Political Posts

[mcliu]

It sounds like the media narrative is starting to change.

 

I wonder how long before the a 10x rise energy prices dips Europe into a recession. Politicians must be doing their math, maybe pushing Ukraine for a deal, especially given the uncertain political situation in many EU countries.

 

I guess US is a beneficiary as manufacturing becomes more competitive vs Europe given the far lower energy prices.

Not surprisingly Europe is getting cold feet on more Russian sanctions while US pushes on.

5 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

Also thought this was utterly hilarious. Nevertheless they will still have some ratings when the next wave is published. 

LOL that timing

Edited March 7, 2022 by mcliu

[Peregrine]

50 minutes ago, mcliu said:

Russian demands:

https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-russian-military-action-will-stop-moment-if-ukraine-meets-2022-03-07/

1) Neutrality

2) Crimea

3) Donetsk & Luhansk

 

Will Ukraine take the deal?

 

Certainly a positive that they're no longer seeking the ouster of their leadership.

[sleepydragon]

1 hour ago, mcliu said:

Russian demands:

https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-russian-military-action-will-stop-moment-if-ukraine-meets-2022-03-07/

1) Neutrality

2) Crimea

3) Donetsk & Luhansk

 

Will Ukraine take the deal?

Why would Ukraine take this deal given their city already damaged and every male is already pulled into war?  Yet, Putin has more to lose if this continues. 

 

[shhughes1116]

33 minutes ago, sleepydragon said:

Why would Ukraine take this deal given their city already damaged and every male is already pulled into war?  Yet, Putin has more to lose if this continues. 

 

Agreed.

 

Amazing how many people in the West, sitting in their comfy chairs safe from indiscriminate rockets, believe that Ukraine should give up their ability to defend themselves and give up their rights as a sovereign nation, in response to an invading country that has a 100 year history of murdering Ukrainians.  

When your house is destroyed and your children have been murdered, there isn’t much left to live for.  Lot of people in Ukraine are in this situation right now.  Do you think they are going to lay down their arms and roll over for Russia?   Or do you think they are going to grab a bunch of javelins and molotovs and slaughter as many Russian soldiers as they possibly can?  I would go with the latter. 
 

And let’s talk about a practical problem for Putin.  The first Tank Guards Army, the elite military ground unit in the Russian army and based in the Western District of Russia, is getting mauled in Ukraine.  This happens to be the same unit that would lock down Moscow and the surrounding region if the populace attempted to overthrow the government.  Continuing to bleed his army dry in Ukraine will undermine his ability to stay in power if the Russian populace revolts.    

[shhughes1116]

Since the thread is about the endgame, I’ll offer my view.  At this point, I see almost no chance that Ukraine agrees to de-militarization and neutrality.   
 

With each day that passes, the Russian ability to wage war decreases, and the Ukrainian ability to wage war (and their resolve to do so) increases.  Each child that is murdered by indiscriminate rocket fire and artillery fire puts another parent on the battlefield that has nothing to lose in their quest to slaughter Russian soldiers.  
 

In the coming week, I think we will see more surrendering of Russian soldiers, more abandoned military equipment, and small areas where the Ukrainians push the Russians back.  I also think the Russians will intensify their bombing of civilian areas in an effort to kill civilians and force the Ukrainians to negotiate.

Medium-term, I think the Ukrainians push the Russians back to their borders, and turn the Donbas into a demilitarized wasteland, a la the Korean Peninsula.  If Poland hands over their 30 Mig29s, I think this happens faster.     
 

During all of this,  I think there is a greater than 50% chance that Russia bombs their own troops (or potentially a small town in russian) with a dirty bomb in order to justify further aggression against Ukraine.  

[changegonnacome]

52 minutes ago, shhughes1116 said:

Do you think they are going to lay down their arms and roll over for Russia?   Or do you think they are going to grab a bunch of javelins and molotovs and slaughter as many Russian soldiers as they possibly can?  I would go with the latter. 

 

The Russian’s & their missiles will mainly be in the air soon…..there won’t be any of them to kill on the ground in Kiev/insert Ukrainian city…..just a relentless barrage from above from things you can’t see and people you can’t shoot at. This is the Russian way. 

[SharperDingaan]

Bear in mind that the US/Poland exchange is really an open-ended revolving 'lend/lease' arrangement. US supplied Polish planes (of different types) over the Ukraine, flying out of Polish air bases, supported by US AWAC assistance. Predator drones continually looking for high-ranking 'targets of opportunity'.

 

Arms merchants need to demonstrate the efficacy of their weaponry, live targets are better, and it is very easy to make foreign pilots 'dual nationals'. Hot pursuits back into Polish airspace providing live targets for sophisticated friend/foe air defense systems.

 

Putin propaganda cant hide large numbers of crashing aircraft, or burnt bodies coming home in body bags, and it would appear that is now the intent. It also cant hide how the war has turned the 1945 Russian 'special hate' for Nazis... into todays very similar Ukrainian 'special hate' for Russian troops. Afghanistan repeating itself.  

 

SD

[Parsad]

5 hours ago, Gregmal said:

So the demands are much more rational and more or less consistent with what should have been respected to begin with than the media and twitterers have portrayed? I’m shocked!

 

You're actually going after the media when a dictator starts an unprovoked war against a country 1/10th its size militarily and 1/3rd its size in population?  I too said that Putin will win out of this through concessions, since the West can't get fully involved and Putin will need to save face.  But to go after the media and their "irrationality" is sorely misplaced!  Cheers!

[Gregmal]

Absolutely. 100% the media is scum of the earth. An enemy just like Putin except they effect more Americans than he does. If that isn’t evident even in the last few month with what’s come out of the Palin defamation case, Russia/Clinton fabrications, CNN problems, etc….don’t know what to tell you. 
 

What’s happening in Ukraine is tragic, but again another instance of the US meddling in foreign affairs and then just shrugging when their actions cause harm to others. 

[Parsad]

2 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

Absolutely. 100% the media is scum of the earth. An enemy just like Putin except they effect more Americans than he does. If that isn’t evident even in the last few month with what’s come out of the Palin defamation case, Russia/Clinton fabrications, CNN problems, etc….don’t know what to tell you. 
 

What’s happening in Ukraine is tragic, but again another instance of the US meddling in foreign affairs and then just shrugging when their actions cause harm to others. 

 

So the liberal media was responsible for Putin attacking Ukraine?  Because as we know, "Putin is a great guy!"  Cheers!

[Parsad]

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-investor-bill-ackman-warns-181807581.html

 

Ackman comments on the war. 

 

I agree with him that China is the one who can end this thing right away.  Question is, will they?  The war is to the benefit of their future interests in Taiwan, but at the same time, the sanctions and economic issues could destabilize China itself.  

 

Cheers!

[Xerxes]

Folks. I submit to you that it is time for NATO members not to increase their defence budget but rather to decrease. 
 

clearly Russian capability to project power is not there, beyond bludgeoning through sheer dumb scale. 
 

I just hope NATO are not planning to bleed the Russian to the last Ukrainian. 

[Xerxes]

Ackman is yet another Westerner who just woke up and realized that the world is one big bad place. 
 

Forget about wars .. how many genocides we had in the past 30 years ? I can think of former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Burma etc they were throwing babies in fire in Burma

 

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/theyre-throwing-babies-onto-fires-in-myanmar-we-need-to-recognize-genocide-is-occurring/wcm/37e88f89-0e4c-495d-aa09-99ff8c307032/amp/

 

now the latte-sipping crowd is getting concerned. 

[Gregmal]

I think Bill is right that China comes out of this looking very good. But otherwise, yea, he's got another short bet and sometime in the future gonna boast about turning another $100 into $2B or something. Thats all I am reading in his war cries. Like alright dude, we know how you do this. 

[Blugolds]

45 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

I think Bill is right that China comes out of this looking very good. But otherwise, yea, he's got another short bet and sometime in the future gonna boast about turning another $100 into $2B or something. Thats all I am reading in his war cries. Like alright dude, we know how you do this. 

 

Ackman was going for an Emmy with his crying on MSNBC with the pandemic...this seems a little reserved with is calls for WW# compared to the sobbing before...but yes...everyone has seen his playbook and Im sure his positions are in, now hes talking his book. 

[Parsad]

1 hour ago, Xerxes said:

Ackman is yet another Westerner who just woke up and realized that the world is one big bad place. 
 

Forget about wars .. how many genocides we had in the past 30 years ? I can think of former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Burma etc they were throwing babies in fire in Burma

 

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/theyre-throwing-babies-onto-fires-in-myanmar-we-need-to-recognize-genocide-is-occurring/wcm/37e88f89-0e4c-495d-aa09-99ff8c307032/amp/

 

now the latte-sipping crowd is getting concerned. 

 

Xerxes, don't lie!  We all know you sip lattes like the rest of us!    Cheers!

[Xerxes]

LOL ... Yes, i do indeed like my lattes

in fact, i love coffee, that first sip in the morning kills me !  

 

Damn, i hope that does not mean that I am projecting myself and actually that it is me who up just woke and realized the world is one big ugly place. 

 

Seriously though, some of those scenes that you see, where black people (students or otherwise) trying to leave Ukraine, and they are being held back by Polish or Ukrainian police at the border really pisses me off. I dont see much coverage of that. Granted I dont have full context but I assume this is not the time to let or not let people to escape to safety based on the color of their skin. This crisis has really shown the best and the worse of us.

 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Xerxes

[Parsad]

40 minutes ago, Xerxes said:

LOL ... Yes, i do indeed like my lattes

in fact, i love coffee, that first sip in the morning kills me !  

 

Damn, i hope that does not mean that I am projecting myself and actually that it is me who up just woke and realized the world is one big ugly place. 

 

Seriously though, some of those scenes that you see, where black people (students or otherwise) trying to leave Ukraine, and they are being held back by Polish or Ukrainian police at the border really pisses me off. I dont see much coverage of that. Granted I dont have full context but I assume this is not the time to let or not let people to escape to safety based on the color of their skin. This crisis has really shown the best and the worse of us.

 

 

Isn't that first sip awesome!  I don't actually really drink lattes much...the occasional mocha or cappuccino.  I do blends of my favorite coffee grinds and then I do a pour over.  Not those fancy cone pour over things all the millennials use, but the same little strainer I've used for 20 years well before the millennial baristas started doing pour overs.  I use an unbleached filter, three pours with the first to bloom the grinds, and then suck that bad boy up!  Damn that's good coffee!

 

I saw a young orphaned Ukrainian boy, maybe 9-10 years old, carrying his little backpack and just crying painfully as he walked alone.  Gut punch as I thought about my own niece and nephew and what if they had to go through such agony.  I just don't understand how someone could do this without provocation...ridiculous!    

[glider3834]

this interview is worth listening too - analyst Michael Nance has spent a lot of time on the ground in Ukraine and with their defence forces & studying tactics - his perspective is interesting unlike most Western analysts he actually thinks Ukraine has a chance of beating Russia.

 

Now this is not in interview but just a few thoughts I have - I am actually more in the camp of economically sustainable & targeted sanctions (rather than just complete blanket sanctions that are hurting a lot of Russian people who have absolutely no say over what Putin is doing) & focusing energy on helping Ukraine to resist & defeat the Russians is the better strategy. Putin needs to be defeated in the field IMHO - that will be more destabilising for his leadership & it will also act as a greater deterrent on future conflict. Sanctions were tried after Crimea & it didn't stop Putin having another go! 

 

 

 

 

[Spekulatius]

1 hour ago, Xerxes said:

LOL ... Yes, i do indeed like my lattes

in fact, i love coffee, that first sip in the morning kills me !  

 

Damn, i hope that does not mean that I am projecting myself and actually that it is me who up just woke and realized the world is one big ugly place. 

 

Seriously though, some of those scenes that you see, where black people (students or otherwise) trying to leave Ukraine, and they are being held back by Polish or Ukrainian police at the border really pisses me off. I dont see much coverage of that. Granted I dont have full context but I assume this is not the time to let or not let people to escape to safety based on the color of their skin. This crisis has really shown the best and the worse of us.

 

The ordeal of lacks and other foreigners has been covered in Sky News quite a bit. There is also a bunch of Indian students stranded in Northern Ukraine that seem to have been forgotten a d who have no way out.

 

On a related note, anyone knows what game Modi is playing in all this? Modi always strikes me as an enigma.

[adesigar]

46 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

The ordeal of lacks and other foreigners has been covered in Sky News quite a bit. There is also a bunch of Indian students stranded in Northern Ukraine that seem to have been forgotten a d who have no way out.

 

On a related note, anyone knows what game Modi is playing in all this? Modi always strikes me as an enigma.

 

India buys over 50% of its defense equipment from Russia. They have China on one side. They have Pakistan which is funded by the US on the other side. I'm sure you can figure out the rest.

[Blugolds]

Anyone have any input on this thought I had? 

 

I understand that Russia is censoring western media, FB etc. cutting the people off from any info that may describe this "military exercise" as War/Invasion...I also read that Anonymous has hacked things in Russia to expose the people to what is really happening, and reports say that 17k people have been arrested for protesting...

 

But lets assume that there is a significant portion of the population that is still unaware of what is going on, there were videos of captured soldiers phoning home and relatives they spoke to didnt even know they were in Ukraine or what was going on...

 

My question is...how does the Russian gov explain the sanctions? You can snowball people for so long until they notice none of their social media works anymore, they cant order Nikes, Disney is unavailable, the Ruble is crashing, the markets are crashing etc...what is their explanation for that? Sooner or later Russian people have to notice that they are being cut off from the rest of the world? 

 

Maybe it doesn't matter, as Putin and his gov have such a tight grip on the population and the penalties are so stiff for even saying anything that I dont think there is much the people could do even if they were aware and mad about it. 

 

My view is that Putin wont stop until Ukraine is a pile of rubble, you dont have to occupy a pile a rubble. Destroy everything so that it takes a generation to rebuild. I dont know that there is anything the Russian people could do to stop it either, he says Ukrainians are the same people and he has no problem sacrificing them, an uprising in Russia would likely yield the same result I suspect. 

[Dinar]

6 minutes ago, Blugolds11 said:

Anyone have any input on this thought I had? 

 

I understand that Russia is censoring western media, FB etc. cutting the people off from any info that may describe this "military exercise" as War/Invasion...I also read that Anonymous has hacked things in Russia to expose the people to what is really happening, and reports say that 17k people have been arrested for protesting...

 

But lets assume that there is a significant portion of the population that is still unaware of what is going on, there were videos of captured soldiers phoning home and relatives they spoke to didnt even know they were in Ukraine or what was going on...

 

My question is...how does the Russian gov explain the sanctions? You can snowball people for so long until they notice none of their social media works anymore, they cant order Nikes, Disney is unavailable, the Ruble is crashing, the markets are crashing etc...what is their explanation for that? Sooner or later Russian people have to notice that they are being cut off from the rest of the world? 

 

Maybe it doesn't matter, as Putin and his gov have such a tight grip on the population and the penalties are so stiff for even saying anything that I dont think there is much the people could do even if they were aware and mad about it. 

 

My view is that Putin wont stop until Ukraine is a pile of rubble, you dont have to occupy a pile a rubble. Destroy everything so that it takes a generation to rebuild. I dont know that there is anything the Russian people could do to stop it either, he says Ukrainians are the same people and he has no problem sacrificing them, an uprising in Russia would likely yield the same result I suspect. 

The government's explanation will be really simple:  The world hates Russia and Russian people, and this is why the West is doing it.  After all, look at what the US did to: Serbia, Libya, Iraq, et all, and there were no sanctions.  There is a double standard, you see.  There was an old joke when I was little: an American President says to Brezhnev, your people are starving; the response is: in the US blacks are discriminated against.  I lived in the USSR for a dozen years, trust me, you can explain anything and everything.  Also, it does not really matter if the people believe it or not, until they rise up in an armed revolt, nothing will change.   This is the wrong forum, but sadly in the US today and western world, there is tremendous censorship of unpopular ideas, or at least ideas that are not in vogue with the left wing of the Democratic party.  There was always censorship in Russia/USSR but to see this in the US scares me.  I am an American citizen who lives here, and this is the only citizenship that I have, and I am beginning to see parallels to my childhood.  People are afraid of expressing opinions, even opinions that were expressed by President Clinton twenty years ago.  We should take our cue from Elon Musk who refuses to censor unpopular opinions (even the ones that represent the view of the Russian government and make me want to vomit.)  Once we lose the freedom of expression, what is to stop us from becoming the next Russia or China?  

[thefatbaboon]

Ive been wondering over the last days whether sanctions ever work?  These are all the main countries sanctioned by America - some for more than half a century.  Haven't all these countries' leaders consolidated and grown old in power, often even establishing dynastic dictatorships for brothers, children etc?

 

iraq (removed only after invasion)

iran

cuba

venezuela

syria

north korea

russia

 

Seems obvious that sanctions work to impoverish a people and keep a country economically and militarily weak but never to help the country "rise up" and escape from under a dictator.  No idea why every politician and media pundit goes on about sanctions punishing dictators.

 

 

 

 

[Spekulatius]

4 hours ago, thefatbaboon said:

Ive been wondering over the last days whether sanctions ever work?  These are all the main countries sanctioned by America - some for more than half a century.  Haven't all these countries' leaders consolidated and grown old in power, often even establishing dynastic dictatorships for brothers, children etc?

 

iraq (removed only after invasion)

iran

cuba

venezuela

syria

north korea

russia

 

Seems obvious that sanctions work to impoverish a people and keep a country economically and militarily weak but never to help the country "rise up" and escape from under a dictator.  No idea why every politician and media pundit goes on about sanctions punishing dictators.

 

 

 

 

I guess the sanctions do work in the way that they ruin their economy and thus makes these countries much less of a threat. They won’t remove dictators  - this is something the people need to do themselves, or the passing of times does it.