grateful to Brian for persuading me to persist with it.
When my dad, who wasn't into rock but was a big jazz fan, heard me playing it, he got into it too.
Sad that Ian McDonald died recently. Robert Fripp's lockdown videos with his wife were fun though.
The King Crimson catalogue is pretty extraordinary. Fripp, although by all accounts, a very difficult and exacting bandmaster, drove the various formations into all sorts of areas. All the albums bear replaying although the three from the 80s are quite poppy and song-based, due to Adrian Belews' input (fresh from Talking Heads and working with Bowie).
BTW, "21st Century Schizoid Man" could have been written for Vlad.
Cat's foot iron claw/ Neuro-surgeons scream for more/ At paranoia's poison door./ 21st century schizoid man.
Blood rack barbed wire/ Politicians' funeral pyre/ Innocents raped with napalm fire/ 21st century schizoid man.
Death seed blind man's greed/ Poets' starving children bleed/ Nothing he's got he really needs/ 21st century schizoid man.
Have you ever tried Henry Cow?
Bittern Storm Over Ulm is at the very edge of listenable, and yet has moments of utter genius
It also has the best title of any album ever, culled from a news report about strange bird behaviour in Germany, clipped by Charles Fort (later made famous by the Fortean Times)
Usual ill-informed doom porn from @Leon again I see. Just ruins PB from someone who is otherwise an interesting and entertaining poster. He’s segued seamlessly from ramping omicron to pontificating on the Ukraine crisis.
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
2 relevant pieces of folk wisdom
1. The race is not always to the swift not the battle to the strong, but that's where the smart money is
2. A good big un will always beat a good little un
Sadly
3. A crap big un will very often beat a good little un. The Winter War of 1940 was a very rare counter example.
Didn't the Russians win eventually? Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan twice are better examples.
Interesting little thread about the impact of an inadequate / corrupt maintenance regime for military trucks on their performance in mud in the Rasputitsa mud season.
This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir-S1 wheeled gun-missile system's right rear pair of tires below & the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.
All true, as anyone knows who has a trailer or caravan which is unused for extended periods - leave them out in the sun and the rubber of the tyres perishes. How funny if something as basic as this is their downfall.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
Me.
As I've said to you since you started making this ridiculous claim, Western diversity of thought and challenging ourselves to become better versions of ourselves is our greatest strength, not a weakness.
Looking at the hollowed out weak and corrupt failure that Russia is and you will see what happens when nations ossify around "strength" and "unity". It is an unmitigated disaster.
For as long as the West challenges itself more than its enemies challenge us, we will be in a very strong position.
The young toppling statues is no different to 1960s hippies and counter-culture challenging their elders preconceptions.
"Ossify" is a great word. To make something rigid and inflexible. That's kind of what statuary does. People who think that statues = history are unknowingly plugging into a view of history as material, fixed, singular, authoritative, and elevated. Real history, good history, is narrative, dynamic, complex, democratic, and humble. Statuary is not history, it is more symbolic of power than anything. A statue reduces a complex life, sometimes a complex society, to an ossified moment, and trends towards the primitive. Statues symbolise eternity, and eternity is a lie.
Tying two themes together. Here is Shelley's Ozymandias.
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
Yes; hangovers aren't great for Leon's clarity of thought (such as it is to begin with).
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic west may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
I don't really understand what 'regime change' means in this context. Putin has made constitutional changes in Russia to ensure that he can stay in power forever etc., so those would be reversed (along with his own departure), but other than that, what regime change are we talking about? Dissolving the Russian parliament? Dispanding its army and security services? Installing a permanent pro-Western Government whether or not that's what the Russian electorate actually wants? What?
Dictators that f**k their countries up big time tend to be exited from office, regardless of the constitutional small print.
That tells me nothing about what you mean by regime change.
Moving from totalitarian to non-totalitarian would be one example.
Russia is quite likely to undergo something of a shock to its collective consciousness if sanctions fully take hold. Pretending that this isn't them against half the world, with powerful former allies standing on the sidelines, is going to be quite difficult. And there's probably quite a significant part of the population which gets its news form the west by various means and doesn't believe state propaganda.
Either it gets a great deal more repressive, or something cracks.
I have to confess that I struggled with jazz. Have some sympathy there. Then discovered jazz fusion (later Miles Davis etc)...and jazz inflected rock such as elements of King Crimson. There are riches there.
When I was in the 6th form, a friend came into school one day with an album that had just been released called "In the court of the Crimson King". He lent it to me saying how amazing it was. The next day I gave it him back and told him I thought it was rubbish. He asked me how many times I had listened to it, and I said, "Once was enough!"
He gave it me back and told me to listen to it at least twice more. The first time I listened to it that evening, I still didn't get it. But I did what he said and played it again, and this time I thought there was something in it. So I played it a third time and decided it was brilliant. I still think so - one of the greatest albums of all time. But I've always been grateful to Brian for persuading me to persist with it.
When my dad, who wasn't into rock but was a big jazz fan, heard me playing it, he got into it too.
Sad that Ian McDonald died recently. Robert Fripp's lockdown videos with his wife were fun though.
The King Crimson catalogue is pretty extraordinary. Fripp, although by all accounts, a very difficult and exacting bandmaster, drove the various formations into all sorts of areas. All the albums bear replaying although the three from the 80s are quite poppy and song-based, due to Adrian Belews' input (fresh from Talking Heads and working with Bowie).
BTW, "21st Century Schizoid Man" could have been written for Vlad.
Cat's foot iron claw/ Neuro-surgeons scream for more/ At paranoia's poison door./ 21st century schizoid man.
Blood rack barbed wire/ Politicians' funeral pyre/ Innocents raped with napalm fire/ 21st century schizoid man.
Death seed blind man's greed/ Poets' starving children bleed/ Nothing he's got he really needs/ 21st century schizoid man.
Have you ever tried Henry Cow?
Bittern Storm Over Ulm is at the very edge of listenable, and yet has moments of utter genius
It also has the best title of any album ever, culled from a news report about strange bird behaviour in Germany, clipped by Charles Fort (later made famous by the Fortean Times)
Henry Cow were a very interesting band. Influenced by the avant-garde, jazz, classical music and psychedelia. Later on , they influenced the German band Magma and various people in France.
I wonder if the Republic of Ireland's policy of strict neutrality and refusal to countenance membership of NATO could have some bearing on the talk about a border poll and unification.
Yes, Northern Ireland was taken out of the EU. But are people there content to be removed from NATO?
Just a thought. Not seen it mentioned anywhere.
Indeed, the UK would only use Trident to defend UK cities or at most NATO cities, nobody else.
The Republic of Ireland is less at risk from Putin than other non NATO members nearer Russia like Georgia or Finland but nonetheless being outside of NATO's umbrella is a risk
Eh? We would not use Trident to defend UK cities, and we would CERTAINLY not use it to defend foreign cities, NATO or otherwise. You know how Trident works (or is meant to work) and what it's for - why are you making up this line?
Of course we would.
The whole point of Trident is it is the UK's defence of last resort
Exactly. It's a revenge weapon after someone has nuked us, to make them refrain from nuking us. It doesn't defend against conventional invasion - we wouldn't nuke someone to prevent them from invading us, because then they'd nuke us. And being occupied is preferable to being nuked. Unless we were being invaded by a non nuclear power I suppose. And we would DEFINITELY not nuke anyone for invading someone else, that would be stark staring mad.
Not necessarily.
If the Russians had invaded and captured the whole of continental Europe (let us assume the French President had decided not to use his nukes) the UK PM would have a choice.
He could threaten to launch a Trident nuclear missile on Moscow if the Russians invaded the UK in the hope they would think twice. Or he could stick to using conventional forces but with the likely outcome that the UK would fall to the Russians within a few weeks (unless we could win a Battle of Britain 2)
But it would be a bluff, because if we nuked Moscow, they could nuke London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Bath, and on the positive side, Milton Keynes. In short, turn our whole island into a nuclear wasteland. So no British Government would risk that, the Russians would know it, and they would continue their conventional invasion unimpeded.
A range of tactical nukes however, could be a different story, fitted to various warheads and delivered by conventional (and non conventional) means. But that's not Trident, Trident is a weapon of last resort.
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
Yes that is true it does give succour to those who want or need it. I am just concerned about the old echo chamber element of twitter. We can't condemn it when we disagree with its nature on the one hand, and cite it as a key element in the fight for truth on the other.
We can't? Surely, we disagree with what it claims is the truth?
We certainly do. But that brings me back to the point of taking a snapshot of twitter on the Russian invasion and making conclusive statements as a result. A photo of a disabled tank (or beat up armoured column) in the context of the overall war tells us nothing. Certainly not enough to say - you see, Russia is suffering/Ukraine is doing this or that... Which many on here have been doing.
For sure it might be useful for morale purposes but it is misleading because we have no idea what is actually happening.
We have a far better idea than we did with past conflicts, when all we had to go on were the reports of the embeds. When commercial satellites operators can post details of troop movements, you can't hide armies of hundreds of thousands. Similarly, there is a cacophony of voices online from Ukraine; if a town has fallen, or been successfully defended, it's news online sometimes hours before mainstream media reports.
We might have a very cloudy, or misguided view of what's happening, but to say we have no idea is just wrong.
The problem is assessing the magnitude of the individual events vs the overall war.
For example, below in this thread, we have a description of a single abandoned, stuck vehicle. Abandoned because tire maintenance wasn't done.
But how representative of Russian military vehicles is that? Is it just one that got forgotten when doing maintenance or is it every vehicle or something in between?
Which given us a range of possible outcomes from "not much" to "the whole Russian transport system is fucked"
Usual ill-informed doom porn from @Leon again I see. Just ruins PB from someone who is otherwise an interesting and entertaining poster. He’s segued seamlessly from ramping omicron to pontificating on the Ukraine crisis.
Sad.
Time for another break from PB.
It would be an insult to the comparatively robust constitution of the average snowflake to call you a “snowflake”
Interesting little thread about the impact of an inadequate / corrupt maintenance regime for military trucks on their performance in mud in the Rasputitsa mud season.
This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir-S1 wheeled gun-missile system's right rear pair of tires below & the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.
I like the tyre nerd who claims to have identified the tyres.
Here's one, do we allow able bodied men between the ages of 18 - 60 from Ukraine into the country ? Zelensky himself has specifically made it a crime to leave the country for men between these ages with the general call to arms.
People want to help refugees, but what the Ukrainians really need help with is fighting Russia. But this is a war that they cannot actually win, and the more they try, the more that people will die. It is just a vicious circle of hopelessness.
I have to confess that I struggled with jazz. Have some sympathy there. Then discovered jazz fusion (later Miles Davis etc)...and jazz inflected rock such as elements of King Crimson. There are riches there.
When I was in the 6th form, a friend came into school one day with an album that had just been released called "In the court of the Crimson King". He lent it to me saying how amazing it was. The next day I gave it him back and told him I thought it was rubbish. He asked me how many times I had listened to it, and I said, "Once was enough!"
He gave it me back and told me to listen to it at least twice more. The first time I listened to it that evening, I still didn't get it. But I did what he said and played it again, and this time I thought there was something in it. So I played it a third time and decided it was brilliant. I still think so - one of the greatest albums of all time. But I've always been grateful to Brian for persuading me to persist with it.
When my dad, who wasn't into rock but was a big jazz fan, heard me playing it, he got into it too.
Sad that Ian McDonald died recently. Robert Fripp's lockdown videos with his wife were fun though.
The King Crimson catalogue is pretty extraordinary. Fripp, although by all accounts, a very difficult and exacting bandmaster, drove the various formations into all sorts of areas. All the albums bear replaying although the three from the 80s are quite poppy and song-based, due to Adrian Belews' input (fresh from Talking Heads and working with Bowie).
BTW, "21st Century Schizoid Man" could have been written for Vlad.
Cat's foot iron claw/ Neuro-surgeons scream for more/ At paranoia's poison door./ 21st century schizoid man.
Blood rack barbed wire/ Politicians' funeral pyre/ Innocents raped with napalm fire/ 21st century schizoid man.
Death seed blind man's greed/ Poets' starving children bleed/ Nothing he's got he really needs/ 21st century schizoid man.
Have you ever tried Henry Cow?
Bittern Storm Over Ulm is at the very edge of listenable, and yet has moments of utter genius
It also has the best title of any album ever, culled from a news report about strange bird behaviour in Germany, clipped by Charles Fort (later made famous by the Fortean Times)
I haven't but will give them a go.
BTW, if you haven't dipped into KC before, the key albums from their different formations are:
1) In the Court of the Crimson King 2) Larks' Tongues in Aspic 3) Discipline
They sound like the work of different bands (which they are, really). If you like those, you can then work forwards and backwards.
NB - I like the reference to bitterns in the Henry Cow album title. The sound of bitterns "booming" hidden in a fen on a misty morning in May is one of the most evocative sounds in nature.
Fair to say that we're now in something of a race between Russian forces encircling Kyiv, Western arms getting to Ukrainians & Western sanctions obliterating the Russian economy?
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
Yes; hangovers aren't great for Leon's clarity of thought (such as it is to begin with).
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic west may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
I don't really understand what 'regime change' means in this context. Putin has made constitutional changes in Russia to ensure that he can stay in power forever etc., so those would be reversed (along with his own departure), but other than that, what regime change are we talking about? Dissolving the Russian parliament? Dispanding its army and security services? Installing a permanent pro-Western Government whether or not that's what the Russian electorate actually wants? What?
Dictators that f**k their countries up big time tend to be exited from office, regardless of the constitutional small print.
That tells me nothing about what you mean by regime change.
Moving from totalitarian to non-totalitarian would be one example.
Russia is quite likely to undergo something of a shock to its collective consciousness if sanctions fully take hold. Pretending that this isn't them against half the world, with powerful former allies standing on the sidelines, is going to be quite difficult. And there's probably quite a significant part of the population which gets its news form the west by various means and doesn't believe state propaganda.
Either it gets a great deal more repressive, or something cracks.
Some people have said they're going to have to get used to being like North Korea, but in a way this is *worse* for Russia than North Korea.
North Korea is used to being isolated so they're set up for it, plus their population doesn't know any better.
Russians are not used to being so isolated. Their supply chain isn't set up for it in the way North Korea's is. Plus the population, while subject to propaganda, does know better.
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
2 relevant pieces of folk wisdom
1. The race is not always to the swift not the battle to the strong, but that's where the smart money is
2. A good big un will always beat a good little un
Sadly
3. A crap big un will very often beat a good little un. The Winter War of 1940 was a very rare counter example.
Didn't the Russians win eventually? Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan twice are better examples.
Well, Finland got to exist, with it's own government. Which was an absolutely astonishing result vs Stalin. They did lose some territory, true.
"Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan twice" - hmmm. Yes - that is good point. It suggests that the importance of the war to the Big 'Un, and what they are prepared to do vs losing, is a major factor?
I wonder if the Republic of Ireland's policy of strict neutrality and refusal to countenance membership of NATO could have some bearing on the talk about a border poll and unification.
Yes, Northern Ireland was taken out of the EU. But are people there content to be removed from NATO?
Just a thought. Not seen it mentioned anywhere.
Indeed, the UK would only use Trident to defend UK cities or at most NATO cities, nobody else.
The Republic of Ireland is less at risk from Putin than other non NATO members nearer Russia like Georgia or Finland but nonetheless being outside of NATO's umbrella is a risk
Eh? We would not use Trident to defend UK cities, and we would CERTAINLY not use it to defend foreign cities, NATO or otherwise. You know how Trident works (or is meant to work) and what it's for - why are you making up this line?
Of course we would.
The whole point of Trident is it is the UK's defence of last resort
Exactly. It's a revenge weapon after someone has nuked us, to make them refrain from nuking us. It doesn't defend against conventional invasion - we wouldn't nuke someone to prevent them from invading us, because then they'd nuke us. And being occupied is preferable to being nuked. Unless we were being invaded by a non nuclear power I suppose. And we would DEFINITELY not nuke anyone for invading someone else, that would be stark staring mad.
Not necessarily.
If the Russians had invaded and captured the whole of continental Europe (let us assume the French President had decided not to use his nukes) the UK PM would have a choice.
He could threaten to launch a Trident nuclear missile on Moscow if the Russians invaded the UK in the hope they would think twice. Or he could stick to using conventional forces but with the likely outcome that the UK would fall to the Russians within a few weeks (unless we could win a Battle of Britain 2)
But it would be a bluff, because if we nuked Moscow, they could nuke London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Bath, and on the positive side, Milton Keynes. In short, turn our whole island into a nuclear wasteland. So no British Government would risk that, the Russians would know it, and they would continue their conventional invasion unimpeded.
A range of tactical nukes however, could be a different story, fitted to various warheads and delivered by conventional (and non conventional) means. But that's not Trident, Trident is a weapon of last resort.
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
Yes; hangovers aren't great for Leon's clarity of thought (such as it is to begin with).
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic west may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
I don't really understand what 'regime change' means in this context. Putin has made constitutional changes in Russia to ensure that he can stay in power forever etc., so those would be reversed (along with his own departure), but other than that, what regime change are we talking about? Dissolving the Russian parliament? Dispanding its army and security services? Installing a permanent pro-Western Government whether or not that's what the Russian electorate actually wants? What?
Dictators that f**k their countries up big time tend to be exited from office, regardless of the constitutional small print.
Not sure that’s true at all. For every example in your favour - Mussolini, say - there is a counter example. Like Mao. Or Tito. Or Franco. They just go on until they die
I think the entire world should always refer to Vlad from now on only as "Prestupnik Putin"
преступник (prestupnik) means criminal
This gave me an idea..
Searching for преступник Путин on twitter brings up accounts that are tweeting in Russian, calling Putin a war criminal
Following and retweeting these accounts makes their voice louder
Let's help them shout!
Check what the rest of it says first, it could be arguing in favour of Putin (as many use hashtags to enter the debate) or indeed advertising penile enhancement pills.
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
2 relevant pieces of folk wisdom
1. The race is not always to the swift not the battle to the strong, but that's where the smart money is
2. A good big un will always beat a good little un
Sadly
3. A crap big un will very often beat a good little un. The Winter War of 1940 was a very rare counter example.
On a perhaps pedantic point that was only the first part. The USSR came back again, and ended up gaining territory equivalent to nearly 10% of Finland 4 months later, essentially as a buffer zone for Leningrad. Treaty of Moscow, March 1940.
That position has never been reversed.
That is also potentially a precedent, as are other features - such as Finland having relied on international institutions.
I wonder if the Republic of Ireland's policy of strict neutrality and refusal to countenance membership of NATO could have some bearing on the talk about a border poll and unification.
Yes, Northern Ireland was taken out of the EU. But are people there content to be removed from NATO?
Just a thought. Not seen it mentioned anywhere.
Indeed, the UK would only use Trident to defend UK cities or at most NATO cities, nobody else.
The Republic of Ireland is less at risk from Putin than other non NATO members nearer Russia like Georgia or Finland but nonetheless being outside of NATO's umbrella is a risk
Eh? We would not use Trident to defend UK cities, and we would CERTAINLY not use it to defend foreign cities, NATO or otherwise. You know how Trident works (or is meant to work) and what it's for - why are you making up this line?
Of course we would.
The whole point of Trident is it is the UK's defence of last resort
Exactly. It's a revenge weapon after someone has nuked us, to make them refrain from nuking us. It doesn't defend against conventional invasion - we wouldn't nuke someone to prevent them from invading us, because then they'd nuke us. And being occupied is preferable to being nuked. Unless we were being invaded by a non nuclear power I suppose. And we would DEFINITELY not nuke anyone for invading someone else, that would be stark staring mad.
Not necessarily.
If the Russians had invaded and captured the whole of continental Europe (let us assume the French President had decided not to use his nukes) the UK PM would have a choice.
He could threaten to launch a Trident nuclear missile on Moscow if the Russians invaded the UK in the hope they would think twice. Or he could stick to using conventional forces but with the likely outcome that the UK would fall to the Russians within a few weeks (unless we could win a Battle of Britain 2)
But it would be a bluff, because if we nuked Moscow, they could nuke London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Bath, and on the positive side, Milton Keynes. In short, turn our whole island into a nuclear wasteland. So no British Government would risk that, the Russians would know it, and they would continue their conventional invasion unimpeded.
A range of tactical nukes however, could be a different story, fitted to various warheads and delivered by conventional (and non conventional) means. But that's not Trident, Trident is a weapon of last resort.
Though, apparently, after we withdrew WE.177, some Trident missiles have been downloaded to 1 warhead plus decoys, with various yield options. Making the worlds most expensive non-strategic weapon.
Yes, of course, there is the slight problem that once an SLBM launch is detected......
Lavrov is coming out with a whole range of signals at the moment, from the emollient to the aggressive. It's also him giving them out all the time. Very odd.
I wonder if the Republic of Ireland's policy of strict neutrality and refusal to countenance membership of NATO could have some bearing on the talk about a border poll and unification.
Yes, Northern Ireland was taken out of the EU. But are people there content to be removed from NATO?
Just a thought. Not seen it mentioned anywhere.
Indeed, the UK would only use Trident to defend UK cities or at most NATO cities, nobody else.
The Republic of Ireland is less at risk from Putin than other non NATO members nearer Russia like Georgia or Finland but nonetheless being outside of NATO's umbrella is a risk
Eh? We would not use Trident to defend UK cities, and we would CERTAINLY not use it to defend foreign cities, NATO or otherwise. You know how Trident works (or is meant to work) and what it's for - why are you making up this line?
Of course we would.
The whole point of Trident is it is the UK's defence of last resort
Exactly. It's a revenge weapon after someone has nuked us, to make them refrain from nuking us. It doesn't defend against conventional invasion - we wouldn't nuke someone to prevent them from invading us, because then they'd nuke us. And being occupied is preferable to being nuked. Unless we were being invaded by a non nuclear power I suppose. And we would DEFINITELY not nuke anyone for invading someone else, that would be stark staring mad.
Not necessarily.
If the Russians had invaded and captured the whole of continental Europe (let us assume the French President had decided not to use his nukes) the UK PM would have a choice.
He could threaten to launch a Trident nuclear missile on Moscow if the Russians invaded the UK in the hope they would think twice. Or he could stick to using conventional forces but with the likely outcome that the UK would fall to the Russians within a few weeks (unless we could win a Battle of Britain 2)
But it would be a bluff, because if we nuked Moscow, they could nuke London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Bath, and on the positive side, Milton Keynes. In short, turn our whole island into a nuclear wasteland. So no British Government would risk that, the Russians would know it, and they would continue their conventional invasion unimpeded.
A range of tactical nukes however, could be a different story, fitted to various warheads and delivered by conventional (and non conventional) means. But that's not Trident, Trident is a weapon of last resort.
Depends who the Prime Minister is. Some Prime Ministers, Thatcher for example, who are also religious and believe in an afterlife might prefer to die in freedom than live under the occupation of a Russia led by someone like Putin.
They might therefore push the button if Russia threatened to invade the UK
Here's one, do we allow able bodied men between the ages of 18 - 60 from Ukraine into the country ? Zelensky himself has specifically made it a crime to leave the country for men between these ages with the general call to arms.
We ask them to return and if they won't we put them to work in some extremely unpleasant capacity, such as driving the trains on London Underground.
"Oligarchs, including Roman Abramovich, may not be sanctioned for months - The Times
Russian oligarchs such as Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich may not be sanctioned for months, after the government was unable to build a case against them, The Times says. The Foreign Office and the National Crime Agency have not been able to prove that there are "reasonable grounds" against the Russian businessmen, and have been unable to link their finances to the Putin government. According to the paper, officials tried to build a case against Abramovich in 2018, but was told that the government could be sued for millions if decisions were made on a flawed basis. "
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
I think that best case scenario is unrealistic. Ukraine is showing us the heavy civilian damage Russia is inflicting, because it elicits sympathy, and the damage it is inflicting on the Russian armed forces, because it creates confidence that they aren't doomed to complete defeat, but logically the Ukrainian armed forces must also be suffering losses which we aren't hearing about.
This, plus the Russian air superiority, means the Ukrainians are unlikely to be able to launch major counteroffensives. So the best case scenario is to fight the Russians to a standstill.
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
Yes that is true it does give succour to those who want or need it. I am just concerned about the old echo chamber element of twitter. We can't condemn it when we disagree with its nature on the one hand, and cite it as a key element in the fight for truth on the other.
We can't? Surely, we disagree with what it claims is the truth?
We certainly do. But that brings me back to the point of taking a snapshot of twitter on the Russian invasion and making conclusive statements as a result. A photo of a disabled tank (or beat up armoured column) in the context of the overall war tells us nothing. Certainly not enough to say - you see, Russia is suffering/Ukraine is doing this or that... Which many on here have been doing.
For sure it might be useful for morale purposes but it is misleading because we have no idea what is actually happening.
We have a far better idea than we did with past conflicts, when all we had to go on were the reports of the embeds. When commercial satellites operators can post details of troop movements, you can't hide armies of hundreds of thousands. Similarly, there is a cacophony of voices online from Ukraine; if a town has fallen, or been successfully defended, it's news online sometimes hours before mainstream media reports.
We might have a very cloudy, or misguided view of what's happening, but to say we have no idea is just wrong.
The problem is assessing the magnitude of the individual events vs the overall war.
For example, below in this thread, we have a description of a single abandoned, stuck vehicle. Abandoned because tire maintenance wasn't done.
But how representative of Russian military vehicles is that? Is it just one that got forgotten when doing maintenance or is it every vehicle or something in between?
Which given us a range of possible outcomes from "not much" to "the whole Russian transport system is fucked"
Of course - it's a single data point. But there are plenty of others.
Some professionals at least seem to be making use of it. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-699130 ...The Israel Defense Forces have set up teams to track and learn from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, The Jerusalem Post has learned. According to Walla News, the teams will gather information and intelligence for the Israeli military in the fields of combat methods and doctrine, ground maneuvers, logistics, air defense, anti-tank, cyber and electronic warfare, psychological warfare and more. As the war in Ukraine enters its second week, thousands of videos are being posted on social media, making it possible for the Israeli military to gather mounds of critical intelligence that could help troops in future wars...
I think the entire world should always refer to Vlad from now on only as "Prestupnik Putin"
преступник (prestupnik) means criminal
This gave me an idea..
Searching for преступник Путин on twitter brings up accounts that are tweeting in Russian, calling Putin a war criminal
Following and retweeting these accounts makes their voice louder
Let's help them shout!
Check what the rest of it says first, it could be arguing in favour of Putin (as many use hashtags to enter the debate) or indeed advertising penile enhancement pills.
They're translated on my pc. I haven't seen one pro Putin tweet.
I've scrolled through the last 12 hours worth so you don't have to.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
Me.
As I've said to you since you started making this ridiculous claim, Western diversity of thought and challenging ourselves to become better versions of ourselves is our greatest strength, not a weakness.
Looking at the hollowed out weak and corrupt failure that Russia is and you will see what happens when nations ossify around "strength" and "unity". It is an unmitigated disaster.
For as long as the West challenges itself more than its enemies challenge us, we will be in a very strong position.
The young toppling statues is no different to 1960s hippies and counter-culture challenging their elders preconceptions.
"Ossify" is a great word. To make something rigid and inflexible. That's kind of what statuary does. People who think that statues = history are unknowingly plugging into a view of history as material, fixed, singular, authoritative, and elevated. Real history, good history, is narrative, dynamic, complex, democratic, and humble. Statuary is not history, it is more symbolic of power than anything. A statue reduces a complex life, sometimes a complex society, to an ossified moment, and trends towards the primitive. Statues symbolise eternity, and eternity is a lie.
Tying two themes together. Here is Shelley's Ozymandias.
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Things wrong with that poem
1. first 10 words are outrageous padding
2 the lone and level sands don't stretch far away. We know the fallen statue of Rameses aka ozymandias at luxor that this is about. The temple of medinet habu is next door. Karnak and luxor just across the river. And all the way down to Abu simbel and up to Cairo you can't move for bloody huge great statues of Rameses.
I have to confess that I struggled with jazz. Have some sympathy there. Then discovered jazz fusion (later Miles Davis etc)...and jazz inflected rock such as elements of King Crimson. There are riches there.
When I was in the 6th form, a friend came into school one day with an album that had just been released called "In the court of the Crimson King". He lent it to me saying how amazing it was. The next day I gave it him back and told him I thought it was rubbish. He asked me how many times I had listened to it, and I said, "Once was enough!"
He gave it me back and told me to listen to it at least twice more. The first time I listened to it that evening, I still didn't get it. But I did what he said and played it again, and this time I thought there was something in it. So I played it a third time and decided it was brilliant. I still think so - one of the greatest albums of all time. But I've always been grateful to Brian for persuading me to persist with it.
When my dad, who wasn't into rock but was a big jazz fan, heard me playing it, he got into it too.
Sad that Ian McDonald died recently. Robert Fripp's lockdown videos with his wife were fun though.
The King Crimson catalogue is pretty extraordinary. Fripp, although by all accounts, a very difficult and exacting bandmaster, drove the various formations into all sorts of areas. All the albums bear replaying although the three from the 80s are quite poppy and song-based, due to Adrian Belews' input (fresh from Talking Heads and working with Bowie).
BTW, "21st Century Schizoid Man" could have been written for Vlad.
Cat's foot iron claw/ Neuro-surgeons scream for more/ At paranoia's poison door./ 21st century schizoid man.
Blood rack barbed wire/ Politicians' funeral pyre/ Innocents raped with napalm fire/ 21st century schizoid man.
Death seed blind man's greed/ Poets' starving children bleed/ Nothing he's got he really needs/ 21st century schizoid man.
Have you ever tried Henry Cow?
Bittern Storm Over Ulm is at the very edge of listenable, and yet has moments of utter genius
It also has the best title of any album ever, culled from a news report about strange bird behaviour in Germany, clipped by Charles Fort (later made famous by the Fortean Times)
I haven't but will give them a go.
BTW, if you haven't dipped into KC before, the key albums from their different formations are:
1) In the Court of the Crimson King 2) Larks' Tongues in Aspic 3) Discipline
They sound like the work of different bands (which they are, really). If you like those, you can then work forwards and backwards.
NB - I like the reference to bitterns in the Henry Cow album title. The sound of bitterns "booming" hidden in a fen on a misty morning in May is one of the most evocative sounds in nature.
I was a massive King Crimson fan in my youth. Know them well
Speaking of even more obscure prog rock, I have an odd personal liking for the early 70s career of Steve Hillage
! Ukrainian armed forces announced that they have killed maj. gen. Andrey Sukhovetskiy, a Spetsnaz commander and deputy chief of the 41 Army in Novosibirsk. This appears confirmed by a spokesperson of the Russian Paratroopers Union. If confirmed, major demotivator for RU.
To repeat, I don't think it's helpful to cherrypick twitter for "evidence" that things are moving in one direction or another.
And the death of a soldier in combat, if that is indeed what has happened, is not a "major demotivator for RU".
Indeed, the loss of Colonel H Jones didn't stop us retaking the Falklands.
But this is a social media war. It may not play so well in Russia, because they are being blocked from seeing a wider picture of Russia's true aims - and their setbacks. But it does give greater spine to those who are standing by Ukraine. The world can see it is an epic David v Goliath battle. But David no longer has a sling. He now has a Javelin....
Yes that is true it does give succour to those who want or need it. I am just concerned about the old echo chamber element of twitter. We can't condemn it when we disagree with its nature on the one hand, and cite it as a key element in the fight for truth on the other.
We can't? Surely, we disagree with what it claims is the truth?
We certainly do. But that brings me back to the point of taking a snapshot of twitter on the Russian invasion and making conclusive statements as a result. A photo of a disabled tank (or beat up armoured column) in the context of the overall war tells us nothing. Certainly not enough to say - you see, Russia is suffering/Ukraine is doing this or that... Which many on here have been doing.
For sure it might be useful for morale purposes but it is misleading because we have no idea what is actually happening.
We have a far better idea than we did with past conflicts, when all we had to go on were the reports of the embeds. When commercial satellites operators can post details of troop movements, you can't hide armies of hundreds of thousands. Similarly, there is a cacophony of voices online from Ukraine; if a town has fallen, or been successfully defended, it's news online sometimes hours before mainstream media reports.
We might have a very cloudy, or misguided view of what's happening, but to say we have no idea is just wrong.
The problem is assessing the magnitude of the individual events vs the overall war.
For example, below in this thread, we have a description of a single abandoned, stuck vehicle. Abandoned because tire maintenance wasn't done.
But how representative of Russian military vehicles is that? Is it just one that got forgotten when doing maintenance or is it every vehicle or something in between?
Which given us a range of possible outcomes from "not much" to "the whole Russian transport system is fucked"
Of course - it's a single data point. But there are plenty of others.
Some professionals at least seem to be making use of it. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-699130 ...The Israel Defense Forces have set up teams to track and learn from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, The Jerusalem Post has learned. According to Walla News, the teams will gather information and intelligence for the Israeli military in the fields of combat methods and doctrine, ground maneuvers, logistics, air defense, anti-tank, cyber and electronic warfare, psychological warfare and more. As the war in Ukraine enters its second week, thousands of videos are being posted on social media, making it possible for the Israeli military to gather mounds of critical intelligence that could help troops in future wars...
Yes - the problem for us in the outside world is getting access to the aggregations of data.
Otherwise we have the results of individual interviews (maybe the Scottish sub-samples :-) ) but not the poll itself, with all the aggregation and bias reduction.
Lavrov is coming out with a whole range of signals at the moment, from the emollient to the aggressive. It's also him giving them out all the time. Very odd.
Well, things are going badly. Historical inside information on regimes in this situation state that mode swings in the leading characters are very common.
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
Yes; hangovers aren't great for Leon's clarity of thought (such as it is to begin with).
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic west may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
I don't really understand what 'regime change' means in this context. Putin has made constitutional changes in Russia to ensure that he can stay in power forever etc., so those would be reversed (along with his own departure), but other than that, what regime change are we talking about? Dissolving the Russian parliament? Dispanding its army and security services? Installing a permanent pro-Western Government whether or not that's what the Russian electorate actually wants? What?
Dictators that f**k their countries up big time tend to be exited from office, regardless of the constitutional small print.
Not sure that’s true at all. For every example in your favour - Mussolini, say - there is a counter example. Like Mao. Or Tito. Or Franco. They just go on until they die
And crucially not until they retire, because they can't take the risk of prosecution or assassination.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
I think it's becoming ever clearer, if it wasn't already, that they've been merrily chucking money at both sides to sow division and weaken us internally and internationally.
There's a Russian term, 'maskirovka', which refers to military deception. It was used to great effect during WW2 (perhaps most notably before and during 1944's Bagration, which crushed Army Group Centre) and it seems to have been a key part of Russian doctrine ever since. Essentially you get your opponent on the back foot by confusing the hell out of them. Overload them with info, confuse them, baffle them, tie them in knots. So they can't discern your real intentions. The Allies did something similar before D-Day with Patton's phantom army group and the like.
They just modernised it and moved it to twitter and political and pressure group funding. We've been tied in knots, in endless internal wrangling over myriad issues and causes. So has the US. I don't know enough about the gilets jaune thing in France but that looks like a potential candidate too.
We've been collectively played and our institutions and politicians, across the political spectrum are complicit, and tainted.
There are valid points on both sides of that.
We have seen stuff about alleged RW links to Putin / Brexit interventions by Putin.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
I think it's becoming ever clearer, if it wasn't already, that they've been merrily chucking money at both sides to sow division and weaken us internally and internationally.
There's a Russian term, 'maskirovka', which refers to military deception. It was used to great effect during WW2 (perhaps most notably before and during 1944's Bagration, which crushed Army Group Centre) and it seems to have been a key part of Russian doctrine ever since. Essentially you get your opponent on the back foot by confusing the hell out of them. Overload them with info, confuse them, baffle them, tie them in knots. So they can't discern your real intentions. The Allies did something similar before D-Day with Patton's phantom army group and the like.
They just modernised it and moved it to twitter and political and pressure group funding. We've been tied in knots, in endless internal wrangling over myriad issues and causes. So has the US. I don't know enough about the gilets jaune thing in France but that looks like a potential candidate too.
We've been collectively played and our institutions and politicians, across the political spectrum are complicit, and tainted.
Yes. And in the noble interests of transparency and truth (all I ever seek) it is clear that Russian & Chinese bots and trolls stoked Brexit, and the Leave campaign, and they infiltrated YES in indyref (see the lingering pro-Putinism from Farage and NATO-hating Scot Nats)
But their greatest victory has been Wokeness. It is not a sign of our “diversity and maturity” that we have violent mobs pulling down statues, or insane race riots across American cities sending murder rates spiralling. It is a sign of western societies being undermined by clever enemies, knowing exactly which buttons to push - white guilt and race hate. Etc
Thanks for educating me. I now realise how wrong and misguided I was when I said that I was pretty relaxed about the bringing down of Colston's statue in Bristol. Thanks to you, I now realise my consciousness was false and I am nothing but a Putin stooge, doing his dirty work for him and preparing the way for the invasion of Ukraine. I now recognise the error of my ways.
"Moscow would not let Ukraine keep infrastructure that threatened Russia, he said. Moscow could also not tolerate what he said was a military threat from Ukraine, he said, adding that he was convinced that Russia was right over Ukraine.
“The thought of nuclear is constantly spinning in the heads of western politicians but not in the heads of Russians,” he said. “I assure you that we will not allow any kind of provocation to unbalance us.”
Russia did not feel politically isolated, and the question of how Ukraine lives should be defined by its people, he added."
Hmm. Definitely some major row-backs of Putin's position here.
Maybe they want martial law also to suppress criticism of a partial about-face.
From Sky “Peace talks 'to resume at midday' The second round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may start in Belarus at midday today (UK time), Belarusian state news agency Belta quoted chief Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky as saying. Delegations earlier met on the border of Belarus in an attempt to end Moscow's invasion, but did not reach a resolution and attacks have continued.”
*talks, getting to ceasefire and further talks. Peace?
I may not know much about these things, but I have mediated between family members and friends
There cannot be fair talks whilst cruise missiles and vacuum bombs are like knife to the throat of occupied country - if Ukraine start trading anything at all in this situation it will be very sad I think. Talks need to focus on now and future, not mention previous issues down the years. That two sides turn up with a line through somewhere of their list, at the top are trades, below bottom line cannot be traded. Each list is of the strictest secrecy, so anything we see in media is guesswork and fiction. Victory in “peace talks” is getting concessions from opponents on bottom lines? If it’s stalemate, surrendering a trade to get it moving can be dangerous because you may not get movement reciprocated, your opponent think you concedes that, what else will you give up. Whoever can walk away from the table without a deal is in a strong position, at stages this can be both, but favouring Russia at this moment in time now or not? 😕
I have to confess that I struggled with jazz. Have some sympathy there. Then discovered jazz fusion (later Miles Davis etc)...and jazz inflected rock such as elements of King Crimson. There are riches there.
When I was in the 6th form, a friend came into school one day with an album that had just been released called "In the court of the Crimson King". He lent it to me saying how amazing it was. The next day I gave it him back and told him I thought it was rubbish. He asked me how many times I had listened to it, and I said, "Once was enough!"
He gave it me back and told me to listen to it at least twice more. The first time I listened to it that evening, I still didn't get it. But I did what he said and played it again, and this time I thought there was something in it. So I played it a third time and decided it was brilliant. I still think so - one of the greatest albums of all time. But I've always been grateful to Brian for persuading me to persist with it.
When my dad, who wasn't into rock but was a big jazz fan, heard me playing it, he got into it too.
Sad that Ian McDonald died recently. Robert Fripp's lockdown videos with his wife were fun though.
The King Crimson catalogue is pretty extraordinary. Fripp, although by all accounts, a very difficult and exacting bandmaster, drove the various formations into all sorts of areas. All the albums bear replaying although the three from the 80s are quite poppy and song-based, due to Adrian Belews' input (fresh from Talking Heads and working with Bowie).
BTW, "21st Century Schizoid Man" could have been written for Vlad.
Cat's foot iron claw/ Neuro-surgeons scream for more/ At paranoia's poison door./ 21st century schizoid man.
Blood rack barbed wire/ Politicians' funeral pyre/ Innocents raped with napalm fire/ 21st century schizoid man.
Death seed blind man's greed/ Poets' starving children bleed/ Nothing he's got he really needs/ 21st century schizoid man.
I have all the 60s and 70s albums but couldn't get into the 80s incarnation, and haven't herd anything later than that. Fripp always likes to move on. Probably the worst album (by anyone) that I own is "Fripp and Eno" - I tried listening to it several times but unlike ITCOTCK it just seemed to get worse each time... ;-)
Fair to say that we're now in something of a race between Russian forces encircling Kyiv, Western arms getting to Ukrainians & Western sanctions obliterating the Russian economy?
How many nights sleeping in the cold, before the soldiers give up and walk into the nearest town with their hands in the air?
And the forecast is getting colder. Remember how people used to say you shouldn't invade Russia in the winter? Although apparently we're now supposed to be in the mud season.
I posted it before and I'll post it again. The BBC Russian language website has gone from 3.1m to 10.7m views in a week. That seems pretty big.
Lavrov is coming out with a whole range of signals at the moment, from the emollient to the aggressive. It's also him giving them out all the time. Very odd.
Putin has cranked up the troll and bot farms. #Istandwithrussia is trending. Particularly nasty that many of the Russian trolls are masquerading as Black people to play the race card. There is definitely a racist element to this crisis, but Putin is no friend to Black people.
The American commentators who spend their whole day on Twitter, had already noticed that the place had become somewhat nicer in the past few days.
Yes, one thing that has seemed more hopeful from this crisis is the rooting out of of a lot of officially-appointed Kremlin trolls from various parts of social media. That surely must make it a bit harder.
I've also wondered something else, recently - there may have been Kremlin trolls on the most extreme fringes of the ID politics left, too.
Plenty of them on all sides. What they were interested in is polarisation and demonisation of opponents. We in the west need to work hard to bring civility back to political debate.
Russia has clearly infiltrated the identitarian left. It has stoked the race wars and culture wars from both sides (recall, again, the Russian bots pretending to be English football fan racists after the euro finals). We have been gamed. Which is one reason the culture wars have been so destructive. The left needs to clean its act and purge these fuckers, as it is now belatedly doing with Stop the War
All the statue toppling iconoclastic woke bullshit is being driven by Russia. Because it weakens western self confidence. Who can now honestly deny this?
Me.
As I've said to you since you started making this ridiculous claim, Western diversity of thought and challenging ourselves to become better versions of ourselves is our greatest strength, not a weakness.
Looking at the hollowed out weak and corrupt failure that Russia is and you will see what happens when nations ossify around "strength" and "unity". It is an unmitigated disaster.
For as long as the West challenges itself more than its enemies challenge us, we will be in a very strong position.
The young toppling statues is no different to 1960s hippies and counter-culture challenging their elders preconceptions.
"Ossify" is a great word. To make something rigid and inflexible. That's kind of what statuary does. People who think that statues = history are unknowingly plugging into a view of history as material, fixed, singular, authoritative, and elevated. Real history, good history, is narrative, dynamic, complex, democratic, and humble. Statuary is not history, it is more symbolic of power than anything. A statue reduces a complex life, sometimes a complex society, to an ossified moment, and trends towards the primitive. Statues symbolise eternity, and eternity is a lie.
Tying two themes together. Here is Shelley's Ozymandias.
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Things wrong with that poem
1. first 10 words are outrageous padding
2 the lone and level sands don't stretch far away. We know the fallen statue of Rameses aka ozymandias at luxor that this is about. The temple of medinet habu is next door. Karnak and luxor just across the river. And all the way down to Abu simbel and up to Cairo you can't move for bloody huge great statues of Rameses.
This bit has provoked endless scrutiny and critical commentary:
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
What does it mean? I think all you can say is that PBS sought to compress a lot of meaning in very few words. A trait of many subsequent poets, esp, the modernists.
Well, I'm prone to both a more optimistic and realistic outlook, but I very much hope I wasn't wrong in thinking that any rational sense has been seen in Russia yet, going from the various signals. Every day seems to start more gloomily and end more slightly more positively on that front recently, though, so let's hope.
Feels quite gloomy this morning.
Russia is going to slowly flatten Ukraine. Probably divide it in two along the Dnieper. Thousands and thousands will die. The east will be absorbed into Russia itself, like Crimea. The west of Ukraine will be run by a Moscow-friendly puppet regime in Kyiv
But Russia, crippled by sanctions, its economy in freefall, will then have to face an Iraq style insurgency, even as Russia is left with no money and an unhappy military
That’s the best case scenario
Worst: nukes
As a best case scenario there's no way that Russia is going to be able to install and maintain a Moscow-friendly puppet regime. The Ukrainians won't have it, and the Russians aren't powerful enough to enforce it.
Best case scenario: The logistics problems become endemic crippling the Russian military, the Russian military loses its morale and fragments, NATO is able to keep Ukraine supplied with munitions, Russia ends up humiliated in retreat and Putin's regime collapses.
Yes; hangovers aren't great for Leon's clarity of thought (such as it is to begin with).
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic west may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
I don't really understand what 'regime change' means in this context. Putin has made constitutional changes in Russia to ensure that he can stay in power forever etc., so those would be reversed (along with his own departure), but other than that, what regime change are we talking about? Dissolving the Russian parliament? Dispanding its army and security services? Installing a permanent pro-Western Government whether or not that's what the Russian electorate actually wants? What?
Dictators that f**k their countries up big time tend to be exited from office, regardless of the constitutional small print.
Not sure that’s true at all. For every example in your favour - Mussolini, say - there is a counter example. Like Mao. Or Tito. Or Franco. They just go on until they die
Lavrov is coming out with a whole range of signals at the moment, from the emollient to the aggressive. It's also him giving them out all the time. Very odd.
Lavrov clearly fancies Liz Truss.
Hah! I think you’re right. That explains so much
Takes me back to the peculiar moment when it was revealed that Hillary Clinton had a massive crush on… David Milliband
I have to confess that I struggled with jazz. Have some sympathy there. Then discovered jazz fusion (later Miles Davis etc)...and jazz inflected rock such as elements of King Crimson. There are riches there.
When I was in the 6th form, a friend came into school one day with an album that had just been released called "In the court of the Crimson King". He lent it to me saying how amazing it was. The next day I gave it him back and told him I thought it was rubbish. He asked me how many times I had listened to it, and I said, "Once was enough!"
He gave it me back and told me to listen to it at least twice more. The first time I listened to it that evening, I still didn't get it. But I did what he said and played it again, and this time I thought there was something in it. So I played it a third time and decided it was brilliant. I still think so - one of the greatest albums of all time. But I've always been grateful to Brian for persuading me to persist with it.
When my dad, who wasn't into rock but was a big jazz fan, heard me playing it, he got into it too.
Sad that Ian McDonald died recently. Robert Fripp's lockdown videos with his wife were fun though.
The King Crimson catalogue is pretty extraordinary. Fripp, although by all accounts, a very difficult and exacting bandmaster, drove the various formations into all sorts of areas. All the albums bear replaying although the three from the 80s are quite poppy and song-based, due to Adrian Belews' input (fresh from Talking Heads and working with Bowie).
BTW, "21st Century Schizoid Man" could have been written for Vlad.
Cat's foot iron claw/ Neuro-surgeons scream for more/ At paranoia's poison door./ 21st century schizoid man.
Blood rack barbed wire/ Politicians' funeral pyre/ Innocents raped with napalm fire/ 21st century schizoid man.
Death seed blind man's greed/ Poets' starving children bleed/ Nothing he's got he really needs/ 21st century schizoid man.
I have all the 60s and 70s albums but couldn't get into the 80s incarnation, and haven't herd anything later than that. Fripp always likes to move on. Probably the worst album (by anyone) that I own is "Fripp and Eno" - I tried listening to it several times but unlike ITCOTCK it just seemed to get worse each time... ;-)
They reformed to produce an album in the 90's (Thrak) which is great - very heavy - and two more in the 2000s. Since then they have concentrated on touring and producing live albums. The current formation, has THREE drummers, ranged in front of the rest of the group. There's speculation that the 2021 tour might be the last. But who knows? TBF Fripp is in his mid-70's and the guitar parts he plays are fiendish.
Yes that is true it does give succour to those who want or need it. I am just concerned about the old echo chamber element of twitter. We can't condemn it when we disagree with its nature on the one hand, and cite it as a key element in the fight for truth on the other.
Yes, Twitter's basically a neutral tool for projecting unfiltered chatter from all kinds of people, and no more reliable that what a stranger tells you in a pub. The general ethos of mutually supportive networks encourages rah-rah cheerleading - the good guys are winning, the other side are idiots. On a similar note it's curious that we've shut down access to RussiaToday, which I suspect had a viewership close to zero before this. From today, we're not allowed to look at it, which is something I don't think we've ever done before - e.g. I believe it's possible to look at militant Islamist websites, and during WW2 AFAIK we never bothered to try to jam Lord Haw-Haw.
I've no brief for the war, which is basically neo-Czarist imperialism, but understanding what everyone is saying is important, and if we stop people doing that, it's harder to complain about Russian censorship of Western comment. It also makes it harder to have an unconstrained discussion as one starts to think that there's something suspect about even knowing what the other side are saying.
Comments
“The shift in [the Ukrainian woman’s] view has alienated her from her mother, who lives in Moscow and receives her news about the war from Russia’s state-run TV channels.
“She says — just be patient and wait it out, it’s just a little ‘special operation’,” Gurkalenko said. “She said Ukraine had let in fighters from the west who were going to attack Russia. She has no idea what’s going on here.”
Ties of friendship have also broken. Olga Sitkovska, 34, another resident of Kharkiv who has now fled the city, exchanged angry texts this week with a Russian friend she met on holiday in Turkey in 2016. “She started to send me propaganda videos, saying: ‘You see, in Ukraine Russians are suffering and Putin must come to their aid’,” said Sitkovska, a local TV presenter.
“I said, ‘I’m in a bomb shelter, why are you sending me these’?”
Станьте водителем метро, предлагается полное обучение
Yes I think I can
преступник (prestupnik) means criminal
Only on PB, Dixie.
US and UKR invited too
🌳Con 34 (+1)
🌹Lab 42 (+2)
🔶LD 9 (-2)
🎗️SNP 4 (=)
🌍Green 3 (-2)
⬜️Other 8 (+1)
2,208 UK adults, 25-27 Feb
(changes from 18-20 Feb) https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1499330672472862720/photo/1
If there’s something the French are good at, it’s this. In two days time these guys will have the nicest state collection of yatchs/ castles https://twitter.com/olivierdussopt/status/1499316982881177601
The whole point of Trident is it is the UK's defence of last resort
And that massive Russian convoy? Wouldn't exactly class that as "swift".....
That's kind of what statuary does. People who think that statues = history are unknowingly plugging into a view of history as material, fixed, singular, authoritative, and elevated. Real history, good history, is narrative, dynamic, complex, democratic, and humble. Statuary is not history, it is more symbolic of power than anything. A statue reduces a complex life, sometimes a complex society, to an ossified moment, and trends towards the primitive. Statues symbolise eternity, and eternity is a lie.
There's a Russian term, 'maskirovka', which refers to military deception. It was used to great effect during WW2 (perhaps most notably before and during 1944's Bagration, which crushed Army Group Centre) and it seems to have been a key part of Russian doctrine ever since. Essentially you get your opponent on the back foot by confusing the hell out of them. Overload them with info, confuse them, baffle them, tie them in knots. So they can't discern your real intentions. The Allies did something similar before D-Day with Patton's phantom army group and the like.
They just modernised it and moved it to twitter and political and pressure group funding. We've been tied in knots, in endless internal wrangling over myriad issues and causes. So has the US. I don't know enough about the gilets jaune thing in France but that looks like a potential candidate too.
We've been collectively played and our institutions and politicians, across the political spectrum are complicit, and tainted.
Here's a thread describing what they're pushing to the kids.
About to start: the Russian education ministry's Russia-wide "online lesson" about "why the liberation mission in Ukraine was necessary."
The version I'm watching is on the Ministry's page on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook clone. Not sure if it's also streaming elsewhere.
https://twitter.com/ichbinilya/status/1499308474563534849
If you are looking at this conflict and thinking "we need to be more like Russia, that will make us strong" then it'd be an insult to cretins to compare them to you.
There are multiple bad scenarios, for sure. But there is also a chance that internal pressure within Russia leads either to a face-saving withdrawal or regime change. The chances of Ukraine joining the EU have increased significantly, the chances of China invading Taiwan have reduced considerably, and the democratic West may be on the way to renewing its spirit and sense of purpose. Probably, the odds of a Trump return have lengthened too, as have the chances of either far left or far right making progress both here and elsewhere, such as the coming French election. It's far from being all bad news, taking the bigger picture.
We may even, eventually, get rid of the clown, once people turn their minds back to 'what was all that for?'.
BTW, "21st Century Schizoid Man" could have been written for Vlad.
Cat's foot iron claw/ Neuro-surgeons scream for more/ At paranoia's poison door./ 21st century schizoid man.
Blood rack barbed wire/ Politicians' funeral pyre/ Innocents raped with napalm fire/ 21st century schizoid man.
Death seed blind man's greed/ Poets' starving children bleed/ Nothing he's got he really needs/ 21st century schizoid man.
Another was a wave of small donations. In quite a few cases, they simply corrupted the treasurers of the organisations - no-one questions if the bank is full...
Difference is that it's open to every bias. State propaganda TV, not so much.
Even without Versailles, I suspect WWII would still have happened, as people simply were not willing to accept peace at that stage.
Its worth remembering that some of the Axis Powers in WWII were Allied Powers in WWI - Italy and Japan were victors in World War I so didn't join the Axis in WWII because they were humiliated by Versailles.
If the Russians had invaded and captured the whole of continental Europe (let us assume the French President had decided not to use his nukes) the UK PM would have a choice.
He could threaten to launch a Trident nuclear missile on Moscow if the Russians invaded the UK in the hope they would think twice. Or he could stick to using conventional forces but with the likely outcome that the UK would fall to the Russians within a few weeks (unless we could win a Battle of Britain 2)
For sure it might be useful for morale purposes but it is misleading because we have no idea what is actually happening.
But their greatest victory has been Wokeness. It is not a sign of our “diversity and maturity” that we have violent mobs pulling down statues, or insane race riots across American cities sending murder rates spiralling. It is a sign of western societies being undermined by clever enemies, knowing exactly which buttons to push - white guilt and race hate. Etc
Also worth remembering that fascism was born in Italy, because of the financial and emotional trauma of its WWI experience, which was at least as bad as the north European trenches but far less well known.
You're just a doddery old fart in your thinking, past versions of you would be saying counterculture and hippies in the 60s were a sign of the decadent west and weak versus the USSR. Yet the West won the Cold War and the West is turning the tables on Russia today.
Challenging ourselves is strength not weakness.
https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1499164245250002944
This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir-S1 wheeled gun-missile system's right rear pair of tires below & the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.
Станьте водителем метро, предлагается полное обучение
Great idea comrade!
When commercial satellites operators can post details of troop movements, you can't hide armies of hundreds of thousands. Similarly, there is a cacophony of voices online from Ukraine; if a town has fallen, or been successfully defended, it's news online sometimes hours before mainstream media reports.
We might have a very cloudy, or misguided view of what's happening, but to say we have no idea is just wrong.
I once read an account of young chap from Germany who, in the early 20s visited the Devastated Zone inside France - since the war had been nearly entirely fought in France and Belgium there was no equivalent in Germany. His realisation that this was what Versailles was about was interesting. Not that he agreed, but he understood why the French (and British) had acted the way they did.
Bittern Storm Over Ulm is at the very edge of listenable, and yet has moments of utter genius
It also has the best title of any album ever, culled from a news report about strange bird behaviour in Germany, clipped by Charles Fort (later made famous by the Fortean Times)
Sad.
Time for another break from PB.
Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan twice are better examples.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Russia is quite likely to undergo something of a shock to its collective consciousness if sanctions fully take hold. Pretending that this isn't them against half the world, with powerful former allies standing on the sidelines, is going to be quite difficult.
And there's probably quite a significant part of the population which gets its news form the west by various means and doesn't believe state propaganda.
Either it gets a great deal more repressive, or something cracks.
https://www.britainelects.com/2022/03/03/previewing-the-nine-by-elections-of-03-mar-2022/
A range of tactical nukes however, could be a different story, fitted to various warheads and delivered by conventional (and non conventional) means. But that's not Trident, Trident is a weapon of last resort.
For example, below in this thread, we have a description of a single abandoned, stuck vehicle. Abandoned because tire maintenance wasn't done.
But how representative of Russian military vehicles is that? Is it just one that got forgotten when doing maintenance or is it every vehicle or something in between?
Which given us a range of possible outcomes from "not much" to "the whole Russian transport system is fucked"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/03/03/ukraine-russia-latest-news-putin-war-nato-live-updates/
Since Kyiv is nowhere near surrounded it won't be hard to get the weapons in.
BTW, if you haven't dipped into KC before, the key albums from their different formations are:
1) In the Court of the Crimson King
2) Larks' Tongues in Aspic
3) Discipline
They sound like the work of different bands (which they are, really). If you like those, you can then work forwards and backwards.
NB - I like the reference to bitterns in the Henry Cow album title. The sound of bitterns "booming" hidden in a fen on a misty morning in May is one of the most evocative sounds in nature.
Searching for преступник Путин on twitter brings up accounts that are tweeting in Russian, calling Putin a war criminal
Following and retweeting these accounts makes their voice louder
Let's help them shout!
How many nights sleeping in the cold, before the soldiers give up and walk into the nearest town with their hands in the air?
North Korea is used to being isolated so they're set up for it, plus their population doesn't know any better.
Russians are not used to being so isolated. Their supply chain isn't set up for it in the way North Korea's is. Plus the population, while subject to propaganda, does know better.
"Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan twice" - hmmm. Yes - that is good point. It suggests that the importance of the war to the Big 'Un, and what they are prepared to do vs losing, is a major factor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4
All they need to say is that they're ferrying migrants across to England and they'll be off scot-free.
That position has never been reversed.
That is also potentially a precedent, as are other features - such as Finland having relied on international institutions.
Yes, of course, there is the slight problem that once an SLBM launch is detected......
They might therefore push the button if Russia threatened to invade the UK
Russian oligarchs such as Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich may not be sanctioned for months, after the government was unable to build a case against them, The Times says.
The Foreign Office and the National Crime Agency have not been able to prove that there are "reasonable grounds" against the Russian businessmen, and have been unable to link their finances to the Putin government.
According to the paper, officials tried to build a case against Abramovich in 2018, but was told that the government could be sued for millions if decisions were made on a flawed basis. "
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-russia-war-latest-news-putin-kherson-kyiv-kharkiv-invasion-live-updates-12541713
This, plus the Russian air superiority, means the Ukrainians are unlikely to be able to launch major counteroffensives. So the best case scenario is to fight the Russians to a standstill.
But there are plenty of others.
Some professionals at least seem to be making use of it.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-699130
...The Israel Defense Forces have set up teams to track and learn from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
According to Walla News, the teams will gather information and intelligence for the Israeli military in the fields of combat methods and doctrine, ground maneuvers, logistics, air defense, anti-tank, cyber and electronic warfare, psychological warfare and more.
As the war in Ukraine enters its second week, thousands of videos are being posted on social media, making it possible for the Israeli military to gather mounds of critical intelligence that could help troops in future wars...
I've scrolled through the last 12 hours worth so you don't have to.
1. first 10 words are outrageous padding
2 the lone and level sands don't stretch far away. We know the fallen statue of Rameses aka ozymandias at luxor that this is about. The temple of medinet habu is next door. Karnak and luxor just across the river. And all the way down to Abu simbel and up to Cairo you can't move for bloody huge great statues of Rameses.
Speaking of even more obscure prog rock, I have an odd personal liking for the early 70s career of Steve Hillage
Otherwise we have the results of individual interviews (maybe the Scottish sub-samples :-) ) but not the poll itself, with all the aggregation and bias reduction.
We have seen stuff about alleged RW links to Putin / Brexit interventions by Putin.
And here is a Guardian piece from 2014 reporting concerns on funding of Green Groups by Russia by the NATO Sec Gen.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/19/russia-secretly-working-with-environmentalists-to-oppose-fracking
One thing that will out of this may be a stronger regulation of crown funding, which would seem to be an ideal funding channel.
“The thought of nuclear is constantly spinning in the heads of western politicians but not in the heads of Russians,” he said. “I assure you that we will not allow any kind of provocation to unbalance us.”
Russia did not feel politically isolated, and the question of how Ukraine lives should be defined by its people, he added."
Hmm. Definitely some major row-backs of Putin's position here.
Maybe they want martial law also to suppress criticism of a partial about-face.
“Peace talks 'to resume at midday'
The second round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may start in Belarus at midday today (UK time), Belarusian state news agency Belta quoted chief Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky as saying.
Delegations earlier met on the border of Belarus in an attempt to end Moscow's invasion, but did not reach a resolution and attacks have continued.”
*talks, getting to ceasefire and further talks. Peace?
I may not know much about these things, but I have mediated between family members and friends
There cannot be fair talks whilst cruise missiles and vacuum bombs are like knife to the throat of occupied country - if Ukraine start trading anything at all in this situation it will be very sad I think. Talks need to focus on now and future, not mention previous issues down the years. That two sides turn up with a line through somewhere of their list, at the top are trades, below bottom line cannot be traded. Each list is of the strictest secrecy, so anything we see in media is guesswork and fiction. Victory in “peace talks” is getting concessions from opponents on bottom lines? If it’s stalemate, surrendering a trade to get it moving can be dangerous because you may not get movement reciprocated, your opponent think you concedes that, what else will you give up. Whoever can walk away from the table without a deal is in a strong position, at stages this can be both, but favouring Russia at this moment in time now or not? 😕
I posted it before and I'll post it again. The BBC Russian language website has gone from 3.1m to 10.7m views in a week. That seems pretty big.
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
What does it mean? I think all you can say is that PBS sought to compress a lot of meaning in very few words. A trait of many subsequent poets, esp, the modernists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYIpQbwS3b8&t=109s
Of course the issue of what happens to their families back home could complicate that for any soldiers thinking of taking that step .
Takes me back to the peculiar moment when it was revealed that Hillary Clinton had a massive crush on… David Milliband
I've no brief for the war, which is basically neo-Czarist imperialism, but understanding what everyone is saying is important, and if we stop people doing that, it's harder to complain about Russian censorship of Western comment. It also makes it harder to have an unconstrained discussion as one starts to think that there's something suspect about even knowing what the other side are saying.