Xerxes

I see it more as FOX SNL. Comedy. Sadly this thread will continue well into 2023 and beyound. ----------------------------------- I was thinking to the earlier days of the war, and the "Ukraine is Weak" episode of Seinfeld came to mind as the one constant theme for 2022. I did a bit of digging - powered by Google Search. The episode was aired on January 1995. The Label Maker - Wikipedia A month earlier, in December, 1994, the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, U.K., and the U.S. signed agreement to provide Ukraine with security assurances for returning the nuclear warheads to Russia'. A rather funny coincidence. ----------------------------------- Back to serious stuff. Much has said about the 1994 memorendum. What has been unsaid is the fact, even if Ukraine had chosen to keep the nuclear warheads, they did not have the "command code" which comes from the Kremlin. Having physical warheads and having control over them are two different things. In that alternative scenario, where Ukraine had chosen to keep the nukes, the historical timeline would have gone a different direction entirely, STARTING in 1994 and onward, AND not the way most Westerners would think => Which starts in 2014, and assumes Ukraine has nukes and Et Voila: - Crimea would not have happened. - Feb 22, 2022, would not have happened. - Ukraine part of NATO That change in that decision point in time, in 1994, would have maybe put Ukraine on path to become a pariah state over the next years and perhaps a closer partner to Russian Federation. Or U.S. could have teamed up with Russia to militarily remove those nukes.

https://financialpost.com/telecom/media/michael-bloomberg-looking-to-buy-dow-jones-washington-post Looking to beef up

Some of the Western media depiction of the war has been cartoonish at best. Not the facts but how they are depicted. I dont know how many YouTube vidoes have been poping out with armchair generals making sweeping "walk in the park" declaration. Like momentum-driven investors, some of these folks are trend-followers. Take a snapshot of say event in Aug, project forward, and declare the Zelensky will be at Moscow' gate by Christmas [sarcasim] I would recommend folks to check out the few articles on The Economist which interviewed the president of Ukraine, along with its top general as well as the commander of the ground forces. They certainly do not see it as a walk in the park. To a certain degree, the upbeat optimistic Western narrative has been good for Ukraine in the first half of the war. That said, I think the Ukrainian leadership would prefer for folks to see it as it is, an uphill struggle where they need all the help they can get. Not a scene off a Rambo movie. EXAMPLE: Fact: Russian conscript are nowhere near the level of training Ukraine forces have and are getting. Western Media: LOLOLOL they dont even have proper gear, LOL the have antiquidated guns LOL Ukrainian/NATO: Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals explain why the war hangs in the balance | The Economist The third challenge is the most serious. Russia’s mobilisation effort has been widely disparaged, with countless stories of inadequate kit and disgruntled conscripts. Ukraine’s general staff and its Western partners are more wary. “We all know that the quality is poor and that they lack equipment,” says Kusti Salm of Estonia’s defence ministry. “But the fact that they can mobilise so fast is an early-warning dilemma for Ukraine and ultimately for nato.” Schemes run by Britain and the European Union can train around 30,000 Ukrainian troops in 18 months, he says. Russia has been able to conjure up five times as many new soldiers in a fraction of the time. “Russian mobilisation has worked,” says General Zaluzhny. “A tsar tells them to go to war, and they go to war.” General Syrsky agrees: “The enemy shouldn’t be discounted. They are not weak…and they have very great potential in terms of manpower.” He gives the example of how Russian recruits, equipped only with small arms, successfully slowed down Ukrainian attacks in Kreminna and Svatove in Luhansk province—though the autumn mud helped. Mobilisation has also allowed Russia to rotate its forces on and off the front lines more frequently, he says, allowing them to rest and recuperate. “In this regard, they have an advantage.”

I am personally against this type of fundraising. It is one thing for soldiers to write messages on payloads/shells (they are doing the fighting after all) than turn the practice into some sort of commercial enterprise. unrelated, I thought that this was rather entertaining. https://ca.yahoo.com/news/bomb-squad-called-er-88-085637481.html

Happy holidays everyone all the best !!

Long, but good i have read the first 2/5 How Putin’s War in Ukraine Became a Catastrophe for Russia - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Just in time. Bill Miller just answered my question: Bill Miller Is Still Bullish on Bitcoin—and a Lot More | Barron's (barrons.com)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2022-12-22/scott-minerd-of-guggenheim-partners-has-died-at-age-63

I have been listening to Scott, whenever he popped out on TV in the past couple of year may he rests in peace.

Tucker never fails

never thought about it this way !

Time to resurrect this thread. Bill Miller became a billionaire on the back of his personal wealth tied to shares of Amazon and Bitcoin/Crypto. He is a one of a kind investor, and this type of drawdown is part of the journey. Still, I like a follow up podcast with him. This was from May 2022. T

Anyone knows what the hell is ITVX Looks like a fasinating astory “A Spy Among Friends” dramatises the treachery of Kim Philby | The Economist

Buy Ingersoll Rand Stock. It Looks Like a Long-Term Winner. | Barron's (barrons.com)

Clearly, your anti-ARK biases is not allowing you guys to see the one that she nailed. Why Is John Deere Part Of The New Ark Funds Space ETF? (yahoo.com)

I don’t know. But I know @Parsad has suggested that FFH has a far deeper bench than say Berkshire. I am curious if that view still holds. That said, I hope Prem would live a long life and continue his amazing journey (at the helm or in the background as “paramount leader”), whichever

Hi John, I am completely unsure of how things will shape up in 2023, so perhaps undestimating and overestimating many many things at the sametime. The one thing that I know for sure, a war does not follow trends. It can have multiples reversion to the mean (politically, militarilly, economically etc.), everytime one side goes to one extreme. Only overwhelming interia may keep it on the trend. And that it can easilly outlive the original sponser and take a life of its own. Everyone knows about Vietnam War, how many folks know that U.S. got involved first to help the French fighting the Viet Minh, which actually could be called the first Vietnam War. And there was a third Vietnam War as well, when the PLA crossed the border and tried to "punish" Hanoi, but failed miserably. The same Chinese PLA that the American feared would jump in the war to help the communist. Three Vietnam wars in south east Asia that far far outlive the initial reason why it started, and not many people would care to remember. -------------------------------------------------------- Unrelated, there was a recent interview on The Economist with the c-in-c of Ukrainian military. Some interesting parts below, but I highly recommend to read what the top soldier in Ukraine has to say. An interview with General Valery Zaluzhny, head of Ukraine’s armed forces | The Economist But they are working on another task in parallel, they are doing everything possible not to let us regroup and strike ourselves. This is why you are seeing battles along the 1,500km frontline. In some places more intense, in some places less intense, but they are constraining our troops in order not to allow us to regroup. The fact that they are fighting hard now is very bad, of course. But it is not a solution to the strategic problem. It simply wears down the armed forces of Ukraine. That’s why, just as during the second world war, I have no doubt about it, it is most likely that somewhere beyond the Urals, they are preparing new resources. They are 100% being prepared. Ammunition is being prepared, not very good stuff, but still. It won’t be the same resources as it could have been in two years of ceasefire. It will not be like that. It will be lousy, and combat potential will be very, very low, even if he enlists a million more people in the army to throw bodies, like Zhukov [a senior Soviet commander during the second world war] did, it will not bring the desired result anyway. .............. Our second strategic task is to get ready for this war which can happen in February. To be able to wage a war with fresh forces and reserves. Our troops are all tied up in battles now, they are bleeding. They are bleeding and are being held together solely by courage, heroism and the ability of their commanders to keep the situation under control. The second, very important strategic task for us is to create reserves and prepare for the war, which may take place in February, at best in March, and at worst at the end of January. It may start not in Donbas, but in the direction of Kyiv, in the direction of Belarus, I do not rule out the southern direction as well. Have the Russian forces adapted to himars [American-made multiple rocket launchers]? VZ: Yes. They’ve gone to a distance the himars can’t reach. And we haven’t got anything longer-range. TE: What do you make of Russia’s mobilisation? VZ: Russian mobilisation has worked. It is not true that their problems are so dire that these people will not fight. They will. A tsar tells them to go to war, and they go to war. I’ve studied the history of the two Chechen wars—it was the same. They may not be that well equipped, but they still present a problem for us. We estimate that they have a reserve of 1.2m-1.5m people… The Russians are preparing some 200,000 fresh troops. I have no doubt they will have another go at Kyiv.

If one is looking for long term historical arc, the one that is provided by Niall Ferguson is the most intersting one. Where he describes an era of globalization, where potential rival and powers traded with each other, an era that went on 40 or so years. Then, it is explained that this is not the 1990s to 2020s. But rather the 30-40 years inbetween the Franco-Prussian War leading to the First World War. After the 1914-18 war, the globalization was largely dead and wont be resurrected back till the fall of Berlin Wall.

Thanks @Pelagic I will check it out. For clarificaiton, what I meant (or should have added but neglected) was that: everything that moves and/or fixed could be considered a target. But that is where the process starts. The very strict process that you speak of were not there to protect poor Vietnamese rice farmers, while Westmoreland, McNamara and Lyndon B. Johnson waged their noble war. They were there because the Johnson administration suffered from "recency bias" of U.S. recent experience in the Korean War, where getting close to the Yalu river triggered a PLA invasion of 300,000 men under the guise of "volunteers". On Thanksgiving no less. Another example, that comes to mind, during the Korean War communist supply line through Manchuria were also considered as a target. There were talks of dropping several dozen atomic bombs in Manchuria, to distrupt the flow of arms that contributed to American deaths. Not sure if this plan contributed to MacArthur's final downfall, but in any case it was not pursued as the risks did not meet the "hurdle rate". Is that a good thing or a bad thing ? Had the plan went through, the Red block would have received a severe blow in its infancy, at a cost of millions Chinese, but the "casual" use of nukes would have become acceptable and normal. I would even say, Russia today can consider targets within Poland or Baltic Sea that are directly impacting the outcome of war that is critical to its perceived national security. Those targets have a very high "hurdle rate" to it, making it almost impossible to achieve any valuable output for the very tangible risk of triggering Article (whatever the # is).

not only that. I meant what was of as known quantity on Netflix ((Better Call Saul, Ozark, Sandman, Peaky Blinders) is of highly questionable quality. Watching them is like “work”. It does not pull me in.

At September 30, 2022 common shareholders' equity was $524.4 million, or book value per share of $4.85 with 108,193,971 shares outstanding, compared to $591.9 million, or book value per share of $5.47 with 108,259,645 shares outstanding, at December 31, 2021, a decrease of 11.3%. Microsoft Word - HFP - 2022 Q3 Press Release - FINAL - Nov 10 2022 (heliosinvestment.com) Grind continues. $524 million of book value selling for $147 million in the market.

Some ancedote to share. Like everybody else i flip through different media offerings. I went back on Netflix in Nov and cancelled Disney+ after finish "Andor", which I really liked. Really enjoyed "crown". But I must say everything else that I tagged to watch (Better Call Saul, Ozark, Sandman, Peaky Blinders) is sooo difficult to watch. It feels like work. It is like planning to go to run outside when it is -10 degree, which I do as workout. I dont feel the same way when I am watching stuff on Disney+, HBO, Paramount+ or Prime. Part of the problem is that the options are soo many on Netflix that if there are truely gems, I could not make the time investment to ever find those. Sometimes less is more.

The Christmas bombings: A US airman recalls the Vietnam War's Operation Linebacker II, 50 years on | CNN Not related Ukraine directly. Saw this on CNN. This December is the 50th anniversay of the "Christmas bombing of Hanoi" to force North Vietnam back on the negotiation table that were taking place in Paris five decades ago. I think if people are concerned about what war (declared or undeclared) is really about it, should re-examine the case study from the 1960s and 70s. Anything that moves is a target. Anything that does not move is a target. What is legitimate or not, only gets debated in history books. War crimes only matters if your lose. United States never declared war in the Vietnam, and its military mission was conduced through the "Military Assistance Command Vietnam" outfit. While, strategic bombing, i.e. B-52s, were directly coordinate by the White House. Make of this what you will, but I think It is an interesting anecdote, in light all of we see in today's world. -------------------------------------------- "Operation Linebacker II saw more than 200 American B-52 bombers fly 730 sorties and drop over 20,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam over a period of 12 days in December 1972, in a brutal assault aimed at shaking the Vietnamese “to their core,” in the words of then US national security adviser Henry Kissinger. “They’re going to be so god damned surprised,” US President Richard Nixon replied to Kissinger on December 17, the eve of the mission. In what would become known as “the Christmas bombings” in America and “the 11 days and nights” in Vietnam (no bombing took place on Christmas day), swathes of Hanoi were obliterated." ......... “The resulting physical destruction was staggering: 1,600 military installations, miles of railway lines, hundreds of trucks and railway cars, eighty percent of electrical power plants, and countless factories and other structures were taken out of commission,” wrote Vietnam War historian Pierre Asselin in his 2018 book, “Vietnam’s American War: A History.” “The Linebacker bombings crippled the North’s vital organs, obliterating the results of its communist transformation, and its ability to sustain the war in the South by extension,” Asselin wrote. Such was the devastation that one Soviet diplomat warned that North Vietnam faced becoming “a wasteland.”

Not a joke Meet The World's Largest Land Crab That May Have Eaten Amelia Earhart Alive | Beauty of Planet Earth

"The problem with leadership is that leaders are human beings. And when they make mistakes, their mistakes are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.” -- Frank Herbert "To remind you that all humans make mistakes, and that all leaders are but human." -- Duke Leto II