Sweet

Was busy earlier but wondered what you meant by this?

I’m not forgetting Bakhmut, I would lump it into the 2023 failure. There too the Americans advised against spending too much energy. Much in keeping with what I meant above.

Not sure I agree with that, it might even have been the opposite. When Ukraine started to push the Russians back in 2022, the US military advised them to keep up the pressure because when the momentum is lost you give your enemy a chance to reset. Momentum is hard to win. Ukraine felt different, it felt (perhaps correctly) that it's troops needed a break, and that after the Winter they could renew their offensive (now proven incorrect). Instead it gave time for the Russians to dig in and strengthen their position. I am not sure how much effort the Ukrainians made to breaking through the lines in 2023. There was never a gap that opened so I understand that much of the Western aid (tanks etc) is still available - although this could be bad information too.

It’s certainly possible it is shaping to his liking and he is happier, but it’s also not possible to know one way or another with certainty. In 2022 it was only a matter of days until Ukraine fell. In 2023 all that was needed was on big push to dislodge the Russians. In 2024 Ukraine is on the brink of defeat. I admit to thinking it was all over in 2022, but I never believed Russia was a paper tiger in 2023, and I don’t believe Ukraine is as weak as current sentiment dictates. We’ll know in 5 years probably.

That’s his reputation but his invasion of Ukraine, under the premise of preventing NATO from moving East, only to cause Finland and Sweden to join, is not his finest work.

It’s irrelevant who it benefits. The US tried to prevent the war by publicly releasing classified material in troop build up and Putin’s plans to invade in the hopes Putin would see sense. Putin launched it anyway. He has only himself to blame. He didn’t want NATO in his border, Sweden and Finland are now NATO counties. Putin the master strategist.

A stalemate is when either side are unable to make significant ground. Ukraine has had a weapons shortage for 6 months and how much has Russia gained? Time will tell if Russia can break the stalemate.

That’s a lie. The drafted document did not contain anything regarding territory. “The talks had deliberately skirted the question of borders and territory. Evidently, the idea was for Putin and Zelensky to decide on those issues at the planned summit. It is easy to imagine that Putin would have insisted on holding all the territory that his forces had already occupied. The question is whether Zelensky could have been convinced to agree to this land grab. Despite these substantial disagreements, the April 15 draft suggests that the treaty would be signed within two weeks. Granted, that date might have shifted, but it shows that the two teams planned to move fast.” https://archive.ph/9hKhZ Your insistence that an agreement was reached in principle but not signed. This is utterly wrong. It’s Russian bs.

People were different then, and mostly in a good way. The side of my family that all went to war grew up in what would be considered extreme poverty by modern standards. We tend to think America and Europe have been rich developed countries for many years, but I’m talking no running water, no electricity, no telephone, the toilet was a bucket buried in the garden every few days, and you grew a lot of your own food. Meals were nearly always break or potatoes, milk and eggs. That was rural UK early 1900s. It’s amazing just how crazy the living standards are now, how technology has improved our lives, and how much better we all have it and yet the levels of entitlement and complaining are off the charts. There is a saying that hard times create strong men and good times create weak men. I think there is something to that. I’m not nearly as strong as the WW2 generation was and I’ve had it so much better than they did. God love them.

Yeh, it sucks. I’d have a problem going to war at my stage in life - kids. Plus I wouldn’t want to kill someone because I believe life is precious. This is contrary to people like Putin I might add. In the case of Ukraine, nobody voted for the war. The war was foisted upon them by Putin. They could have just given up but they haven’t. Unfortunately I think a draft is sometimes necessary in war. It’s unfair for others to be fighting but you’re not. I have trouble with this because it conflicts with my view that you are not the property of the state. I had a very large number of family members who fought in world war 2. Young men in their 20s who had their life ahead of them and who risked it all. That generation was just different. They say they were the greatest generation and I think they probably were.

What are you referring to Greg? Are you talking about yourself or putting yourself in the shoes of a Ukrainian?

Over a few rural regions - really Luca? Putin tried to take the entire country but was stopped. He is still trying to take the entire country. What the heck are you smoking? The West did not stop peace negotiations. There was no deal, no agreement on territory, or what a post war Ukraine would look like. Ukraine was at the table because of weakness and walked away when they kicked the Russians out from large swathes of territory, and because they didn’t agree on Russian demands. Putin for his part has been sending mixed messages. Last month he said he wouldn’t negotiate, this month he said he was open to negotiating. Again though, why would you trust Putin? He has broken so many agreements that his word means nothing: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4443781-history-shows-that-no-ceasefire-or-treaty-with-russia-can-be-trusted/#:~:text=Finally%2C aside from breaking ceasefires,site inspections of nuclear arms. Why shouldn’t a post war Ukraine join NATO or the EU? It’s only a problem for Russia if Russia intends to attack Ukraine. For what it’s worth, I also think a negotiated settlement is the way out of this. The two sides are stalemated. But just accepting Putin’s demands would be dumb.

Ukraine is fighting for freedom from Russian domination, Zelenskyy has made that clear many times and the Ukrainian people are mostly behind him. Who in their right mind would trust Putin and the ‘security guarantees putin is willing to offer’? He cannot be trusted. Many countries have punishments for trying to dodge a draft, Ukraine is no different. To date Zelenskyy has resisted a general draft hoping to prevent young Ukrainian men from being sent to the front. The average age of military men is 43. Zelenskyy has been very reserved when it comes to army recruitment.

Whilst I agree that’s the strategy these companies should pursue, unless there is clear evidence companies are going to do this going forward it’s still a big risk to own them. GM hasn’t done much in the past 15 years. It’s up approx 50%, I know that doesn’t include the dividend, but that’s terrible under performance

US birth rate currently 1.63, I think that’s a huge problem for the economy and stock market in the future. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b#

Lot of volatility out there. Drop might not be over.

I get the trace back to Athens or Rome, but the only thing unique in their history was they were types of fledgling democracies, neither democracies were inherited in European history. Both Athenian and Roman democracies were extinguished and democracy didn’t return for a long time in Europe. The dictatorship, wars etc. This was universally present everywhere across the world. Nothing unique to Europe and therefore not a feature of the Greeks or Romans. So if democracy was truly the only unique thing about the Greek and Roman history, surely that’s the basis for defining what a Western nation is? We could say counties of European origin but it’s not much different than saying white since that’s what Europeans are. Or Christian. I don’t know. This is a long winded way of saying that I don’t like the comparison of West with X country.

Yes, I found that a strange thing to say. It honestly reads like white people wrote the playbook on genocide. Don’t think that is what Parsad meant, but it was my reaction.

100% get what you mean, but the West isn’t a monolith. It has changed over time, adding countries, losing countries. Belgium is a specific country, so is Germany and the UK, here we can point to a continuum of history. We can’t do that with the West. Does anyone here really think Nazi Germany was part of the West as we think of it today during WW2? That would mean blaming the West for the genocide committed by the Nazis, but at the same time crediting the West for helping to stop the Nazis? That doesn’t make sense. If the West is white people to you and others then just say white people. But let’s not pretend the Nazi Holocaust is equally the responsibly of the UK, France, USA etc under the umbrella of the ‘West’. We all know that BS. That’s like blaming the millions killed by Mao on ‘Orientals’ as you put it.

I’ve not been to Switzerland and Norway but I’ve been to many on this list above the US. The average person in the US has much more disposable income than some of these countries. Ireland and the UK are nowhere near as well off as their American counterparts, that’s really quite obvious if you visit the these countries.

Can you provide examples of how the West’s development relied on corporate espionage? What non-Western nation where these corporate secrets stolen from?

Agree with not getting too self righteous, but are you sure the West has perpetrated far more atrocities? I don’t even know when ‘the West’ that we are referring to even begins. I think of the West as a type of ideals, so I would include Japan being part of the ‘West’ post WW2. I wouldn’t include Germany or Italy as being part of the ‘West’ during WW2 because they abandoned that liberal order. 5,000 years is a very long time. The Chinese fought a lot of wars and committed a lot of massacres, many probably unknown: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_China I think all historic people were ruthless. Some better documented than others.

Great post.

I’m sure you already know, but these 3x ETFs have horrible decay in their value when held for the long term. Be careful with these.

I didn’t say Europe has no innovation, I said it had little innovation, and if it wasn’t clear I was making that in comparison to the amount of innovation in America. The only reason this came up was because you said German engineering and Russian resources threatened the US economy. In 2008 the GDP of Europe was roughly the same size or bigger than US GDP. Now the US economy is much bigger than Europe’s economy and we have far more people living in Europe. We are doing something wrong. You named a handful of European companies, the US has far more world leading tech companies. Airbus is definitely better than Boeing right now, one thing we can agree on at least.