Big diversion. 🙂
Now that I tutor, I often read /rTeachers at reddit where I learn about the existence of various education bills. One annoying thing is tons of (supposedly teachers) make claims about “what the bill does” without ever linking to the bill. (This is annoying because so many of the teachers claim they teach their kids to do “research” and learn to “support their claims. Perhaps they even do. But whatever.) It’s also clear that the details of precisely what the bill does are at least somewhat mangled both by the teacher-commenter at /rTeachers and in the news article. My guess this is because it never occurs to the teachers commenting to find and read the bill.
(‘Journalists’ are often no batter. As many are aware, news article “research” seems to be to call a supporter of the bill and a detractor and report what each claims. This is likely one of the worst possible ways to learn what is in any bill.)
Anyway, I did find the bill that has been dubbed “don’t say gay” by its detractors:
- Current version as of March 11
- Page with links to older version and when updated, presumably newer versions. Some of you who’ve heard of this bill might be interested in reading it.
The “controversy” is over the bill in general; detractors like none of it. Supporters mostly like all of it. Of. Course.
Many of the overstatements are about this passage.
3. A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.
Type of overstatements include things like, “Now teachers cannot stop kids from teasing another kid about his two dads.” Uhm… no. A telling kids in the process of teasing and bullying about “X” to stop it is not encouraging discussion about “X”. Answering questions students bring up is also not “encouraging” a discussion.
Intentionally adding something to the curriculum or formally writing “discuss X” into a today’s lesson plan is “encouraging discussion of X”. People happen to have different opinions about whether discussion of this particular “X” should be encouraged in k-3 grade levels in public schools.
Will the specific meaning end up thrashed out in court? Of course. We saw specific meaning thrashed out in the “potty mouth cheerleader” case. We see it thrashed out in every bill.
The schools are publicly funded and education is compulsory. So naturally people are going have different opinions about the extent to which schools can overrule the parents views about what is good for kids. This is a bill that leans toward the notion that parents views about the physical, emotional and social welfare of their children is important and prevent schools or teachers from over-riding that. Is that good or bad? In general? In every specific case? People have different opinions on that, and I’m not sure everyone knows in every specific case.
Anyway: big diversion. But I may be posting links to other controversial education bills in the future. My motive is mostly to be able to find them later! (Googling generally leads to news articles with no links.)
Open thread.
Lucia,
We could read the bill. Or we could just read the Babylon Bee:
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Just kidding.
I recall my mother taking me to a film night at our primary school 1956 5 years old for a grainy black and white film with egg fertilisation.
I think it was an early sex education film.
Nothing through the rest of school until 5th year university but too late then.
Did not really bother me but I cannot see the point in educating 5 year olds.
Not exactly wrong but unnecessary.
8 years old might be a better starting age and I think a parent should be with the child.
One thing will probably have to be revised: Unless ‘primary grades’ is defined elsewhere, it needs to be explicitly defined in the proposed addition.
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DeSantis has the votes for easy re-election and for continued control of the legislature. He also has a cooperative FL supreme court. The bill will become law. Those who object are wasting their time…. much like me complaining about crazy California laws.
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BTW, in one of the county school districts in FL (Gainesville area) that have fought DeSantis over parental opt-outs on school mask mandates, it was recently discovered that one of the five elected school board members was not a resident of the county, a direct violation of FL law. Under the law, that board member was immediately removed and replaced by a DeSantis appointee. That appointment flipped the political balance of the board, leading to the removal of the school superintendent that had instituted the no-opt-out mask rules. The school board is in the process of selecting a new superintendent.
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Warmed my heart to read that story, if only because it is so rare for public employees who refuse to follow the law to get what they deserve.
I didn’t read where primary grade was defined in the bill. It might be in a more major section–they sometimes have a definitions section. I read elsewhere (news articles etc.) it’s k-3.
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It’s definitely good the law saying you have to be a resident was enforced. Tons of people don’t run for that reason. My guess is mostly extreme activists (in either direction) violate. They are the only ones with a strong motive to want to impose their will to the extent of getting involved on the school board in a county where they won’t live. I can’t imagine myself wanting to spend time on the school board far away from me!
SteveF (Comment #210345): “it was recently discovered that one of the five elected school board members was not a resident of the county, a direct violation of FL law. Under the law, that board member was immediately removed”.
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Was the crook also required to return every penny of salary and benefits that he received?
Mike M,
As far as I know, no. The board salary (a part-time evenings only job) is only ~$36,000 per year, so it may not be worth the effort to try to recover. Of course DeSantis had withheld state funding equal to the board member’s salaries for some months, so maybe that part didn’t get reimbursed when the school district relented.
Mike M,
I should add: The superintendent’s salary was $175K plus car allowance and benefits…. so the superintendent actually has suffered financial consequences. She has stated publicly that she remains “proud” of her fight to keep school mask mandates. Perhaps some months being unemployed will lead her to some reflection, but I doubt it: social justice warriors, like religious zealots, seem quite incapable of reflection.
There’s an editorial in Friday’s WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-the-dont-say-gay-bill-say-that-11647041916?st=7ac7me6ly2yo76t&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
A lot of the comments are definitely overwrought.
The Alachua School Board story is fascinating.
The earliest story I can find is from early June 2021, which states that School Board member Diyonne McGraw lives in District 4 although she was elected as District 2. School Board members are required to reside in the district which they represent for the duration of their term.
Gov. De Santis declared her seat vacant after a preliminary hearing and a couple of months thereafter appointed a new member to the Board.
McGraw claims that she was told that she lives in District 2 by a member of the Supervisor of Elections Office. There seems to be some legitimate confusion, as the voting precinct in which she lives was changed after the 2010 census, but the School Board did not update its district boundaries to align with the new precincts.
McGraw filed suit to contest the removal, claiming that her election opponent et al. ‘ “concocted a scheme” to swiftly move McGraw from her school board seat by filing an emergency injunction that stripped McGraw of her voting powers. ‘ [Btw, her election opponent was not the one whom DeSantis appointed to replace McGraw.]
Hearing on her lawsuit was in late February, with the judge questioning whether DeSantis cited the correct statute in declaring the vacancy. Parties were given 20 days, so that means that the hHearing will continue sometime later this month.
HaroldW,
That may be a reason, but it’s not an excuse. Just like: The real estate agent told me the addition to the house I bought had been properly permitted does not make the addition legal.
Ignorantia Juris non-excusat
DeWitt,
We’ll see if the Supervisor of Elections agrees they told her that.
SteveF,
How far outside district 2 does she live?
Lucia,
I do not know her address, so I can’t say. I believe that one of her political friends on the school board was elected in the district where she lives.
“How far outside district 2 does she live?”
5 houses or 384 feet, according to this.
Off topic but some may be interested…. NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) can be used to find near real time locations of burning armor, aircraft and active engagements in Ukraine
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2022-03-12..2022-03-13,2022-03-12;@28.6,50.1,11z
[the system is not foolproof]
https://twitter.com/bradyafr/status/1501321464150208520?s=20&t=P0n_1JTPxkcrck5Za3KqOw
Ed Forbes (Comment #210335)
“I consider myself a very well informed layman on military subjects and able to make reasonable and informed comments on the subject. Sorry about that if it disturbs you.”
No Ed, just the opposite, I have learned quite a bit reading your posts on the war and I look forward to reading more. What gives me a belly laugh are the pseudo-experts who post authoritative comments on Eastern Europe and the same posters were pseudo-experts on Covid only a month ago. I have no expertise in either Covid or war, but I pride myself on my BS detector.
Thanks HaroldW,
It’s plausible she could actually make the mistake them. She should still be kicked off, but I don’t necessarily think badly of her personally.
Russel,
I don’t know who you are talking about specifically. You don’t sound like a pseudo-expert about war. But, at least to me, you sounded like on on Covid!
Lucia,
“ You don’t sound like a pseudo-expert about war. But, at least to me, you sounded like on on Covid!”
I tried to always state that I was a layman and had no public health credentials when expressing an opinion on Covid. I often repeated that in my posts. In my career, I was accepted as an expert witness in many proceedings, both civil and criminal, [Yes I passed voir dire and survived cross examination] so I am careful to not express an expert opinion on matters where I am no expert. If I present information on matters where I am not an expert, I try to always include a link.
Good. If you are having a good laugh and everyone is talking, it sounds like we are all satisfied.
What would be more impressive and effective than this constant sneering you subject us to would be to demonstrate that these pseudo-experts you speak of are full of BS, by posting your own arguments and links that persuasively refute them. Just something to think about there Russell.
I for one would honestly and sincerely be grateful if you would correct my specific factual errors or misunderstandings with verifiable info. Who knows, you might even earn some respect.
mark bofill (Comment #210371): “I for one would honestly and sincerely be grateful if you would correct my specific factual errors or misunderstandings with verifiable info. Who knows, you might even earn some respect.”
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Well said.
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Russell seems to think that nobody here should comment on anything important. Makes me wonder why he bothers with us.
lucia: “[Alachua School Board member Diyonne McGraw] should still be kicked off, but I don’t necessarily think badly of her personally.”
That’s what I found so fascinating. It sounds like (to me) that this problem is rooted in an innocent mistake made by an elections official, McGraw relying on this misinformation. The pleadings by her lawyer suggest that had the issue been brought up at election time, she might have been disqualified, but claim that there is a statutory limit on such challenges which expires 10 days after election. [Note: as with all legal arguments made by an interested party, this may or may not be a fair representation of the laws and rulings which apply to the situation.]
At one point, the School Board considered a quick re-drawing of the boundary lines. Thankfully, such shenanigans did not come to pass.
And inevitably, party politics come into play. I suspect the governor would not have intervened so quickly had the member in question been a supporter of his policies. Did the governor have the statutory power to declare a vacancy, and thereby appoint a successor? If he hadn’t acted, would the legal challenge to McGraw have produced a decision in a timely manner (say, before her term expires)? Interesting questions to which I do not know the answer.
What is verifiable information as far as this conflict is concerned? Misinformation is everywhere, on every side. Personally, I’m more worried this is the start of something of far more import. On Feb 4th, Russia signed a joint declaration with China.
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“Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development”
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The sides reaffirm their strong mutual support for the protection of their core interests, state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and oppose interference by external forces in their internal affairs.
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The Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle, confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan.
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Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions, intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose colour revolutions, and will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas.
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The sides believe that certain States, military and political alliances and coalitions seek to obtain, directly or indirectly, unilateral military advantages to the detriment of the security of others, including by employing unfair competition practices, intensify geopolitical rivalry, fuel antagonism and confrontation, and seriously undermine the international security order and global strategic stability. The sides oppose further enlargement of NATO and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologized cold war approaches, to respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilizational, cultural and historical backgrounds, and to exercise a fair and objective attitude towards the peaceful development of other States. The sides stand against the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region and remain highly vigilant about the negative impact of the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy on peace and stability in the region. Russia and China have made consistent efforts to build an equitable, open and inclusive security system in the Asia-Pacific Region (APR) that is not directed against third countries and that promotes peace, stability and prosperity.
Russel
Repeating that in your posts isn’t all that meaningful in my opinion. This is a blog. It’s no sin to air your views. You aren’t asking for a job at taxpayer expense. But you might want to be aware that you too tend to sound just as much like a pseudo-expert as whoever it is you criticize. (I’m not entirely sure which people you think are the guilty parties in any case. You are just volleying accusations at random anonymous people. )
HaroldW wrote:
It would be a mistake to believe in such “innocent mistakes”. As more information comes out, they often don’t look like mistakes at all.
DaveJR: “It would be a mistake to believe in such “innocent mistakes”. As more information comes out, they often don’t look like mistakes at all.”
I agree with this take at the big-league level, cynical it may be but often accurate. In more local terms, I don’t think that such strategems occur often. More specifically in this case, if the election official did steer McGraw wrong deliberately, I’d think that McGraw’s ineligibility would miraculously be made public just before the election, in time to be disqualified.
DaveJR,
By that logic, we should be within our rights to overthrow the current Cuban government as it is well within our adjacent region and is certainly undermining security and stability.
DeWitt Payne
Or Mexico for that matter. They can’t seem to manage to get their drug cartels reigned in. It causes us problems. We could go in guns blazing!
Lucia,
“They can’t seem to manage to get their drug cartels reigned in. It causes us problems. We could go in guns blazing!”
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Ummm… no. But if they signed strategic military agreements with Russia or China (or both!), that would be very different.
I think the idea of ‘within our rights’ when it comes to overthrowing other governments is an interesting idea. I’m not sure what this means. If we believe the legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the people, it might actually be within our ‘rights’ to overthrow the government of Cuba or Mexico.
What sort of rights are we talking about? I don’t put much stock in the notion of international law – legal rights seem to me to be mainly applicable within the context of a specific nation. Moral rights, natural human rights I guess?
I tend not to often think about such things because it seems besides the point. Nations don’t often appear to make decisions on the basis of what is within their rights as far as I can tell, usually the criteria seems like more of a question of whether or not something is within their power and perceived best interests.
DeWitt “ By that logic, we should be within our rights to overthrow the current Cuban government as it is well within our adjacent region and is certainly undermining security and stability.”
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You might want to read up on “Bay of Pigs “, “ Cuban Missile Crisis”, and “ Operation Mongoose” among others of US actions vs Cuba.
Lucia “ Or Mexico for that matter. They can’t seem to manage to get their drug cartels reigned in. It causes us problems. We could go in guns blazing!”
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We’re done that several times. The Mexican American war where the US pealed off a major portion of Mexico. Let’s not forget the Black Jack Pershing “punitive “ expedition.
mark bofill,
“….usually the criteria seems like more of a question of whether or not something is within their power and perceived best interests.”
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Yes, that is the reality. The USA could have simply ceded the entire Louisiana purchase to native Americans. They didn’t. The Continental Congress did not decide to make all of the English speaking colonies property of native Americans. China will not cede independence to Taiwan. North Korea is never going to accept that South Korea is a free and independent country.
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Reality is sometimes less than what some would want.
Ed,
I have read up on these things:
(a) We didn’t invade during the Cuban Missile crisis.
(b) During the Cuban Missile Crisis, it’s not at all clear that Cuban people wanted those missiles there. (Which may be a reason Kruschev recognized he’s be on his own if he did move them in and we did respond.)
(c) I think we were unjustified during the Bay of pigs.
So, I think the point still stands. These notions do not justifiy invasion.
Ed Forbes
Yep. And we were wrong in some cases. Most people recognize that now. That we (or the Gauls, Visigoths, Vikings or whoever) once did something wrong doesn’t make doing it right.
As for other cases of peeling off Mexico: Sometimes we are not remotely in the wrong. Texas for example was peeled off by local residents. Did some American’s come in and help? Sure. But Mexico invited people to settle because Mexico didn’t have the power to deal with the local indiginous population. Turns out those he invited in to displace the local indigenous didn’t like Mexican rule either, so they rebelled. Sure they got help from their friends– but that’s not the US invading Mexico.
If you really want to talk about what happened, perhaps you should be specific.
Ed Forbes,
I don’t need to read up on the events you listed. I lived through them. Kennedy chickened out. If he wasn’t going to provide air support, he could have and should have canceled the Bay of Pigs fiasco before it started. That led directly to the missile crisis. Arguably, it was motivation for Oswald.
Several participants in the Bay of Pigs were high school students at the same school and the same time I was a student.
Ed Forbes,
“You might want to read up on “Bay of Pigs “, “ Cuban Missile Crisis”, and “ Operation Mongoose” among others of US actions vs Cuba.”
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To which I would add: Lee Harvey Oswald was a dedicated (if somewhat crazy) communist who had visited Cuba just before returning to the States and assassinating John Kennedy. Who put Oswald up t it? Nobody in the States it seems, but there was plenty of desire for payback in Cuba after the the Bay of Pigs fiasco and operation mongoose. The Cuban Missile Crisis and Kennedy’s assignation followed very shortly thereafter.
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IMO, Kennedy’s error was in not sending in several battalions of marines in 1960, eliminating the Castro regime… which was little more than a bunch of murderous thieves and thugs. A while later Kennedy paid very dearly for this error.
DeWitt,
Cross posted.
Lucia,
Why do you think we were unjustified during the Bay of Pigs?
My view is that the government of Cuba at the time was certainly a dictatorship where the consent of the governed was disregarded.
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I’m asking and not arguing, for lots of reasons. Chiefly I’m still not sure I buy the idea that ‘rights’ exist in this context (nations have a ‘right’ to invade or not invade or not be invaded). I’m quite sure that even if they nations do have rights, I have no clear idea what the foundation of those rights are or how to derive … anything really about them. So my observation about ‘consent of the governed’ might have nothing to do with anything anyway.
DeWitt,
I certainly agree with you there. What happened was awful. Better not to even begin than that mess.
Mark
I agree the Castro’s government in Cuba was a dictatorship and the consent of the governed was disregarded. I don’t think that justified us being so directly involved in invading.
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I do suspect that part of the reason Kruscheve backed down during the Cuban missile crisis may have been absolute knowledge that if we did invade (rightly or wrongly), the Cuban populace was not going to fight to maintain the Castro’s government or any sort of alliance with Russia.
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That doesn’t mean it would have been “our right” to invade. In fact– if we had invaded and the people of Cuba had wanted to fight us off, they would have had a perfect justification to do so. The difficulty for Krushev and Castro was they wouldn’t have done so.
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In contrast: Ukraine citizens have the perfect right to repel invaders and are fighting to do so. They may lose, but suggesting that somehow Russia has a “right” to invade them or dictate their situation is wrong. Russians might may mean they eventually will prevail and do so. But they have no right.
Thanks Lucia.
Sounds like the the posts I commented on needed sarc tags. Or were they serious statements as written?
Ed Forbes,
You might want to be more specific about which statements need /sarc tags.
Mark “ If we believe the legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the people, it might actually be within our ‘rights’ to overthrow the government of Cuba or Mexico.”
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If the above is legitimate, then so is:
“ The Brezhnev Doctrine was the Soviet Union’s declared policy to intervene in the internal affairs of another socialist state if the leading role of that state’s communist party was threatened”
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I generally agree with you. I most definitely reject any idea that nation states themselves have “natural rights” and that “international law” governs the actions of nations states other than what alliances are willing to backup with force. It’s a Hobbesian world out there “of unrestrained, selfish and uncivilized competition” only restrained by fear of force. All laws, at their base, are compelled by the threat of overwhelming force against those not in compliance.
Ed,
It’s not that I don’t believe in rights at all. I’m just not sure about the rights of nations. As usual, at this point in the conversation I start asking myself, exactly what in the heck is a ‘right’ anyway? I start reading definitions. I find the exact meaning is pretty fuzzy when it comes to important particulars and sources vary on some details that I think are important.
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It might be for further discussion to be fruitful we’d need to agree to at least what we mean here and now when we use the word.
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Usually when I think of rights, I think of governments existing in order to secure those rights; this is one of the proper (in my view) justifications of our government.
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I don’t know if governments have rights. I’ll go on thinking about it. I [could] make initial arguments either way. [Or maybe if nations have rights. I’m not even sure it’s quite right to say nations and governments are precisely the same thing.]
shrug.
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Thanks Ed.
Mark, these ideas on the rights of the people and nation states were thrashed out pretty well during the English Civil Wars, mainly between the two ends of the spectrum, Hobbs and Locke.
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These debates have not subsided over the last 400 years so don’t feel bad if you are conflicted over the issue of “rights” !
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I tend to go with Hobbs on the matter….Life’s a bitch, then you die.
Ed Forbes
I’m not seeing the connection.
A state not having “the consent of the people” is entirely different from “the state’s communist party was threatened.”
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You are really going to have to explain the connection. Because I’m not seeing it.
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Now, I don’t think we had a right to overthrow Cuba’s government because we thought Castro didn’t have the consent of the people. (He probably didn’t. I think the Cuban’s themselves would have this right.)
And I don’t think the Brezhnev doctrine is correct either. But I don’t see why you think those to doctrines are similar in any way. (Well, other than being claims to rights to intervene.)
Lucia,
“Ukraine citizens have the perfect right to repel invaders and are fighting to do so. They may lose, but suggesting that somehow Russia has a “right” to invade them or dictate their situation is wrong. Russians might may mean they eventually will prevail and do so. But they have no right.”
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Certainly the ~80-90% in the Crimea who are ethnic Russians (and voted to be part of Russia) are not fighting the Russians, nor are the ethnic Russian majorities in the eastern provinces.
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The situation in Ukraine is more complicated than whether or not Russia has a right to insist Ukraine not become part of NATO and the EU. Does Cuba have the right to actively promote armed insurrection in other countries? Does the USA have a right to keep Mexico from developing nuclear weapons? Does Israel have a right to object to Iran developing nuclear weapons? Does any country EVER have a right to interfere in the affairs of another when it doesn’t like what is happening….. say, the attempted extermination of an ethnic minority by the majority, like in Rawanda? Those are not simple black and white moral questions, but ones that often fall in the gray area between. There are no simple answers. The reality is: these are real-politic questions and have to be judged case by case, and are in fact so judged.
Lucia,
Yeah, I don’t see the connection either. I actually started my prior answer around that question but I couldn’t get the tone I wanted / my wording seemed argumentative, so I scratched it. Maybe Ed will speak to what he meant there.
I think your theory of what is right or wrong for a nation to do is more developed than mine. I’m not sure I disagree with you in principle. I suspect we would agree that the practical application would be tricky. For example, when you say
A host of questions present themselves. Who speaks for the Cuban people. Who speaks for the people particularly when the people are not free to speak, when they face incarceration or summary execution in extreme cases for trying to speak for themselves.
One of the ideas I’m currently considering is that any nation that generally forbids exit immigration might be considered a sort of slave state by default.
I know I’m on slippery ice abstracting from individual rights to the level of nations. On the level of individuals though, we do recognize the right to defend and assist each other. If I witness somebody getting mugged, I don’t have to interrogate them about the nature of the situation. I can make reasonable assumptions and assist them with force. Do you think this idea has some equivalent on the level of nations, and if so, how do you think it ought to work?
And in other news: worldometers has S. Korea with 350,000 new cases yesterday and the rate looks like it is still going up. That would be equivalent to about 2,000,000 cases/day in the US. Omicron in the US peaked at about 800,000/day. The seven day trailing average in the US is now down to 30,000/day.
mark,
I’m not sure my theory is more developed. Generally, I think countries and people in countries have a right to defend themselves. Now, it’s true other countries may join them. When joining, a country isn’t necessarily wrong and it’s generally not “a war crime”. — but I don’t think it’s “a countries right”.
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I think there is a big gap of “neither a right nor a crime/wrong” between what we have a right to do and what is a crime.
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To give an example:
I don’t, for example, think we had “a right to enter the European theater in WWII. We did have a right to fight Japan– due to having been bombed.
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At the same time, I don’t think we were wrong to enter the European theater. In fact, I think it was “the correct choice”. That doesn’t make it some sort of fundamental “right”.
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But countries often want to claim that an invasion or policy involves exercising “their countries rights”.
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So: I don’t think we had a right to invade the Cuba because the Cuban people didn’t consent to Castro’s government. It may have been in our interest— which is different from being some sort of absolute right. Maybe it was an ok to help local Cuban’s who wanted to exercise their own rights to overthrow someone who had overthrown their previous government.
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But Kennedy certainly botched it.
DeWitt,
How are deaths with Omicron there?
Ok… looks like deaths in Hong Kong are bad.
lucia (Comment #210404): “I don’t, for example, think we had “a right to enter the European theater in WWII.”
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If you are referring to our active military involvement, then we certainly had that right, no matter how strictly you define “right”. Germany declared war on us, then we declared war on them.
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lucia: “At the same time, I don’t think we were wrong to enter the European theater. In fact, I think it was “the correct choice”. That doesn’t make it some sort of fundamental “right”.”
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I don’t think I see the difference. Within US law, a fundamental right is something that may not be restricted, not merely something that is not prohibited. I don’t see how such distinctions apply in international affairs, other than to the extent that certain actions might violate treaties. As Ed Forbes says, its pretty much Hobbsian.
MIke M.
Yeah, they declared war. But Germany didn’t attack us. Maybe they would have attacked, but they didn’t. Obviously, it was in our interest to go to war, but I still don’t consider that enough to make it “our right”. YMMV.
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I’m puzzled by the adjacency of “I don’t see the difference” followed by a sentence that precisely describes the difference!
lucia (Comment #210406): “looks like deaths in Hong Kong are bad.”
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Yikes! Five time the peak in the US. That is not so in South Korea, New Zealand, and Singapore although those places now have huge case totals. They have a high rate of vaccination. Maybe the Chinese vaccine is useless.
MikeM,
I expected the Chinese vaccine to be fairly useless. There was some evidence it wasn’t particularly good even with the initial variant.
Still…. sad.
lucia (Comment #210408): “Yeah, they declared war. But Germany didn’t attack us. Maybe they would have attacked, but they didn’t.”
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Well, if they declared war, one could assume they would attack. And they DID attack us. German U-boats started sinking ships in US waters in Jan. 1942.
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lucia: “I’m puzzled by the adjacency of “I don’t see the difference” followed by a sentence that precisely describes the difference!”
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Because the difference is irrelevant to international affairs.
MikeM
Even if a treaty contained a provision that stated Ukraine would not be allowed to defend itself if attacked, that provision would be void because a countries right to self defense may not be restricted. That’s a right. It’s not granted by treaty.
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And even if someone claimed to take it away by treaty, as a practical matter, you are going to see the country supposedly so bound “violate” the treaty.
MikeM
Assumptions aren’t realities.
January 1942 is after Dec 11, 1941 when we declared war back on them. We don’t know what they would have done if we’d ignored them.
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I certainly don’t think it was wrong to declare war back. But I don’t think it’s the same inalienable right as the right to protect ourselves if actually attacked— which is what the Japanese did. I get you may see this differently. But there is a difference between “an inalienable right” and “something that is permitted”. WRT to Germany, we did something entirely permitted. It was a wise choice. It was in our interest. I don’t think it was an “inalienable right”.
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In principle, a treaty could make a rule that said “If a country declares ware but does not attack, the two of you will enter negotiations.” That’s not in alienable. Now, of course, we didn’t have such a treaty with Germany. It would generally not be in anyone’s interest to enter such a treaty. But I don’t think that provision would be automatically void. In contrast, a provision that a country can’t fight back of actually bombed or invaded would be void. Enforcing that is a fundamental violation of people’s rights.
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In contrast, I think the right to defend ourselves when actually attacked is inalienable. That’s a right..
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Lucia and Mike,
Thanks for your comments. [They] clarified the matter for me some.
lucia (Comment #210413): “In contrast, I think the right to defend ourselves when actually attacked is inalienable. That’s a right.”
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OK, I think I see your point. But it still sounds to me like a distinction without a difference. If the US is attacked, we will defend ourselves. We will do that whether we have a “right” to do so or not. Either way, nobody is going to stop us from defend ourselves. At least not from trying.
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Russia has no right to invade Ukraine. Does it actually matter, other than in the court of public opinion?
lucia (Comment #210413): “January 1942 is after Dec 11, 1941 when we declared war back on them. We don’t know what they would have done if we’d ignored them.”
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In the same since that we don’t know that it will be warmer in July than it is now.
Mike,
Maybe.
I may be in the minority in that I believe there is utility to adhering to moral behavior. At the end of the day, I believe what is right turns out to in fact be what is most profitable, beneficial, etc. Which is not to define what is right by what is apparently most profitable or beneficial or whatever.
To supply a concrete example, democratic and free societies generally vastly outperform authoritarian regimes economically and in terms of technological or scientific progress. It’s a consequence but not the justification of governance that is closer to what is right.
So – I think it could be useful to think about and bear in mind.
I could be full of cheese whiz as always, this is just my opinion.
Mike M,
“Maybe the Chinese vaccine is useless.”
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Probably is useless or close to useless. The difference between Hong Kong and China is there is enough press freedom and contact with other countries that huge death rates can’t be easily hidden.
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Korea has used non-Chinese vaccines, and doesn’t have such high death rates.
Another contributing factor in Hong Kong is the age demographics for vaccination is bass ackwards. Highest rate is among the least vulnerable.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/hong-kongs-omicron-spike-tests-its-zero-covid-approach.html
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I remember the spin last year that Hong Kong avoided Covid because everyone was wearing masks.
mark bofill (Comment #210417): “I may be in the minority in that I believe there is utility to adhering to moral behavior. At the end of the day, I believe what is right turns out to in fact be what is most profitable, beneficial, etc.”
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I very much agree. There is definitely a difference between right and wrong, even in the affairs of nations. And doing right rather than wrong generally makes the world a better place, for all involved.
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But there is a huge difference between what is right and a right. We have a right to speak freely. That right applies to telling lies. But telling lies is wrong. So we have a right to do wrong.
A Chinese vaccine was tested in Peru some time ago. It was about 50% effective from what I heard.
Mike,
Yes. I apologize for blurring the distinction in my thinking there. Perhaps I mean to say that observing, adhering to, and honoring rights is what is right. In fact that is what I was thinking, but since I wasn’t thinking very explicitly maybe I hosed it up someplace. I’ll think it though again.
It’s necessary and sufficient conditions; observing rights is necessary but not sufficient for ‘right’ to be done. There is also the condition that people [or nations, apparently] choose to exercise their rights to do what is right.
MIkeM
I disagree with this claim.
Asked about my statements on:
Mark “ If we believe the legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the people, it might actually be within our ‘rights’ to overthrow the government of Cuba or Mexico.”
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Me “If the above is legitimate, then so is:”
“ The Brezhnev Doctrine was the Soviet Union’s declared policy to intervene in the internal affairs of another socialist state if the leading role of that state’s communist party was threatened”
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My general view is that “rights” of nations and people are relative, not fixed. A peoples, and a nations, rights are what can be enforced by the people on their government and for the nation state what can be enforced on the other nation states.
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The Brezhnev Doctrine expressed the view that communism was a vital state interest. The issue with Cuba revolved around the US view that communism was against vital state interest.
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No “natural rights” in either case other than down the barrel of a gun.
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Now, does a “moral” approach work better than use of pure force? Yes, it does. This is the issue where trust of one keeping ones word leads to better outcomes generally. This true on both the personal level and for agreements between nations.
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The trouble with always doing the “moral” thing as policy between nations is that “moral” is defined by the local society and different local societies define what is moral differently.
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For nation states, upholding vital state interests is moral. If it is in vital state interest to declare war, then that war is a “just war”, by definition. The devil is in the details determining what are “vital state interests”.
Ed,
Needless to say,
isn’t what I said here:
Obviously you know that. I guess you used my statement as a placeholder or something.
[Edit: Which is fine I guess, I’m not complaining. Just trying to sort through the source of the original confusion.]
[Edit2: I probably disagree with you about moral relativism, but I’m not invested enough in the discussion to step into that arena.]
Moral relativism: complain that BLM, and shove racism down everyone’s throat. Have your merchandise made in India where the workers are treated just a step above slaves ie already low pay just keeps getting lower.
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Moral irony: China, reporting on the “robust disagreements” in working conditions in India smugly mentions that such problems wouldn’t happen in China. In other words, they’re far better at keeping their wage slaves in line.
Ed
Well, that looks like you taking something specific, and interpreting it to mean one of the many categories it falls in, then seeing something different that also falls in that category and decreeing them the same.
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It’s like someone saying a they like to eat tomatoes, then you telling them that’s the same as saying you like to eat wood. Then when they don’t think it’s saying the same things, you explain that eating tomatoes is eating something plant based. And then noting that wood is plant based. And so saying you like to eat one is the same as saying you like to eat the other.
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Yes, they are both plant based. But the differences matter, so obviously, saying you like to eat tomatoes is not the same as saying you like to eat wood (or even walnuts for that matter.)
Individual human beings have rights, and they have those rights because they are human and have human traits. Natural rights do not depend on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government. They are universal, fundamental, and inalienable. That does not mean that individuals cannot be subjugated and denied the practice of those rights, but they continue to have them. An individual who violates the rights of another can be refrained from practicing those rights.
Nations do not possess those rights, but their citizens do and to a greater or lesser extent in practicing those rights. War as a moral question needs to be considered with regards to the rights of the individual citizens. Since nations cannot, by definition, have natural rights of individuals, attempting to define nation’s rights will allow the definer such a wide latitude that the so-called rights can be used to rationalize just about any actions and reactions.
Even for a nation with a legitimate grievance against another, the issue of collateral damage must be considered in terms of individual rights. The further that a state’s action can deviate from that considered proper for individuals’ actions the greater the dilemma in assigning any morals to a states action and particularly when it comes to military actions.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #210428): “Nations do not possess those rights, but their citizens do and to a greater or lesser extent in practicing those rights. War as a moral question needs to be considered with regards to the rights of the individual citizens.”
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I like that.
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I note that the invasion of Grenada has been condemned as a violation of international law. But in Grenada, the anniversary is a national holiday.
Mike M,
“I note that the invasion of Grenada has been condemned as a violation of international law. But in Grenada, the anniversary is a national holiday.”
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Yes, and had Kennedy the good sense to get rid of the Castro regime in 1961, that date would likely also be celebrated today in Cuba. Fidel could have shared a prison cell with Noriega for 25 years… or just have been shot in the street… no real policy difference. But Kennedy didn’t have that good sense. We risked nuclear holocaust and Kennedy was assassinated as a direct result.
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Seems to me that history has as often turned on really bad political decisions as turned on good ones.
Good news! I can concealed carry without a permit now!
Of course, I don’t have a gun I could conveniently carry concealed, and I don’t really go anywhere where I could bring a firearm anyway. But if I did! Heh.
Maybe I’ll buy a cheap Taurus 9mm.
Are you in the correct state for the change in law to apply?
Yup, Alabama.
The thing is, I don’t like little guns. They’re light and the barrels are short, which means they tend to be noisy and inaccurate (due to the shorter barrel) and they tend to kick or snap (due to being light). My guns are big and heavy and fun and easy to shoot, but they’re not really useful for concealed carry by virtue of the fact that they are big and heavy with relatively long barrels.
I know, somebody get me some cheese to go with my whine. It’s not like I have to concealed carry now. Somehow I feel like I ought to though.
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[Edit: Before people start posting to argue with me – the bit about the noise is my subjective opinion. I haven’t taken decibel measurements, it just seems like the shorter barrel guns are louder to me. It sounds louder when I shoot them, even when the rounds are the same. ]
Same for the accuracy thing. I suspect the bullet trajectory of most guns [] has a smaller variance than the variance in my ability to consistently aim at the same place between multiple shots. Subjectively, it seems like shorter barrels are less accurate. Maybe they are just harder to aim consistently.
Shrug.
Mark,
The ratio of the trigger weight to the gun weight is very important.
P-E Harvey, I agree. Nothing screws up my aim more than pulling the darn trigger! The lighter (and shorter) the trigger the better for placing the shot in my experience.
My favorite revolver is single or double action, and there’s a consistent, observable improvement in my accuracy shooting single action (I’m sure this is true for most everybody; you tend to jerk the gun out of position less when you have to do less work to pull the trigger).
Sorry. I’ll shut up about guns. Clearly it’s been too long since I’ve gone to the range. :/
Oops. The law doesn’t go into effect until January 1’rst, apparently.
I have been blocked from RT by my current website control. Downloaded Brave and can now get into RT. The level of censorship in the US is becoming dangerous to a functioning democracy.
Ed,
What is RT?
“RT (formerly Russia Today or Rossiya Segodnya)[10] is a Russian state-controlled[1] international television network funded by the tax budget of the Russian government.[17][18] It operates pay television or free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.”
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RT website
https://www.rt.com/russia/
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It is somewhat like reading the major news outlets, heavy on a specific point of view, but I find it useful to compare the two.
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RT tends to be more objective on posts not dealing directly with their governments position than US major media.
Thanks.
Ed Forbes,
Try an onion browser
https://onionbrowser.com/
Or try a vpn of some sort.
Velensky has now (apparently) publicly accepted that Ukraine will not join NATO. The two sides still seem far apart, but who knows? Not joining NATO was always the primary demand Putin made.
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What complicates things is the need for international sanctions to be withdrawn as part of any settlement. Western leaders seem unwilling to even entertain reducing sanctions. Worse: Any final negotiated peace will require Europe and the USA agree to the terms. There is too much political hay to be harvested from resisting any negotiated peace. I predict the process will be ugly and prolonged and especially damaging to the Ukrainian civilian population, no matter what the Ukrainians themselves want.
EU and US will kill Zelensky before they allow him to sign a peace deal.
MikeN,
I hope not. He is a courageous and eloquent leader… and a heck of a dancer as well. If he can agree to a deal with Putin, I hope the West will not keep it from happening.
My statement that field modifications to protect vs top of turret attacks will be seen in the field are coming true. Can’t link to photos as it is in a restricted Facebook account.
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Basically a steel plate that looks to be stood about 3 ft off the top of the tank turret. Exactly what I expected the fix to look like. .
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The photo shows several MBT’s in column covered in their normal reactive armor with the field modification built out of scrap steel plate covering the top. Part in plate and part in closely spaced bars.
Ed Forbes,
We will see. With many more anti-tank weapons in the Ukraine than Russian tanks, each tank faces (potentially) multiple attacks. Whatever measures the Russians have adopted, they will need to be highly effective against multiple independent attacks.
Ed forbes,
If you find a photo showing what you describe, that would be something to discuss.
Steve,
true, but I wonder how many of the new, and more effective, AT weapons are actually getting to the front in the east and into trained hands. The east is where it matters and that is a long and open route to move supplies form the western Polish border to the far eastern border.
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I am also seeing reports that the large stocks of older Soviet LAW’s sent by Germany were in close to junk status due to poor storage.
Steve,
I have downloaded the photo, but gave up my photo bucket account years ago and don’t want to pay to have photos hosted.
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Will look for another free photo host.
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Looking closer, the photo I have does not look to be current. Looks like from one of the previous Russian actions, not Ukraine. Likely something cobbled together on the local divisional, not Army level.
My reaction to Russian tank “cope cages” are that obviously those anti-tank missiles are working. Russians attacking supply lines from Poland are arguably the same, as well as the continued refusal of Russians to enter Kyiv en masse. More and more I speculate they are very concerned about the vulnerability of their armor and high population to occupier ratio. They aren’t going to have very many friends in Kyiv.
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I don’t know they have very many good answers here. The daily barrage of burning buildings seems more likely to harden the opposition than demoralize them, but I’m not the one in Kyiv.
I have no idea why RT should be banned in the US, this is a mistake. I doubt many people would watch but they should have access. The Western media has had some very credulous coverage during this war, oops special miltary exercise. Even with that, it is obvious that Russia is engaging in some brutal urban combat that is sloppy and cruel, but it’s pretty much what I expected.
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It’s still taking longer than expected and every day that goes by increases the odds that Ukraine could “win”, although the win would leave their country decimated. I’d say Russian chances of winning are down to 90% from 95%. Too many tanks blowing up and too much brutality that could backfire. All those abandoned vehicles are strange. Running out of gas or breaking down or people giving up the fight. Nothing good.
SteveF (Comment #210445): “Velensky has now (apparently) publicly accepted that Ukraine will not join NATO.”
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What Zelensky and Ukraine need is a guarantee that this won’t happen again. Obviously, Russia’s word is not good enough. So they need a deal whereby NATO and/or the US will come to their defense. Joining NATO would accomplish that, but would not be needed.
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If the US and NATO don’t want the war to end, all they have to do is refuse to be a part of any such deal.
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From what I have heard, access to Russian media is being blocked in the US. Because disinformation. Welcome to our brave new world of censorship.
It’s a mistake to look at “time” being against the Russians. Cut supply, cut services, and starve as the cities only have about 2 weeks supply on hand. Rinse and repeat.
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I noticed that the “stalled” column to the north and west of Kiev suddenly dispersed and deployed after Russian forces coming from the east neared Kiev. Looks to me they were just waiting for this force before being committed to combat.
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The far east is the key forcing Kiev to capitulate.
The far eastern Ukrainian forces are still being slowly encircled. If they allow themselves to be entrapped, it’s game over. This is their most experienced force. It’s loss will allow the Russian forces in the east to combine and drive westward. If they leave their fortifications to engage in a mobile battle to breakout for Kiev, the Russians will have an extreme advantage due to Ukraine’s shortage of mobile equipment. It’s a long retreat west while under continuous attack.
Ukraine is facing a Dunkirk situation which can turn disastrous in quick order.
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Again, there are no time constraints for the Russians that I see. Slow and steady will win it for them.
Post in moderation
Released!
Ed. Forbes (Comment #210456): “Again, there are no time constraints for the Russians that I see. Slow and steady will win it for them.”
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But we can not see the state of supply of their troops in the field. And we can not see their stores behind the lines. If they planned for slow and steady (doubtful) and are executing their plan (also doubtful), then you may well be correct. But if they planned for quick and easy and are making a mess of their logistics, then time might favor Ukraine. Can’t tell from a distance.
I have been following the thread here on the Russian/Ukraine conflict that has included a lot of information on battle tactics and strategies. I might have missed it, but I have not heard much about the cost of this war to Ukraine or even if estimates are available. When I look at images on US television of this war it is difficult for me to come up with a wild guess. I often see the same images several times. Here I am not considering the toll on human lives as that would be most difficult to put a price on that agony and a seemingly cold-hearted endeavor.
The reason I bring up this aspect of the war is the issues I see when the battles are over and with that being who outside of Ukraine will feel morally obligated to help rebuild and further the dependence of that help on who actually controls Ukraine.
As our vice president put it we have a large nation going after a smaller nation. What she left out is that a large nuclear armed nation in today’s world can do battle with a smaller non-nuclear nation without the threat of world nuclear annihilation and further the nations aligned with that smaller nation can support that nation’s war effort indirectly without risk of a WW III – or at least to this point in time. What we have with this battle is Ukraine’s war effort (with aid from aligned nations) being a proxy for a larger war in a concerted effort to avoid WW III. In actuality Ukraine in fighting on has paid a huge price in human sacrifice and material loss that will be difficult to determine. The positive side of this great loss, if there is a positive side, would be the price that it has put on Russia’s war effort. Whether it is a major deterrent remains to be seen and particularly when the deterrent may be more against Putin than Russia as a nation.
In my mind this brings forth two questions: (1) what do the aligned nations owe Ukraine after the war for their proxy effort and (2) how will the nations of the world deal with Putin as an entity separate from Russia?
Kenneth,
I don’t believe we will owe Ukraine anything. I understand what you are suggesting about proxies. However, in my support of Ukraine I am not motivated by any desire to fight a proxy war with Russia. I am motivated mostly by empathy for Ukraine’s effort to survive as a sovereign nation. Therefore, I view the assistance we are rending as charitable donations, the transfer of which incur no further obligation on the part of either party.
I have no answer to your second question.
Why was Jussie so determined to claim he was not suicidal 8 times?
Why was he released?
The answer to the second is easy.
The camera system where he was detained was working properly.
While he is not in the Epstein league of revelation his actions did tie in with Kamala and Corey pushing anti lynching legislation at the same time.
Hard to believe the staged attack was no orchestrated well in advance to elicit support, after all it was not spur of the moment and involved someone who certainly can act.
A third suicide in cells over less major actors was never going to be well received by the public.
There are rules to be followed.
Like Cuomo at CNN there are big bikkies involved.
Very proud of his families united front for him but do not know how they can all collectively suspend their belief systems.
As an aside not one mention of the Ex [Redhead] at CNN today for the first time in 6 years.
Mark, thanks for the reply about your personal view of this matter, but I was thinking more in terms of what will be the positions on these matters by the world politicians. Wars are very costly in human and material toll and I think in the heat of battle this end result is too often not discussed.
Oh. Apologies for misunderstanding you.
Angech,
I’m not above putting on my tin foil hat and talking craziness- this all men know. Still. I really really doubt anybody was going to kill Jussie in jail. I really really really really doubt Kamala was going to have Jussie killed. He’s worth nothing to politicians now, they likely figure the sooner he is forgotten the better.
If some politician wants a black man lynched in order to whip up discord (hardly necessary these days), well. Jussie isn’t the only black man in America, or even Chicago. Somebody without the baggage would serve better and would certainly be easier to arrange.
mark bofill (Comment #210465)
I will take my tinfoil off.
You are quite right in all the above.
I was just amazed he was released.
Much better optics to just forget about him as you say.
I do not think it correct to refer to Ukraine as a proxy war. Russia is not fighting via proxies; they are directly involved. And Ukraine is certainly not fighting via proxies. Nor are they anyone’s proxy; they are fighting for their OWN freedom. They would be doing so with or without our support. And they definitely know the cost.
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When it is over, assuming Ukraine is victorious, we will not “owe” them anything. But we ought to be willing to help them rebuild, the same as we help a poor country after a natural disaster or helped the ruined countries of Europe after WW2.
My prediction: Eastern Ukraine will collapse within the next 3 weeks, taking a major part of the Ukraine army with it. Food and fuel stocks in the far east are already about gone.
The “winner” of the war has responsibility to rebuild Ukraine. If Russia prevails then it is on them to do things similar to what the US did in Iraq / Afghanistan, but not Syria. Nation building. The US allied nations are obviously not going to pump money into Russia to help rebuild the nation they just conquered. With Russia likely having enduring sanctions it will be difficult for them to do this rebuild, and they will no doubt use it as excuse to let Ukraine rot. I don’t see the future of Ukraine being very bright in this scenario.
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Alternately if the allies prevail then they will pump money into Ukraine as an example of results when siding with the good guys.
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Anything between a clear win or loss will probably be a clusterf***.
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I don’t think we owe anything on a rebuild for a Russia win when all Ukraine is asking for is weapons and no fly zones. There is certainly a point of moral obligations to blameless citizens living in a country we helped destroy while trying to protect it. I think the weapons we sent are not responsible for that, and it is the Russian artillery and other heavy weaponry that are doing the real damage. There is a secondary case of the allies’ weapons helping extend the war, but that is overridden by the primary case of Russia brutality in a war of their choosing with minimal necessity.
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For the second question Russia and Putin are the same entity until such a time as Putin is dead. Even if he leaves power it is likely he will put a protégé in place. He needs to go the hard way and then I think the western world will relieve sanctions if you get a moderate in place.
2000 more Javelins to Ukraine, that’s on top of at least a 1000 from previous pledges. If I’m in a Russian armor crew … I’m volunteering for the infantry ASAP.
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The Russians will eventually figure out tactics to defend against these, but it might not be before next month.
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Ukraine Has Become a Graveyard for Russian Tanks
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-has-become-a-graveyard-for-russian-tanks-11647521721
Smollett was released because his appeal would not be heard before he would have finished serving his short sentence for a non-violent crime. Whether other people would get this type of favorable treatment is an open question.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210471)
Tom, thanks for the reply. I do think I am getting a mix of what you think politicians will do and what you think should happen.
Here is a very interesting an powerful essay by Bari Weiss:
“Things Worth Fighting For -What we can learn from President Zelensky”
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/things-worth-fighting-for?s=r
LOL Mike.
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I was about to post the same link.
[Edit: He goes on to eloquently argue that freedom and individual liberty, America, and civilization are three things worth fighting for.]
The article that MikeM linked goes on to say:
There are a lot of vague references in this article. I think one must be more clear in their definitions of what is worth fighting for and how that fighting is to be carried out.
It does bring up an interesting point related to what things the individual Ukrainian citizen feels they are fighting and how it would be ranked in importance. From the Ukrainian government it appears to be sovereignty first and foremost, i.e. not being under the thumb of Russia and Putin.
The author seems to be comparing what the Ukrainians are doing under very different conditions than those conditions of the populace he is criticizing for being cowards. Or is he implying we should (and including the author) sign up for a tour of duty in Ukraine.
Kenneth,
I do not believe the author is implying we should sign up for a tour of duty in Ukraine, no.
I thought this was more of what he was getting at.
regarding individual liberty, the concluding paragraphs are as follows:
regarding America, in his second point he extols us:
regarding civilization (final point),
A good read on the reaction of fanatics to people who didn’t toe 100% to the government line.
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https://greatgameindia.com/those-who-chose-shaming-over-science/
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The main difference between the author and me was that I refused to be cowed into taking their untested, experimental, and novel non-vaccine. It was obvious to me from the early data that the entire issue was overblown for political purposes that led to clearly unconstitutional restrictions on US citizens.
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I am SO glad I rejected the shots and was not in such a vulnerable position that I was forced to choose between acceptance or loss of my livelihood.
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I realize that many (most?) here do not agree with me (shrug). O’well. Life goes on.
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I fully expect in the coming years that this covid hysterical reaction will go the way of court rulings on Japanese interments in WWII.
I wouldn’t be too sure of that.
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I got the vaccines. Right or wrong, based on the information I had at the time I estimated by chance of dying of COVID if I caught it at something in the ballpark of 1 in some thousands. I estimated the risk of the vaccine to be substantially less, so I got vaccinated.
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Other than that, I don’t think the page I’m on is far from yours. The reaction was overblown. The lockdowns were bad decisions in general, for lots of reasons (including some you allude to). The masks were largely theater.
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I suspect the ‘shaming’ the author refers to is also largely a product of social media in general, maybe more so than COVID.
For the record Bari is a woman, ha ha. I’m reporting you to the relevant authorities. She’s the one who wrote the scathing article on her exit from the editorial board of the NYT. That was awesome.
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But anyway I’m not moved by rah rah words, many are, I’m just more transactional in nature for most foreign policy, especially those that don’t involve our BFF’s. That means less mistakes and more predictability. This article is good for what it is, but doesn’t ever get around to naming what needs to change on the ground.
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It really also takes courage in a different way to not get dragged into a war that will likely not end well for anyone. Russia may make major mistakes that will seem to demand a bigger response (theater bombing, etc.). So if you like the words then you need finish the sentence, what different behavior are you suggesting? No fly zone? Advanced ground to air weapons?
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It is proper to sit this one out.
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I see this as an appeal to emotion that has potentially dire consequences. What do you worry about more?
1. Putin winning an ugly brutal beat down in Ukraine.
2. Putin starts losing the war after NATO decides to engage
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I worry about number 2 much more. These guys have seriously scary weapons between tanks and nukes. You just cannot risk a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine, and you cannot set precedents of arming the opponents of your adversary of the week with game changing arms.
One can easily be for getting a vaccine based on the available data and also be against mandating vaccinations for others. Vaccine evangelism did get out of control, but as Mark suggest a lot of that is just the usual virtue signaling we all know and love so much. It went wrong with mandates that cost people their jobs. As it sits now the vaccines are pretty bad at stopping the spread so mandates are ineffective for the original stated purpose.
Looks like Bari got the attention of many. It was well written, but maybe had a little too much appeal to emotion for my taste. She is correct to point out our “ruling class” is cowardly, foolish, and repugnant in most every policy they adopt.
I’m such a sexist pig. Sigh.
Thanks Tom.
I need to go back and reread the piece. People seem to have the impression Bari suggested we go to war with Russia or something. Maybe she did and I had shit in my eyes. I’ll go read again.
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[Edit: I read it again. She’s certainly sympathetic to Ukraine but I really don’t think we can seriously say that article is advocating for increased US military involvement in Ukraine. It’s just not what she’s saying.]
I am mainly in agreement with Tom about this article and SteveF about its appeal to emotion, but further for me, and I repeat, it is too vague and compares a population under seige to one that is not.
What were the Russians, who bravely defended the homeland in WWll against Nazi Germany, fighting for: totalitarian communism versus totalitarian facism? Or should we put our favored words in their mouths.
I hear a lot of talking about what is going on in Ukraine and a lot of it, and particularly by politicians, sounds to me like pontification with pretentiousness.
The Russian people in WWII were fighting for their very survival and against their coming eradication by Germany. Once firsthand reports by survivors started coming in, support for the war increased significantly. One can get a feel for national vs party support by the slogans tank crews were painting on their tanks. Way more “For the Homeland “ and such than “For Stalin” and such.
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Early war, political Commissars were stationed to force the troops to fight. Mid war, the Commissars were scaled back as the morale of the troops soared coming to defense of “Mother Russia”, not the party as such.
“Would we similarly feel no choice but to fight for our home, for everything we love?”
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I have no doubt that this would happen, zero. The rednecks in the US will step up. Good luck Russians with the invasion of WV where the ratio of hunters and gun owners are much higher than average. Bring plenty of body bags.
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Would academia, the media class, and the upper class step up? I very much think so and would be profoundly disappointed to see anything else. It’s edgy and cosmopolitan to diss your own country at cocktail parties but threaten people’s homes and it is a different ballgame. The US would unite. We saw it with 9/11 and would see it again. Lots of the perpetually offended grew up after 9/11. Now it is arguable the elites are all for the rednecks doing all the dying but I believe they would have each other’s backs when push comes to shove. They may be rednecks, but they are my rednecks. There actually are things above the red/blue culture wars.
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Now this doesn’t mean a win would happen, but it is pretty much a prerequisite for winning a tough fight. Ukraine appears to have it IMO looking through the fog of disinformation and knowing little of Ukrainian culture. Probably not enough to stop the Russian army, but enough to send home plenty of Russians in refrigerated trucks.
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Wars of conquest are different. Putin made a mistake by making this an overt war of conquest. Arrogant move. All this unnecessary death is on him.
I view my support for the war in Ukraine about the same way as I would have supported sides in the Spanish Civil War leading into WWII, little to none. Proxies for a fight between Germany and Soviets, be still my heart.
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I have sympathy for the civilians caught in the middle and the grunts on both sides, but little to none for either national government. Still, I give Russia a bit more slack than I do Ukraine.
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With the Color Revolution that deposed a democratically elected president instigated by the US embassy , Ukraine became enveloped in civil war, with Ukraine now a proxy in a fight between NATO (the USA) and Russia.
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Russia has been very clear over the years that NATO expansion to its border was a Redline, and that Ukraine crossed it by asking for admission to NATO. Considering NATO’s support for aggressive wars over the years, Russia has reason to view this expansion with alarm.
If the published numbers of destroyed tanks and armored vehicles is anywhere close to accurate, then there are a lot of dead Russian soldiers. Nobody inside a tank survives when it is destroyed; few in an armorded vehicle would survive. High body counts==pressure on Russian political leaders. At some point Putin may accept what Zelenskyy can offer in terms.
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That still leaves the West in a position to keep any agreement from happening. We will see, but I am not optimistic.
I suspect Arnold’s message will be blocked in Russia.
https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1504426844199669762?s=20&t=ZatUr3ACPfXdyBqUys-49Q
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Still, maybe it will reach a few. The Ukrainians ought to re-broadcast that video within the Ukraine any way they can.
The NYT admits the Hunter Biden laptop is real, the NY Post notices:
https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/the-times-finally-admits-hunter-bidens-laptop-is-real/
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“Forgive the profanity, but you have got to be s–tting us.”
Tom Scharf,
Suppressing the laptop story is one of the most disgusting events of the past few years.
Yes, Hunter Biden was OBVIOUSLY selling his father’s political influence, from which his father Joe Biden OBVIOUSLY received a significant cut. The Bidens are corrupt, and always have been… although corrupt on a much smaller scale than the Clintons (damning with faint praise, I know). That MSM outlets and on-line social media outlets completely suppressed this obvious corruption before the 2020 election tells you all you need to know about the “progressive left”…. it is profoundly dishonest and profoundly corrupt. The elections in November 2022 and November 2024 can’t come too fast. Corrupt, dishonest people have power in Washington; it needs to be taken away from them ASAP.
SteveF,
Being less corrupt than the Clintons is a pretty low bar. And another cliche: Saying the Bidens are less corrupt than the Clintons is something of a left handed compliment.
I just saw a graphic from the WSJ (no link provided in the article) that from 1999-2014 for contributions of more than $50,000 by nationality Ukrainians were the largest contributors to the Clinton Foundation, donating a total of $10 million. England was second at $8.4 million.
Oh, and over 600,000 new COVID-19 cases in South Korea today.
DeWitt,
Corrupt people are always looking for political protection….so ya, they are always going to donate to corrupt politicians selling influence…. like the Clintons, the Bidens, and sadly, far too many others.
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Here is the painful reality: Nobody gets rich on a politician’s official salary, yet career politicians routinely, almost uniformly, become wealthy. Corruption is pretty much their only path to wealth, unless they were wealthy before entering politics. I think there is nothing surprising in any of this. Power corrupts, and the poorer the person with power, the stronger the temptation of corruption.
Interesting article in the WSJ on the performance of Russia’s Revamped Military in Ukraine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-putin-revamped-military-ukraine-invasion-11647469602?st=4rvrs4xoxpuzyc1&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Fraud and corruption in Russia? I’m shocked. [not]
China is still p…ed off.
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“China responded to NATO’s moral exhibitionism on Ukraine by asserting, “We will never forget who bombed our embassy in Yugoslavia.”..”
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https://summit.news/2022/03/18/we-will-never-forget-who-bombed-our-embassy-in-yugoslavia-china-chides-nato-moral-exhibitionism/
That’s the best China can come up with, pointing to something the CIA did twenty years ago. Wow.
Ed Forbes (Comment #210501): “China responded to NATO’s moral exhibitionism on Ukraine by asserting, “We will never forget who bombed our embassy in Yugoslavia.”..”
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When I hear unending claims about how the Russians are intentionally killing civilians, I remind myself of things like that, the carload of kids we killed in Kabul, and the way Israel gets such blame no matter how hard they try to avoid killing Palestinian civilians.
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Maybe the Russians *are* targeting civilians. But there is also a lot of demonizing and moral posturing going on.
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Of coarse, it is reasonable to blame Putin for civilian deaths in Ukraine, even if they are not intentional.
Ed Forbes and Mike M.,
Tu quoque is not a persuasive justification for reprehensible action.
Hints of progress toward a cease-fire?
“March 20 (Reuters) – Turkey’s foreign minister said in an interview published on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine were nearing agreement on “critical” issues and he was hopeful for a ceasefire if the two sides did not backtrack from progress achieved so far.”
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The longer the war continues, the greater the motivations for it to end. It has been far more costly than Putin likely imagined, and Velenskyy has learned the (painful) limits of what NATO will do to protect the Ukraine from Russia.
I have wondered for a while why the Russians have not directly targeted Zelenskyy’s offices with smart-bombs. Zelenskyy has not been exactly in hiding. I speculate that Putin knows he will need a popular politician in Kyiv to sell a settlement to the Ukrainians, many of whom are not likely to be happy with the terms.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #210513): “Tu quoque is not a persuasive justification for reprehensible action.”
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Nobody said it was. In fact, I said the opposite. I only pointed out that demonization is not a sound basis for rational decision making.
Steve,
The Russians may be short of precision guided munitions. It would help explain a lot.
mark bofill,
Donno. Seems like dumb bombs and even artillery could be used to destroy the government offices in Kyiv, yet AFAIK they have not been targeted. I find it very strange.
SteveF (Comment #210519): “Seems like dumb bombs and even artillery could be used to destroy the government offices in Kyiv, yet AFAIK they have not been targeted. I find it very strange.”
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A quick web search turned up this:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44579/this-is-russias-much-feared-artillery-arsenal-that-could-wreak-havoc-on-ukraine
and this:
https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-powerful-russian-artillery-big-gun-to-destroy-ukraine-2022-3?op=1
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The former says that the 2S7 Pion is the only Russian mobile artillery piece with a range over 15 miles. The latter says that gun carries a very small amount of ammo and is very slow.
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So the 2S7 might be a poor choice for a quick strike against Kiev, where speed matters and the supply line is long and insecure. Those guns might all be in the east where they can sit in Russia and bombard Kharkiv or other targets near the border.
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The other guns may not be in range of downtown Kiev. I have seen reports of the Russians getting within 15 miles, but artillery pieces would not be in the vanguard.
Intentionally and overtly killing Zelenskyy at Russian hands is risky. It will make him a martyr and possibly escalate the response from the west. They would much rather arrest him and put him on trial for his “Nazi crimes”. They might at least try to make it look like Ukraine did it to sell it to their domestic population.
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However I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it, the Russians are pretty brutal.
CDC says there was a logic coding error and has reduced the number of COVID pediatric deaths by more than 20%.
Perhaps it was something like
if(x.covid=1 AND x.age<=15) and it should have been x==1
Overall US deaths have been reduced by 70,000.
Reuters: “The health agency, in a statement to Reuters, said it made adjustments to its COVID Data Tracker’s mortality data on March 14 because its algorithm was accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related.”
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Unbelievable. Just outright incompetence. What is even more outrageous is that the media is barely reporting this. This has been going on for how long and nobody at the entire CDC noticed?
The west has started an economic war with Russia that will likely cost the west much more than Russia, and the west is likely losing this war.
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Nations representing most of the world’s population have not signed on to the sanctions imposed by the west on Russia. This will lead to dire consequences for the west, and with the US in particular.
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With Russian $US assets being frozen, and Russia being bared from using the western banking systems, other nations are coming to see that they can not trust their assets in this system. They will be actively looking for a replacement system.
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China will be the clear winner of this economic war. International trade is starting to move from the $US to Russian, Chinese, and Indian currency, mostly brokered through China.
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The $US currently is the worlds petro and reserve currency. This gives the US an enormous advantage in international trade. The economic war has been moving the major middle eastern oil producers into start looking at trading through alternative currency to trade with. If this trend continues, it will wreck the $US as the worlds reserve currency, sending $US inflation soaring, and further trend away from the $US due to inflation.
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Commodity trading is also starting to move away from the $US to bypass sanctions against Russia, who supply an enormous volume of basic commodities to the world at large. There are no replacements for the worlds requirements for many basic commodities currently supplied by Russia. The middle east in particular will have to move from the $US to acquire desperately need grain from Russia, or see major population unrest due to exploding grain prices due to scarcity brought on by sanctions on Russia.
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Welcome to the Brave New World
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Ed,
There is so much I disagree with in your comment above that I hardly know where to begin. In fact I will skip going into it; I’ll just post this for the record expressing my skepticism.
I’ll content myself with this: it is not at all unlikely that USD will not be the world’s reserve currency forever. But that has been coming down the pipes for a heck of a long time now and lots of factors play into it. I doubt that the current situation with Russia is a dominant factor; I certainly have no evidence to support that idea. If you have some evidence you’d like to share to support your assertions above I’d be pleased to look at it.
Russia isn’t even one of the top 10 world exporters, I think they ranked 13’th in 2019. It’s not that they are negligible, but Russian exports do not drive the world by a long shot. They are an energy superpower, perhaps.
Anyways.
It’s not that Russia is a major factor in itself, it’s that nations with a majority of the world’s population are losing trust in the current system.The sanctions against Russia are the catalyst that will unify these nations in policies that will undermine the $US. Once trust in the system goes, so goes the value of the $US.
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Using the $US as a political weapon is a mistake that will comeback and bite the US.
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There has been a number of writings posted on this issue.
Here are several there are many more.
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https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/17/will-joe-biden-oversee-the-collapse-of-the-u-s-dollar/
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https://thecovidworld.com/severe-economic-sanctions-against-russia-will-end-the-dollar-as-the-global-reserve-currency/
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https://www.rbth.com/business/332673-russia-china-us-dollar-america
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https://www.newsweek.com/sanctions-destroying-us-dollar-status-top-currency-1580619
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https://wearechange.org/russian-sanctions-threaten-dollars-reserve-status/
I am not an economist, but it seems to me that there are a number of effects of the USD being the dominant reserve currency. One is that it makes it easy for our government to spend way beyond its means. That is fun in the short term, but definitely bad for us in the long term. Another is that it lets us run persistent trade deficits. Again bad in the long term. That has also led to the decline of manufacturing at home, with many negative consequences for our society. It has made us dependent on imports of critical products from unfriendly countries; very dangerous. The financialization of our economy has shifted power from makers and builders to owners and bankers and has caused the interests of those groups to diverge; that has been politically destructive.
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I am inclined to think that the dominance of the dollar as a reserve currency has been more a curse than a blessing. Reducing that dominance might be a big benefit in the long run, even if somewhat painful in the short run. But that is just what my instincts tell me; I am not knowledgeable on the subject.
Mike M,
“Reducing that dominance might be a big benefit in the long run, even if somewhat painful in the short run.”
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I think it could be very painful, for several of the reasons you list. Ending the option to live far beyond our means will lead to a reduction in material wealth, and people will not like that at all.
Ed,
Thanks for the links.
SteveF (Comment #210530): “I think it could be very painful, for several of the reasons you list. Ending the option to live far beyond our means will lead to a reduction in material wealth, and people will not like that at all.”
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I think that depends on what one means by “ending” and “material wealth”. It would likely be catastrophic if all the central banks were to suddenly dump all their USD reserves. But that won’t happen. Any change would be gradual, if only because central bankers tend to be big fans of stability.
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Government spending would have to decrease, but I don’t think the government produces all that much wealth. The paper value of assets would also decrease. That would be a big deal for the owners and the cosmopolitan class. A good thing, if you ask me. But we would also have to produce more real goods (food, energy, manufacturing, housing). It seems to me that determines the true wealth of a country.
Bravo Ed. I’ve read through some of your links. I’ll rethink my objections.
It’s the same as always, the US throwing around their economic dominance is unseemly and the people on the other end of the bullying don’t like it and shouldn’t like it. There just isn’t anybody more trustworthy around the globe to move assets to. The US just has to be the most trustworthy, not actually trustworthy.
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India and China aligning against the US, or more accurately attempting to stay neutral, isn’t very surprising. Picking sides in every fight just alienates everyone so staying neutral is a wise move.
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A world in which India and China grow to economic parity with the US isn’t all bad. I read the other day that China graduates more engineers every year than the US has engineers. Ultimately bringing that scale of innovation online will be good for everyone, although the US’s ego might get a little butt hurt along the way.
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The US needs to rise to the challenge and stay competitive. We have so far, but one could argue the boomers worked a little harder than the millennials (sacrilege!). History shows that nobody stays on top forever. Enjoy the stay while it lasts.
With the disparity of “news” coverage between the east and west the reality on the ground in Ukraine is difficult to determine. I’d like to say the west’s side is more accurate but given the endless series of media forced narratives lately my trust for them is in the bottom of a 2000 lb bomb crater.
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The Russian domestic audience knows their side’s state media coverage is biased and that misinformation is a given. It’s not much of an accomplishment when the “free” press accomplishes the same thing voluntarily.
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I don’t know how they are going to react if/when Russia actually wins the battles and occupies the cities. I have no idea what is going on really, and I don’t think anybody else does either. There are very few journalists actually on the ground doing real work, they are mostly just doing hive mind reporting from their Twitter feed.
The world’s reserve currency for the US dollar derives from the 1944 Bretton Wood’s international agreement where the dollar was pegged to gold at $35 per ounce of gold. Central banks of other nations could demand exchanges in gold at the $35-dollar prevailing rate. Most nations did not exchange for gold until the US began rapidly increasing the number of dollars (or money supply). When the dollar money supply inflation reached the point where the US would no longer be able meet the demands for gold, in 1971 Nixon suspended the promise of the gold exchange. The suspension remains in effect ever since, but the US dollar remains major global reserve at near 60% with the Euro next at 20.5%.
The world’s major currencies are all fiat currently which means that national governments can print money without any restraints of standards. The major reason for the US dollar remaining dominant is because of its stronger economy. When people talk of the US losing its currency dominance, they usually point to issues like the government’s increased tendency to print money and its deficit spending. While I would agree that these tendencies are very much in the wrong direction, those bad tendencies and others by world’s governments can be even worse.
The use of economic sanctions can, just like tariffs and trade restrictions, be just as harmful to the nations imposing them as to those nations that they are imposed upon. The imposition of these restrictions can erode the world’s trust in the imposing nation and thus erode the trust in the imposing nation’s currency. That trust however is a relative thing whereby a bad policy of a nation must be ranked by degree versus other nation’s bad policies and usually in total and not related to a single policy. Making major changes from the status quo based on this trust will probably not happen in a dramatic fashion unless the relative trust amongst the world nations for one another changes significantly.
The need for a reserve currency could be eliminated with a digital currency or going back to a pre-Bretton Woods gold standard.
I have been curious what the minimum range for theJavelin is as combat is moving into an urban environment where this range limitation becomes important.
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The safety and engagement minimum distance for the Javelin, which all missile have, is said to be 75m from:
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https://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/detail.php?smallarms_id=391
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This would have to be in direct fire mode which is not all that effective vs modern MBT’s (Main Battle Tank). The Javelin strength is a top armor attack.
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FM 3-22.37 lists minimum engagement distance as 65 meters.
http://ugcsurvival.com/weaponsmanuals/FM%203-22.37%2020030123-Javelin%20Medium%20Antiarmor%20Weapon%20System.pdf
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Figure 1-27. Top attack flight path from the above FM shows a minimum top armor attack profile of 500m.
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This minimum range of 500m for the Javelin top armor attack will make the Javelin much less effective in an Urban combat environment. As modern MBT’s shrug off frontal and side attacks by portable anti-tank weapons, the Javelin will seem to have limited use in urban environment vs these MBT’s. All other portable AT weapon have very limited effect vs MBT’s.
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The age of the MBT in warfare is far from over.
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I remember when Japan was going to dominate the world’s economy. Of course there must be a means or metric for measuring and determining economic dominance. GDP is probably not that metric and even GDP per population.
I think economic progress will come best to those nations that are the most free and particularly in allowing the most individual innovation and private enterprises to make use of those innovations. I actually see China and India currently going in the wrong direction.
Kenneth “.. The need for a reserve currency could be eliminated with a digital currency..”
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Change one fiat currency for another to fix the problem?
Ed Forbes,
Page 1-17 (on your linked document for the Javalin) says 150 meters minimum distance for top attack and 65 meters for direct attack. Not sure where you got 500 meters minimum.
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WRT direct attack: the dual shape charge warhead is designed to defeat explosive armor. Why do you say the Russian tanks would not be vulnerable to a direct attack? Your linked document (page 4-2) says “The dual-shaped charge warhead is capable of defeating any known enemy armor.”
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Tanks are very heavy moving coffins…. 😉
Cryptocurrencies aren’t usually considered fiat currencies.
How close do * you * really want to be when attacking a tank with a missile?
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This is definitely an issue with firing from an alley as a tank rolls by, but it also opens up firing from a building or street far away where there is always a corridor available and an easier escape after firing. So different tactics. I’d see this as mostly a popup firing from a window in a building and running away thing. Firing from 50M leaves one more vulnerable to getting killed for your effort.
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Not sure how well Javelins really work in an urban environment. The targeting system must deal with a lot of distractions. Never seen a test video of it in a crowded setting. Hitting a power line probably wouldn’t be helpful.
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Way cheaper to bury an artillery shell in the street with remote detonation. Parked car IED with larger shaped charges are also easy. This is a huge problem for an occupier. I don’t think Russia really wants to do this and that’s what the delay is, hoping Ukraine gives up.
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The US had to never stop moving in their convoys in Iraq at some point. They would literally run over cars before they would allow the convoy to be stopped (one enemy would stop the convoy, another would suicide bomb it from the side). This didn’t win hearts and minds.
Steve,
Figure 1-27. Top attack flight path is pretty clear on the 500m min range.
On 1-17:
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“(2) The exact profile of the missile flight path depends on the range to the target and is determined automatically by the missile’s onboard software). When firing at a 2,000-meter target, the missile reaches a height of about 160 meters above the battlefield (Figure 1-27). “
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The 160m is the height above the launch, not the min distance.
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For side / frontal attack of the Javelin on MBT’s, the side cages dentate the first stage round and combination of distance, explosive armor and thick side and frontal armor stops the second stage from penetration.
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There is a reason the Javelin uses a top attack profile vs MBT’s.
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MBT’s, such as the Abrams and other modern MBT’s, have little to fear from direct attack by inf ATGM as shown in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nothing has changed in this for Ukraine. In open country where the Javelin can use a top attack profile, it becomes more effective and tactics need to change to counter.
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But due to Ukraine forces loosing mobility due to losses of vehicles and lack of fuel in the east where the major combat is currently, it is urban warfare that will seal the fate of the major part of the Ukraine army that is trapped in the east.
Mark. “Cryptocurrencies aren’t usually considered fiat currencies.”
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Their not ?
What tangible are they backed with then? With the gold standard, you could demand hard payment. Nothing in crypto that can give hard payment. To my mind, they are more smoke and mirrors.
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Ed Forbes (Comment #210539)
March 21st, 2022 at 10:44 am
Ed, I did not say that would be my favored reserve currency. It isn’t, but I thought we were talking about what could happen in today’s world. Fiat money is the rage and apparently MMT is becoming very popular in nations rationalizing their already unrealistic views of central banks printing money.
There has been talk of digital currency and under the control of central banks. Digital currency without government control, although still fiat money, is a current no no as it would be a move away central banking controls – which is world wide considered in almost heroic terms in keeping the economy on an even keel when in fact it actually causes the so-called business cycles.
Digital currencies controlled outside governments and without being forced unto people as a legal tender would be more motivated by market considerations of acceptance than a central bank that is motivated by financing government spending for welfare and warfare and has monopoly power.
Ed,
Fair enough. Some of them (take Bitcoin for example) are decentralized and harder for governments to screw with than most fiat currencies. But certainly, Bitcoin is backed by nothing except the faith of those who use it.
Kenneth,
Ok, best without actually being good. ????
I see your logic and makes sense. Any port in a storm.
I think the reason cryptos aren’t considered fiat is because cryptos are not backed by any government.
Investopedia says this is what fiat money is:
Certainly I agree that cryptos are not backed by a physical commodity. However, limitations on the money supply can be built into the currency and enforced by the decentralized network. I grant that cryptocurrencies may still be too new for reasonable people to have high confidence that all of this will continue to work out as intended.
Here is a link discussing Bitcoins 21 million bitcoin total limit and some of the issues surrounding that limit.
mark bofill (Comment #210547): “But certainly, Bitcoin is backed by nothing except the faith of those who use it.”
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Is that also true of old fashioned gold coinage? Both are in limited supply and have value according to what people are willing to bid.
Mike,
Yeah. Of course you can melt down gold and make things out of it, but at the end of the day people have to consider it to be of value for it to be valuable.
To digress, on the fiat side, people can be forced to consider fiat money valuable to some extent by a government only accepting fiat money for taxes, and punishing people for not paying their taxes. There’s a term for this that I forget…
Ed Forbes,
Wow. Your linked reference, Page 1-17:
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You are simply mistaken… I think you need to work on your reading skills.
Ed Forbes,
If you don’t believe your own reference, here is another link:
http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/antiarmor/Javelin.html
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150 M minimum for top attack mode. 65 M minimum for direct attack mode
A long read of an example of the US’s urban combat in Sadr City / Iraq. One very important weapon turned out to be concrete barriers.
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https://mwi.usma.edu/stealing-enemys-urban-advantage-battle-sadr-city/
“The changing nature of the fight revealed that the Stryker vehicles used by 1-2 SCR were highly vulnerable to the EFPs and RPGs employed by JAM. 1-2 SCR lost six Strykers in six days. Not only were the vehicles not survivable, but their width (especially when fitted with RPG cages due to their vulnerability) limited them to driving on the main roads, making their potential locations predictable and susceptible to ambush.”
“1-2 SCR additions included an armor platoon that began leading patrols so the tanks could bear the brunt of attacks before they could destroy the Stryker vehicles.”
“The construction of the wall was heavily contested from the beginning. JAM’s first tactic was to establish a defensive zone by emplacing IEDs along the roads leading up to where construction of the wall would start that day. Because of these IEDs, the concrete-laying patrols had to first do a deliberate breach into the battle area. Streets were lined with trash, each pile a possible IED hiding spot. … Some patrols would encounter twenty IEDs on a single street.”
“As JAM realized that IEDs were not going to stop the construction of the wall, the group’s fighters came out in force to fight the besiegers with direct fire. By so doing, they gave up one of the biggest advantages of being an urban fighter: remaining hidden by the city. Once JAM militia engaged the wall construction team, they became visible, easily identified, and targeted by the coalition’s far superior weapons and aerial ISR and strike capabilities.”
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Innovations in taking out the trash:
“Tanks began to fire 120-millimeter canister rounds (in essence, shotgun-type rounds that, once fired, open into hundreds of tiny pieces) down streets from their main guns. The canister rounds blew the trash off the streets and, in many cases, exploded IEDs lying in wait for the patrol.”
https://nypost.com/2022/03/20/white-house-ignores-its-hunter-problem/
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Well, just for starters, Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, who paid $3.5 million into a bank account associated with Hunter and his business partner Devon Archer, was not sanctioned along with other oligarchs allied with President Vladimir Putin this month.
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Baturina wired $3.5 million on Feb. 14, 2014, to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a consortium formed between Rosemont Seneca — the firm co-founded by Hunter, Archer and Chris Heinz — and the Thornton Group.
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A year later, in April 2015, Baturina and her husband, the former corrupt mayor of Moscow and political ally of Putin, Yury Luzhkov, would appear on a guest list Hunter prepared for a dinner at Washington’s Cafe Milano where his father, then VP, would meet with his son’s overseas business partners from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
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After The Post published details of that dinner last year, the White House quietly admitted to a Washington Post fact-checker that Biden did attend the dinner, but only briefly.
mark bofill (Comment #210552): “at the end of the day people have to consider it to be of value for it to be valuable.”
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Sure. But there is a big difference between gold (or bitcoin) and fiat money. There is nothing to stop a government from arbitrarily increasing the amount of fiat money. You can’t do that with gold. So you can’t get hyperinflation with gold. So there is an extra level of fate with fiat money that we don’t have with gold or bitcoin.
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I am not advocating for the gold standard or bitcoin. Just pointing out that there is a fundamental difference between them and fiat money.
DaveJR,
Yes, the Bidens are corrupt, long term sellers of political influence. Selling influence seems to be acceptable behavior for those who govern like lefties… at least that is what I gather from the MSM actively hiding the Biden family’s influence peddling. Heaven forbid a conservative politician do the same.
Russian bans Facebook and Instagram, hilarious. They kind of deserve it for their contortionist ruling that calls for violence against Russians was suddenly within the rules. These are both kangaroo courts.
Mike,
There is that. I am now wondering about China’s upcoming state crypto and how exactly that will work. Technical details seem scarce, but maybe I’m just not looking properly.
Mike,
Do you think that making sure a government can’t easily increase the money supply is a more important desirable attribute than being able to exchange currency for some commodity of value?
I am starting to wonder if this might be so.
I don’t know (and should therefore go read, but it’s inconvenient to right now) but I wonder. Did we get off the gold standard in the first place because we were worried about having our actual gold reserves cleaned out, or was that just an excuse, or am I completely full of it / none of the above (always a real possibility)? There could be downsides to being able to cash out currency for commodity along with the upsides.
mark bofill (Comment #210561): “Do you think that making sure a government can’t easily increase the money supply is a more important desirable attribute than being able to exchange currency for some commodity of value?”
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I don’t think those are mutually exclusive. One way to implement the gold standard would be to have the fed adjust the money supply as needed to keep the price of gold at some preset value. So things would really be no different except that the fed would be put on autopilot and all the speculation about what the fed might do would be eliminated.
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Most economists seem to think that is a terrible idea since then the fed would be unable to implement economic policy. The supporters seem to think that the big advantage would be that the fed would be unable to implement economic policy. 🙂 I guess the difference is whether you see the fed as doing more harm than good or vice versa.
Mike,
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply I thought they were mutually exclusive.
[Edit: I was thinking about it because crypto isn’t backed, but it can be difficult to increase the supply of a given cryptocurrency, depending on how it is implemented. As opposed to gold standard, which is backed and .. while it’s not trivial to increase the supply, gold mining presumably does still occur.]
🙂
I wholly agree with the rest of your answer, I think that is an accurate characterization. I know where I land on that spectrum! Heh.
It looks like cases in South Korea have peaked; about two weeks after Hong Kong and 10% lower. Deaths in Hong Kong seem to have peaked. Still rising in South Korea and already badly straining hospitals and crematoria. Looks like they are headed for a really rough few weeks.
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It is as if Hong Kong and South Korea are experiencing what was predicted here in the early days of the pandemic.
Hunter Biden and forced narratives. Especially anything concerning Russia. The evil Russian mall bombing is apparently “lacking context”. Russia released a video of them tracking a rocket launcher firing from a field and then driving back into the mall. Followed by quite a specular overkill ballistic missile(?) hit on the mall by Russia.
https://youtu.be/SfZpoVp4op4
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I don’t doubt that this could be faked but it looks plenty real and there isn’t much incentive to fake evidence for a mall bombing nor is it very likely that Russian would just randomly hit a mall with such a powerful weapon.
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What we get is the western media showing artfully composed mall destruction with no curiosity at all as to why the Russians may have done this. They aren’t confirming or denying the Russian story, they for the most part aren’t even mentioning it at all (there was a short sentence by the NYT which is why I looked).
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The US shot up minarets at mosques in Iraq. They contained snipers and were being fired from. After the first year or so nobody blinked an eye if a mosque was damaged. Plenty of ammo was being stored in Iraq schools, etc.
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The media has to do their job better if they want to be trusted. They are being propagandists for Ukraine. That is their decision to make, but I don’t think anyone will be shocked to learn that Ukraine is using deception and not hanging around with all their weapons at the local military base. They shouldn’t reveal this is happening but at least can mention that the mall may been used for military purposes and was a legitimate target.
The vaccination rates of the elderly in Hong Kong are shockingly low. Only about 30% have full vaccination.
Tom,
Yes. Unlike New Zealand and Australia, some of the countries in the far east behaved as if they could keep Covid out forever and people didn’t get vaccinated. With this particular disease, that’s not so bad with children. But the elderly are being devastated now that containment measures just can’t work.
The mall was being used to hold military vehicles.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Ukraine-shopping-center-1.jpg
Zelensky asked Biden to announce that Ukraine would be part of NATO. Didn’t have to be immediately, but announce 1 year, 2years, 5 years, whenever. He says he was told Ukraine would not be allowed into NATO, but to not tell anyone that, let it stay as an option publicly.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210565): “The media has to do their job better if they want to be trusted. They are being propagandists for Ukraine.”
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Indeed. That has been obvious for about 3 weeks now. One of the few exceptions has been Tucker Carlson. But he has been so excessively contrarian that he doesn’t add any clarity, he only acts as a reminder that the waters are muddy.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210566): “The vaccination rates of the elderly in Hong Kong are shockingly low. Only about 30% have full vaccination.”
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If you are an elderly native of Hong Kong, then you grew up and reached middle age under British rule. Maybe such people are disinclined to trust the communist Chinese government.
Slava Ukraini! From a 1960’s anti war hippie I am becoming quite the war hawk. I have no expertise in these matters but I found the following items noteworthy:
“Ukraine Retakes Makariv From Russian Forces As Invasion Falters” https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-makarov-russia-1690326
That 40 mile long column of Russian invaders aiming at Kyiv has been a success story for Ukraine. The Russians were systematically bled all along it by ‘hit and run’ attacks from the sides and the Southern ends near Kyiv are now collapsing.
Further, from an unconfirmed but seemingly knowledgeable source, some Russian forces are cut off in a pocket… OOOPS!
“Ukraine Reporter @ReportsUkraine·3h
The very first UNCONFIRMED report just came in. The #Russian forces in the pocket containing #Ukraine #Bucha, #Irpin and #Gostomel north west off the #Kyiv city have been cut off! cc @KoneserUnii @plaguedoctorpl”
https://twitter.com/ReportsUkraine/status/1506275230884548613?s=20&t=HUZG7OlhMXgZ1eUk_k9owA
And finally the Ruskies are obliterating the Southeastern coastal town of Mariupol with high explosives fired from a distance at civilian areas. This is a town that predominantly spoke Russian and was almost 50% ethnic Russian. With friends like Putin who needs enemies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol#Ethnic_structure
PERSEO71, Italian Air Force
A new aircraft [new to me] has been flying doughnuts in the air along the Ukraine border …. Gulfstream G550 CAEW spy plane
It’s been on station all morning. It’s a Gulfstream aircraft with Israeli spy gear.
https://www.flightradar24.com/PERSEO71/2b3a4b88
About the plane: https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Gulfstream_G550
Steve, thanks for pointing out the Javelin min top attack distance. The shorter distance does not change the statement that the Javelin will not be a factor in urban combat.
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14-3
“.. The minimum engagement distance limits firing opportunities in the confines of densely built-up areas, and the Javelin may not be the weapon of choice in the urban environment (FM 3-06.11 [FM 90-10-1]) where there are additional considerations including: fires (caused by both friendly and enemy) may cause target acquisition and lock-on problems; clutter on the battlefield may cause lock- on problems; and, line-of-sight communications may be limited by the structures ..”
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“.. (3) Time. When a gunner comes across a target of opportunity, he may not be able to take advantage of it. The cool down time of the NVS is 2.5 to 3.5 minutes. Seeker cool down takes about 10 seconds. Once the BCU is activated, the gunner has a maximum of 4 minutes to engage the target before the BCU is spent. Vehicles crossing the street or moving between buildings (flank shot) are exposed for about 10 to 15 seconds, meaning the gunner may not have enough time to lock-on to the target and fire..”
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Once the BUC is spent, the Javelin round becomes unusable until replaced. This makes opportunity fire difficult.
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1-1
“ The round consists of the missile and the launch tube assembly (LTA) (Figure 1-1), and the battery coolant unit (BCU).”
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1-18
“ g. Battery Coolant Unit. The BCU (Figure 1-19) has the battery section and a compressed-gas coolant section. The battery section powers the missile electronics before missile launch. The coolant section cools the missile seeker to its operating temperature before missile launch. The BCU is a single-use unit with 4 minutes of operating time and is not rechargeable. Once the missile has been fired, the spent BCU is discarded with the LTA…”&
Ed Forbes,
There are lots of places in many cities where a Javelin could be launched. The Ukrainians now have enough experience that they are probably reasonably efficient at preparing and firing. Yes, cities are not the same as open countryside, but the Russian tanks are not yet near the city, and I rather expect that is in large part because of the Javelin. Getting from where the Russians are into Kyiv will be no easy task. If the Russians do get close enough to start shelling, that seems to me a more likely strategy than trying to get tanks into the city proper. House-to-house combat in cities against a dedicated opponent is not going to be a bargain for the Russians; ‘nightmare’ is probably a better description. And there aren’t even any IED’s involved yet (more accurately: explosively formed projectiles).
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My guess is that a long, drawn out semi-stalemate for the next month or so is the most likely outcome. As more and more arms from NATO arrive, that becomes ever more likely. Better, of course, if the Russians and Ukrainians can agree on cease-fire terms, but I think that is not likely in the near term.
My guess is that Russia will become serious about peace talk if they can secure the link between Black sea and their breakaway provinces. That would give Russia a face-saving gain for their efforts (plus no-NATO guarantees etc).
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I think Western media is largely rooting from Ukraine and happy to publish the propaganda. While neither side is a very attractive proposition, this is a long way from Iran-Iraq situation. I think we should be rooting for Ukraine.
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The long term consequences of Russia overrunning Ukraine are not good in my opinion. Putin’s successors will see this a good strategy. A pyrrhic victory/army embarrassment with a lot of economic pain is more likely to encourage reform in his successors. European dependency on Russian energy is a bad thing. (And ditto for China. Liberal democracies might encourage capitalism but reverse does not apply). Short term economic pain in the west might be well worth it for long term improvement in global order.
I have a question about electric vehicles. We know that battery packs are expensive and not trivial to replace or recycle. So the question is, how would this affect used electric vehicle resale value? Do you scrap them after the battery pack dies? And how long will that actually be? With care, you can keep an ICE vehicle running for many decades and hundreds of thousands of miles. See all the 1950’s vintage cars in Cuba, for example.
Speaking of recycling, Tesla says they recycle battery packs and don’t landfill them. They’re considered hazardous waste, so simple disposal is likely out of the question. But they didn’t say specifically that they recycle them into new batteries.
Stable prices in an expanding economy requires a money supply that can also be expanded. It also requires a currency that has a reasonably stable value. Bitcoin fails both these tests. Bitcoin not only has a fixed maximum number of ‘coins’, but Bitcoins also disappear over time as when, say, a hard drive is thrown away or a password is lost. A pegged digital currency would still need something to peg it. I fail to see an improvement over fiat currency.
We used to have multiple currencies issued by individual banks. I don’t think anyone other than the bankers liked that.
Btw, for a hilarious view of currency, I highly recommend Making Money, a Discworld novel by the late Terry Pratchett. The lead character, Moist von Lipwig, is also featured in two other novels, Going Postal, which is set before Making Money and Raising Steam which is set after.
DeWitt
All good questions and ones Jim and I have discussed while sitting on the couch. I don’t know how much replacing a battery will cost, nor how long the batteries will really last. That’s just not something you can know until many cars have been out on the road driven by “real” drivers under normal everyday conditions.
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So… Dunno. It is a factor we’ve thought about when thinking about whether we might by one electric vehicle and retain one fossil fuel one. (We could easily wire the garage for a charger. We used to have a electric drier on the wall shared with the garage. So that’s do-able for us.)
DeWitt, I understand only about 5% li batteries are recycled but the growth of companies doing it profitably (Li-cycle and Redwood Materials are North American exampes) suggest this might be more economically feasible in the future. Newer chemistries are supposed easier to recycle too so current issues may go away.
More detail on what Tesla do is here https://electrek.co/2021/08/09/tesla-battery-cell-material-recovery-new-recycling-process/
Looks like raw material out. If batteries are made in China and recycled in US, then probably makes more sense to sell raw material locally than ship back to Chinese battery maker.
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Meantime, looking at how Nissan Leaf prices vary here, I’d say battery life is a very big impact on used car pricing.
DeWitt,
RE Bitcoin, all true. This is not to say the problem necessarily has no crypto solution, but I agree that Bitcoin would not embody that solution.
[Edit: The trillion dollar bill featuring Joe Biden’s face will save us.]
DeWitt,
A likely lifetime limit is ~1,000 to ~1,500 cycles of reasonably deep discharge (say 80% or more). If the car has a maximum practical range of 200 miles, then that is a lot of miles. By maximum practical range I mean a range with a significant margin for error, say 25% below the maximum stated by the manufacturer. Of course, the car could continue to be used even as the battery capacity declines, but for sure this would reduce the car’s value a lot.
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The cost for new batteries may make an older electric car a “total”, in the sense that it may have little intrinsic value above its battery. who would want to spend $20,000 for a new battery on a 15 year old car? Probably not too many.
Tesla battery packs cost ~$22K or so to replace. Unsurprisingly there are sites that obsessively track battery life of Tesla cars. From what I have seen Tesla cars get to about 100K miles and have approx. 80% of their battery lifetimes left so this seems like a non-issue but If you are buying you want to check the battery status. Tesla takes this tech very seriously.
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There are all kinds of strategies one could use to extend battery lifetimes, one of the biggest ones is not letting them get too hot during charging or use, making sure to charge them less quickly as they get toward full charge, not over charging them, not allowing full discharge, etc. The characteristics of lithium ion batteries are well known.
https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries
Tom Scharf,
Good link…. explains it pretty well. The most interesting comment was that we simply don’t have enough experience with Li ion batteries in electric cars to know how long they will last in service, but based on all the parameters that control loss of capacity, I expect there will be quite a lot of variation, even for the same model and battery pack.
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It looks to me like most two-car families could make do with one electric of moderate range (say 225 miles) along with either a standard gasoline or plug-in hybrid, which might have 25 miles all-electric range.
Here is some long term data for the Tesla S
https://maartensteinbuch.com/2015/01/24/tesla-model-s-battery-degradation-data/
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It holds up pretty well with a lot of variance. It’s probably worse if you drive around in a desert and leave your car outside. Not all cars are created equal, some car battery packs degrade faster than others.
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I believe what Tesla does is keep the batteries charged only to a moderate levels almost all the time, combined with a typical discharge that doesn’t go very far with most people’s trip being short distances, the batteries can last a long time.
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A phone’s charging scheme is completely different, quick and destructive fast charging are important to consumers and they tend to discharge them a lot further every day. Phone comparisons often criticize models for not charging ultrafast when slow charging is really a feature if you want the battery to last a long time. A phone could learn that overnight charging can be done slowly, perhaps they do.
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My laptop was down below 50% after about 5 years. Phones are worse.
The economic war with Russia heats up
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/putin-wants-unfriendly-countries-to-pay-for-russian-energy-in-rubles_4356486.html
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“.. “We will transition to charging supplies of natural gas and other raw materials in Russian rubles when dealing with unfriendly countries,” Putin said, according to an RT translation of his remarks.
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“Russia, of course, will continue supplying natural gas and will respect all the obligations and the pricing under the contracts that we have signed,” Putin continued, adding that “we treasure our reputation as a reliable supplier and a reliable partner.”
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Russian state-backed media Kommersant reported that Putin also instructed the Russian central bank and the government to develop a mechanism to make the ruble payments within a week..”
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“ The ruble strengthened by around 7 percent following Putin’s remarks to around 98 against the U.S. dollar, while earlier it was trading at around 104 versus the dollar.”
Russia’s apparent lack of interest in occupying Kyiv has me speculating that this was all a feint from the beginning to hold a lot of Ukraine troops in place while eastern Ukraine was secured. Putin may be just fine with “losing” in this area if he gets his land bridge. It increasingly looks like a country wide occupation will be very painful. If western Russian troop casualty estimates of “Up to 40,000 Russian Troops Killed, Wounded, Taken Prisoner or Missing in Ukraine” are anywhere near accurate (and I doubt they are) then Russia can’t sustain that for a year or more, the Russian citizens will notice.
One assumes the currency of payment was part of the “treasured” obligations that he wants to change.
I don’t see the point of the fabled “land bridge”. It will take tens of thousands of troops to secure and/or will be subject to constant guerilla action and sabotage.
Is it really possible to recycle batteries? The battery pack can be recycled, but I would think if the battery is dead, the chemicals have to be used for other purposes.
Tom,
the east is where the war will be decided. Ukraine food stocks in the east are almost gone, listed now in days. The main part of the regular Ukraine army is in the east and is cut off from resupply. It is only a matter of time before the Ukraine army in the east is starved into submission.
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As for Kiev, the Russian army will continue to maneuver to cut supply to the city and besige. No need to do an expensive frontal assault until the city supplies are exhausted and the defense greatly weakened.
Starving a population into submission via siege seems like also setting the conditions for a vicious insurgency.
Israel solved the problem of an unruly and hostile population by forcing the population to refugee out and not letting refugees return, and then repopulated the area with a loyal population.
“the chemicals have to be used for other purposes”
Isnt that what recycling means? Nothing to stop the recycled metals being turned back into batteries. They are claiming >95% recovery and Redwood’s partnership with Ford is specifically aimed at a closed loop.
MikeN,
The physical batteries wouldn’t recycled. They would be disassembled and the valuable elements like cobalt and lithium would be recovered. Ideally that would be a lot less expensive than mining the ore and refining it. The same thing applies to lead acid batteries. The lead is recovered and is presumably sold to battery manufacturers. Maybe the sulfuric acid is also recovered. Putting non-functional lead batteries in a landfill would be a very bad idea.
SteveF,
I don’t think the number of charge/discharge cycles is the only important measure of battery life. I doubt that batteries that are maintained at a reasonable charge level live forever. Thermodynamics would say that it should be impossible to even construct a lithium ion battery because they are inherently unstable to oxidation and reduction. What saves the day is kinetics. The decomposition reactions are slow, but not infinitely slow.
As I remember, there was the case some years back of a flashlight that was supposed to be able to be put in a drawer and would work just as well many years later. Again, as I remember, it failed in a relatively few months because one of the electrodes developed a coating that drastically reduced the available current. That’s been fixed in modern batteries, but I still don’t think they will last decades.
DeWitt,
I was not suggesting batteries would last forever, nor even close. But it is clear from real-world experience that over 1000 charge discharge cycles is expected in electric cars, and perhaps 2000 or more, depending on how the car is actually used. That is a lot of total car miles…. with the limitation that you can’t easily take the car on any long trips, of course. If a car can go 200,000 to 400,000 miles before the battery is toast, battery lifetime becomes much less an issue.
I still take batteries out of flashlights I’m not using.
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All batteries will self discharge. Some chemistries are worse than others.
https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-802b-what-does-elevated-self-discharge-do
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Li-Ion you are better off keeping it on a smart charger than letting the battery sit where it might go into deep discharge which makes it very unhappy. That type of discharge will take months to happen though normally unless there is a load. Li-Ion batteries require a safety circuit to keep them from catching fire with charging anomalies and part of that circuit is also a hard cutoff for discharge level.
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A sophisticated charging regimen with Li-Ion can extend the service life a long way but this takes a lot of engineering effort.
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You can see a detailed report on your Windows laptop battery life over time:
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-check-your-laptops-battery-health-in-windows-10
Ed, on the point I disagreed with you:
Here,
Lets see how much further it goes. You’re right so far.
The Russia-India agreement shows that international trade is facilitated (reduced overall transactional cost) when done in a widely recognized ‘reserve’ currency, but is by no means stopped when transaction in a reserve currency is not possible. That is why I think blocking (some, not all) Russian transactions in Dollars is likely to fail as a policy tool. People want to buy Russian petroleum, fertilizer, and grains; short of a physical embargo (and a shooting war) it is going to be impossible to stop trade with Russia. Worse, freezing Russian reserves held in Dollars, Euros, and Yen means that policy can be used exactly once. Other countries are watching, and I think it is virtually certain many will try to move away from assets held in those currencies. I think the consequences for the countries who’s currencies are considered ‘reserves’ will be negative and long term.
News from Ukraine:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-strikes-russian-navy-in-berdyansk-as-war-enters-second-month-11648119468?st=1l4h6wm9k225uge&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
The Orsk, a Russian navy landing ship was reported destroyed.
DeWitt
“under reliable protection of the Russian air defenses.”.
Kaboomba!
I have been impressed with the smaller NATO countries jumping into the fray. Just now I am tracking:
NATO12, Boeing E-3A Sentry spy plane from Luxemburg
https://www.flightradar24.com/NATO12/2b409178
MMF12, Airbus A330-243MRTT, Refueling tanker from the Netherlands
https://www.flightradar24.com/MMF19/2b4007b8
I had been tracking a Military Helicopter from Lithuania, but it went dark as it approached the Ukrainian border. It was listed as Aérospatiale SA 365 Dauphin 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocopter_AS365_Dauphin
If the port of Mariupol is under siege, seems like Ukraine might make a mad kamikaze run with all their ships and see how much damage they can do to Sevastopol.
This is one way to reduce the population in an active war zone and increase the home nations total population. Dispersement of non combatants throughout the nation and not into camps. Opens up hostile areas to repopulate with loyal citizens.
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https://thehill.com/policy/international/russia/599686-over-400000-ukrainians-taken-to-russia-against-their-will
“.. A Ukrainian official alleged Thursday that 402,000 Ukrainians have been taken into Russia against their will.
Ukrainian ombudsperson Lyudmyla Denisova said Ukraine fears that some of the civilians, which include 84,000 children, will be used as “hostages” in the monthlong war between the two countries, The Associated Press reported.
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Moscow offered a very similar number, but said the civilians had gone to Russia voluntarily, according to the AP.
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This comes after the city council of Mariupol, Ukraine, said on Saturday that several thousand of the city’s residents had been forcibly taken into Russia ….”
The Ukrainians have made two aggressive moves in the East in two days. “ Looks like MLRS or artillery strikes on the Russian controlled Kherson airport tonight”
https://twitter.com/osinttechnical/status/1507102478013280266?s=21
I wonder if this signifies a change in emphasis now that they are winning in the Kyiv region.
Another new one (to me). At 4 AM (my time) the US Navy was flying their top spy plane over Eastern Romania. It is the closest point to the Russian naval base at Sevastopol.
https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/EP-3E-Aries-II
It took off from an airport by the Greek Navy base on Crete. Also new to me was a Romanian Airforce Alenia C-27J Spartan, medium-sized military transport aircraft in the area.
8:45 AM [my time]This may be Biden’s plane flying into Rzeszow in Eastern Poland from Brussels. Broadcast as “NO CALLSIGN” Boeing C-32A It might also be a decoy.
United States – US Air Force (USAF)
https://www.flightradar24.com/2b4318b9
“The game is afoot” Sherlock said to Watson. I am seeing a lot of sophisticated electronic warbirds in the air over Eastern and Northern Romania. The surveillance over Eastern Poland has been handed off to Italian and NATO planes. This puts the US spooks closer to Eastern Ukraine
“Homer51” USAF Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joint https://www.flightradar24.com/HOMER51/2b42adc5
“Redeye6” USAF Boeing E-8C
https://www.flightradar24.com/REDEYE6/2b42fd22
There are also USAF and German refueling tankers circling nearby:
https://www.flightradar24.com/LAGR274/2b42e28a
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=3f6682
I think we can say at this point the debate over Ukraine’s will to fight is over. It seems to be there in quantity and it’s hard to see Russia getting out of this without a large number of casualties and enduring sanctions. Pride will prevent Russia from backing down.
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Ukraine’s Three-to-One Advantage
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/american-volunteer-foreign-fighters-ukraine-russia-war/627604/
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“First, Jed wanted to discuss anti-armor weapons, particularly the American-made Javelin and the British-made NLAW. The past month of fighting had demonstrated that the balance of lethality had shifted away from armor, and toward anti-armor weapons. Even the most advanced armor systems, such as the Russian T-90 series main battle tank, had proved vulnerable, their charred husks littering Ukrainian roadways.
When I mentioned to Jed that I’d fought in Fallujah in 2004, he said that the tactics the Marine Corps used to take that city would never work today in Ukraine. In Fallujah, our infantry worked in close coordination with our premier tank, the M1A2 Abrams. On several occasions, I watched our tanks take direct hits from rocket-propelled grenades (typically older-generation RPG-7s) without so much as a stutter in their forward progress. Today, a Ukrainian defending Kyiv or any other city, armed with a Javelin or an NLAW, would destroy a similarly capable tank.”
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The balance of power could shift back as the militaries return to developing sophisticated anti-personnel weapons to keep those pesky missile carriers away. Suppose for example a large swarm of small drones with infrared and small arms capability. There is lots of drone imagery available which shows the anti-air capability of both sides cannot deal with small drones. The arms race continues … it is a bit of a waste of resources in the grand scheme.
Tom,
Perhaps understandably, there is resistance in some U.S. military leadership circles for LAWS without humans in the loop, even though I don’t think the guidelines explicitly forbid it. I’ve often wondered if we’d see killbots from other countries before we see them in the US military. It’s probably a lot harder than we casually think to make the things differentiate friend from foe reliably and in general circumstances. [Edit: LAWS == lethal autonomous weapons systems]
Beg pardon Tom. I should add, I was assuming AI control because you said ‘large swarm’. It made me (perhaps without sufficient justification) believe you were talking about AI systems; I suspect it’d be hard for human operators to manage large swarms.
I think we could feasibly build air superiority drones today. We have AI’s that win 5 to 0 in F-16 simulated dogfights against a human pilot. I betcha if survivability wasn’t an issue (and of course it’s not for drones) we could mass produce relatively cheap warplanes that would clobber anything in the air. In fact, I’m afraid another nation will do this and use it against us. Our air power (and the naval projection of our air power) is arguably the cornerstone of our military might. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Drones are pretty close to full automation. The military will no doubt develop the technology anyway and then let the politicians decide on their use. In the interim the drone can do everything and ask a human for final permission. It’s not that much different than an indiscriminate land mine.
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Kill everything that moves that doesn’t have a friend or foe transponder is probably doable today but obviously risky. You could geofence it. ISIS was flying hacked drones that dropped grenades. It’s changing pretty fast. Robot armies fighting other robot armies doesn’t seem too far off.
I’m not overconfident in the survivability of our surface navy. Big metal boats sitting in a wide open ocean seems like an easy target. Submarines are a different story. I don’t see human piloted combat vehicles being around a few decades from now. Keeping the big bag of meat alive is a design constraint that limits performance. We first retrofit existing planes and then go to full drone only design. Keeping the comm link reliable is probably the hard part.
What?!? Spend money developing something without a government charge number? 😉
Maybe.
[Edit: No, I take that back, you’re right. Here I read that Kratos has been developing drones along these lines.]
Russia has chosen to “refocus” its efforts on eastern Ukraine, there’s no way to spin that message as anything but a setback, although everything is still propaganda. They now say 1,351 dead and 3,525 wounded. Even if one was to believe those numbers, then that’s >40 dead soldiers a day. There’s definitely some fighting going on.
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“Western officials said that Russia is pausing its operations around Kyiv. “They don’t appear to want to pursue Kyiv aggressively or frankly at all. They are focused on the Donbas”.
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Kyiv would likely be a graveyard for Russians given the numbers already. Reading between the lines is hard but Russia may want to settle this thing but the west is never going to agree to remove sanctions and the insurgency could just move to the east if it has 1000’s of missiles it doesn’t have anything to do with.
So how does the war end?
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Putin wants Ukraine to be part of Russia. Not going to happen, and least not in the foreseeable future, and Putin presumably knows that now.
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Putin would be happy to have a puppet government in Ukraine. Not going to happen, and least not in the foreseeable future, and Putin presumably knows that by now.
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Putin would settle for a defanged Ukraine that is not allowed to make military alliances with or get military assistance from other countries. That way he could take over Ukraine at some convenient date in future. Ukraine won’t agree to that, at least not the way things stand. I suspect Putin still thinks he can get that.
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Zelinsky has said that Ukraine would agree to abandon joining NATO in exchange for “guaranteed neutrality”. Presumably that would be something like having Article 5 extend to Ukraine but without being part of NATO. Putin won’t agree to that, at least not the way things stand.
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So it seems that either Ukraine or Russia must get the upper hand. Or maybe Putin ends up dead.
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IMO, we should give Ukraine enough help to give them the upper hand. I fear that our foreign policy establishment would be happy to see the war go on indefinitely.
I have been saying this since the invasion; the war will be decided in the east.
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The main part of the regular Ukraine army in the east is surrounded and nearly out of supply. It’s only a matter of time before the Russians flatten everything in the east and overrun what’s left.
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Take a good look at the road and railroad nets and the major transport hubs. It does not look good at all for Ukraine as I see it.
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Russia has moved close to 1/2M Civilians from the war zone into Russia to date. Between refugees leaving cities with out power and water and going to the west, and Russia moving refugees into Russia proper and dispersing them, the ability to carry out guerrilla warfare in the east without a civilian base will be greatly hindered.
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https://www.ezilon.com/maps/europe/ukraine-road-maps.html
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https://freewestmedia.com/2022/03/19/day-23-of-the-russian-operation-in-ukraine/
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https://endoftheamericandream.com/siege-and-squeeze-the-mainstream-media-in-the-west-doesnt-understand-russian-military-tactics-in-ukraine/
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https://www.ft.com/content/4351d5b0-0888-4b47-9368-6bc4dfbccbf5
I was elated when I read that the Ruskies said they were scaling back in the East and were going to concentrate on the two provinces in the West where the ethnic Russians live. Then reality set in. Since everything the Ruskies have said so far has turned out to be a Load of Hooey, I figured this statement may be a Load of Hooey too. I read my go-to war info sources and decided the following is the smart play for now:
“The absence of significant Russian offensive operations throughout most of Ukraine likely reflects the inability of the Russian military to generate sufficient combat power to attack rather than any decision in Moscow to change Russia’s war aims or concentrate on the east. Rudskoi’s comments are likely an attempt to gloss over the Russian military’s failures for a domestic audience and focus attention on the only part of the theater in which Russian troops are making any progress at this point. The West should not over-read this obvious messaging embedded in a piece of propaganda that continued very few true statements.”
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-25
Russell, you have this backwards “.. I was elated when I read that the Ruskies said they were scaling back in the East and were going to concentrate on the two provinces in the West where the ethnic Russians liv….”
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They are concentrating in the east, not west. The east is where the Russian minorities are.
Russell, your links main points are not supported in the body of its own document.
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What matters to the Russians:
1. Cutting supply lines to Kiev from the west.
2. Cutting rail and road nets from the western border to the far eastern Ukraine forces.
3. Keeping the far eastern Ukraine forces in pockets to destroy in detail in order to redeploy these eastern Russian forces westward.
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For Kiev, the main road from the west to Kiev is still cut per the documents own map. The minor Ukraine attacks northeast of Kiev have no effect on the Russian goal of cutting western supply routes to the city. Kiev is a major transport hub. The siege of Kiev causes enormous difficulties in moving supplies from the west to the east. There is no need to actually take full control of Kiev to cut supply to the east.
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Cutting the major transport hubs at Kharkiv and Donetsk cuts transport ones to the entire far east. Both of these are cut from the transport lines by the documents own map.
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The far eastern Ukraine forces are in pockets and are currently being destroyed per the document.
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Open logistical lines of supply are critical to modern combat. Cutting these supply routes and forcing the enemy to fight out of supply is key to winning decisive battles with minimal losses of your own. This may have been Plan B, but it sure looks to me that it is still progressing.
Ed Forbes, yes I had it reversed. Thank you for the correction.
Ed Forbes (Comment #210620),
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Your claims seem to be without much support. The map at FreeWest is very different from all others, such as the one at the Financial Times. Of course, all sources must be considered suspect. But that site seems strongly ant-Ukraine and rather conspiratorial. The lead story is “Hunter Biden funded biowarfare research of US labs in Ukraine”. Seriously?
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Ed Forbes: “I have been saying this since the invasion; the war will be decided in the east.”
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You *were* saying that the key was that the Russians were going to cut the country in half from north and south.
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Ed Forbes: “The main part of the regular Ukraine army in the east is surrounded and nearly out of supply. It’s only a matter of time before the Russians flatten everything in the east and overrun what’s left.”
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That seems to be entirely without foundation.
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Ed Forbes: “Take a good look at the road and railroad nets and the major transport hubs. It does not look good at all for Ukraine as I see it.”
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I don’t see it. The Russians surely have far greater transport and resupply problems everywhere except near the eastern border.
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Ed Forbes: “Russia has moved close to 1/2M Civilians from the war zone into Russia to date. … the ability to carry out guerrilla warfare in the east without a civilian base will be greatly hindered.”
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That is simply not plausible. 12 M people in the band consisting of Kherson, Zapororizhzhia, Donesk, Luhansk, Kharkiv.
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Your confidence is not warranted. But if your purpose is to puncture the confidence of the mainstream view, that is worthwhile.
Mike M,
“Your confidence is not warranted.”
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The first casualty of war is always truth. I agree, Ed seems to draw very confident conclusions about the direction of the war that rely on information which is, at best, very doubtful.
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I don’t believe a word the Russians say, nor a word the Ukrainians say.
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But I think that Putin, while a murderous thug, has always had serious security concerns about Russia’s neighbors to the east joining NATO. Even if there were some other leader in Russia, those security concerns would continue. The most likely end to the war will be a negotiation which accommodates those security concerns. Putin will ask for much more, of course (permanent control of Crimea, land corridor from Crimea to Russia, “independent” Russian speaking states in the east), but how much he actually gets will depend on how the war goes. Our Imbecile in Chief seems committed to keep negotiations from succeeding.
I read that it was Ukraine that destroyed the rail lines, to keep Russia from supplying forces in the west.
The half million Russia removed from D&L, Ukraine is claiming were forced by Russia, and Russia is saying that’s where they wanted to go.
If Ukraine were to keep control of these areas in the east after the war, there would likely be an ongoing cleansing of Russians there.
Some Ukrainian officials have said as much, even prior to the start of the war.
Russia could save face by saying they destroyed the Nazis in the Azov battalion and kept foreign armies out of Ukraine.
Today another small NATO country was on point…
SVF645 “RAVIN” Swedish Air Force spent 8 hours on the Ukraine border collecting intelligence.
“Two Gulfstream IV G were purchased for the ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) role and which got Swedish designation S 102B Korpen. Korp means raven. These two aircraft are named “Hugin” and “Munin” after the Norse God Odin‘s ravens which flew around the world gathering information for him.”
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SVF645
In some respects it doesn’t matter what the Russian tactics are if it leaves an angry, armed, and motivated populace in place that will become an effective insurgency. Millions of citizens will still need huge quantities of normal goods to survive and rebuild once the Russian armies with all their superior tactics “win” on the battlefield. Lethal munitions can easily be smuggled in.
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The ignored question is what should the Ukraine tactics be against a superior armed force? Perhaps it is hit and run and kill as many Russians as possible on their way in, use up the Ukranian fixed assets (tanks, heavy weaponry, etc.). Once the siege tactics take their nearly inevitable toll, then Ukraine soldiers en masse disappear and melt into the countryside. Dare the Russians to come on in, artillery isn’t very useful when you are occupying a city and trying to pacify it. Then the sh** really hits the fan for the Russians.
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In my view the Russians are likely incapable of winning the hearts and minds of Ukraine because they don’t seem to care and the Russian behavior now is … uhhhh … alienating to say the least.
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The Russians appear to be playing chess against an opponent who is just going to stab them in neck when they are not looking instead of moving their piece. I don’t think the Russians want to occupy any urban areas with an insurgency and may try to negotiate their way out of that. Ukraine should force them to endure that before any settlement. Given the current battle status it would seem the insurgency will be brutal.
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Part of fighting what seems to be a losing cause is sending a signal how painful another round is going to be. Deterrence. Ukraine with the assistance of the west needs to kill effing Russians all day long, every day, for as long as possible. I have zero sympathy for dead Russians in Ukraine as does most of the world. Even though Putin likely could care less, a lot of people in Russia will tire of this eventually.
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That’s what the west wants, maximum damage to Russia. I’m no cultural expert on Ukraine but they get to decide. It’s hard to see through the fog of propaganda but my reading is there are lots of people in Ukraine who want the same.
Russians just now blow up fuel depot in Lviv, far Western Ukraine.
So much for the Russians saying the were moving to the East.
https://twitter.com/HalaGorani/status/1507752217222205440?s=20&t=WKHmr9nNQRFVqk3_BZBeyg
Russell,
Sweden is not in NATO.
Badass Girl Power…
https://twitter.com/lesiavasylenko/status/1507482887297421312?s=20&t=JvelCFUR5oGZnevGOJ6Zsw
Mike M. “Sweden is not in NATO.” Thanks I had missed that. It’s good to see them join in, nonetheless.
Ironic.
The President who publicly says that which he does not officially mean, apparently because his mind wanders? … will remain in power for a few more years anyway.
Biden talking about Putin as a war criminal and removing him from power will only serve to make it harder to provide him with an off ramp. That just ensures that the war lasts longer.
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I ask myself what we would have done if we wanted to lure Putin into a quagmire in Ukraine.
* Restrict domestic oil production to drive up the global price of oil and Russia’s revenues.
* Give Putin what he wants regarding things like the START renewal and Nordstream2.
* Don’t hold Russia accountable for destructive hacking.
* Take steps to make it seem like Ukraine joining NATO is inevitable and might happen sooner rather than later.
* Hold back on providing Ukraine with defensive weaponry.
* Talk big about sanctions while refusing to say what they might be, thus tempting Putin to think we are bluffing.
* Predict that an invasion will succeed within days, thus confirming any overly optimistic assessment Putin was getting from his own intelligence apparatus.
* Precipitously pull out all diplomatic and military personnel, to make it clear to Putin that we won’t get in his way.
* Make no real attempt to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
* Have a very public spat within NATO to give the impression that we are lukewarm about providing weaponry.
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What have I missed? Or maybe that should be what has the Biden administration missed?
Mike M,
Biden is a demented old fool, and has surrounded himself with a bunch of lightweights. By giving Putin no reasonable exit, Biden only increases the risk of an expanded war, and guarantees the Ukraine will suffer more than needed. Biden is the one who should be removed from office. Unfortunately that won’t likely be until January 2025, unless the 25th is invoked.
The WH spokespeople sure are spending a lot of timing explaining what the president really meant lately. This is just another on a lengthening list of stupid things Biden has said in the last year. A war criminal, a butcher, he must be removed, these things are not very helpful. Every time he goes off script it goes wrong.
mark bofill,
What did Obama say about Assad in Syria in 2015? Oh, yes:
Bashar al-Assad is still the President of Syria today. There was still fighting going on in Syria in 2021, but effectively Assad has won.
Tom Scharf,
“Every time he goes off script it goes wrong.”
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Lack of self control and poor judgement are symptoms of early stage dementia. IMO, Biden’s poor and ever declining metal acuity is a real danger to the world. I find it frightening. I hope General (Woke) Miley has the good sense to resist completely crazy orders from Biden.
Mike M “. The lead story is “Hunter Biden funded biowarfare research of US labs in Ukraine”. Seriously…”
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Mike you need to open your reading a bit more. This is all over the place..but I doubt CNN or NYT carries this story
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Another of many
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10652127/Hunter-Biden-helped-secure-millions-funding-military-biotech-research-program-Ukraine.html
Ed Forbes (Comment #210640): “Hunter Biden funded biowarfare research of US labs in Ukraine”.
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Yep, perfectly accurate except that Hunter did not provide funds and there is no evidence of either biowarfare research or US labs in Ukraine. A lie spun around a germ of truth.
I don’t doubt that our government gets up to stuff that they don’t make publicly known. We do have an official classification system for secrets after all.
Bioweapons labs in Ukraine doesn’t seem especially plausible to me, but what the heck do I know about it (nothing). So I’m agnostic on this issue. I haven’t seen any evidence I find compelling, so by default I have no reason to believe that specific claim.
It strains credulity in my view to involve Hunter Biden in any way shape or form with the already dubious claim. Who in their right mind would choose a wastrel like Hunter for any role in such an operation.
Shrug.
mark bofill (Comment #210642): ” Who in their right mind would choose a wastrel like Hunter for any role in such an operation.”
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Exactly. There are Ukrainian biolabs that have received funding from the US. Given what we have learned over the last two years, it is plausible that our government has paid those labs to do work that could not be done here. That does not mean that we did do that and, if we did, it does not mean that such work was bioweapons. At least at this time there is no evidence of either.
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Hunter does seem to have helped an American bio company get funding and seems to have connected them with his buddies at Burisma. But it seems that is a data management company not a lab research company. And I don’t think that it has any connection to the labs in Ukraine.
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It is like having a handful of points on a blank sheath of paper, then “connecting the dots” by drawing an elaborate picture. Conspiracy theory stuff. And like most conspiracy theories, it makes it easy to dismiss things that should be genuinely concerning.
I think this Biden gaffe is probably worse than people think. He needs to personally walk this back in my opinion, sooner rather than later.
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Every major media outlet headlined this statement without context, not sure there is much context to add actually. He sent out some spokespeople and other administration people to clarify this, but this amounts to “I shouldn’t have said half of Trump supporters are deplorables”.
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The reason I think this is that Putin and his regime have been selling to their domestic audience that the west is a direct threat to Russia for years and his entire rambling speech before the war was based on the west encroaching on Russia sovereignty. There can be no clearer confirmation of this paranoia than Biden’s own words. It’s going to go over with quite a thud to the Russian audience and harden the opposition to the west and make them rally around Putin.
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Imagine the same on our border with Putin demanding that our President must go as he sends in advanced weaponry.
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We see this as “Biden being Biden”, I think it goes over differently in Russia. Own goal. He needs to walk it back even if the damage has already been done.
As I mentioned before, the much more plausible scenario is that we are involved in Ukraine biolabs in order to keep an eye on what the Russians are doing across the border. People talk. Same thing could apply for China.
The sad truth is that “Russian paranoia” is well grounded in fact. After promising that NATO would not expand eastward, it added the former Warsaw pact states, then 3 former SSRs, and then implied further expansion. While that was happening, NATO went from being a purely defensive alliance to become an offensive bloc in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya. Of course Russia sees NATO as a threat.
Before this war started I posted my worries about cranky old Joe having his trembling fingers on the nuclear button during a faceoff with Putin. Nothing either man has done since has lessened those fears; quite the contrary.
This AM from KTMcFarland:
“Biden’s call for regime change in #Russia is a game changer. WH tried to walk it back, but Moscow won’t read it that way. Instead, it’ll unify Russians behind Putin. He now has ZERO incentive to stop the war or negotiate w/ Ukraine & every reason to escalate.Has WWIII now begun?”
https://twitter.com/realKTMcFarland/status/1508057843500556297?s=20&t=hfjjQ566Mvggf1skwDfn7Q
Tom Scharf,
I wrote above: “Lack of self control and poor judgement are symptoms of early stage dementia.”
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While true, that is not completely accurate. Lack of self control and consistently poor judgement are classic symptoms of a ‘progressive’ mindset as well. President Dementia has surrounded himself with progressives; yet another indication of his lack of judgement. There is nobody involved in preparing Biden’s public statements who can think clearly about the wider dangers the war in Ukraine poses, and when Biden goes off script, it goes from very bad to much worse. The guy is putting humanity at risk every time he talks into a mic. IMO, his office plus his dementia make him a menace to all of humanity.
Yesterday’s Ruskie statement was a Load of Hooey…. “ The Russian military continues to concentrate replacements and reinforcements in Belarus and Russia north of Kyiv, to fight for positions on Kyiv’s outskirts, and to attempt to complete the encirclement and reduction of Chernihiv. Russian activities around Kyiv show no change in the Russian high command’s prioritization of the fight around Ukraine’s capital, which continues to occupy the largest single concentration of Russian ground forces in Ukraine. The Russians have not claimed to redeploy forces from Kyiv or any other part of Ukraine to concentrate on fighting in Donbas, and we have observed numerous indicators that they have not done so. The increasingly static nature of the fighting around Kyiv reflects the incapacity of Russian forces rather than any shift in Russian objectives or efforts at this time.” https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-26
Very good article on the war. Well worth reading
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https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/21/michael-kofman-russia-military-expert-00018906
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Very surprised such a balanced article came out of Politico as they are usually as balanced as CNN.
Talk about poking the Bear… We are flying a spy drone inside the closed air space over the Black Sea near the Russian navy base. “FORTE10” Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk is flying at altitude 54,000 feet. https://www.flightradar24.com/FORTE10/2b4912f5
I don’t know if I keep tracking a flock of angels or a gang of warriors. For several weeks I have been seeing US Army Sikorsky UH-60M Blackhawk helicopters with the callsign “DUKE” and two numbers. Just now it’s “DUKE41”. They appear over extreme Eastern Poland for a short time and go dark as they approach the Ukraine border. They are often near a hospital… Szpital Powiatowy w Nowej D?bie; but also near the airport at Rzeszow, which is a supply hub for weapons. There have been about six different callsigns, sometimes there are multiple “DUKE” birds in the air at the same time. I also do not know if they are delivering cargo or picking up patients inside Ukraine or right at the border. Is a puzzler. https://www.flightradar24.com/DUKE41/2b4d2a2e
Hospital: https://zoznowadeba.pl/
There are no “angels” in government on either side of this conflict.
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Nations have a natural right defend their interests, up to, and including armed conflict. War is said to be “politics by other means”. .
Russia sees its conflict with Ukraine as being in their national interest to defend itself from continuing NATO expansion that has been actively working against Russia for decades. With NATO having a long track record for aggressive wars, Russia has a very good reason to regard NATO as a direct threat to its very existence. If Russia does decide that Ukraine is a direct threat to its existence, the war can get much uglier than its been so far.
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The west has been supporting Ukraine in the war as a war between democracy and totalitarian. “Democratic “ Ukraine has, by presidential decree, suspended all opposition political parties and nationalized all media. So much for Ukraine being a democracy. .
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Add in that Ukraine is consistently listed as one of the worst of the lot in corrupt governments of the world adds to the hypocrisy of the western support for Ukraine.
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In reading the world news regarding the war, one must remember that we are generally getting only one side of the conflict, Ukraines side. Ukraine consistently lies, which is expected as propaganda is an effective tool in war. Ukraine is very active in production of news favorable to Ukraine and against Russia. Russia has gone dark on its operational moves as it sees no benefit in engaging in an informational war it believes it has no chance of winning due to the extreme anti Russian bias by US media over the last 6 years.
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The only way I see that can give clues to Russian operational logic is by review of the maps showing Russian advances and major commitment of forces, and making conclusions that try to make sense of these commitments.
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In other recent news that looks to give Ukraine a black eye in the information war:
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“ Zelenskyy Worried About Western Financial Support After Video Surfaces Showing Ukraine Military Torturing Russian POW’s”
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https://www.sgtreport.com/2022/03/zelenskyy-worried-about-western-financial-support-after-video-surfaces-showing-ukraine-military-torturing-russian-pows/
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https://www.rt.com/russia/552804-moscow-investigates-alleged-footage-of/
Biden walks back his comments, or more accurately a no walk-back walk back in Biden speak. “The plain meaning of my words are not my meaning.” Standard Biden. He did need to do this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7PCZX1nxlY
Ed Forbes (Comment #210657): “Russia sees its conflict with Ukraine as being in their national interest to defend itself from continuing NATO expansion that has been actively working against Russia for decades. With NATO having a long track record for aggressive wars, Russia has a very good reason to regard NATO as a direct threat to its very existence.”
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Russia has a legitimate grievance against NATO. But I do not believe that is the only reason, or even the main reason for their invasion. The war is an extreme measure to prevent something that was not imminent and might never happen.
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Ed Forbes: ““Democratic “ Ukraine has, by presidential decree, suspended all opposition political parties and nationalized all media. So much for Ukraine being a democracy.”
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Two big problems there. One is that it is not true. They have suspended some pro-Russia parties that might reasonably expected to aid the invaders. And the central control of the news is not really nationalization and, I think, only applies to TV news. Given the emergency, such actions might or might not be warranted.
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But there is a bigger problem with Ed’s statement. Ukraine is a war zone. The country is under martial law. Of *course* it is not a democracy for the time being. During WW2, the UK was not a democracy. And they did not even have enemy armies on their soil.
Mike M,
“Russia has a legitimate grievance against NATO. But I do not believe that is the only reason, or even the main reason for their invasion.”
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Kinda doubt that; I think Ukraine’s obvious movement toward the west (and NATO) it is the main reason. Russia started moving troops and equipment to the border with Ukraine shortly after the USA and the Ukraine announced an agreement last fall to expedite Ukraine becoming a NATO member. Since then, the Russians have been outspoken on Ukraine not ever becoming part of NATO. Yes, Putin may long for the days of the USSR, but even Putin likely understands that is a era which is not coming back.
Ed Forbes (Comment #210657)March 28th, 2022 at 2:12 pm “There are no “angels” in government on either side of this conflict.”
These Blackhawks may be flying medevac. If they are regularly going into harm’s way to evacuate injured people, they are close to angels in my book. They have several times seemed to originate their flight near that regional hospital.
Until 2014, Ukraine had an official position of neutrality. After Russia invaded, Ukraine dropped that position and started to aim for NATO membership. Putin has been clear about his opinion that Ukraine is part of Russia and has no business being an independent country. If all he wanted was Ukraine not in NATO, he would have made demands backed by threats. He did not do that. Or he would have offered to negotiate some mutually agreeable neutrality. He did not do that.
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Ukraine is offering to drop any idea of NATO membership. Putin is not biting.
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Yes, the timing has been influenced by Biden’s actions, including moving closer to Ukraine in NATO. But the invasion was intended to end Ukrainian independence. Nothing less.
Mike M,
The 2014 invasion/semi-invasion and taking of the Crimea was the result of the Obama administration’s involvement in forcing the ouster of the Russophile president. The USA and NATO have had a long term involvement in Ukrainian politics, always against Russian interests, of course. Not to mention enriching the Biden family influence pedaling business. I will make a (not so) bold prediction. Putin will get most everything he wants: no NATO membership evah. Crimea remains permanently part of Russia, the “independent” majority Russian speaking states in the east will become permanent, and maybe (not certain) a permanent land corridor from the Crimea to Russia. The settlement terms will be neither ‘just’ nor ‘right’. The suffering of the Ukrainian people will be terrible from now to a settlement. But the settlement will recognize reality, which seems to me well beyond the intellectual capacity of the woke Biden administration.
Reports that the peacekeeping teams of Russia and Ukraine have been poisoned.
However, the source is BellingCat, so I am skeptical.
MikeN,
Both negotiating teams deny this happened.
Russia wants veto power over the autonomy and sovereignty of countries that it considers inside its area of control. It’s nice to want things, everybody wants things, other people want things such as declining to have a thug totalitarian state telling you how to run your country. Is anybody ever been better off with the Russians in charge? There’s a reason people want to change sides.
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If Ukraine wants to be run by the benevolent Russians then that is fine by me, have a referendum and lets find out. This basically already happened when the last Russian puppets got removed from office.
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Russia in theory wants a buffer demilitarized zone, perhaps that can be worked out, perhaps it could have been worked out, but what I think happened is Russia just lost patience and decided to start a war of conquest more on impulse than anything else. Did Russia really think it’s homeland was in danger? That is preposterous by any rational judgment. You can’t just declare all of the old USSR as Russia by fiat. People hate Russia for good reasons such as fear of * exactly what is happening right now *.
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If Ukraine declines to want to be part of Russia then it is at an impasse and I say let the Russians come in and die by the thousands trying to get what they want. It gets complicated if parts of the country want to secede and having a fair vote might be a bit of a problem. This war increasingly looks a like a very bad decision because even if they win the battles they will lose the peace.
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Most of Canada speaks English, aren’t they really just Americans? I think we need to protect their interests from that Nazi Trudeau so lets roll in the tanks and take over, we can put our oligarch Trump in charge of Canada.
Tom Scharf,
Parts of the Ukraine do indeed prefer to be part of Russia; certainly the Crimea (where a plebiscite and independent polls, including Pew, consistently show overwhelming majorities support union with Russia). That is likely also the case in parts of the east, although the majorities are for sure smaller than in Crimea.
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Yes, the Russians don’t actually face a credible threat from the Ukraine and NATO. But the Russians may not see it that way. Yes, Putin is a murderous thug, but Putin may not see himself that way. The Russians will for sure pay a dear price in blood and treasure to insist the Ukraine not become part of NATO, and they will have a hostile country on their border for generations, so in that sense, they will ‘lose the peace’. But there is no way, short of nuclear war, they will be dissuaded from forcing their minimum conditions for peace on the Ukraine. As distasteful as that reality is, it remains reality. I think the USA and the Europeans should do their best to operate within the realm of reality, and try to minimize suffering of the Ukrainians.
SteveF,
I have serious doubts that’s true after several years of Russian occupation. Before the invasion, Russian speaking Ukrainians in Kharkiv had changed their minds about being annexed by Russia. And that was before the Russians bombed out the city. I also doubt it’s possible to conduct an independent, unbiased poll in Crimea at present.
Also, the Russian claim that NATO and Ukraine made them invade is on par with the spousal abuser claiming their spouse made them do it. Putin wants to re-establish the Russian empire. Period.
In my view, the problem with the whole justification idea that Russia feels threatened by NATO is illustrated by the situation right now. Why is nobody directly getting involved with helping out Ukraine? Because they fear escalation by Russia, because it’s a nuclear power. NATO poses no aggressor threat to Russia while Russia remains a nuclear power. NATO doesn’t dare. Russia would use their nukes to defend themselves.
DeWitt,
“Putin wants to re-establish the Russian empire.”
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Even Putin is not so crazy as to believe he can do that. Moral outrage is often inconsistent with prudent foreign policies, as Joe Biden’s recent rants so clearly demonstrate.
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mark bofill,
Sure. Same reason China is never going to be held to account for its outrageous human rights abuses, and why the mullahs in Iran are so desperate to have nuclear weapons. I think the mullahs in Iran and the CCP leaders are profoundly evil and do many profoundly evil things; I also suspect the mullahs and the CCP leaders don’t consider themselves to be profoundly evil, and actually believe what they do is anything but evil.
Steve,
I’m sorry. I didn’t read what you wrote carefully enough.
I think we agree.
mark bofill (Comment #210670): “NATO doesn’t dare. Russia would use their nukes to defend themselves.”
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That is true as long as Biden is in office here and Putin is in office there. Both will change. NATO certainly dared to risk Russia’s ire by aggressively and pointlessly expanding to the east. Things might change again in the future.
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We would like to believe that our government will always be benign. We may be right or we may be wrong. But we surely can not expect Russia to gamble their fate on our hopes.
Mike,
I disagree with the idea that adding countries to NATO will ever pose an aggressor type of threat to Russia while Russia has nukes. Russia can pretend that they think NATO is a threat, but it’s BS.
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I don’t believe our government is benign. I believe NATO is fundamentally conservative in the sense that NATO will not start wars of aggression with nuclear powers. [Not because anybody is benign. It’s because they don’t want to risk getting nuked.]
NATO is only an obstacle to Russian expansion. That’s not the same thing as an aggressor threat. NATO is never going to attack Russia while Russia can nuke NATO countries.
[All of this is just my opinion, obviously.]
After face-to-face negotiations today in Turkey, we have a new headline:
“Russia says it will “drastically reduce” military activity near Kyiv.”
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They say they want to maintain the conditions needed for continued negotiations. They also talk about the “need for mutual security guarantees.” We will see. Could be just lies. Could be they recognize how high the cost for continued war will be and are looking for an off-ramp.
DeWitt
That’s my understanding. Also: there was an age split. Elderly Russian speaking people had warm feelings to “Mother Russia”, but the younger generation: Nope.
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The same split is being seen in Latvia.
MikeM
Pointless? I suspect you are using that word to mean something other than “pointless”.
I don’t think former soviet block countries think NATO expansion to the east is pointless. I don’t think Ukraine felt NATO expanding to the east was pointless. I think the war itself shows it would not be pointless. Even Russia doesn’t think it’s pointless. Russia just doesn’t like the outcome.
SteveF
Yah think?
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They may be reducing military activity. That part might even be true. But if they are reducing it, I suspect their motive is that they want time to resupply.
Or not. They’ve lost a lot of generals.
“…try to minimize suffering of the Ukrainians.”
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Or maximize the suffering of Russians from a NATO point of view. If Ukraine wants blood and vengeance that is fine by me, if they want a dirty distasteful settlement then that is fine by me as well. It’s really up to them.
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I don’t think demilitarization of the remnants of Ukraine should be on the table given the current conditions, but guaranteed neutrality is not a problem in my view if Ukraine sees this as acceptable. Also I doubt sanctions are going to be lifting under anything but a complete Russian withdrawal so my guess is talks break down over those two issues.
Tom,
“Most of Canada speaks English, aren’t they really just Americans?”
No!
>This basically already happened when the last Russian puppets got removed from office.
They were removed not in an election but by a coup orchestrated by the US. Once Russia seized Crimea, the loss of voters makes it difficult for another pro-Russia puppet to get elected.
If Russia is arming and sending in troops to breakaway areas on its border, why wouldn’t she think NATO would do the same to areas in Russia?
lucia (Comment #210678): “Pointless? I suspect you are using that word to mean something other than “pointless”.”
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I meant pointless. It seems to me that the appropriate use of that word in this context is “serving no useful purpose”.
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What is the purpose of NATO? It had a purpose, but then the USSR fell apart. What do we (or the Brits or the French) gain from the eastward expansion of NATO? I say that the eastward expansion of NATO was pointless because I can’t answer those two questions. Maybe you can provide me with answers. The fact that some countries wanted to join NATO is beside the point.
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lucia: “I think the war itself shows it would not be pointless. Even Russia doesn’t think it’s pointless. Russia just doesn’t like the outcome.”
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So was the point to irritate/threaten Russia? If so, I would not call that a useful purpose. But it was a foreseeable consequence.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210679): “guaranteed neutrality is not a problem in my view if Ukraine sees this as acceptable.”
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The problem is, who guarantees Ukraine’ neutrality and how do they do it? Do we extend NATO Article 5 to Ukraine?
MIkeN (Comment #210681): “They were removed not in an election but by a coup orchestrated by the US.”
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I am not buying that. A popular uprising is not a coup. And although the Obama administration encouraged the protests, I don;t think they “orchestrated” them.
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MikeN: “Once Russia seized Crimea, the loss of voters makes it difficult for another pro-Russia puppet to get elected.”
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But the loss of votes by pro-Russia parties was far greater than the loss of voters in Crimea and the Donbas.
Lucia,
” I suspect their motive is that they want time to resupply.”
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Or could be they are looking for an off-ramp. No way to know for sure right now.
Mike M,
“But the loss of votes by pro-Russia parties was far greater than the loss of voters in Crimea and the Donbas.”
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Sure. There are no doubt people in the rest of the Ukraine who supported Russian aligned politicians until the Russians seized Crimea and the Donbas region.
It’s not our fault that countries would prefer to join NATO, it’s exactly the opposite, it’s our virtue. It’s Russia’s fault that people are running away from them as fast as possible. Putin is having a temper tantrum because nobody wants to be his friend. NATO and the west are far from perfect but it is rational to desire NATO over Russia. How far we take that is debatable but effectively blaming NATO for being a better answer isn’t a strong argument.
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The biggest problem we potentially face is a combination of Biden’s “Putin must go” rhetoric with a loose Javelin being used by an extremist to take out Putin. No armored car is going to survive that. Wars get started over that kind of thing.
Obviously Russia and NATO will agree to respect Ukraine’s neutrality and this would hold right up until the moment Russia decides to invade again, ha ha. There are no guarantees. Russia already gave security guarantees to Ukraine for giving up their USSR nukes and broke them. These promises might end the war though, but shouldn’t really be seen as biting contracts.
The Russian view
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“ The road to Ukraine started with 1999’s Kosovo War”
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https://www.rt.com/news/552646-kosovo-war-nato-ukraine-hypocrisy/
Not entering Kiev could have been their plan all along, or it might have been to take it if it was easy. It could be that the war got tough and occupying Kiev looked rather punishing without a justifiable endpoint. It could be that this is all propaganda and it is still the plan to occupy Kiev.
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I’m not buying they can’t occupy Kiev because they haven’t really tried very hard. They have done lots of scouting raids, got bloody noses, and withdrew. What they probably know now that they didn’t before is that it will cost them dearly.
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Nobody knows. The western media narrative is that Russia is weak but they don’t know anything either.
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My guess is that it is probably a combination of many of these (pick any two!). It is rational to not want to occupy hostile urban areas given the effectiveness of Ukraine’s miltary and western aide. I figured Putin’s pride would not let him appear to back down from grandiose objectives but perhaps he is more rational then I thought.
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Russia’s cold calculation may be that they are willing to trade blows one for one long term because Ukraine will run out of people and equipment first. Wars of attrition are not something the west likes, perhaps Russia sees things differently.
One view worth reading.
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“ Victory, Defeat, and Russian Ways in War”
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https://gbv.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/uploads/documents/KI_220322_Cable%2075_V1.pdf
I still say that Russian operational plans are shown by its movement.
Plan A was a quick strike to take Kiev, which failed.
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Plan B is to isolate Kiev, which is a major transport hub between the western border and eastern Ukraine, in conjunction with forcing the eastern Ukraine army into pockets to be destroyed in detail.
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The Russian force at Kiev is cutting the main route from the west to northeastern Ukraine and Russian forces in the east are advancing and reducing pockets of resistance.
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Plan B is working
Tom Scharf,
“It’s not our fault that countries would prefer to join NATO, it’s exactly the opposite, it’s our virtue. It’s Russia’s fault that people are running away from them as fast as possible.”
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This may be more of a bit more of a simplification than is justified.
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Those of us who live in a ‘superpower’ country may not be best able to judge. Yes, given a choice between wealth and poverty, people usually choose wealth. But it is far more complicated than that.
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My guess is most people in the Ukraine just want peace and to have a chance to profit from their own efforts. Putin is messing that up, of course. Still, the objective for most Ukrainians is most likely peace and the ability to profit from their own efforts.
MikeM
The point would be to expand the block of countries protecting themselves against Russia. That Russia is no longer the USSR didn’t mean they ceased to be an aggressive threat. I consider allowing a larger group countries to protect themselves against Russia a useful purpose.
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That Russia has now shown it’s aggression demonstrates the utility of the purpose.
lucia (Comment #210695): “The point would be to expand the block of countries protecting themselves against Russia. That Russia is no longer the USSR didn’t mean they ceased to be an aggressive threat. I consider allowing a larger group countries to protect themselves against Russia a useful purpose.”
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Am I not buying. NATO was already more than strong enough to stand up to the diminished Russia. And they had a whole bunch of buffer states between NATO and Russia. By bringing those countries into NATO, they greatly increased the opportunity for conflict, with no real gain. Pointless.
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So you and I may disagree as to whether the expansion was pointless. Fine. But please don’t tell me that I meant something other than pointless.
Perhaps the Russia bordering countries should have formed a new Warsaw Pact, rather than joining a NATO which should have been closed.
MikeM
Ok. You aren’t buying it.
But if Poland isn’t part of NATO, there is no agreement for NATO to stand up for Poland if Russia invades them. Likewise Bulgaria. Or Croatia. Or Estonia.
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Countries from the former Soviet Union gaining the ability to stand up to Russia is a useful purpose to my mind. Evidently, they see it as useful to.
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But sure: NATO could have continued to stand up and protect “original NATO”.
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That fact doesn’t make extendng the umbrella of protection to other countries not a useful purpose. It may not be one you approve of. It may not be one Russia likes. But neither your approval nor Russias is required for it to be either “a purpose” or “a useful” one.
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It’s true that I found it unimaginable you would see NATOs umbrella of protection expanding to include Bulgaria, The Czech Republic and so on either “useless” or “pointless”. But I guess you do. I’m pretty sure Bulgaria, the Czech republic, Estonia, Croatia and so on disagree with you.
MikeN
It’s an idea. But I don’t see how it’s a better idea. Maybe Russia would have liked it better. But I suspect these countries would felt safer by joining an already existing established group they thought less likely to be subverted. So from their point of view, joining NATO made more sense than creating a “former vassals of the USSR– but not Russia” group.
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I’m betting on of the attractions of NATO is that it is specifically NOT “the former USSR” and/or “Russia”.
lucia (Comment #210698): “But if Poland isn’t part of NATO, there is no agreement for NATO to stand up for Poland if Russia invades them. Likewise Bulgaria. Or Croatia. Or Estonia.”
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That would be a good thing for us and probably also for Poland, etc. It most certainly would have been a good thing for Ukraine.
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lucia: “It’s true that I found it unimaginable you would see NATOs umbrella of protection expanding to include Bulgaria, The Czech Republic and so on either “useless” or “pointless”. But I guess you do.”
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Actually, I find it foolish and dangerous.
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lucia: “I’m pretty sure Bulgaria, the Czech republic, Estonia, Croatia and so on disagree with you.”
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I imagine they don’t agree with me. I don’t care. I don’t see why I should care.
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MikeN (Comment #210697): “Perhaps the Russia bordering countries should have formed a new Warsaw Pact, rather than joining a NATO which should have been closed.”
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Now that would have made sense. Such a pact would have been strong enough to stand up to Russia without being a threat to Russia. And they likely would be able to count on each other. Unlike, say, the Baltic states who now can’t be sure we would actually come to their aid.
I agree with Lucia on this. Further (she hasn’t really said this) I suspect there is more ‘point’ to helping protecting countries and opposing aggression than may be immediately obvious, but I’m not up to arguing the case tonight. (Sinus headache, from allergies maybe.. [Or maybe just work stress. :/ ])
MikeM
I’m not saying you should care.
The problem is you’ve decreed them joining NATO is “pointless”.
It’s one thing to disagree with their motivation for wanting to join. Or for NATO countries motivation for letting them join. Or for you to think it’s foolhardy. Or think it ill advised. Or think they won’t achieve their goal. I get you think all those things.
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But the original NATO countries and those wishing to join do have a motivation, goal and desired outcome. So it’s not “pointless”.
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I very much doubt Russia would have seen a group of former soviet block countries that formed a pact to protect themselves against Russia as “not a threat”. I suspect they would have invaded sooner rather than later.
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I really don’t think Putin would have welcomed the “We are not Russia-Pact” countries coalition.
I’m also not sure they could be sure they could count on each other.
I think it’s good for everyone when people are more free / less subjugated. It’s pretty clear Ukraine does not want to be conquered by Russia and that this isn’t merely the ruling clique, but Ukrainians in general. Do I have to find the arguments and articulate why it’s better for everyone when people are free? I’d have thought we all know those reasons. People are more productive, happier, less bitter and vengeful and homicidal, it improves trade, there is peace, so on and so on. The world is tilted a little less towards hell in this circumstance. What is right is also profitable, maybe not hugely and obviously profitable to everyone, but still. All things being equal, I think it’s better for everyone if Russia doesn’t conquer Ukrainians who don’t want to be conquered by Russia.
Also, I still maintain that Russia knows perfectly well that NATO does not pose much of a threat. They are not stupid. They doubtless observe like everyone else that the mere threat of nuclear escalation is enough to prevent NATO from taking much direct action to assist Ukraine, which I think (direct action to assist Ukraine) is a lot more palatable to the citizens of NATO nations and probably would generate more public support than some sort of war to conquer Russia would be. Russia knows they have but to rattle their nukes and NATO will try to deescalate if they can.
It’s not that Russia fears NATO will attack it. It’s that Russia fears NATO will prevent its gradual expansion and regional domination.
I think the “point” depends on what kind of long term goals you want. One of axioms in international relations is that liberal democracies dont attack other liberal democracies (and to raise the obvious objection, if a country does attack, then they were obviously not a “real liberal democracy” – but let that ride for the moment). Ergo, a world populated by liberal democracies is a much safer than one where exceptions apply. I think this is generally likely to be true, even the axiom is not perfect.
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Extending NATO provided security guarantees to countries that wished to move toward liberal democracy but without much of history in its practice. You have to play the game to get the benefits but you are free from having to worry about how Russia feels about it. With such systems come wealth and the world becomes safer. .
Imagine a possible future. Donbass area becomes part of Russia or “autonomous” region. Security guarantees are in place (a NATO equipped army in Ukraine but no nukes or long range missiles). EU decides to enough security is possible to significant invest in Ukraine and EU-type rules fosters development of an actual liberal democracy in Ukraine which then grows rich.
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So how do the people of Donbass or for that matter Western Russia feel about the growing disparity that comes from being vassals to Russia’s system? Personally I suspect that discontent and a growing reform movement which should be a step towards making the world even safer.
Lucia,
“It’s not our fault that countries would prefer to join NATO, it’s exactly the opposite, it’s our virtue. It’s Russia’s fault that people are running away from them as fast as possible.”
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Mike M may or may not agree to that, but for me, yes, it is obvious that Russia represents mostly an oppressor, and always has, not a liberator. The West has represented mostly a liberator.
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That said, we would be wise (I think) to let the Ukrainians negotiate with Russia for terms to end the war. Will the west like those terms? Almost certainly not. But the West has very little skin in the game compared to the Ukrainians. I hope President Alzheimer de Imbeciles will not screw up a final agreement between Russia and Ukraine, but I am not sanguine about that prospect. Most likely Biden’s handlers will do everything they possibly can to delay ending the war; they appear to be 100% idiots, and only very (very!) marginally more aware than Biden himself. Under these circumstances, there is almost no limit to how much damage the Biden administration can do.
Phil,
“So how do the people of Donbass or for that matter Western Russia feel about the growing disparity that comes from being vassals to Russia’s system?”
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Of course, given the chance, people will most often choose economic liberty over economic oppression (not always, there are lots of very crazy Muslims who think otherwise). How that relates to the Donbas versus the rest of Ukraine is a discussion for a date very long (10 years?) in the future. I doubt it is an issue right now.
SteveF
I have no objection to letting the Ukranian’s negotiate terms to end the war. I think they are precisely the correct party to negotiate them.
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I suspect this will be a salient issue to Ukranians and it will be salient right now.
Now, if it turns out the Ukranians are willing to give up Donbass to end the war, that’s their decision. But I’m guessing that would be seen as a big concession to them. And it’s a big concession right now.
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If Ukranian’s want to fight on rather than give it up, I sure hope Biden or NATO don’t lean on Ukraine to “make nice to the Russians”. Making nice to the Russians hasn’t worked well for Ukraine in the past and I don’t think it’s likely to work well in the future.
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Likewise– if they really want to give it up, that should be their decision. But it should be theirs.
It’s blindingly obvious why they want to join NATO, read the news, and most or all of those countries have been on the wrong end of Russian rule already. Either get nukes, join NATO, or watch your borders nervously for strange armies without identification crossing over.
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There is a legitimate debate of why NATO would want them. I think the answer is more strategic than tactical. It’s not much use really to have them as their * current * economies and militaries are not likely to help much in a real shooting war. However just like it can make economic sense to allow mass immigration into the US (yes, I know this is contentious, but just for argument’s sake) it can make sense to allow these countries into NATO and the EU as a future investment and a hedge against Russian global impulses.
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This really makes Russian expansion plans very difficult and high risk. Putin isn’t strenuously objecting because he doesn’t plan on expansion, and he is near crazy to think NATO is going to invade Russia. He’s failing to convince these countries of Russia’s benefits and the west has a much more compelling argument. This is galling to Putin because he truly believes in Russia’s virtue, then he invades his neighbors. The beatings will continue until Russia’s neighbors morale improves. Good luck working out that fit of cognitive dissonance Putin.
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Do we want to risk nuclear war to defend Estonia? Probably not but neither does a rational Russia. There may be some price to pay for antagonizing Russia but that has to be balanced against the belief Russia is a bad actor anyway.
It’s in NATO’s interest to extend the proxy war to punish Russia. I think that is clear. NATO should not stand in the way of a Ukrainian settlement since they are doing all the dying. This doesn’t mean that NATO ends sanctions because Russia cannot be allowed to behave like this, bite another chunk out of a neighbor and just go on as BAU.
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The Russians are not fools and will probably use this as a wedge to split NATO / Ukraine. A false proposal of Russia will stop the war if the sanctions end.
” How that relates to the Donbas versus the rest of Ukraine is a discussion for a date very long (10 years?) in the future. I doubt it is an issue right now.”
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End game would be decades in making (at least a generation), but I think that was part of the reason for NATO expansion (hopefully most of reason), and has to be factored into decisions being made today.
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I think even crazy muslims would prefer economic liberty but that isnt necessarily incompatible with Sharia law (unless you happen to be female).
Phil Scadden,
“I think even crazy muslims would prefer economic liberty but that isnt necessarily incompatible with Sharia law (unless you happen to be female).”
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Or gay, lesbian, Christian, Hindu, atheist, or a Muslim who wants to stop being a Muslin. IMO, sharia is terrible, and completely incompatible with liberty, economic and otherwise.
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BTW, looks like New Zealand covid deaths may max out near 20 per day, so equivalent to about 1200 per day for the States, way below the maximum death rates we had in the USA. Holding off the virus until most everyone was vaccinated for sure saved a lot of lives.
Yes, the Taliban have shockingly broke their promise and now say women can not be educated … again.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/29/taliban-girls-education-ban-reversal-afghanistan-schools/
lucia (Comment #210708): “If Ukranian’s want to fight on rather than give it up, I sure hope Biden or NATO don’t lean on Ukraine to “make nice to the Russians”.”
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I don’t think that is at all likely. Far more likely is that Biden is willing to fight Putin to the last Ukrainian.
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Tom Scharf (Comment #210710): “It’s in NATO’s interest to extend the proxy war to punish Russia. I think that is clear. NATO should not stand in the way of a Ukrainian settlement since they are doing all the dying. This doesn’t mean that NATO ends sanctions”.
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That might be the case. The possibility terrifies me. If NATO refuses to end sanctions, then there will be no peace deal. The war will not end. at least not until there is far more death and destruction. And the damage will likely extend to the Mideast and sub-Saharan Africa. Food shortages cause all sorts of unrest and destabilization.
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Ukraine is well on the way degrading Russia’s conventional forces to the point that they will no longer be able to fight effectively. If that happens while Ukraine’s forces are still effective and if a peace deal is blocked off by NATO, then Putin will turn to unconventional weapons. I hate to think about what might happen next.
A fundamental problem with Sharia and economic freedom is the ban on paying interest on loans. Islam, IIRC, defines usury as paying any interest on borrowed money. There are some workarounds, but they are incredibly clumsy. Usury was also a problem with Christianity. But usury has been redefined to mean highly excessive interest rates and nobody in the West pays any serious attention to that now anyway. See, for example, credit card and pay day loan interest rates. Since Muslims are fundamentalist, they hew to a strict, literal interpretation of the Quran. And since there is no central authority in Islam, redefining usury is, IMO, unlikely.
It’s looking like the Omicron BA.2 spike in the UK has peaked. That, however, won’t stop the poison dwarf and his ilk from peddling more fear porn. Yes, BA.2 is now causing the majority of new cases in the US. But so far the increase in new case rates doesn’t look much like a new surge.
The seven day trailing average of the global daily death rate at worldometers is down to 3,971. That’s a level not seen since the original ramp up in March, 2020.
MikeM
Sounds like you want NATO to push Ukraine to make nice with the Russians whether or not the Ukrainians want to do so.
lucia (Comment #210717): “Sounds like you want NATO to push Ukraine to make nice with the Russians whether or not the Ukrainians want to do so.”
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I can’t imagine why you would say that. I only said that I am afraid that NATO might stand in the way of peace. Everyone should want peace. I want a peace that respects Ukraine’s sovereignty and prevents Russia from invading again. Yes, that will be hard. I don’t want NATO or Biden making it harder.
DeWitt,
Yes. Deaths deaths in the USA continue to fall rapidly, and are now at <20% of the most recent (omicron) peak in early February.
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The evil dwarf does not want ever more people to ignore him and his fear-mongering ilk. But ignore him they will. Fauci's explicit dishonesty, as well as his dishonesty by omission (withholding of critical data) is so extreme that it almost beggars belief. The endless drum-beat of vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate, even those who had recovered, when Fauci knew that recovery from illness was multiple times more protective than vaccines, was nothing short of criminal. I predict Fauci will resign before Republicans gain control of the House (and maybe the Senate) next January and can finally call him to task about his many lies and his funding of gain-of-function coronavirus research in Wuhan.
Mike M,
“I don’t want NATO or Biden making it harder.”
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Agreed. But I fear they do whatever they can to block a settlement.
>Sounds like you want NATO to push Ukraine to make nice with the Russians whether or not the Ukrainians want to do so.
That’s what happens when big powers try to broker a peace deal.
Obama told Ukraine to stop fighting for Crimea or they risked losing the whole country.
However, MikeM was saying the opposite, that NATO would make it harder for Ukraine to get the peace they want by not dropping sanctions.
Tom Scharf,
There is noting much to do about the Taliban. Muslims who support extreme Islam (and it is a frightening portion that do) get exactly the government they deserve.
I fully support not removing sanctions on Russia unless they pull out of Ukraine and rebuild the damage they did. Ukraine can work out a deal on all the other terms. There have to be penalties for invading neighbors. They have destroyed large sections of civilian areas, killed lots of civilians, etc.
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Perhaps there can be other types of deals, where all Russian gas exports are taxed to rebuild all the damage they did to Ukraine.
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Russia taking the good parts of Ukraine (land bridge, gas fields, etc.), leaving the rest half destroyed, displacing millions of civilians, and so on is not something they get to walk away from and let someone else fix. F*** that. A war ending deal will be very hard.
MikeN (Comment #210721): “That’s what happens when big powers try to broker a peace deal.”
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I don’t know if that is always the case. Obama always thought that he knew what was best for others and cared more about being able to trumpet a deal than if the deal was good or bad. So of course he twisted the Ukrainians’ arms to accept what he thought they should accept.
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But the issue is probably moot since Biden is like Obama, only more so.
Tom Scharf,
“Ukraine can work out a deal on all the other terms. There have to be penalties for invading neighbors.”
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Great idea, especially if it means the Ukraine is totally destroyed and the war doesn’t end for years. Yup, we should just make sure the people in Russia are punished, no matter the consequences to the people in the Ukraine. Heck throw in a potential for a nuclear exchange with Russia for good measure, and maybe kill off a billion or two, including most of the people in the USA. Great ideas all.
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I could not disagree with you more. The West should do all it can to bring the war to an end, even if that means lifting most sanctions as part of the deal.
Mike M,
“But the issue is probably moot since Biden is like Obama, only more so.”
Obama didn’t have the benefit of dementia to allow his very worst tendencies to be publicly announced. They both just want to tell everyone exactly what to do. It is the nature of ‘progressive’ thinking: “Just shut up and do as I say!”
MikeN
Ukraine has not asked NATO or anyone to drop sanctions. NATO sanctions are giving Ukraine bargaining power. In fact, Ukraine has asked for stronger sanctions.
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In terms of what’s really happening in Ukraine, MikeM is dreaming up some sort of imaginary scenario in which NATO some how ‘ought’ to remove sanctions– one of the very few things they are doing that helps Ukraine bargain for please without just buckling under and playing nice with the Russians. And he’s “fretting outloud” that not taking them away would somehow block peace.
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Tom Scharf (Comment #210723): “I fully support not removing sanctions on Russia unless they pull out of Ukraine and rebuild the damage they did. Ukraine can work out a deal on all the other terms. There have to be penalties for invading neighbors.”
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That is one attitude that I fear. Russia will not accept a deal that does not end the sanctions. If we insist on that, then we effectively force the Ukrainians to reject any peace deal. That would not only cause great destruction in Ukraine, but would cause hardship in many other places and might result in Russia resorting to WMD’s. There would be almost no chance of it ending well.
lucia (Comment #210727): “In terms of what’s really happening in Ukraine, MikeM is dreaming up some sort of imaginary scenario in which NATO some how ‘ought’ to remove sanctions”.
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That is ridiculous.
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To clarify:
Sanctions should not end until there is peace.
There will be no peace until sanctions end.
Ending sanctions will have to be part of any peace treaty. That gives NATO veto power over any peace treaty. They should not use that veto power.
MikeM
You are pearl clutching that NATO countries specifically might continue sanctions and “fretting” that continuuing sanctions can block peace. Yet right now, on the ground, sanctions give Ukraine support toward peace.
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So I see you as hunting for reasons to get rid of sanctions– and doing so would have the practical effect of Ukraine being parctically forced to play nicer with the Russians.
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It looks like what Ukraine has proposed is to promise neutrality (aka don’t join NATO) in exchange for guaranteed for protection from a subset of NATO countries to step in militarily if they are attacked again. So they are asking for the protections of NATO withouth the obligations incurred by joining.
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I say: If Russia will accept that the called on nations should step forward and do what Ukraine asked. But I don’t think Russia is going to see the proposal as better than Ukraine joining NATO!
MikeN
Sure. Big powers will screw little guys.
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As I recall, when the new United States signed a treaty with England after our revolution, Franklin and Adams specifically went around France. It may be true we would behave has the French intended to way back after the revolution. But the US does not seem to be brokering a peace deal. So that’s moot.
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Zelensky is involved in the Peace negotiations. He has not asked NATO to lift sanctions. Not remotely. In fact, he has complained the sanctions aren’t harsh enough.
Lucia,
I think you may be misunderstanding what Mike M and I have said.
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Yes, sanctions should remain in place so long as the war continues, that is, so long as the Ukraine and Russia can’t agree on terms to end the war. Yes, the sanctions strengthen the Ukraine’s position in negotiations with the Russians; pressure on the Russians to come to terms with the Ukraine is a good thing.
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But any plausible final peace deal will almost certainly require that the sanctions be lifted when the fighting ends and the Russians have withdrawn according to the terms the Ukraine and Russia agree on. What the USA and NATO should not do is refuse to lift sanctions as part of a final peace agreement. That would make a peace agreement just about impossible.
SteveF – “looks like New Zealand covid deaths may max out near 20 per day”
Maybe. I think it is too early to draw many conclusion yet. Omicron is rolling north to south. Auckland is way past infections, hospitalization, deaths, but infections rising elsewhere so very diffuse peak. Some hints that we might finally being getting the anti-virals but probably way too late to be any help. Another couple of weeks should give a clearer picture of overall effectiveness of vaccine strategy. There are very strong anomalies in ethnicity which will be interesting to look at.
“What the USA and NATO should not do is refuse to lift sanctions as part of a final peace agreement.”
I heartily agree but I very much doubt that there is a way back to Europe happily buying Russian gas. There may not be sanctions, but I would expect rapid move away from Russian gas to continue.
SteveF (Comment #210732)
Clearly stated. My position exactly.
You guys are sooooo worried that if we don’t let Russia have a clear win then … what? This master plan ends the war by giving Russia everything it wants. Great plan. We could have just skipped all the shooting stuff and surrendered before the war.
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Russia will just be reinforced that this type of behavior works for them. Where is the deterrence in this plan? There isn’t any. At all. You act like Ukraine started this war. Russia did, and I’m not buying the story that NATO and Ukraine made them do it.
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The strategic purpose of sanctions and throwing weapons over the wall to Ukraine is to prevent Russia from doing this again. If you make these type of concessions to Russia then they will do this again. Like they have. Several times now. Russia waltzes in, wrecks the place, dictates the terms of surrender, and walks away.
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At some point you have to take the risks of potential escalation to stop bad behavior. Sanctions are the minor leagues. Ukraine can end the war on their terms but they and Russia don’t get to dictate NATO policy, or maybe we should just surrender now too?
Phil,
“I very much doubt that there is a way back to Europe happily buying Russian gas.”
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Donno. They are buying Russia gas today as the war rages. I will not be at all surprised if gas purchases don’t return to normal once a negotiated peace is in place. There is just no simple way for the Europeans to find alternative supplies, short of a crash program to frack their own natural gas in France (which has lots of shale gas), and you know that will never happen. The USA does not have capacity to export what the Europeans need, and President Alzeimer de Imbeciles is doing his best to discourage increased natural gas production in the USA….. not to mention multiple ‘green’ states actively blocking both production and pipeline transport of natural gas. No quick solutions, and no good long term one.
The US is set to lose its economic war against Russia
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“.. Russia has just made some moves that are going to change the global financial system forever. When the conflict in Ukraine originally erupted, the U.S. immediately attempted to crash the value of Russia’s currency. Those attempts were successful for a few days, but now the value of the ruble relative to the U.S. dollar is almost all the way back to where it was before the start of the war. This has absolutely stunned many of the experts, because they thought that U.S. sanctions would absolutely cripple Russia. ,,”
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“.. If other countries want to buy oil, gas, other resources or anything else from Russia, he said, “let them pay either in hard currency, and this is gold for us, or pay as it is convenient for us, this is the national currency.”
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“..The dollar ceases to be a means of payment for us, it has lost all interest for us,” Zavalny added, calling the greenback no better than “candy wrappers..”
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https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/82261/the-ruble-the-dollar-and-the-price-of-gold–who-is-really-winning-the-economic-chess.html
And
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Update (1140ET): It looks like Moscow is making headway with its demands that “hostile states” (aka its European customers) start paying for their gas in rubles. According to Bloomberg, Putin and German Chancellor Scholz have agreed to let ‘experts on both sides’ discuss the feasibility of Russia’s demand that Germany switches to rubles for its gas payments, according to an emailed statement from the Kremlin.
Both leaders have agreed that switching to ruble payments shouldn’t deteriorate contract terms for European importers of Russian gas (meaning that the price should remain stable regardless of which currency is used for payment and settlement). Putin also updated Scholz on the state of talks between Russia and Ukraine.
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But Scholz isn’t the only European leader who appears to be seriously considering Putin’s demands. Italian leader Mario Draghi is also reportedly considering Putin’s demands.
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The news has been broadly supportive of the ruble, which has erased all of its post-invasion losses.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/germany-scrambles-ration-gas-after-refusing-make-payments-rubles
South Korea’s recent per capita covid case counts were 3X the highest rates of the UK/US. Looks like it finally peaked there. Everyone has a covid bill to pay. Pay now or pay later. Paying later is the better option of course, but it looks like everyone must pay.
It’s March 2022. The Washington Post has now analyzed the Hunter Biden laptop.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/
“Two experts confirm the veracity of thousands of emails, but say a thorough examination was stymied by missing data”
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Turns out it is real. No word yet on Twitter and Facebook banning the WP account. What an embarrassment to journalism this is. Why would they look at this now? Who knows?
Tom Scharf (Comment #210736): “You guys are sooooo worried that if we don’t let Russia have a clear win then … what?”
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Who are “you guys”? Because I have not seen anyone here say that.
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Tom Scharf: “You act like Ukraine started this war.”
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That is inane.
SteveF (Comment #210737): “They are buying Russia gas today as the war rages. I will not be at all surprised if gas purchases don’t return to normal once a negotiated peace is in place.”
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Probably true. The best that can be hoped for is that they start to reduce Russian gas imoorts rather than increasing them.
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SteveF: “There is just no simple way for the Europeans to find alternative supplies, short of a crash program to frack their own natural gas in France (which has lots of shale gas), and you know that will never happen.”
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They just got a wake up call. It remains to be seen if they go back to sleep.
I think that Poland and Ukraine have a lot of shale gas.
Ed Forbes,
Those links look to me like gold bugs and wild-eyed fringe commentators.
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Yes, the Russians can (and may well) insist on gold or Russian ruble payments, at least for some countries. Goes like this: Nobody has rubles, so they either exchange gold for rubles with the Russian central bank, and pay for gas and oil in rubles, or just pay in gold. Perfectly understandable, considering that hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian foreign assets were frozen; the Russians are not going to let that happen again. Freezing the assets of a country you absolutely have to continue buying oil and gas from is a losing proposition. Green policies do damage at all economic levels and on all time scales.
Tom Scharf,
“Why would they look at this now? Who knows?”
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My guess is they realize they have to get rid of Biden before 2024, and his corruption, once exposed, could force him from office. Then a primary fight with Kamala Laughter, and hope for a candidate who has at least a chance in 2024.
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A more charitable explanation is that they have seen the error of their ways and want to amend. Nah, they are utterly shameless. They probably just want to get rid of Biden and Kamala to keep a Republican from reversing all their stupid policies.
Mike M,
“It remains to be seen if they go back to sleep.”
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Their hands are already quivering over the ‘snooze’ buttons. They will never come to their senses; admitting their energy policies are stupid is way beyond their intellectual capacity.
Steve, you don’t like the links I gave, then try these. Just a few others on the subject that a quick search link to. There are many more.
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Russia has Germany and other EU members over a barrel and there is little the EU can do about it. Another form of Mutual Assured Destruction, and the EU will blink first.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russias-ruble-rebound-raises-questions-of-sanctions-impact/ar-AAVGbMW
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https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Europe-Is-Facing-Supply-Disruptions-As-Russias-Gas-For-Rubles-Deadline-Looms.html
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. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/russias-ruble-rebound-raises-questions-sanctions-impact-8376854.
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. https://www.fxempire.com/news/article/rouble-extends-recovery-gains-stocks-up-on-5th-trading-day-952378
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Russia gets the east, Russia gets neutrality guarantees, Russia gets sanctions dropped. Russian doesn’t pay for damages. Clear win. This on a negotiated settlement. I’d hire better negotiators.
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It may very well come to that situation or worse, but IMO there needs to be a fight before that happens. Maybe I’m a hardliner but I doubt I’m the only one.
The EU stopping Russian gas imports only hurts the Russians if that results in less Russian exports. Most likely just a reorganization of who buys from who and nothing more. To the extent that this results in disallowing Russian energy blackmail to the EU then it is useful.
Tom,
there is no supply of gas available for the EU to tap that would replace Russian gas to the EU. It would take years to change the infrastructure for a different supply source. Stopping Russian gas to the EU puts the EU into an immediate depression, which the EU will not allow.
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If the choice comes down to a EU wide depression, or paying for the gas in Rubles, the Ruble wins.
Why should there be disagreement on the how the sanctions should work? In my Civics 101 course we were taught that governments in all their wisdom and reason spell terms out in matters like sanctions. Surely when the sanctions were imposed those terms were made clear to the imposed nations. Governments would reason that sanctions are used to compel the imposed nation to stop a behavior that has been detailed in the terms of the sanctions – and by detailed here I mean avoiding some generalized and vague language that has no bounds. We should dig those terms out and discuss them here.
I have been reading about the power of sanctions and listening to those who favor big government and the power it can wield for good causes or at least causes that they consider good. Sanctions can be a convenient power of governments even when those that are hurt by the sanctions are never those in power making bad decisions but rather it is the common man in both the imposing and the imposed nations. The indirect logic here has to be getting to the political leaders through the imposition on the individual citizens. That can, of course work, in the opposite direction whereby the cagey leader turns this all around by convincing the common man that he is being put upon by an evil foreign power.
Sanctions are being imposed directly on individuals and private organizations and not limited to governments. I have even heard some talk in terms of US citizens who might oppose the current US policy as being foreign agents. Who better to impose sanctions on than foreign agents.
The biggest danger of losing individual freedoms can occur as the result of direct or indirect foreign conflicts. The cause at the time seems so right and good it easy to forget that individual rights to have full meaning have to stand at all times. I have some trepidations about the increasing use of sanctions and how sanctions could be used to compel a nation’s good behavior in mitigating climate change and doing it at the level of the sanction-imposing nations. It does not take a leap of faith to see climate mitigation as the next fertile area for sanctions.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210748): “It may very well come to that situation or worse, but IMO there needs to be a fight before that happens.”
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I very much agree.
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I am still puzzled over whom Comment #210736 were aimed at.
MikeM, SteveF,
I guess I misunderstood. I probably shouldn’t read and discuss when I’m hepped up on cough syrul and decongestant. (Going to bed now. Again!)
“there is no supply of gas available for the EU to tap that would replace Russian gas to the EU”
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Not at this moment and they will need to pay the Russians for now. The ruble thing is a bit of a sideshow, apparently the contracts specify euros but the lawyers will need to work it out. Russia could always refuse to cash the Euro check and just cut the supply if they want but this is likely a bad long term decision for little short term gain. This is an inter-dependence thing. Neither side can afford to cut the supply, no doubt part of Putin’s calculus.
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Over the next several years LNG exports from the Middle East and the US could fill the gap but unclear how much really. Germany could also always ramp back up nuclear power, coal, and other things in the medium term.
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The important thing is a long term strategic commitment to remove a dependence on an unreliable hostile partner. It took decades for the US to do that with oil from the Middle East, remember the energy crisis and OPEC wielding supply over the US like overlords? It might take that long for the EU to switch over unless they do a crash program. One thing for sure is access to energy is very important in today’s world. Limiting options to pacify greens is a folly that many just woke up to.
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The war is not going to last forever and the real question is whether everyone just goes back to the usual path of least resistance. I’m guessing not this time.
For the record, a certain political party that shall remain nameless has been fighting to disallow LNG exports from the US for quite a while now.
We canceled our DisneyPlus subscription today. This was done in protest of Disney’s political actions against Florida’s education bill named the “Just say Hooray” bill. [I know, and it ain’t named the “Don’t say Gay” bill either.] I am guessing this will be a big win for Desantis and the Republicans come November. I am hoping the Liberals keep up their outrage and vociferous attacks against it.
Disney management will regret their entry into politics from the left.
Russell,
We never had a subscription to Disney. I thought that was something only people with kids would subscribe to. 🙂
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(I honestly have no idea what they carry. We carefully monitor and limit “subscriptions” because that’s an avenue for unchecked expenditures on things we ultimately don’t use. I know I’m constantly tempted by substack authors, paywall news papers and so on. But I also know that in the end, I could spend a fortune on all those if I didn’t have some threshold for that. I set the threshold low.)
Lucia, “I honestly have no idea what they carry. We carefully monitor and limit “subscriptions” because that’s an avenue for unchecked expenditures”
We got a package deal…Hulu. ESPN+ and Disney+. We got the Disney+ for the grandkids, but some stuff we watched. Disney+ includes the Smithsonian Channel [no commercials!] and we watched a few movies. The new Cruella was great. I will restart ESPN+ for out-of-market NHL games. We had Hulu+ [no commercials!] for “Only Murders in the Building”, “Alias” and “Veronica Mars”, but we have watched all of those so we may not restart it.
Our credit card [and some others] help manage the recurring charges.
I didn’t renew my subscription after they fired Gina Carano for being a Republican, with comments against cancel culture referencing Nazis as the excuse.
I was planning to subscribe again after it looked like Bob Chapek had cleaned things up, firing many of the people involved, and pushing Kathleen Kennedy into emeritus status.
However, I will pass with the recent revelations that the head of entertainment and other execs are on a mission to insert LGBT agenda everywhere. She says her kids are transsexual and pansexual.
Disney has the full Star Wars collection among other things. I don’t subscribe because I try to keep that monthly rental suck factor down as low as reasonably possible. I have also had it with corporate political activism. Disney is protesting against a caricature of the bill, which is just standard operating procedure nowadays. Realistically this is just another easy win for DeSantis once anyone finds out what the details of the bill are, which of course are carefully hidden by the legacy media.
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Things are changing, young employees demand their companies take political stands, it’s getting to just be random noise though. I imagine these companies will find out why politics was effectively banned from the workplace in my generation. As the stands become more and more one sided or stratified this will breed unnecessary internal conflict. This already happened at Google and other places.
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California now bans state funded travel to 18 states for various sins.
https://www.ucop.edu/central-travel-management/resources/ab-1887-travel-prohibition-to-certain-states-using-state-funding-source%E2%80%8B.html
What I’ve noticed is that the legacy media advertises these “protests” before they happen and then carry them nationally. They are effectively creating the news for their favored narratives.
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It looks like this protest was rather small. 50 people?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/business/media/disney-florida-employee-protests.html
“Since many Disney employees are still working from home, it was impossible to gauge the ultimate size of Tuesday’s protest.”
“It had been decided that Pixar’s “Lightyear,” for instance, could have a lesbian couple at its center. But a G-rated kiss was perhaps a step too far.”
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If the left thinks teaching elementary school children about LGBTQ issues is the hill they want to die on I imagine the right will invite them to take that stand. There are zero adult discussions going on here about what age is appropriate for this type of thing. A lot of this type of craziness is the outcome of corporate America hiring tons of diversity executives.
The Disney controversy about the Florida public school state law should in my view of things be discussed in terms of who should ultimately control the local public schools curriculum in general terms. The parents and taxpayers should have the greatest control and here I am talking about general curriculum and not the details of how an individual teacher teaches it. I do not judge that the control that comes from election of school boards is sufficient as many parents and taxpayers are all of sudden realizing.
These problems are inherent in public education where the controlling governments want to push their agendas which have increasingly gone way beyond providing students a basic education that they can then use to think through these issues on their own or with the aid of their parents or other individual or organizations of their choosing.
I am not at all sure the arguments on any sides of this controversy hit on these issues.
My general view: The focus in k-3 should be
* reading,
* writing
* arithmetic
* basic social skills (don’t hit each other. Don’t tease each other. Don’t bully each other.)
* some physical ed.
* some singing, painting , using scizzors etc. (Good for coordination and so on.)
* some amount of personal safety (don’t talk to strangers. Stay away from hot pans.)
That’s the main focus at the beginning.
In the later portions:
* a modest amount of history/ geography. (The continents. Where we are. How long our country has existed. There are 50 states Blah…blah…)
* a modest amount of science. (Weather. Clouds? Some cause and effect. )
* modest amount of “economics”. (What is money? How do people make a living.)
* beginning map reading.
Lots of things are going to come up informally and of course,discussing something that kids brought up organically should be allowed. (It looks like the bill doesn’t prohibit a teacher from discussing something brought up organically by any student.)
I also think the general position on lessons — especially for younger kids– should often be to ask “Is this subject/resource/topic politically controversial”? If the answer is “yes”, the next question is “Can we avoid this political controversy and still achieve our learning goals?“. If the answer is “yes we can avoid it”, they should avoid the controversy. I think this ought to be common sense, but perhaps someone can explain the down side of it. (I suspect there are some downsides I don’t see. But I do think the series of questions is useful. Evolution would still be taught because we agree it’s a learning goal. But somethings don’t need to be taught, and certainly don’t need to be brought up early.)
If that means a k-3 teacher is “stuck with” or “limited to” assigning books like “Where the sidewalk ends”, “Harold and the Purple Crayon” or “Where the Wildthings are”, when the teacher might want to structure their lessons around, “Heather has Two Mommies” or “Little People, Big Dreams” (RuPaul). Sure the teacher might want to address a certain controversial political or social issue. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessary to the learning outcome. And like it or not, a public teacher is a public servant, and to some extent, they are hired and paid to carry out the services the public wants.
lucia (Comment #210764)
Lucia, I like your list, but I do have a question about at what point in a child’s life – and here I know it probably varies somewhat from child to child – can you get across the importance of thinking for themselves and questioning what others might say with evidence that they have discovered. Of course, the questioning has to come with an acquired knowledge base and that might even mean acquiring it out of the bounds of school curriculum.
I am attempting think back on my own children. My oldest, who was a girl, did this earlier than her two younger brothers. From what they told me later I think my daughter verbalized her thoughts better at a younger age while her brothers had the thoughts but did not verbalize as well. It was after K-3 I am fairly sure – as I recollect.
I think you can teach kids the importance of questioning early. Certainly parents can quite early– as soon as kids interact with playmates and adults.
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Certainly, this has to come up when addressing some aspects of personal safety. “Don’t talk to strangers” type discussions also include “Don’t believe everything people tell you” and/or “Don’t automatically put 100% trust in people.”
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I know at some point, teachers discussed advertising with us in school. So that had an element of verifying. I don’t think it was k-3 though.
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The “verify” aspect of what people say can be difficult for teachers to present though. Because the teacher often simultaneously wants to be subject matter expert and claim to teach kids to question ideas and support their own views. And like it or not, as humans teachers are just as prone to mistake their opinions and values for facts and truths. They can mistake what the want kids to learn or conclude with being what the need to learn or conclude.
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Of course, parents do the same thing.
Lucia, you make a good point here, but it has been my experience that getting what the public wants across to a school board and school administrators is no easy task.
I attended a few school meetings as a parent and I cannot say I was happy with that line of communications. It appeared that getting a bond issue shot down provided some additional attention that would fade after a 3rd attempt finally got the issue passed.
I had a work friend who had a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago and was a big time democrat who was elected to a school board of a suburban school district. He was a very frugal person and straight forward in his speech. He is one reason I do not judge people based on their political affiliations. He would tell me of his experiences as the lone member of the board with any fiscal sanity and how he would question the reasoning behind some of their decisions and policies. He said in the end the other board members would simply say Mr. Smith, the superintendent, wanted it that way. He would be ignored when he told them that they had the process backwards. He ran for a second term and lost.
I need a serious sanity check here that might be off even these off topic threads. It might be on topic if I can ask in the end whether a TV program might be appropriate for K-3 kids.
I normally browse through multiple channels on my TV before going to sleep at night and recently I found a series called Mighty Mike which has well animated stories about a pug dog and his daily routines – which are surely not routine. At first I would watch only a few minutes before changing the channel but now I watch the entire program. I am not sure at what age group these stories are aimed, but I think they are very entertaining and funny. Maybe that is just me.
Can someone explain why LGBT issues seem such a flashpoint for the right? I guess there are not many Pacifika in Florida but maybe some Samoan?? What would teachers do in a class where there is a fa?afafine coming to school?
A well thought out analysis on the Ukraine conflict and well worth reading
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“ Is it possible to judge the war in Ukraine with equanimity? The unanimous daily and unidirectional media bombardment (as with covid), designed to provoke emotional reactions that override our capacity for reasoning, has led to a extreme partiality in Western public opinion, although that’s certainly not the case in the rest of the world.”
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https://www.fpcs.es/en/war-and-peace-and-truth/
Phil,
I can only speak for myself regarding this. I think it’s unfortunate that LGB have been tied together with T in the acronym, because ‘lesbian, gay, and bisexual’ are sexual preferences. ‘Trans’ appears to be something wholly different and relating to a notion of gender identity.
So – take this headline for example. I do not approve of minors undergoing sex reassignment surgery. I don’t even think minors should be legal[ly] allowed to make decisions about getting tattoos. It is, in my view, criminal insanity to promote surgeries and treatments with permanent impacts on minors in an affirming manner where there is no safety mechanism protecting the minor from their own inexperience and confusion. I mean, seriously. What the hell does a kid know about anything anyway? They are children.
There are other issues, but they pale in my view next to this one.
Can someone explain why LGBT issues need to be forced on children, the younger the better?
Phil,
I don’t think it is much of an issue beyond protecting young children from exposure to age-inappropriate classroom subject matter. The Florida law applies to 4 to 9 year olds. The other issue is schools hiding information from parents about “helping” children assume a gender identity different from their genetic gender. The Florida law says parents must be kept fully informed. If schools focus on reading, writing, math, science, etc, there will never be a problem with the right. Schools simply should not become a means to ‘indoctrinate’ children with subject matter unrelated to education, like the ‘1619’ project.
My take:
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The left is pressing a bit hard on the LGBTQ issues, it is reactionary on the right. A lot of the more emotional response comes from the religious right where it is deemed immoral by many.
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As I recall – As a general background gay marriage was voted on in 31 states and lost in 30 of them before the Supreme Court ruled it legal. This was mostly religious people objecting to the term “marriage” being redefined as a civil union when they considered it a religious union. All these states at this point already had some form of legal benefits for gay couples that were the equivalent of heterosexual couples so there wasn’t any government discrimination that mattered.
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The more militant activists demanded that “gay marriage” be legalized. This eventually happened and it was more or less met with a yawn because although many on the right didn’t see this as moral they also just really didn’t care that much. Now it’s just culture war fodder to demonize one’s opponents.
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See the Colorado Gay Wedding Cake case for an example of where this all goes spectacularly wrong. Gay rights activists target a religious baker to force him to make a gay wedding cake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission
Schools are going to do plenty of indoctrination no matter what, it’s mainly an issue of who gets to decide what that is.
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I don’t think any books should be banned from schools, but obviously libraries can’t hold all books so somebody has to decide which books get stocked. Not allowing Huckleberry Finn and inserting a bunch of one sided culture war material is inappropriate.
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Realistically it ought to be the lowest common denominator for 95% of books and a few edge cases here and there. What has happened in the US is activists have been bullying school boards with shame campaigns to get their agenda taught, the other side has found some pretty bad examples and also gone nuts.
Kenneth
Oh, I’m quite aware of this! And teachers, of course, think the boards are too considerate of parents. (I think parents have the better argument its the other way around.)
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I don’t think there is anything wrong with the legislature constraining the curriculum specifically. I’m sure there are constraints I would disagree with and ones I agree with. But I definitely don’t disagree with the concept that the legislature could say “you must teach subject X” or “You may not teach subject Y”. Like any decision by the legislature it might be good or bad. But I don’t think the general idea amounts to overreach.
Phil
Sometimes it’s the way things are presented. Many of us have gone through various “trainings” at jobs.
But also, sometimes when those defending something say the objection is only that a book is “LGBT” oriented, that’s not true. There is one in particular that was parents in Texas objected to that literally contained illustrations of one kid’s phallus in another kids mouth. This was stocked in the library for something like 6th graders.
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Defenders insisted parents only objected because it was Gay sex. But honestly, those parents would have objected to equally graphic depictions of straight sex.
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On the other hand, some people really just object to LGBT stuff at all. So there is a mix.
Biden administration has covid protocols that produce immediate deportation at the border. This will be ending soon. To handle the inevitable flux of illegal immigrants, they are producing new rules that call for immediate adjudication of asylum requests. In other words, pretend you need asylum at the border, it will be granted, and you are now a legal immigrant. Current policy is you pretend, you will be let in but then you have to file for asylum and appear in court, and if you don’t you are technically an illegal immigrant.
Steve, I am all for age-appropriate instruction, but accusations of “indoctrination” imply a believe about something that is regarded as wrong. What sort of “indoctrination” is feared? This would seem to be an issue only for the extreme religious right.
And still interested in how teachers faced with such a broad-brushed law are supposed to deal with a trans 5 year-old in the classroom. I find it hard to believe that this is not going be noticed and needing some discussion.
Phil,
The law requires that the school work with the parents, and not do things the parents object to.
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If there is such a thing as a ‘trans 5 year old’ (and I have never heard of one) then under the Florida law that child’s parents have to be calling the shots, not the school administrators or teachers.
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I am frankly puzzled that you frame this as a religious issue. I am a life-long atheist, and religion has absolutely nothing to do with my support for Florida’s law. I think it is more accurately understood to be a question of who is responsible for decisions made in the best interests of young children. My impression is those on the left usually want to reduce parental control of their own children, and those on the right want parents to maintain control over their young children.
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I do think it is wildly inappropriate for teachers of young kids (4 to 9) to be talking about sex….. ever. And the law blocks that.
This sort of gets to the heart of the issue. A trans 5 year old, meaning, a transsexual 5 year old, that’s what we are talking about. Or a heterosexual or homosexual 5 year old.
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No.
5 year olds are presexual. The whole formulation is wrong.
Setting aside sexuality and just looking at identity, I don’t think 5 year olds have a well formed identity yet. They roleplay a lot, play dress up, play house, so on. I don’t think the evidence suggests kids that young have quite figured it out yet.
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Parents have a point in my view. Much of the issue is inherently age inappropriate.
Phil,
Here.
There’s a strange increase in girls identifying as transgender. I suggest that this has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that the subject has become popularized. I think this is doing people harm.
That was why I mentioned fa’afafine. I think Mahu is the name in Hawaiian culture. It isnt that uncommon in Pasifika cultures for a child to be brought up different gender to their biological . I am not sure whether you classify as trans or what.
Well, look. I appreciate that in some cultures parents bring their kids up thinking they are a gender other than what they actually are. I don’t know what makes you think that’s justified however. There are probably cultures that bring girls up to believe they are inferior to boys, and cultures that enforce caste distinctions, and so on and so forth. Merely because some culture embraces something doesn’t lead me to a default position of tolerance. I mean, I have a culture too. In my culture, males and male and females are female.
Phil,
I doubt there are a lot of people in Florida purposely raising their kids as the opposite of their biological gender; most likely the number is zero. (This a classic ‘red herring’ argument if I ever smelled one!) But even if that were the case, the Florida law doesn’t stop those PARENTS. The law applies to what teachers and school administrators do, not what parents do.
So Mark, are then okay that a child should suffer hell at school because of it? Because majority culture gets to choose what they tolerate? I guess that is the big red line between left and right.
Phil,
Somebody always suffers. The thing about the left is that they seem pathologically sympathetic to certain classes of victims, even when they are fewer than the victims of the policies they embrace to try to solve the purported problem.
I think the big red line between the right and the left is actually responsibility. I’d like to know who is going to stand up and take responsibility for the confused kids who get gender reassignment and who discover afterwards that it didn’t really solve any of their problems. Why does nobody on the left feel any sympathy for them.
Let parents take responsibility for their kids. That’s the best bet. The odds are the parents know their kids best and care about their kids the most. Keep schools and politicians out of it.
Well, sure not a red herring here. I was mostly impressed by the wide blanket ban of the law and what would happen if you had an issue in the classroom. And puzzled quite what people were afraid of.
Somebody always suffers. It’s not because we embrace leftism or rightism. We are not gods. It’s only totalitarians who think they can alleviate all suffering from the world, and it turns out all they accomplish is to dramatically increase the suffering in the world. You are foolish to lay that at the feet of one side or another. It’s not a wiffle ball world and it never will be, and that’s not anybody’s fault.
lucia,
Wouldn’t a graphic illustration of children below the age of consent having sex, whether gay or straight, be kiddie porn and hence illegal? If not, then why not? IMO, saying it’s not real people shouldn’t count. After the Traci Lords incident when, it was discovered that she had been 16 when she started her career as a porn star, the porn industry has been very careful to ensure that none of their actors are under age. That’s even true of Japanese anime porn if they use motion capture in the animation process.
Dewitt,
You can see the image here:
https://greenbayreporter.com/stories/619616848-shawano-public-library-carries-book-depicting-gay-oral-sex-among-teens-gender-queer
Phil,
“And puzzled quite what people were afraid of.”
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Not at all a question of fear. More a question of protecting their kids from perceived harm. Were a school teacher in New Zealand telling 7 year olds how wonderful being a communist (or a Nazi) is, I expect there would be some objection…… even in fearless New Zealand.
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I once invited a Dutch family (father, mother, 9 YO son) to spend 10 days exploring the ‘out-islands’ in the Bahamas on my 40′ cruiser. Kind of an adventure of a lifetime for a 9 year old…. much to learn, much to explore: ocean navigation, snorkeling on tropical coral, how to clean and eat a conch, and much more. Dates and plans were all set to overlap school vacation. But when the local public school was informed their son would would be missing three days of school, the school administrators forbade it, threatening the parents with fines and even prosecution. So we had to cancel the whole thing. This is but symptom of what is wrong with public education when educators believe they should control children. The fundamental issue is: who chooses what is best for the child? My vote is for the parents.
Phil
What do you think the law forbids? (real q.)
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It doesn’t forbid discussions the kids bring up. It doesn’t prevent the teacher from stopping teasing or bullying– just as they get to stop teasing of bullying for being short, fat, skinny, pimply or whatever.
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I doubt the correct reaction to the existence of a trans-kid would be to schedule an actual lesson to “discuss what we all think of johnny’s gender”. That would be forbidden. But I doubt the kid would want a whole lesson focusing on his gender ideology.
Phil, I think you are missing the main point of the discussion here which has evolved into control of the curriculum and who should have most of that control. I suspect a lot of school kid parents and taxpayers in FL feel the state law favors that position.
I would personally favor more parent and taxpayer control at the local school level. There might be local school districts were parents and taxpayers favor something other than what the FL law spells out – even if the law is rather neutral.
I doubt very much that K-3 kids would react to differences that might have a slight chance of being manifested to them concerning lesbian or gay or bisexuality or transgender or queen unless a teacher made a big issue out ot it.
Dewitt,
I wanted to also explain a little about how people criticizing this book tends to be spun in the media.
I also did a bit of googling on main stream news discussing the controversy over “Gender Queer” being stocked in middle school libraries.
You can find something typical by nbc here:
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-life-and-style/author-gender-queer-one-banned-books-us-addresses-controversy-rcna8991
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It starts out like this
That last paragraph is the closest they come to letting the reader know the problem is related to a “handful of graphic illustrations of LGBTQ sexual experiences”. It’s carefully worded to make it seem that if the most the illustrations are not objectionable, then this “handful” should be now big deal.
Based on that wording, as far as casual readers can tell, the “objectionable” pictures show two guys holding hands, kissing or patting each other on the butt.
I’m guessing the nbc news author knows perfectly well that if they said Stacy Langton passionately argues that books containing illustrations of blowjobs does not belong in public school lending libraries providing reading material to 11 year olds. So the author doesn’t write it that way, but gives it a “book banning” slant, and then reminds us that some people wanted to ban “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
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Sure. But the fact that people may have wanted to ban “To Kill a Mockingbird” doesn’t mean we can never identify that some books might not be appropriate on the shelves of public school libraries servicing 6th graders! No one has “banned” Penthouse. They also don’t pretend saying it should not be on middle school libraries amounts to “banning” it. People can still buy it– get subscriptions and so on.
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But anyway, this is the typical slant of the “neutral” articles. If you don’t dig a bit, you definitely are left with the impression that those objecting are mostly worried about the whole “gender identity” issue, and the “graphic depictions of blow jobs” aspect of the books is obscured.
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I’ve read about a number of these books on /Teachers at reddit. This one is– as far as I can tell– the most egregious example of blatantly inappropriate content and biased reporting. Lawnboy has some very real problems that are also glossed over. Some others, well… don’t seem so bad. (But honestly, I can’t read them all.)
Kenneth
When I was in day camp — summers after 3rd and 4th grade– one of the girls in our group insisted she was a horse. Her cousin was also in our group. We, of course, asked many questions. The girl who insisted she was a horse insisted it all the time.
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The day camp counselor pretty well ignore the “I am a horse” delusion. We got a lot of horsey rides though– mostly from her. But we were kids. So kids getting on other kids backs and “riding” happened even if a kid didn’t think she was a horse.
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I ended up in a different school district from her so I have no idea if she ever outgrew her “I am a horse” phase.
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The point is: a kids view of what they “are” does not have to dominate a classroom or day camp discussion. If we were doing art, the response to her, “I am a horse”, could be “Here’s your sticks and yarn. We are all learning how to may ‘God’s eyes” today.
Lucia – My understanding would be – “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity”
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I guess there is a lot of interpretation in what constitutes “instruction”. I hope so.
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Kenneth, what you say makes a lot of sense. It does make the debate as reported a lot more comprehensible. We have tensions here too about the community versus government input.
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But clearly there are a lot of people who think that LGBT is something that can be “caught”. I frankly find it too baffling for any theory of mind that I am capable of, but I think there is merit in the thesis that more people seem to be LBGT now because it is less unbearable to identify as such. It still seems a tough to choice to make.
Phil,
Well, I have read that social media use and social contagion is thought to be linked to eating disorders in teenaged girls. I don’t know what theory of mind problem there is with that. I’m not clear on why an increase in rapid onset gender dysphoria in teen girls would necessarily be dissimilar.
[Edit: Here is a link supporting my claim about eating disorders having a social component.]
Bulimia may be a better example.
Nope.
lucia (Comment #210797)
I think it is the same affliction that renders my inclinations to watch Mighty Mike that made me laugh at your post about the girl who said she was a horse. I was assuming that this was not a major delusion but rather a passing child thing. I had to laugh even more that you practical kids got rides on the horse/girl – a win win situation for the riders and the horse/girl.
My son was probably in fourth or fifth grade when he informed the class and his teacher that he was born in a log cabin near Priest Lake, Idaho. He would spin tales of a rather rustic life in the backwoods and had the teacher and the class believing until his teacher talked to my wife. A year later the whole family took a trip to Priest Lake. It was the best or near best vacation the family ever took together.
These books are intentionally being placed in libraries. Certain groups have members make presentations to school boards that the libraries are discriminatory for not having books with minority characters, and demand money be spent to rectify this racism. The school board thinks they are buying some books by black authors with black characters and give an OK, but the actual purchasing list is not monitored.
The Reference Frame has disappeared. I wonder if he has been hacked by Russians. Eight years ago when Russia invaded Crimea, Lubos was very supportive of Russia, but now is very hostile to Russia. One person on Twitter said it was because Google has been threatening him over language in old articles.
Eating disorders tend to be associated with dieting cultures, thin-desirable pressures and are suspected of existing prior to 20C. I don’t think girls read about anorexia and decide “oh that looks like a fun thing to die of”.
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A better example in my mind would be self-harmers which in my limited (but non-zero experience) have a very weird socially-transmitted rationale. Also mostly outside my theory of mind (but hey I havent tried it..).
Nobody thinks that.
Phil,
These large state laws often have sections that define terms. (The can be funny to read. ) This is a section in a larger body of law, so the definition may be in that larger text. I haven’t looked through the law though.
My understanding of “instruction” is actually organizing a lessons or activity to teach something and then carrying it out. It isn’t answering a question that comes up. Kids bringing up something about their family life isn’t “instruction” by the teacher and probably not “instruction” of any sort.
Kenneth
I assume so. Or, if not, when she grew up, she learned to hide her belief in public. 🙂
I didn’t make the girl up either. She was very insistent. I never met another like her.
Mark, ok. Let’s try to clear about this then. My reading is that “people” think there would be fewer LGBT if people would just stop talking about it. ie. it is a social contagion. You compared it to eating disorders and point to article on social component. I do not think your source support the idea that it is a social contagion, at least in my understanding of the term. The social aspects set up the conditions where positive feedbacks come from weight loss. I suspect within that setup, eating disorders would exist even they were never discussed. Since LBGT behaviours exist even when heavily sanctioned by society, explaining them away as simply socially transmitted doesnt work for me.
One teacher ends up with 20 of 32 LGBT kids. Unless she’s making it up, I would suspect that her constant pushing of it has encouraged kids to claim this. I think it was an elementary teacher in Austin.
One tactic used is to have the kids play a game, where they are hunting for clues. The answer to the puzzle is that the teacher is transgender. Then the kids ask what does that mean? The teacher can then claim it was not instruction, she was just answering the kids’ question, they brought it up themselves.
With social things, nothing needs to be either/or. It could be there will always be some of all the LBGT groups, but there can be more or less of it. So the fact that some always existed doesn’t mean it can’t also be social.
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The fact that “Bi” exists suggest their is a spectrum of Gay-ness. So it’s possible the innate tendency is a range and for some people could be encouraged or discouraged. Or not. I don’t really know.
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Mostly, I don’t think being gay or lesbian is due to some sort of conversion though. I honestly don’t know any trans people remotely well, so I can’t begin to speculate whether they were somehow socialized into it or whatever.
Actually making a transition is pretty drastic though. I do think it’s wrong for schools to assist minor children in transitioning while keeping the counseling or medical interventions secret from parents. It’s something parents should be made aware of at least. And if you think parents would harm the children that’s something that should be addressed directly through the courts. We have systems for protecting kids from parents who might harm them. It shouldn’t be up to a school system to be judge and jury on the decision to cut parents off from information while still thinking the parents are good enough to retain custody!!
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The theory that a set of parents is somehow good enough to feed, clothe, house, and other wise guide the child, but too dangerous to allow them to know their kid is getting psychological counseling is odd. If a school thinks the parents are a danger to the child, make the case and get the kid out of that house!
Lucia, I would agree there must be a spectrum.
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But I don’t think there is a black-white on psychological counselling. There is a lot things a kid might want their parents not to know about (imagine strict Muslims and a liberal daughter) without the parents being a danger to the kid. I would be disappointed if it happened to my kids because I would have hoped we offered safe channels for discussion, but it would our failure as parents if they needed confidential counselling.
I have this idea that the “Just say Hooray” bill in Florida is a landmine laid by a master political tactician named DeSantis. He has infected the Liberals with a cause that their left wing and the media can’t help but go to extremes over. Democrat politicians, no matter their personal views, have gotten swept up in the whirlwind. DeSantis is seeing to it that the issue remains in the public eye. [Like a matador waving his red cape at the bull!] When the Fall political campaigns start, the Republican candidates need only educate the voters about what the bill actually mandates and paint their Democrat opponents into a corner with their own past words and deeds. The vast majority of voters will be supportive of the simple principles about parental rights that are outlined in the legislation. [As happened in Virginia last year.] The Florida republican party retains complete control in Tallahassee and DeSantis has another feather in his Republican Presidential cap; Brilliant.
By a process of punishment and reward, any behavior can be encouraged, especially in children. This doesn’t need to be overt. You just make those who “stick out” feel special, and those who don’t as if they’re boringly normal.
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Social fads are a thing with kids. Think goths and emo’s etc. The difference with the gender fad is it has establishment approval and encouragement, which wouldn’t be too bad if ir couldn’t also lead to irreversible future consequences.
Thanks Phil.
A couple (three or four) of points in closing:
1) Read my second link about bulimia for the social component of eating disorders. I agree my first link wasn’t the best in that regard.
2) I don’t care what adults do. They can knock themselves out. I think the LGB part of it is preference. I don’t like licorice or rap music. If somebody else does, more power to them.
2a) I have no reason to believe preferences can’t be acquired. I didn’t always like coffee or bourbon. But, I don’t mind in the slightest if people acquire tastes for homosexual behavior. Adults can do as they please, it is emphatically no concern of mine.
3) I think the T is categorically different. I think gender dysphoria is a mental illness, not a matter of taste or preference. I think people who suffer from it believe something that is flatly and obviously untrue. Doesn’t mean I don’t think they should be treated with dignity and respect (everybody should be treated with dignity and respect) but they are crazy, and nothing good is going to come from pretending otherwise.
4) I don’t think you’re consistent with your cultural tolerance ideals. I don’t know how you square your tolerance of LGBTQ with your apparent intolerance of Muslim fundamentalists.
I’ll leave it be now.
[2b) some preferences might be built in. I have never liked American cheese. I have tried to like it. I don’t. Whatever. It’s not a concern for me if other people like it.]
Phil
It would be if they really needed it. I think the difficulty is the school electing to hide the fact of counseling from the parents doesn’t necessarily mean the it needs to be hidden. Requiring a 3rd party like a judge to weigh evidence on the need would be useful. (We have that for kids who want to be separated from their parents and so on.)
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The FL law goes further than that–the schools just can’t do that. To if they do suspect abuse in the family, they can call child protective services. That goes for any sort of abuse.
This has the potential to be really big: “Will the Legislature kill Disney’s self-governing ability over ‘parental rights’ law opposition?“
In 1967 a special act of the legislature gave Walt Disney local government status over a huge tract of Central Florida open land. Think: drainage district, zoning laws, law enforcement, road construction, mosquito control and much more. Revoking that is the ‘Nuclear Option’ … Probably not gonna happen but even talking about it is ground shaking. https://floridapolitics.com/archives/512670-will-the-legislature-kill-disneys-self-governing-ability-over-parental-rights-law-opposition/
Mark Bofill
There are people who have looked down on me for liking Velveeta for grilled cheese sandwiches. But I’m not ashamed to say I love Velveeta for grilled cheese. (I also like it for Broccoli cheese soup.)
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I constantly see articles like “Best cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches” and I notice they never include Velveeta. Travesty.
~grins~
I respect your travails and I sympathize with your plight amidst the Velveeta snobs.
Just don’t expect me to celebrate your love of Velveeta in my spare time and we’re good, Lucia.
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[Edit: And don’t try to make my children eat it. :p ]
Phil Scadden (Comment #210807): “My reading is that “people” think there would be fewer LGBT if people would just stop talking about it. ie. it is a social contagion.”
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There are documented outbreaks of teenage girls identifying as boys. And most children who go through a trans phase outgrow it. Pushing them to embrace their confusion does massive damage.
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There is often an active pushing of LGTB behavior that goes way beyond mere recognition of its existence.
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The Florida law has nothing to do with LGBT. It also bans age-inappropriate instruction regarding straight sex. (Edit: I may have gotten this wrong.)
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I don’t know about New Zealand, but here the LGBT related conflict is NOT about acceptance or tolerance. The conflict is about forcing people to celebrate what they regard as deviant behavior. It is about forcing women to accept the presence of biological males in bathrooms and locket rooms. It is about forcing female athletes to compete against biological males. It is about encouraging children to make decisions about major and irreversible experimental medical procedures without input from parents.
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Ultimately, the conflict has nothing to do with the well being of LGBT people. It is instead about activists using such people as a wedge to attack the foundations of society. A key tool is to subjugate people by forcing them to avow obvious lies: “this man is a woman”, “men can have babies”, etc.
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– attributed to Voltaire
…I’m compelled to add, if I’ve ever tried Velveeta, I don’t remember trying it. So as usual I have no idea what I’m talking about.
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[Edit: That’s a great quote Mike. Thanks! I agree with you.]
Lucia “ There are people who have looked down on me for liking Velveeta for grilled cheese sandwiches”. Ditto for my fried Spam sandwiches.
lucia,
I used to make a spicy cheese dip with Velveeta. It was one can of Old El Paso jalapeno relish to one pound of Velveeta. The viscosity could be reduced by adding a little water if it’s too thick to be easily dipped. Unfortunately I haven’t seen OEP jalapeno relish in years. Rotel tomatoes and green chilies is not an adequate substitute, IMO. It might be possible to make it with real cheese, but it would be a lot harder. You’d probably have to make a Bechamel sauce and add cheese.
Pet peeve department: Nacho Cheese Doritos taste nasty and nothing like real nachos. Also, real nachos are not nasty cheese sauce poured over tortilla chips. Btw, real Philly cheese steak sandwiches use Cheese Whiz.
lucia (Comment #210819)
“There are people who have looked down on me for liking Velveeta for grilled cheese sandwiches.”
And well they should.
MikeM
The wording seems to equally ban discussion of sexual orientation altogether. So basically, the teachers can’t organize lessons about sexual orientation at all. But I’m pretty sure the supporters of the law prefer this. They probably didn’t want the teachers to actively teach anything about sexual inclination or what gender you (or anyone) identifies as in class.
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Of course, that’s the way it used to be. My public school teacher didn’t raise the topic of sexual orientation in 2nd grade when I was here. (I only did half 1st grade in the US and that was at Catholic school. The nuns didn’t raise sexual orientation. )
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Yes: of course the word “boys” and “girls” was used.
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I’m sure we will read about classroom incidents in time. It’s likely that when being introduced some kids may actively volunteer they want particular adjectives. But that’s not “instruction”. If some kid says they consider themselves “zir”, then call them “zir” (if you can remember. ) The law doesn’t prevent that.
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(The “if you remember” comes from a remark from my sister. I told her one kid I tutored had her “pronouns” listed on her zoom profile. Visually, she may have been trans–or not. dunno. My sister is sympathetic to the whole “pronouns” thing, but who teaches large biology classes at a community college says she’s been encountering that and it’s difficult remembering who is who at all. I mean– you all remember you suspected your professors in courses with 40-50 people don’t know who everyone in the class is individually? That was true. And it’s hard to remember which person had what pronouns. I told her it’s actually trivially easy in tutoring because you almost never refer to anyone by any 3rd person gendered pronouns when engaged in one-on-one discussion. The pronouns used are “I” and “you”, and so not gendered.
The memory situation may be less of an obstacle for kindergarten where the teacher has the same batch of kids for 4 hours straight and interacts more directly. Or not.
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It should not be overlooked that the family unit is a major part of a relatively free society and where people can interact without much government intervention. Public schools that have agendas, intentional or not, that weaken the family unit are aimed at more government control over individuals.
More authoritarian governments necessarily need to weaken the family unit, since it can be seen as competition for state authority.
As an aside but related to previous posts here: In IL if a teacher or school worker sees any evidence of abuse to a student, no matter how weak that evidence is, they are expected to report the matter to the proper IL state agency for further review. The school employee not reporting in these cases can be held liable in an abuse case.
It goes beyond that. School and medical personnel are mandatory reporters at least in my state and FL. They receive training on this. If they suspect abuse they are required legally to report it to the appropriate authorities. That they don’t in these cases means that they don’t really see that it definitively rises to the level of provable abuse.
Grade school is not the place for “instruction” on transgender any more than it is for other sex ed topics or calculus so I really don’t have an issue with FL’s law. Personally, I also don’t see transgender as a choice for everyone anymore than it is for being gay. The numbers are low, .5% of population, but the outcomes for those who identify as such are bleak. I doubt gender reassignment is the answer to every case, but that it is in some. That isn’t something that should be done lightly and certainly not as a teen or without intensive therapy first. Leelah/Josh Alcorn is local to me. It was seven years ago when he/she killed herself/himself by semi after her parents response to him/her coming out was Christian conversion therapy and grounding. There needs to be an avenue for these kids to get help likely through existing court processes. I’m very uncomfortable with school’s making these decisions on their own or quite frankly some parents such as the Alcorns who are friends of friends of mine. How to handle this effectively is something that needs rationale debate just like trans women participation in women’s sports. The extremes on either side have no interest in that.
FWIW public schools work for the public’s interest in having an educated populace not the parents. I as a person that will not sire offspring have been paying taxes to fund those schools for decades and people like me get just as much say in how those schools operate as those with children in them. While there is quite a bit of overlap there, that distinction can be important that some parents tend to forget.
lucia (Comment #210826)
I see the pronoun preference thing was finally brought up here.
I started seeing this in communicating with the teachers and administrators where my autistic grandson of whom I am guardian goes to school. I do not recall where in my emails or person-to-person communications I would use a pronoun in addressing them. The people I communicate with happen to all be females so I see they/them and she/her. Those designations mean nothing to me compared to the content and meaningfulness of our communications about my grandson. I am still not sure what they mean about the person using those designations. I have talked to my daughter-in-law, who is a teacher about this. She gets student requests for pronoun preferences but thinks that it most often means sympathy with the LGBTQ+ community and not their sexual orientation.
If a she or he is referred to as they would not that require pointing out the grammatical error?
AndrewP
Precisely. In fact, they don’t think they even have a case with sufficient evidence to reach the mandatory reporting threshold– and that’s a low level of evidence.
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It is certainly the case that some parents will response abusively to certain revelations from their kids. Some will be abusive about low school grades. But that isn’t given as a reason to not report grades to parents.
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Pointing kids to these resources could be done. Perhaps it will when the school loses the option of just being judge and jury on cutting parents out they may research these options.
If I knew a kid who talked to me, I’d point them to
https://www.illinoislegalaid.org/
I don’t know if emancipation is what the kid would want to work toward, but that would be a conversation with a lawyer
https://www.illinoislegalaid.org/legal-information/emancipation
Perhaps the kid could get a new guardian. I don’t know what the options are. (Maybe you could get a judge to enjoin them from sending you to conversion therapy?) But sometimes just knowing an option exists can motivate people to some sort of compromise.
A kid certainly ought to have a right to refuse Conversion therapy (Christian or otherwise.) I think they should have a right to refuse it even if I thought it worked. (I suspect it doesn’t. )
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(Side note: googling whether judges have ever blocked parents from sending kids to conversion therapy, I also read that Florida had a law banning conversion therapy as a service. A judge threw out that ban in 2020. So on the one hand, Florida doesn’t want k-3 teachers teaching about gender, on the other hand, they don’t want kids being forced into conversion therapy! So things may go two ways in the state.)
“Somebody always suffers”
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I think this is the most substantial point. I’m not a religious zealot, don’t practice religion, but I did grow up going to church ever Sunday. Religious people have rights too, and they get to express their desires just like anybody else. They matter. There is that pesky church/state separation legal issue of course.
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What nobody wants to talk about is the boatload of children brought up in a religious household that have different views. Activists want to crap all over them and disallow their viewpoints all the way back to grade school. “Your church is WRONG, your parents are WRONG, you are WRONG, don’t express your incorrect views”. Is this what you want to tell children?
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What I’m pointing out is not religious views should get priority, but there are * fundamental * differences in viewpoints here that are not resolvable and the best we should hope for is people understanding alternate viewpoints and having empathy for both viewpoints. What we don’t really want is school boards choosing who is right and wrong on irresolvable cultural issues. The default should be ignore the issue completely or lightly touch on it and teach the controversy. There is no science here as there is for evolution.
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Activists aren’t very useful and are counterproductive for most of these issues.
Psychologists/Psychotherapists are great at inventing new therapies out of whole cloth with no need to demonstrate safety and effectiveness. Remember recovered memories? That was definitely something that made things worse rather than better for a lot of people. People who should know that human memory is unreliable and highly plastic were convincing people that they had been abused. See also the so-called child advocates who drove the whole day care abuse insanity. Conversion therapy, IMO, is guaranteed to do more harm than good.
It’s probably reasonable to assume that if the gay issues were more socially acceptable then there would be more of them, at least publicly viewable, and that this is objectionable to some people who view this as immoral.
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Some people want to fight to make these views more socially acceptable so that what they view as legitimate cases of people suffering can be reduced. I’m mostly ambivalent here because I think this suffering is likely overblown. There are real cases here but a lot of them fall into a group of multiple mental issues happening that are hard to sort out. Straight people suffer quite a bit as well for other things. The activists over play this and I can’t really get a good grip on it.
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However I think some suffering is real. One book I read was Middlesex
https://www.amazon.com/Middlesex-Novel-Jeffrey-Eugenides-ebook/dp/B002HHPVPS
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Pulitzer prize winner (maybe influenced by the subject matter). This book had a really interesting angle, some people are born with both sex organs (so no decisions here) and this book explored a teen’s life and the absolute terror they had to navigate with trying to extend friendship to a sexual nature. This obviously maps to these discussions. It helped me empathize a bit with some of the social dynamics that can happen.
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It makes sense to try to reduce the trauma of a hard life even if it is self selected if that can be done in a low impact reasonable way by society. The DeSantis bill is mostly a political play and forces a social wedge, it’s drawing an easy red line. The bill itself is reasonable but left unstated is what can society actually do to reduce mental impacts here while respecting different viewpoints. The teaching has to go both directions.
The massive judicial overstep of the week:
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/florida-playbook/2022/04/01/the-blockbuster-florida-election-law-ruling-no-one-saw-coming-00022245
“And because of a what he called an ongoing pattern, Walker ruled that the state (Florida) must get court approval for the next 10 years if it wants to make any future changes to laws involving drop boxes, third-party voter registration groups and regulating what is called “line warming” conduct such as giving out food and water at polling places.”
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It’s not particularly surprising a federal judge would strike down the law as this thing winds through the court system but the 10 year pre-approval thing was about 50 miles out in left field. Crazy.
Kenneth, I noticed that just yesterday. Someone named Josette has they/them in an e-mail. I believe this means transgender.
It is used in the show Billions to refer to a single person(the syndicate person in John Wick 3), and the grammar error is grating.
Trouble in the house of the mouse
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“..Banks wrote to Chapek as the Mickey Mouse copyright will expire on January 1, 2024. Given Disney’s opposition to Gov. Ron Desantis’s Parental Rights in Education Act, and its push to include as “many, many many LGBTQIA characters in its stories,” he cannot support an extension of its copyrights..”
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/01/jim-banks-theatens-to-block-mickey-mouse-copyright-over-disneys-political-and-sexual-agenda/
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #210827): “It should not be overlooked that the family unit is a major part of a relatively free society and where people can interact without much government intervention.”
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That has not been overlooked by the more destructive and totalitarian elements on the left. BLM for instance; they used to be open about it. And, I think, the more radical elements using LGBT as a wedge. They seek to destroy the family, the better to impose their will on the rest of us.
For anyone who has followed the Oberlin College vs Gibson Bakery saga over the past several years, Oberlin was once again handed a clear defeat by the Ohio appeals court.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/appeals-court-upholds-gibsons-bakery-massive-verdict-against-oberlin-college/
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Upheld $25M to Gibson’s for defamation after the college assisted the students calling the business racists for apprehending a shoplifter. It seems there are actual limits. Could still go to the Ohio Supreme Court but probably will not receive a much better reception.
On the topic of Disney copyright extension, irrespective of their social views, why on earth should such a boon be granted? The duration of copyright protection was extended some time ago — in my opinion, unwisely — but it is certainly long enough. [To my mind, 50 years would be plenty, with the period extended if the author is still living after that time. For comparison, patent protection is only 20 years.]
P.S. As we’re discussing personal pronouns, rather than “he/him/his”, I prefer “His Highness/Her Majesty/that idiot’s”. There, I’ve said it.
Disney should have lost the copyright in the 90s, after 75 years.
Even with no extension, only certain old versions of Mickey Mouse lose their copyright.
Tom,
That’s a blast from the past!
Pretty brutal. Don’t drive down the road in a war zone. BBC Report:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNTPyAsMmxs
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Q: “What do you think of the Russians?”
A: “No obscenities? … I hate them from the depth of my heart”
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I think this war may go on for quite a while.
More interviews with Ukrainian soldiers from the Washington Post on the frontlines.
https://youtu.be/AzgiqnpJRGo
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“Noone can trust Russians, never. The only language that Russians understand in the language of force”
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They look highly motivated. They hate the Russians. I don’t think they are quite aligned with Putin’s viewpoint that Ukraine is really Russia.
Why the Ruskies are getting their butts kicked…according to the WSJ: “Mr. Barry said more than 170,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been committed to Ukraine in about 130 units, known as battalion tactical groups. When the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003, similar numbers of U.S. troops were committed in fewer than 50 BTGs. The reason for the difference: the large proportion of the U.S. force being used for logistics and the transportation of fuel, ammunition, water and food.”
Free link hack: https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-front-lines-russias-military-struggles-to-supply-its-forces-11648805401?st=9rubd5m4cerf5eh&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Russian logistics have been know to be fubar’d for a while if forced to operate at any distance from a railhead. Their CSS units are undersized by order of magnitude compared with US levels and the structure of RusArmy units require more transport not less. https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/
“Where angels fear to tread”…. Talking about Covid vaccines….
To booster [again] or not? I am weighing the pros and cons. I found this writeup from Consumer Reports useful. Let me know if it is behind a paywall and I will post excerpts of the important parts.
“Your Questions About COVID-19 Booster Shots, Answered”
https://www.consumerreports.org/covid-19/your-questions-about-covid-19-booster-shots-answered-a8815548189/
[The first couple of paragraphs are boilerplate.]
My husband got his booster today. I’ve been ill. I know they don’t like people to get vaccines while actually under the weather. So I’m waiting until I feel perfectly well.
For me the issue with boosters is whether they provide any significant protection against severe disease. They do seem to provide additional short term protection against “infection”. And if you can’t get infected, then you can’t get really sick. But that is really short time. After it wears off, is there any extra effect from the booster? I have yet to see that question answered. I have no intention of getting a shot every six months or whatever. So still not boosted.
Mike M
“Severe disease”. That link I posted has some date in the bottom paragraphs
In looking over the rankings of Ukraine with regards to GDP per capita and economic freedom indexes, I was surprised to see how far down the list of the world’s nations that Ukraine was in both these categories. It has a GDP per capita significantly lower than Russia and in some economic freedom indexes it ranks below Russia. This to me makes their resistance to the Russian onslaught even more surprising and makes me even more sad to see what the Ukrainian people are enduring and what that portends for their future misery with an ongoing war.
I suspect that Russian incompetence is a major factor in the fact that Ukraine has held on for so long.
I also think that leading world politicians’ motivations for their policies and their competencies in carrying those policies out most times are evaluated on Civics 101 terms and not at the level of those politicians raising to the top in authority by means other than competency and those politicians having very apparent human flaws that motivate their policies. Putin, for example, was probably a second- or third-rate KGB member relegated to East Germany where the Stasi took care of the nasty things expected of the KGB. He was stationed in Dresden and not East Berlin where the action was. Putin was given his initial power by the usually drunken and most times corrupt Boris Yeltsin who regretted doing it just before he died.
MikeM
This is a very meaningful question.
I’ve always said I have no problem with that. I don’t until I hear some reason to have a problem with actual evidence for that reason.
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I do wish the booster was specific to Omicron or a broader spread of spikes. I looked into when we might see Omicron specific and it’s a while. So it looks like booster for now. Then in fall, when Omicron specific is available I take that.
I haven’t seen any evidence the second booster protects much better against severe disease. I’m going to wait until we get into another major surge or I engage in some more risky behavior (e.g. travel) before I get my next booster. It takes about 2 weeks to take effect and you get some short term moderate increase in protection (a couple months maybe) against infection risk.
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I also read that there is some minor benefit to mixing vaccines so I will get Moderna next time around.
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The variant specific vaccines were tested and apparently didn’t work any better than the original vaccines. I never saw any reasoning why, probably because the virus changed to be much more infectious (faster multiplying) and the vaccine changes couldn’t deal with that aspect any better.
FYI: The White House was asked whether Ukraine would be enabled to negotiate the Russian sanctions away and the WH effectively answered “no comment”.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1503802521776758784
Tom,
I think that was an in vitro result and based on monitoring jumps in antibodies. I’m not sure I would take that as conclusive. In absense of other evidence, I would lean toward thinking boosting the long term (T-cell immunity to “see” the new spike, it still somehwhat bettter. ) But I would admit to having no evidence to support this.
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Still: it’s an absence of evidence situation. I’d take the omicron specific booster in a hear beat. YMMV.
Tom
Good! That’s the right answer!
Zelenskyy has fired 2 of his generals as traitors and is looking for more. He had already outlawed 11 political parties for being pro Russia. If indeed the Russian factor in Ukraine is as large as these actions indicate, the Russian military failure to date looms even larger.
I can only comprehend the summary paragraphs of these two reports, but they say to me the first booster is good at preventing hospitalizations long term. That fact and with prevalent strands of Covid being mild it may be prudent to wait for a while on my second booster. [Wait until a more severe variant starts to circulate so the second booster is fresh.]
Also I have never had a positive Covid test so it might be helpful to get a bout of this mild strain to get a boost with natural antibodies.
Booster long term effectiveness against hospitalization:
CDC:
Vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19–associated emergency department/urgent care (ED/UC) visits and hospitalizations was higher after the third dose than after the second dose but waned with time since vaccination. During the Omicron-predominant period, VE against COVID-19–associated ED/UC visits and hospitalizations was 87% and 91%, respectively, during the 2 months after a third dose and decreased to 66% and 78% by the fourth month after a third dose. Protection against hospitalizations exceeded that against ED/UC visits. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7107e2.htm?s_cid=mm7107e2_wd
UK Health security agency:
In updated population data analysis, vaccine protection against mild disease has largely disappeared by 20 weeks after vaccination with a 2-dose primary course of vaccination. After a booster dose, protection initially increases to around 65 to 70% but drops to 45 to 50% from 10+ weeks. It is therefore likely that current vaccines offer limited long-term protection against infection or transmission. Protection against severe disease is much higher – after a booster dose vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation is estimated at 92% and remains high at 83% 10+ weeks after the booster dose. This data will also appear in the weekly COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report published routinely on a Thursday
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1050236/technical-briefing-34-14-january-2022.pdf
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #210850): “It has a GDP per capita significantly lower than Russia and in some economic freedom indexes it ranks below Russia.”
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Russia gets a lot of income from oil and gas; those may not make it down to the public.
This source says the per capita GDP for Russia is more than double Ukraine, $29K vs $13 K. But median income is much closer: $5.5K for Russia and $4.4K for Ukraine. Numbers look like PPP.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country
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It is ridiculous that Biden has not clearly stated the conditions for lifting sanctions. They should be lifted if there is a peace deal. As it is, it is reasonable to assume that the sanctions will not be lifted as long as Putin is in power. That cuts the legs out from under anyone in his circle who might be inclined to argue for peace.
I think if Biden said what it would take to lift sanctions now he would likely set the bar so high that it would make it difficult to back down from later (Complete Russian withdrawal! Reparations!, etc.). Best to keep it as a negotiated item for a dirty deal later on that nobody will like, it’s going to change depending on how the war pans out.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210859): “I think if Biden said what it would take to lift sanctions now he would likely set the bar so high that it would make it difficult to back down from later”.
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No, he only needs to make it clear that if there is a peace deal acceptable to Ukraine, then the sanctions will be lifted.
MikeM
I disagree that Biden should state conditions for lifting sanctions before negotiations start. That should be part of the negotiations.
You don’t give away al your bargaining chips before bargaining begins. This rule is no different from discussion of what one might have done before Russia invade. Biden should not have stated what he would or would not do then and he shouldn’t now.
MikeM
What is required for sanctions to end should be negotiated and not given away before negotiations. It’s a chip.
Lucia,
Yes, ‘it’s a chip’, but the USA and NATO are not party to the ongoing negotiations. Perhaps the USA and NATO have given guidance to the Ukraine about lifting sanctions. If so, then the Ukrainians can use that guidance in negotiations. But if the Ukraine does not have guidance about the lifting of sanctions, then I think it will make negotiations more difficult. Perhaps the best answer would be ‘We are discussing this with our friends in the Ukraine’.
Kenneth, the Taliban managed to retake Afghanistan so easily because they had bribed Afghan military leaders in various places to surrender.
SteveF
I think NATO and the USA telling Ukraine what they are willing to do is good. Telling or promising Russia is not good. Telling the world or the public is not good.
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Conditions for ending sanctions should be Ukraine’s chip, not Russia’s chip.
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This is appropriate. Or, as long as it is discussed with Ukraine, that’s appropriate.
lucia (Comment #210862): “What is required for sanctions to end should be negotiated and not given away before negotiations.”
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You miss the point. It is now unclear as to whether negotiations *can* bring sanctions to an end.
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lucia: “It’s a chip.”
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No, it is a cudgel to back up bargaining. It should cease to be such when a peace deal is reached.
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When a union and an employer engage in negotiations, both sides are careful about revealing exactly what will be sufficient to reach a deal. The union has the threat of a strike to back up its bargaining power. The union is always 100% clear about what it will take to avoid a strike: A contract approved by the membership. The details of the contract are what is negotiated, not whether there will be a strike.
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The situation with the sanctions is like a union saying “First, we want a deal. Then after the deal is agreed to, we will decide whether or not to strike.” Such an attitude would make a deal all but impossible.
I believe that the conditions for removing sanctions should be clearly spelled out before applying them. The process becomes very extra-legal otherwise. It is like negotiating the consequences of a law after the fact.
It might change over time with Russian sanctions, but Putin’s approval ratings continue to increase and are currently at 83%.
I boosted with pfizer in late December. Picked up the long term hives a week or two later that just now appears to be subsiding. Others have reported similar effects. I doubt I’ll boost again but will reconsider if variant specific or if a more dangerous variant pops up. FWIW just returned from Ireland for 10 days through their post saint patricks day spike without picking it up. Masked in public transportation but that was about it. Ended up spending 10 hours on a bus near some showing symptoms so testing for return was a bit nerve racking.
MikeM
No. I don’t “miss the point”. I disagree with you.
Of course it may be impossible for negotiations to bring sanctions to an end. The point is: it is better there be doubt on this. This, itself, is subject to negotation.
Cudgels and chips are indistinguishable during negotations. There is zero benefit to the NATO, US or Ukraine sides to making it clear that sanctions would end and that decision is outside negotiations. Promising an end to sanctions before bargaining is only useful to Russians.
First: your analogy is poor. A more appropriate analogy would that Russia is a union who just elected to strike, out of the blue while the previous contract is still in place.
But even if your analogy was remotely correct: Sanctions remain a detail of the contract to be negotiated. Just as the pay, and work conditions are details of the contract.
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Right now, if Russia wished, they could advance the offer that in exchange for and end to sanctions:
(1) They will leave Ukraine instantly and stop hostilities.
(2) They will move all troops to further than 50 miles from the Ukraine-Russia border.
(3) They will begin reparations of Ukraine .
If they offerred that, then we’d have a negotiation. There is no need for NATO/US to be the first to offer to end sanctions for “whatever”.
Russia hasn’t made any real offers. There’s no reason other than your imaginings to believe the “stumbling block” to peace is sanctions. (I think the stumbling block to peace is they still want Ukraine.)
Presumably, they don’t think it’s in their interest to offer anything. I see no advantage to anyone but Russia in offering them to end sanctions for something that must– by its very nature– be vague.
I mean… look at Russian’s negotiating stance:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-says-talks-with-ukraine-not-easy-important-that-they-continue-ria-2022-04-02/
Gosh. They are hostile toward poor little Russia? After your unprovoked invasion? Bombing out their cities? Killing their people? And now they are hostile.
Well… duh. Turkey is clearly a better place for negotiations. They aren’t supporting your invasion!
Russia is sticking to it’s guns on this utterly concocted fiction.
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The notion that what’s Russia wants an end to this war and the only thing preventing Russia from ending the war is their not being guaranteed sanctions would end is an utter delusion.
My unsophisticated approach to ending sanctions….
To the Russian people from the American government:
“There are several possible scenarios that will bring an end to sanctions. A successful conclusion to good faith negotiations with the Ukrainian government is needed for all of them to develop, except for one. The one scenario that will bring an immediate end to the sanctions is the end of the Putin government.”
“No, he only needs to make it clear that if there is a peace deal acceptable to Ukraine, then the sanctions will be lifted.”
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Any deal? That’s crazy IMO. Nobody exports their foreign policy to other countries. Perhaps it will work out that way eventually but Ukraine and the US have different agendas. Ukraine will be highly motivated to end all the killing and maintain some form of their independence while the US wants there to be deterrent to prevent Russia from doing this again. These only partially overlap.
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It is better for NATO if this war drags on. It is better for NATO to bleed Russia as much as possible. It is better for the US for Russian to become a global outcast. It is better if Russia believes NATO will happily extend the war. This gives the US and Ukraine leverage in negotiations.
Russel
I doubt Putin is going to relay any offers from the US government to the Russian people.
There’s always rallying around the flag in times of war. Bush was highly supported in the second gulf war. I’m not surprised Russia supports Putin. They believe they are the good guys. It is reasonable that they believe the west is out to get them, see Biden’s comments and a long history of Cold War antagonism.
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It’s high levels of motivated reasoning on both sides. The thinking on our side is summed up as “… but this is a chosen war of conquest”. AFAICT on their side it is “… the decadent west is supporting corrupt governments in eastern Europe whose citizens really want to be on our side”.
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I don’t really get the “but they speak Russian” argument or somehow Russia has sovereignty over all Russian speaking areas. If the citizens of eastern Ukraine really want to be part of Russia then so be it. I’d be interested in whether they would prefer two independent countries of East Ukraine / West Ukraine or prefer to be consumed by Russia.
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There is huge amounts of video out over the past several days on the occupied places Russia left (see local Ukrainian news on YouTube). It’s not pretty to say the least. Mass graves, citizens laying dead in the road, large numbers of charred armor, desecrated Russian soldiers, endless civilian areas destroyed. That’s war. It’s OK to have conflicting thoughts that this needs to end and also this needs to be answered for “in kind”.
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From what I can tell both sides want this to continue … or they would stop. That’s why you don’t want to enter a war casually. The cycle of revenge is now in place. The narrative that there is now a lot of very pissed off and emboldened Ukrainians with a will to fight seems legit.
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This is a critical stage where the US needs to have the discipline to stay out of it. Russia may be winning hearts and minds at home for now, but watch the news, it’s the only place that is happening.
Lucia, “I doubt Putin is going to relay any offers from the US government to the Russian people” … and the US government should refuse to make nice with a lying, murdering dictator.
Just as I predicted… voters support the actual words in Florida’s “Just say Hooray” new law. This report from the WSJ:
“When Americans are presented with the actual language of the new Florida law, it wins support by more than a two-to-one margin.”
…and as further evidence: “Even more notable is the breadth of that sentiment. Democratic voters in the poll support the law 55% to 29%. Among suburban voters, which could be a decisive group for the midterm elections, it’s 60% to 30%. Parents: 67% to 24%. Biden voters: 53% to 30%. Respondents who “know someone LGBTQ”: 61% to 28%. Those figures might come as a shock to Florida’s progressive activists, including those who happen to work at Walt Disney.”
The actual wording of the law is a slam dunk winner across the board.
Free link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-say-gay-is-popular-you-dont-say-ron-desantis-florida-law-elementary-school-11648849131?st=eie6lvotn2qea2u&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Well, I’ll give the Washington Post editorial board credit for at least asking the right question:
The Hunter Biden story is an opportunity for a reckoning
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/03/hunter-biden-story-is-an-opportunity-reckoning/
“Why is confirmation of a story that first surfaced in the fall of 2020 emerging only now?”
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I would think they would be in a pretty good position to answer that question themselves. Maybe they could ask the editorial board.
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“This context doesn’t necessarily exonerate every action of every publication and platform. It makes obvious sense for newspapers to wait to verify information before turning it into a story”
“The lesson learned from 2016 was evidently to err on the side of setting aside questionable material in the heat of a political campaign. The lesson learned from 2020 may well be that there’s also a danger of suppressing accurate and relevant stories.”
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I like how they thread the needle with “in the heat of a political campaign” because they clearly reported every unverified detail about Trump with hyperventilating enthusiasm for years. I suppose introspection is a start, even if it may be just for show. Better than the rest of the legacy media which just looks the other way.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210874): “From what I can tell both sides want this to continue … or they would stop.”
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I don’t think that is fair. I suppose that both sides want the war to end, but they want something else more. In particular, the Ukrainians prefer fighting to being subjugated. But they would much prefer being allowed to live in peace to either.
Honestly, it reads like you are contradicting yourself.
It’s pretty clear that right now, the prefer fighting and not being subjugated to merely being allowed to live in peace– while subjugated.
It’s possible Putin was misinformed and has come to believe that western Ukraine is no fan of subjugation and that is why they pulled out. That’s the charitable view, not sure I’m quite willing to extend that to Putin. Leaders everywhere are never going to admit when they have been proven wrong, that is almost universal. If this was the US, Putin would be saying his policy is correct but he just isn’t communicating it successfully, ha ha.
Lucia,
IMHO, it will be just about impossible for there to be a negotiated agreement ending all hostilities if the end of sanctions is not part of the deal. So the USA/NATO can in fact make a negotiated settlement just about impossible if they insist that an end of sanctions not be included in the negotiated agreement. I do hope it doesn’t come down to that. YMMV.
Been away for weekend, but wanting to thank everyone who offered there opinions.
Mark
“I don’t know how you square your tolerance of LGBTQ with your apparent intolerance of Muslim fundamentalists.”
The watershed for me on tolerance is when a group commits or advocates violence against people who they see as “others”. That would apply to Muslim extremists, white supremacists, etc. Working with and in Islamic countries, I certainly find plenty to like and admire among ordinary muslims.
SteveF
Sure. But that doesn’t mean NATO or the US need to state that sanctions will end before anyone enters negotiations.
I’m not hearing someone fretting,
“Russia needs to announce they will take their troops out of Ukraine before NATO, Ukraine or the US consider discussing other topics, otherwise we we’ll “worry” they’ll never agree to leave so we won’t have any incentive to end the war!!”
Conditions for the end of hostilities can all be negotiated during negotiations. Then we can have a formal agreement on all aspects. That ending sanctions will surely be part of the agreement is almost certainly true. That Russia will need to get their troops out of Ukraine is too.
Now this I find amazing. Germans supporting Russia in large numbers. Check out the Twitter link.
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Politically, things are going to be interesting for sometime now
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Live Updates: Berlin Drivers Show Solidarity For Russia As Energy Costs Soar From Western Sanctions
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Germany?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Thank god for at least some sanity in the court system
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California’s corporate diversity law ruled ‘unconstitutional’
https://thepostmillennial.com/california-corporate-diversity-law-ruled-unconstitutional
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“California’s Assembly Bill No. 979 was approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom and signed into law on Sept. 30, 2020. Because of what progressive lawmakers saw as a general lack of representation of American minorities on corporate executive boards, the law would have required corporations to hire members of “underrepresented communities” proportional to the size of the entity.”
lucia (Comment #210879): “It’s pretty clear that right now, the prefer fighting and not being subjugated to merely being allowed to live in peace– while subjugated.”
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Subjugating someone is not allowing them to live in peace.
SteveF (Comment #210881): “IMHO, it will be just about impossible for there to be a negotiated agreement ending all hostilities if the end of sanctions is not part of the deal. So the USA/NATO can in fact make a negotiated settlement just about impossible if they insist that an end of sanctions not be included in the negotiated agreement. I do hope it doesn’t come down to that. YMMV.”
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Exactly. That is the problem. Biden and NATO have the power to prevent a peace deal. They have not made it clear that they will not do so. That in itself makes a peace deal far more difficult.
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The US has used endless sanctions in the past to try to induce regime change. Biden has made it clear that he wants regime change in Moscow. He has not made it clear that he won’t stand in the way of a peace deal; i.e. that he won’t sacrifice Ukraine to his objective of ousting Putin. It would be quite reasonable for Moscow to read the situation that way. If so, then it would be quite reasonable for them to conclude that the only way out is victory, thus precluding a peace deal.
Fair enough Phil.
[By fair enough, I think I really mean ‘whatever’. Because – the example earlier with the strict muslim parents and the liberal child didn’t seem to involve extremist terrorist type parents who advocated violence, yet it was taken for granted that the parents were wrong.
But – I don’t think I care enough about this to pursue the subject any further. So. Whatever]
MikeM
Peace is often describe as a state of non-war. Even in the dictionary. One can be not-at war and subjugated. Happens.
If you want to be clear that you mean “not subjugated”, you should say so explicitly.
Sure. Biden and NATO have the power to do so in the future. They don’t need to make it clear they won’t use the future power right now. It’s just a strange silly demand that they “make it clear” before Russia is willing to even enter negotiations.
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You can try all the mental gymnastics about what it would be “reasonable” for Russia to conclude. But right now, based on what Russia has said and done, it’s entirely “reasonable” to conclude that they don’t want to leave Ukraine and won’t ultimately agree to. Russia is doing pretty much zero to suggest they are willing to give up anything or have any plans to leave Ukraine.
So it would be “pretty reasonable” for Ukraine, NATO & US to conclude they shouldn’t bother entering negotiations because Russia has no intention of leaving Ukraine.
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Look: either the two sides will come enter negotiations in good faith or they won’t. When they do, that’s the right time to discuss what each will do.
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If and when Russia has an inclination to enter peace talks, they can and will enter peace talks. When they do is soon enough to discuss ending sanctions. Promises to end sanctions before they begin to bargain is premature, stupid, counter productive and will achieve nothing that benefits the US, NATO or the Ukraine. It’s hard to believe anyone other than Putin would be pushing the idea.
The idea that there must be a * precondition * that sanctions will be dropped for * any * peace deal that is acceptable to Ukraine and Russia is crazy.
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Just to move this along a little bit, why don’t you suggest an equitable peace deal that Russia will accept that you believe sanctions should be dropped for. If your answer is “it depends on the deal” then you aren’t actually disagreeing with anyone.
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Example: Russia gets the east. Russia withdrawals from the west. Ukraine promises neutrality. Russia promises not to invade the west if they demilitarize. Russia refuses to rebuild the west and compensate the victims. Drop sanctions now? No.
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Fantasy: Russia withdrawals from Ukraine. Russia agrees to a tax on EU gas exports to rebuild Ukraine. Ukraine joins the EU and NATO and takes nukes on their soil as a deterrent. Drop sanctions? Yes.
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There is a bit room between these deals where things get fuzzy.
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It’s all a moot point because Russia isn’t really interested in this deal anyway. They are going to take the east by force and continue to threaten the rest of Ukraine because it is in their interest to do so. Russia is still very likely to win this thing and everyone thinks it is over or something. The only thing that is going to bring Russia to the negotiating table is very large piles of dead Russians which is the type of negotiating they currently understand. I don’t think sanctions are really that big a deal here.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210890): “Example: Russia gets the east. Russia withdrawals from the west. Ukraine promises neutrality. Russia promises not to invade the west if they demilitarize. Russia refuses to rebuild the west and compensate the victims. Drop sanctions now? No.”
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YES. Absolutely we should drop the sanctions. The alternative is that we tell the Ukrainians that they have to keep fighting for our interests. Either that, or surrender completely to Russia. Doing that would make me ashamed to be an American.
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Of course, I don’t think Ukraine would even consider a deal of the sort Tom suggests. But that is not relevant. It is not our place to tell them what they may or may not accept.
MikeM
Huh? The Ukrainians don’t have to continue to fight at all. If Russia and Ukraine agree to that, they agree to it. The both stop fighting.
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Now, Russia may not agree to that deal. But they could if they wanted to.
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We wouldn’t be telling either of them what they could or could not accept. Russia and Ukraine could come to that deal if they wanted to.
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Your view seems to be Russia wouldn’t agree to that even though it’s wildly in their favor. Even though the get way more than they deserve. And they might not because they don’t want to stop fighting.
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I don’t think the fact that Russia wants everything and more mean we need to sweeten the pot for them and make it even more in their favor.
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And we wouldn’t be forcing Ukraine to anything.
“It is not our place to tell them what they may or may not accept.”
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I have no idea what this means. Ukraine can cut any deal they want with the Russians. What you are actually saying is the exact opposite, that Ukraine can tell the US what they may or may not accept for dropping sanctions.
I finally saw a poll of the Ukrainian people about the current Russian war. There were 93% of respondents that thought Ukraine will win the war. There was a 74% approval of Zelenskyy. Over half the respondents hoped the war would end in weeks and around a quarter thought the war would last months.
If the polling is reasonably accurate it sounds like this war could go on for a long time and the blood bath will continue. It probably depends on how brutally the Russians decide to proceed.
Over half the respondents in the US currently favor a no-fly zone. I am sure Biden and his administration have their eyes on the favorable polling Putin and Zelenskyy are receiving as war leaders. I wonder if the Biden administration might in desperation based on the mid term polling get into a more war time footing. You know, to save democracy, not in world, but in the US.
Do you guys really think that a peace deal is possible without lifting sanctions? Even if it is, it would have to be far more favorable to Russia than a deal that could be made that drops sanctions.
MikeM
No. I don’t think Russia will agree to a peace deal without lifting sanctions.
I don’t think Russia will agree to a remotely reasonable peace deal with our without sanctions. I think they don’t want peace unless they get large pieces of Ukraine, huge other concessions and leave Ukraine in ruins.
In the unlikely event that Ukraine actually started pushing Russia out of Ukraine then they should stop fighting and negotiate? Whoever has momentum once the shooting starts wants to resolve it that way. The battle phase needs to hit some endpoint before real negotiations can occur. This may take months or years. Sanctions can be on the table then of course.
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Russia didn’t even attempt to negotiate before they hid their true intentions and then invaded Ukraine. Again. They started a war with no sanctions in place.
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If Russia thinks sanctions are important then they will be willing to sacrifice things to get them lifted. It’s not even on the radar at the moment, there are much harder issues and Russia is resolving things through force and that may work to their favor.
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My view is that as long as Ukraine is willing to fight then we should be going down that route. It’s not just about Ukraine, it’s also about stopping Russia from doing this again, and again. Make them pay a heavy price. Ukraine being flattened isn’t desirable, but that was Russia’s move which left a fight or surrender response. I see the conditions I stated above as a surrender. I don’t think sanctions or no sanctions changes Russia’s calculus now. Dropping them tomorrow won’t change a thing.
US, Ukraine, and sanctions
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“..Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky got a green light from Washington to offer Russia relief from international sanctions in exchange for ending its military offensive against the former Soviet republic.
“…US Secretary of State Antony Blinken opened the door to such an offer on Sunday, confirming in an NBC News interview that Zelensky has the ability to negotiate sanctions relief for peace. He said President Joe Biden’s administration will support whatever the Ukrainian people want to do to bring the war to an end.
“We’ll be looking to see what Ukraine is doing and what it wants to do,” Blinken said. “And if it concludes that it can bring this war to an end, stop the death and destruction and continue to assert its independence and its sovereignty – and ultimately that requires the lifting of sanctions – of course, we will allow that.”
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https://www.rt.com/news/553240-us-says-ukraine-can-offer-russia-sanctions-relief/
Lucia,
“No. I don’t think Russia will agree to a peace deal without lifting sanctions.”
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On that at least we completely agree. I have never suggested that the lifting of sanctions be announced publicly. I do not pretend to know what conversations have taken place between the USA, NATO, and the Ukrainian government. All I am saying is that someone who is part of the negotiations has to have the authority to discuss the lifting of sanctions. Since the USA and NATO are not directly involved, I think it is important that they provide the Ukraine with the authority to negotiate lifting of sanctions as part of a final agreement. If that authority is withheld, then the negotiations are unlikely to be successful.
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One thing that has puzzled me: there are lots of Ukrainians who speak both Russian and Ukrainian natively. That some of those people have not entered Russia through the porous border and blown things up (bridges, buildings in Moscow, etc) is a surprise. I would have guessed that would happen pretty quickly after Russia invaded. Maybe with better spring weather it will.
SteveF,
YOu and I agree. I disagree with MikeM who keeps insisting the agreement to lift sanctions “if” has to be announced in advance. That’s a bad idea for many reasons.
Tons of people do. My dance teacher Vlad does. Jim read Russia blamed a oil depot being blown up on the Ukrainians and the Ukraine government said they have no information on it. Maybe some are sneaking into Russia and blowing things up.
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The people inclined to do it may not have been sufficiently organized or have sufficient weapons and materials.
Lucia “ Jim read Russia blamed a oil depot being blown up on the Ukrainians and the Ukraine government said they have no information on it. Maybe some are sneaking into Russia and blowing things up.”
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This was by 2 Ukraine attack helicopters by a number of accounts. Russia reciprocated by blowing up a Ukraine fuel refinery.
I’m suspsect the Russian’s would have blown up a refinery regardless. anyway, yeah, it’s a war. My view is if the Ukraininan’s did hit Russia, good for Ukraine.
SteveF (Comment #210899): “All I am saying is that someone who is part of the negotiations has to have the authority to discuss the lifting of sanctions.”
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I agree, but I add the condition that Russia has to know that is the case. And they need to hear that from us; it would not suffice to take the Ukrainians word for it.
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lucia (Comment #210900): “SteveF, YOu and I agree.”
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In which case it would seem that lucia and I agree.
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lucia: “I disagree with MikeM who keeps insisting the agreement to lift sanctions “if” has to be announced in advance.”
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That seems to me a distinction without much of a difference. My point has been that Russia has to know that the sanctions will not take on a life of their own, independent of what might be agreed to in the negotiations. And there is no harm in the Biden administration publicly stating that which they told the Russians. In fact, a public statement provides greater credibility.
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I do think that SteveF stated the issue more clearly and succinctly than I did.
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I also like the way Blinken put it; see the link provided by Ed Forbes (Comment #210898).
I was heartened to read the link provided by Ed Forbes; for once Biden got something right!
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But maybe not. Here is a full transcript of the interview:
https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-with-chuck-todd-of-nbcs-meet-the-press-3/
It has Blinken saying something rather different in response the question “can Zelenskyy negotiate sanctions relief at all here or not?”:
In other words, if Zelinsky negotiates sanctions relief, we will think about eventually dropping the sanctions. Not helpful.
MikeM
They don’t need to hear it from us before they’ve even entered negotiations. And even at that: all they need to know is that Ukraine is communicating with us during negotiations. We can tell them that when real negotiations begin. Any final commitments on our part will require a direct communication from us.
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We can’t be handing our sovreignity over to Ukraine either. That’s madness! Ukraine can’t bind us. Heck, we have trouble enough getting the Senate to ratify what the US President signs on to!
The issue is when they need to know this. The (a) don’t need to know it now, (b) don’t need to know it before negotiations begin and (c) don’t even need to know it until we are close to closing a deal.
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It merely need to be clear when the deal is made and agreed to. That’s one heck of a long way off.
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You keep seeing to say they need to know it now, or failing that before negotiations or before the close of the deal. They don’t. No one knows what the deal is until all elements are discussed and resolved. Until that point, everything is tentative and subject to negotiation. This includes dropping sanctions.
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We can be pretty sure they won’t agree to a deal that still has sanctions. But that will be one of their conditions. So of course that will have to be part of the deal. And they will need to know it’s part of the deal. But it doesn’t need to be agreed beforehand.
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And if, in some shocking surprise to all of us, it turns out they will agree to a deal with sanctions, then sanctions can continue. (But we know they won’t agree to that.)
MIkeM
Except SteveF did Not say the Biden administration should tell the Russians we will drop sanctions in advance of negotiations. And he did not say he should tell make such a public statement.
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Or at least I think has said nothing of the sort. If he did I disagree with him.
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As far as I can tell: SteveF is not adding the silly idea you are that us dropping sanctions needs to be pre-announced before any deal making.
MikeM
What this does not say is that sanctions will be ended. Zelensky has the ability to negotiate it. But he can also not agree to end sanctions. It remains a bargaining chip.
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IT’s also worth nothing that
“and ultimately that requires the lifting of sanctions, of course we’re going to look at that. ”
We are going to look at that is not a promise to do it. So Blinken is not doing what you are claiming our administration “must” do. Sanctions are being used as a bargaining chip.
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That’s good. It’s nice to see the Biden administration is doing something not utterly idiotic.
If Russia forces Ukraine to surrender under terms we think are highly unfavorable to Ukraine, then we should not drop sanctions even if Ukraine asks us to do so. The absolute worst thing we could do would be to announce that we will drop sanctions in the event of any ‘peace’ deal between Russia and Ukraine.
Lucia,
In this case, I think the Biden administration is saying much too much. Better if they said as little as possible publicly and just communicated with the Ukrainian government; if the position of the Biden Administration and NATO is that they will not commit to ending sanctions, then they ought to be clear about that with the Ukrainians, not hinting at that possibility it in a broadcast interview.
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I doubt the Russians will agree to serious compromises on any of the issues if they think the sanctions will continue in spite of an agreement with the Ukraine. I think Bliken is not helping by publicly suggesting the sanctions may not be lifted as part of an agreement.
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In any negotiation, you must have confidence the other party can actually fulfill the terms that are agreed upon. If not, the negotiations are unlikely to be fruitful.
DeWitt,
Why should we interfere with the Ukrainians negotiating with the Russians? Real question.
More on the new FDA booster recommendation:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-shuts-out-its-own-experts-in-authorizing-another-booster-covid-vaccine-pandemic-science-11649016728?st=efnzq0f2pbtpx6e&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Given the current low rate of new infections in the US, I see no point in my getting the booster-of-the-month. If I had a seriously compromised immune system, I might think differently.
Then there’s this (also from the linked article:
However, I’m not at all sure that I would trust a vaccine developed and manufactured in India.
SteveF,
Why should Ukraine be allowed to interfere with our sovereignty? Also a real question. It is 100% our decision to impose or withdraw sanctions. It is not in our interest to allow Ukraine to determine our foreign policy, especially if they agree to what we think is a bad deal.
Suppose Russia had indeed rolled over Ukraine and set up a puppet government in Kyiv. Should we then drop sanctions against Russia because the Ukrainian puppet government asks us to? No, absolutely not.
DeWitt,
OK, screw the Ukraine.
Wrt sanctions on Russia there’s this:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/strategic-defeat-putin-russia-blinken-biden-zelensky-bucha-war-crime-kyiv-mass-grave-atrocities-united-nations-un-human-rights-shelling-odessa-ukraine-11649016865?st=xgj46xhonnglbui&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
IMO, we should not drop sanctions against Russia unless Putin is removed from office. If anything, we should impose more sanctions specifically targeting all the kleptocrats enabling Putin.
SteveF,
IMO, you and Mike M. are the ones with the ‘screw the Ukraine’ attitude.
Gary Kasparov in the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-told-the-truth-putin-has-to-go-russia-ukraine-invasion-leader-free-world-regime-change-11648998065?st=6h2u0vb28ynge7r&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
DeWitt,
You are entitled to your opinion. So am I: you are mistaken. I hope cooler heads prevail.
The Orban regime in Hungary won reelection. It became a referendum on Orban’s promise to block aid for Ukraine. A recent survey in Hungary showed nearly half the respondents found the Russian invasion legitimate.
All this information was from today’s WSJ.
In general you don’t concede things in negotiations without getting something in return. Every time I sign something I ask myself what I am receiving in return for what I am giving up. Signing a non-disclosure gives one a potential business opportunity, etc. There have been a few times where it was completely unreasonable of people to ask me to sign something that I was giving up some business rights (or other things) for absolutely nothing useful in return. The other side was giving up nothing. No thanks. BTW that’s a red flag for engaging further with that business.
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These conversations are somewhat arguing past each other. My point is * definitely * don’t give up sanctions unless you are getting something useful in return, and I’m perfectly OK with disagreeing with what constitutes “something useful”. I’m more hardline, don’t trust Russia, see them as bad actor, and so am inclined to not want to give up sanctions short of a withdrawal from all of Ukraine which isn’t realistic. Basically start Cold War II. I think that is where we are at, and although it is really not relevant I see this as having been Russia’s decision to enter this phase and we are left little choice.
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There is much more strategically on the line, China, Taiwan, further Russia incursions, etc. We have to show we are willing to fight and sacrifice for our beliefs. It is more dangerous and an escalation, but this has to be balanced against an alternate belief that the world will be more peaceful if we deescalate and allow Ukraine to be taken without consequences. I see that as incentivizing a more dangerous world, not less dangerous. Saddam hasn’t been invading his neighbors lately. If we could see the future then we would know the right path, otherwise everyone is speculating on correct strategy. Even experts are guessing more or less.
For the record Ukraine is currently feverishly publicly asking for sanctions to be increased, not permission to remove them. This would be expected of course. Maximum pressure to try to force negotiations that leaves them with better final terms.
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The US’s statements on sanctions are strategic ambiguity it seems. Politically Biden cannot afford to look weak against Russia going into the midterms. This is not a feature when this situation should be resolved on a grown up transactional / strategic basis.
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Should the EU stop buying Russian gas over the next few years? Yes. Is this not basically a humongous sanction? Yes. Nobody is suggesting that the EU be forced to continue to buy Russian gas as an end to the war, right? No. There is a lot of gray areas in what constitutes future isolation of Russia. McDonalds doesn’t have to continue to serve them Big Macs. Some things like access to global banking systems and so forth are legitimate points.
Sanctions are not a bargaining chip unless they are on the table. That requires that there be someone at the table with the authority to make commitments regarding sanctions. We are not at the table and we have not given Ukraine such authority. That robs Ukraine of important leverage.
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The sanctions are supposed to be in support of Ukraine. Giving Ukraine the right to negotiate them away does not give Ukraine authority over our policy. Unless, of course, the sanctions have a different purpose and the war in Ukraine is just an excuse to impose them.
MikeM
If the US or NATO pre-agrees to end them, they are, by definition, not on the table. So under your proposal, they won’t be a bargaining chip.
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No one at the table needs absolute authority for a promise. People will be discussing at the table, and confering with others. That’s the way bargaining is normally done. No one thinks that means items cease to become bargaining chips.
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Which is why they must be in place until the end of negotiations.
No it doesn’t. We don’t need to literally be at the table, nor do we need to grant them the full right to making a decision. We only need to be communicating with them and then agree once they ask.
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This agreement does need to depend on conditions so it can’t be done in advance. If Zelensky were poisoned and a puppet put in his place, then we would obviously regret having granted Ukraine full authority to decide to end them. So, (a) we are in full support of Ukraine and discussing with them, and (b) actually agreeing to end sanctions happens when people are nailing down the full agreement.
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There is no way to grant them full authority with all the proper caveats in place. We will be in communication with Zelensky’s government during negotiations. Feedback will be given during. All this can happen at the right thime without any country giving up it’s sovreinity to someone else.
Nobody wants the US at the table from what I can tell, and Russia already entered negotiations (or more accurately is pretending to engage in negotiations) without any promises or preconditions. There are no serious offers yet. You want to give Russia something they aren’t even asking for. Russia hasn’t even gotten to the point of offering up things they know will be refused to try to drive a wedge between Ukraine and the west.
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The sanctions are absolutely, without a doubt, and not even a little bit of a secret, to punish Russia’s bad behavior. Carrot AND stick. We might remove them, and we might leave them in place. There is something about “it depends on Russia’s behavior and their counter offers” that isn’t getting through here.
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Russia wants eastern Ukraine and their nearby fossil fuel fields. 2019:
https://hir.harvard.edu/ukraine-energy-reserves/
“Ukraine today holds the second biggest known gas reserves in Europe. As of late 2019, known Ukrainian reserves amounted to 1.09 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, second only to Norway’s known resources of 1.53 trillion cubic meters. ”
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See any correlation here? Want to take a guess of where Russia’s final preferred map will be? I have a guess.
http://www.energy-cg.com/Ukraine/Ukraine_preconflict_oilgas_situation_Jan15_EnergyConsutlingGroup_web.png
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They are going to take them by force.
Tom Sharf
These are reasons why the US and Nato should not have any sort of “soundbite” promise to end sanctions. No sound bit promise is going to nail down details like whether some specific acts are or are not sanctions. Would a war crime trial after the war be “sanctions”? Or are sanctions just freezing assests or not doing commerce? Which commerce?
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If someone were to understake the idiotic idea MikeM suggest, you can be damn sure Russia would then paint all sorts of actions as “sanctions” even though those promising (us) don’t consider them to be “sanctions”. Not having legalese as to precisely what is or is not a sanction would be fatal. And, obviously, it also cuts Ukraine bargaining position at the knees before Russia has even remotely begin to bargain.
IF Russia requires lifting of sanctions as part of a peace deal with Ukraine AND Russia and Ukraine can come to an agreement both can live with, THEN refusal to lift sanctions means the war will continue to the destruction of Ukraine. Russia will see little choice but to continue the war to a full conclusion.
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Seems some here want to fight to the last Ukrainian.
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If Russia commits the forces it has available, and proceeds to a scorched earth assault that flattens cities and drives the starving population to refugee out to the EU other than the somewhat restrained current Russian policy, Ukraine will be ground under. No other result is possible as neither NATO or the US will commit forces into Ukraine with the sword of nuclear warfare hanging overhead. Ukraine is just not that important to them.
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Plenty of civilians died in these battle zones but it is unclear who really killed them or why. Both sides likely threw in somewhat indiscriminate artillery into contested areas. The people left in these zones are civilians and probably a mix of Ukraine and Russian collaborators, and outright spies. Collaborators are likely to get summarily killed by the opposing side, same goes for suspected collaborators.
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Send in scouting missions until somebody shoots at you, locate the source of the firing, then shoot artillery at them. Repeat hourly or daily. Civilians who happen to be close to where the miltary is hanging out that day may end up in the crossfire.
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Russia probably did engage is killing everyone they saw for a while. It’s just hard to sort out. There is a lot of shoot first and ask questions later going on here. The US killed plenty of civilians. Poke your head up right near where somebody just fired an RPG to see what is happening and it may not end well. Leave a war zone ASAP.
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Mass graves are more likely good behavior from an occupying force as opposed to letting them rot in the streets. People laying in the streets may have been drug there intentionally so somebody can pick them up or perhaps even staged as Russia suggests. There should be evidence those people were left there if anyone wanted to investigate. Eventually this has to happen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcbR1J_4ICg
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #210919): “The Orban regime in Hungary won reelection. It became a referendum on Orban’s promise to block aid for Ukraine. A recent survey in Hungary showed nearly half the respondents found the Russian invasion legitimate.”
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This sounded fishy to me. Hungary has not blocked aid, but they refuse to be a conduit for weapons. And as for approval of the invasion, I found this (Fidesz is Orban’s party):
https://hungarianpolitics.com/2022/03/08/majority-of-fidesz-supporters-say-russia-is-the-aggressor-in-ukraine/
I don’t think this is about Ukraine’s gas and oil fields. Russia has the largest gas reserves of any country, 40 times those of Ukraine at #23.
https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-reserves-by-country/
And Russia (#8) has 200 times Ukraine’s oil reserves (#51):
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-reserves-by-country/
Russia sanctions are a 2 edged sword. It is biting NATO as bad as it is biting the Russians, if not worse.
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The EU has NO replacement for Russian grain, fertilizer, commodities, NG, and oil in any timeframe less than 2 years, if then. Inflation in the EU as well as the US is rocketing upwards at a very destructive rate, in large part due to these sanctions.
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The Russian Ruble has regained all the value it lost when the sanctions were first applied. The Russians are finding a clear path around the sanctions as most of the world has refused to apply sanctions on Russia and are increasing their trade with Russia, notably China and India.
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I see lots of emotions driving the western view towards Russia and little clear eyed and dispassionate thought on how to end this mess with as little damage as possible.
It likely depends on how easy the gas is to get out of the ground. No idea on Ukraine’s gas. It hasn’t been utilized much so it’s possible it is expensive to extract there.
Ed Forbes,
“I see lots of emotions driving the western view towards Russia and little clear eyed and dispassionate thought on how to end this mess with as little damage as possible.”
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Yup. Lots of righteous indignation. Not much real-politic. Look at a map of countries that have joined sanctions; most of the world’s population has not joined the sanctions. Russia will find a home for its exports. The longer the war (and sanctions) go on, the less likely things will return to normal, with ‘normal’ defined as the existing system of international payments, reserve currencies, world bank, etc. Fight to the last Ukrainian indeed, but for what?
“Inflation in the EU as well as the US is rocketing upwards at a very destructive rate, in large part due to these sanctions.”
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I’m calling BS on that one.
Mike M, you are correct. I misread the comment about the support of the Russian invasion being nearly a half of responents. It was nearly a half of the winning regimes supporters.
“Fight to the last Ukrainian indeed, but for what?”
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As Rumsfeld might have said: To.kill.as.many.Russians.as.possible. To punish Russia. To deter Russia in the future. A lethal quagmire will adjust FUTURE calculations even if the ultimate trajectory of this one is pretty much set.
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Give the bully your milk money and they will be back tomorrow.
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There is an assumption here that Russia will just stop at eastern Ukraine. Why? Because that is what they did in Crimea? Because that is what they did in Georgia? Because that is what they did in Afghanistan? Czechoslovakia? These are the same people who built the Berlin Wall to keep people from crossing over. This is not a one-off behavior.
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Ultimately it’s Ukraine’s choice and they have no obligation to fight for western interests. But I don’t see any moral obligation to the rest of Europe to pacify Russia’s aggression but if * Europe * wants to end sanctions then fine. You don’t think Ukraine would understand other’s wishing to deter the same thing happening to them? They are asking for more weapons and more sanctions and the one’s paying the heavy price.
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There is no deal. There is no proposed deal. Sanctions discussions aren’t very enlightening until there is one.
Tom “ I’m calling BS on that one.”
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For the US, inflation was started due to Biden’s incompetence. His Russian policy enhanced it.
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For the EU, they will be driven into the ground by inflation directly attributable to sanctions and the war.
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A huge amount of different commodities come from Eastern Europe and these commodities are now either in short supply or being withdrawn from the European market directly due to the war.
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One link of many…look it up
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https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-04-04/german-grocery-prices-set-to-further-increase-5576983.html
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #210934): ” “It was nearly a half of the winning regimes supporters.”
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Yeah. If a third is nearly a half.
Mike M. (Comment #210937)
The WSJ did say nearly half – a bit of propaganda perhaps. The news part of the WSJ does have an agenda in most things political – so nothing new there.
It was my error, however, in misreading the half of what.
“To.kill.as.many.Russians.as.possible. To punish Russia. To deter Russia in the future. A lethal quagmire will adjust FUTURE calculations even if the ultimate trajectory of this one is pretty much set.”
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Sounds like mostly emotion. The people being punished are mostly Ukrainians. Russia can, and will, ignore sanctions and continue do pretty much whatever it wants if the USA and Europe will not allow their lifting as part of a negotiated settlement. As I pointed out above, most of the world population has not, and will not, get involved in sanctions. Russia will continue to export, just not to Western Europe, USA, Japan and Australia, and maybe not in Dollars or Euros. Russia will not allow NATO forces on its doorstep; something they have said a hunder times over 20+ years. Russia will not give up the Crimea. Yes, it is very ‘wrong’, very unfair, frustrating and very unreasonable. It is also reality. A country with thousands of nuclear weapons is not a school-yard bully. War in the Ukraine is not going to change these realities, no matter how much we might hope it would.
The US and the EU greatly increased the money supply as intentional processes by their central banks. If the money supply is not increasing and a price on an item or several items increases there is less money to spend on other items. When the prices and asset values go up more or less across the board you can and should blame the central banks.
There are a lot of so-called experts and central bank shills out there who will claim that printing money out of thin air has no effect on prices or asset values. None of this makes sense when the central bank’s strategy in reducing inflation is, in effect, reducing the money supply and stopping or greatly reducing the printing of money out of thin air. Big government proponents will, of course, not blame government actions for inflation when they can readily point an unknowing public to some other non-government claimed cause.
Invasions and wars aren’t business transactions. For whatever reason this Russian incursion has struck a nerve in lots of people. I’m a moderate relatively. The media is propagandizing like crazy, The Atlantic today:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/russia-bucha-killings-war-crimes-genocide/629470/
“Russian invaders are now treating the entirety of the Ukrainian population as combatants, as dirt to be cleansed.”
“the streets were strewn with Russian atrocities”
“The targeting of Ukrainian civilians is so ubiquitous that it can only be intentional”
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The NYT did actually do what I suggested and compared old satellite pictures to recent video and it does appear civilian bodies were left laying in the streets by Russians for weeks. Guilty. That is pretty low, even for a war.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-bodies.html
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As I stated before, the US needs to not get carried away here and get sucked into active combat.
Ed, to clarify, you believe that US should not have taken any action in response to the invasion, or just not any sanctions action? Are you perfectly comfortable with Russian invasion of Ukraine or just that you don’t believe the West should take any actions that might be an inconvenience to the economy.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210941): “it does appear civilian bodies were left laying in the streets by Russians for weeks”.
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Was that in areas securely controlled by the Russians? I don’t know that I can blame them for not risking their lives to bury people.
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Yes, the media seem to be cheer leading for WW3. I don’t know why. I suppose that inducing outrage is good for ratings. And it distracts people from all of Biden’s other screw ups.
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But it does look like we are being prepped for permanent sanctions on Russia. No matter how many Ukrainian lives it might cost.
It’s not definitive but the whole town had been under Russian control for weeks. I saw one report where they interviewed people who lived “across the street” in an apartment complex and they said there were executions. Of course nobody asked them why they didn’t move the bodies either.
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Early reports said the morgue had “failed” and that was why a mass grave was dug. I’m no expert but I think it is common for other citizens to ask for and receive permission to remove and bury bodies.
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A PBS report had a girlfriend of one the executed victims explain that her boyfriend had been in the army a year ago and his passport showed he served in the east. Didn’t go over well with the occupiers I guess. With large amounts of devastation in the town the Russians probably lost plenty of people which left them in an unforgiving mood. It’s wise to cleanup your mess before leaving or else there will be a propaganda feeding frenzy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIVLCpLH2iE
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That being said I have seen plenty of video of dead Russians being left by their destroyed equipment and nobody doing a thing. Perhaps not a moral equivalent. There are no saints here.
Tom Scharf (Comment #210944): “It’s not definitive but the whole town had been under Russian control for weeks.”
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Do you have the name of the town?
Phil, to be perfectly clear, NO, the US should not have gotten involved at all. The US has, IMHO, no legitimate strategic interest in supporting Ukraine.
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With the US declaring war on Russia, which is what the appropriation of Russian assets amounts to, Russia is being driven into the open arms of China, which IS a major threat to US interests. The US should be actively courting Russia as an ally, not going to war against Russia.
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The US started this entire mess by pushing NATO membership for Ukraine knowing this was a hard redline for Russian interests.
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National states have the right to protect their interests up to, and including, war. The US has gone to war quite a few times in its history justified by this natural right of sovereign nations to protect their interests.
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While the deaths and injuries to civilians in time of war is regrettable, civilians support their nation in time of war by supplying their nation the means to prosecute the war. As such, civilians are, strictly speaking, combatants. This was the Allied position in WWII for their indiscriminate bombing campaign against the Axis cities. The position that civilians are combatants is reinforced when nations, such as Ukraine, call out for all their civilians to take up arms and fight for their nation.
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War is politics by other means. Sometimes force, as in war, is required to achieve political claims.
EdForbes
Russia doesn’t want us to be their ally! I can’t imagine what we could provide Russia to make them our actual ally but I’m sure we wouldn’t want to give it. I, for one, don’t want to welcome Russian overlords. And I’m pretty sure them being “top dog” would be the price of them being our “allies”.
Bad news for Ukraine
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https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2022/04/03/putin-wont-go-russia-wont-collapse-so-what-will-biden-do-about-ukraine-n1586600
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“ Putin Won’t Go, Russia Won’t Collapse—So What Will Biden Do About Ukraine?
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“ NATO says the military phase of the conflict in Ukraine is far from over. Of course, no one will let Zelensky make peace.
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“Ukraine is not a subject, but an object, where the Zelensky regime is not an actor, but a tool.
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“Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the intentions of the enemy and use the period of the military phase of the operation to continue the methodical destruction of the military infrastructure of Ukraine, and taking into account NATO’s course of prolonging the conflict, it is advisable to consider moving on to the destruction of industrial facilities in the territories of Ukraine that lie outside our interests, especially paying attention to those objects that Ukraine, for obvious reasons, will not be able to restore. Later, such a convenient opportunity to complete the deindustrialization of Ukraine may not present itself.
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“ An “opportunity to complete the deindustrialization of Ukraine.” Putin isn’t defeated or baffled or confused. He’s turning the crank on the meatgrinder. One doesn’t have to read too far into these lines to conclude that Putin hoped that Zelensky would cut a deal on his terms once Russia invaded, but when Zelensky refused to cut a deal, Putin moved to Option B, which is to erase most of Ukraine from the face of the earth.
I said a week ago that the eastern Ukraine army would likely fall apart in about 3 weeks. About 2 more weeks to go to see if my take on the situation is correct. The situation will collapse quickly for the eastern Ukraine army once it starts to unravel.
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Russia is able to heavily outnumber the Ukraine army in the east at many points of contact. Russia can resupply where the Ukraine army in the east is almost completely cut off from supply. Russia is able to continually rotate units off the frontline to rest and refit where Ukraine is under continuous attack with no respite for Ukraine to rest or refit.
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Without reinforcement, the eastern Ukraine army is doomed. It’s just a matter of time.
Ed Forbes (Comment #210949): “I said a week ago that the eastern Ukraine army would likely fall apart in about 3 weeks.
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Rubbish.
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Ed Forbes (Comment #210469)
March 16th, 2022 at 8:32 pm
“My prediction: Eastern Ukraine will collapse within the next 3 weeks, taking a major part of the Ukraine army with it. Food and fuel stocks in the far east are already about gone.”
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That was 19 days ago.
Mike
Time flies when your having fun
Another new development … For the past two days, I have been tracking a different and very sophisticated USAF spy plane circling in the air for hours and hours a Boeing RC-135U Combat Sen It has been just off the coast of Kaliningrad, Russia.
https://www.flightradar24.com/JAKE31/2b62f082
This is 500 miles from the nearest battlefield. Maybe we are just playing head games with the Russians but I doubt it. It’s a mystery as to what we are looking at.
What it does: https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104495/rc-135u-combat-sent/
Just another wild guess on the USAF spy plane circling off Kaliningrad, Russia. Kaliningrad is sandwiched between two NATO countries: Lithuania and Poland. Maybe we want to see if there is any buildup of Russian forces near our allies. These are two of the five NATO countries that share a land border with Russia. They are right on Russia’s doorstep.
Russell Klier (Comment #210953): “Maybe we want to see if there is any buildup of Russian forces near our allies.”
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But Russia does not have much in the way of combat forces to build up; they are pretty much all in Ukraine. Except for the ones just withdrawn from near Kiev. I suppose that we would want to keep an eye out even if there is only a thousand to one chance that Putin might do something crazy.
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Ah, that might actually be as good a place as any from which to keep an eye on the Russian troop movements out of Ukraine. The area involved is pretty far from both Poland and the Black Sea.
“The clear lesson is that Americans should not bliss out prematurely. This is a European conflict. Think Thirty Years War or Hundred Years War. Putin is.” … John Bolton
Russia is winning the war; The atrocities are being committed against ethnic Russian by Ukrainian Nazis. NATO is fighting a proxy war using Ukraine. Those seem to be the popular opinions in Russia:
“Putin Is Losing in Ukraine. But He’s Winning in Russia.“ NYT
“Putin’s Domestic Approval Rating Reaches Highest Level In Five Years“ Forbes
At the onset I said this might end very well, with the collapse of the Putin government. I hereby withdraw that option. My current thinking is that this will only end when NATO cannot stomach any more carnage.
Another topic: I have been reading on this blog about conditions for ending sanctions. The sanctions are not working. Talk should be of how to increase sanctions.
“The sanctions are not working. Talk should be of how to increase sanctions.”
That would be the typical government answer to a failing program – more of the same.
I have read recent talk of more sanctions and also suggestions of going to a war time setting.
Zelenskyy at the Grammys is a bit too much for me. It’s getting a bit unserious and too much like Real Housewives of Ukraine.
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The alleged atrocities to date are fairly routine war madness and there isn’t any evidence this is anything but individual soldiers or units doing bad things. This always happens. There has to be evidence it was directed as policy or by major leaders.
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Russia doesn’t hold back in targeting civilian areas, but that is their MO, and we both left Syrian areas as a pile of rubble. So far the hyperventilating in the media is unwarranted and is more marketing narrative than reality.
Well, well well….Looks like the EU is taking my advice: “The European Commission will propose on Tuesday to EU nations sweeping new sanctions against Russia, including banning imports of coal, wood, chemicals and other products worth about 9 billion euros ($9.86 billion) a year, an EU source told Reuters.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-propose-new-sweeping-sanctions-against-russia-worth-billions-euros-source-2022-04-05/
How can we know if the sanctions are working or not? That would require that we know the purpose of the sanctions; which does not seem to be clear.
MikeM, that is what I have said from the begining of this discussion, i.e., the terms have to be spelled out at the start. Those terms could change, but the change would have to be spelled out.
Having said that I continue to believe that sanctions rarely work, hurt the wrong people, hurt those doing the sanctioning and in the current situation could become or have become a contest in virtue signaling.
I agree with Tom about reporting of the war. I would like to see more reporting from the battle field and divulging what is going on with both sides in this conflict. War is not some heroic endeavor nor are the politicians who are involved heros. Report the facts no matter which side it might effect and let the readers and listeners decide how it matters.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #210961): “Having said that I continue to believe that sanctions rarely work, hurt the wrong people, hurt those doing the sanctioning and in the current situation could become or have become a contest in virtue signaling.”
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It is my impression that well targeted sanctions with achievable goals often do work. But we have often applied sanctions with no clear achievable goals. Those tend to get the most attention since they are often severe and go on and on. An example would be the sanctions on Iraq after the Gulf War. It seemed that we expected Saddam to commit suicide to save his people from the sanctions. And they were politically impossible to remove. Or some of the sanctions on individuals seem to be because we think they are bad people. Those might be satisfying, but they never produce a result.
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I fear that the sanctions on Russia are intended to produce regime change in Russia (assuming that they are not just virtue signalling). As such, they will be endless, will fail, and will produce a great deal of unintended harm. It should be made clear that their purpose is to force Russia to make peace and that they will be removed when that happens. Then they might do some good.
I would say a modest aim for sanctions would be to damage the Russian economy sufficiently as to make the regime think that invading another country is a bad idea. A less modest aim would be to make the current regime less popular and on the defensive. Ultimately, you want a more liberal regime, more willing to engage with a rules-based international order, to replace Putin (realizing that you might have to wait 10 year for that).
Phil Scadden (Comment #210963): “I would say a modest aim for sanctions would be to damage the Russian economy sufficiently as to make the regime think that invading another country is a bad idea.”
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So when do the sanctions get removed? What could Russia do to show that they learned their lesson? How do you decide when the sanctions have succeeded? If there is no way to tell if the sanctions have succeeded, then they MUST fail.
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Phil Scadden: “A less modest aim would be to make the current regime less popular and on the defensive. Ultimately, you want a more liberal regime, more willing to engage with a rules-based international order, to replace Putin (realizing that you might have to wait 10 year for that).”
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My previous questions apply to this also. I don’t believe that sanctions have ever succeeded in such a task. So that is a recipe for permanent sanctions.
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A much more fundamental problem is that this would set us up as arbiter of what sort of government other countries are allowed to have. That is not acceptable.
I don’t know that I’d put it quite like that Mike. I’m struggling to express what I think is my version of your idea there exactly.
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I don’t think it’s profitable, or generally a good idea or productive enterprise, for us to go and overthrow other governments without what we should seriously consider good and sufficient cause by whatever standard we seriously consider good and sufficient.
This said — there is such a thing as right and wrong, freedom and slavery, good and evil. There are governments with proper foundations and governments that are essentially prisons (such as North Korea for example). What is the proper thing to do in the face of that? I wouldn’t categorically say ‘it’s not proper for us to judge’.
Just my thoughts though. Maybe I am wrong.
And it’s not to say that in judging and acting we are without risk of being wrong either. But I don’t believe that that excuses people from trying to figure out the right thing to do and doing it.
We can judge if we like, but I do not think it proper for us to impose our will on the domestic affairs of another nation. Especially since attempts to do that inevitably seem to result in major suffering by the people of those countries. And other than military intervention, they don’t produce regime change.
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” There are governments with proper foundations and governments that are essentially prisons (such as North Korea for example). What is the proper thing to do in the face of that?”
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When have we ever made things better?
Mike,
I don’t think that matters. I don’t think that even if we have dicked it up every single time in the past without fail that that somehow alleviates us from a responsibility to try to figure out what the right thing to do is and to do it.
If we have consistently effed up and made things worse in the past, I think it behooves us to give some serious thought to what we did wrong, certainly.
Look – do you disagree with me that there are governments that obviously have the general consent of those they govern and governments that do not? Military dictatorships would be obvious candidates for governments that do not. I fail to see why we have some obligation to respect the sovereignty of some thug who does not actually have the support of his people but who holds them in slavery and rules by fear and force. It would be morally much different in my view to overthrow Maduro as opposed to Macron.
I do not claim that we have some moral obligation to do regime change on the world in general. I merely claim that it’s conceivable that we might under some circumstances — that it’s far from an absolute that we should never consider such a thing.
Did we not do right when we fought in WWII? Real question.
Let me try to find common ground with you. I agree that we have no business going forth and trying ‘nation building’ on countries where the majority of the people in those countries have no interest in Western style democracy or western liberal culture. We poured our blood and money in the sand in Afghanistan [to no good purpose]. Do we agree on this, more or less?
“When have we ever made things better?”
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Germany, South Korea, Japan. Eastern Europe (via the collapse of the Soviet Union). Iraq. There are counter arguments to Iraq of course, but certainly better than Iraq under ISIS, likely better than Iraq under Saddam. Afghanistan is basically the same. These all require speculative alternate realties. Nation building is pretty messy and an argument that we shouldn’t do it is easy except when nations cause global or regional instability.
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Nobody is really arguing that external forces should remove Putin, but putting pressure on Russia to make their citizens do the dirty work is fair game in my opinion. How far this goes is up for debate.
Oh. Thanks Tom, I should have made that clear. No, I do not support regime change for Russia. I don’t understand what makes us think that Putin’s replacement would be fundamentally any different or better than Putin. I don’t think it’s at all clear that Putin doesn’t have the support of his people, insofar as anybody can know what the people want in a country that has made corruption such an integral part of it’s culture for so long. Putin is a pain in the ass, but I don’t see a clear argument that shows his government is illegitimate with regard to representing the will of his people. I don’t think it is.
I’m getting a bit confused between arguments that sanctions never work and arguments that they must be removed as a precondition or there will never be a peace deal.
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Sanctions are just one tool in the toolbox. Should we just allow Russia to have normal access to the global financial system and pretend their invasion is in alternate universe? I think not. This is closer to taking away a driver license for reckless driving. Access to the global financial system is a privilege, not a right.
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Are everyday Russians going to be hurt by sanctions? Probably. Are everyday Ukrainians going to be hurt by constant artillery bombardments directed and enabled by the Russian government? Yes, literally hurt. Are 4 million Ukrainians affected by the Russian invasion just because they had to leave the country? My sympathy for this line of argument is not high.
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I don’t expect sanctions to “work”, certainly not by themselves. As part of an overall pressure campaign in a close war perhaps they combined with other things will make a difference. But for the most part they are punitive for bad behavior. It’s on the list of “we must do something” kind of things and it is politically impossible to justify not having sanctions in the EU and US.
” I don’t believe that sanctions have ever succeeded in such a task”
I don’t think sanctions by themselves will do it, but I think they were important part of regime change in South Africa. Sanctions are the tool that you can use when you are unwilling to actually go to war. Supplying the Ukraine military is probably the more important tool. War’s tend to improve popularity of leaders, but only if you can keep winning.
As to legitimacy of Putin’s regime – hard to judge. When press is not free and you can poison/imprison the opposition/journalists, then “will of the people” is not as meaningful as in a place with a truly free press.
Phil,
I agree. When in doubt, I argue we should err on the side of caution and humility and leave the regime alone.
Shrug. I think it is still meaningful. It’s just harder to know. Maybe I don’t exactly understand what you mean.
https://youtu.be/4R0i4Eg-Vls
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Biden getting ignored by Obama and co. This is just sad.
Of course we made things better by entering WW2. Arguably South Korea also. Those are beside the point since those wars were not about regime change.
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By the way, for roughly the first 20 years after the war, North Korea was economically better off than South Korea. And for the first 30 or so years after the war, South Korea’s government likely would have met mark’s criteria for forcing regime change.
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We made things better in both Grenada and Panama, which *were* about regime change. Many, maybe most, Panamanians still resent us for invading. I don’t know that we made things better in Iraq; things weren’t all that bad there until we tried to crush them with sanctions. And then we made things even worse for a decade or so. We might have made things better in Afghanistan if we had not stupidly tried to remake their society in our image.
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OK, so what do those things have in common? we put boots on the ground in every case where we even arguably made things better. Both Grenada and Panama already had the political and societal institutions in place to allow them to pick up from where they had been. Afghanistan might have worked out if we let them have their old institutions back; we shall never know.
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I don’t think sanctions alone have ever worked to bring about regime change. And the model for remotely bringing about regime change, like we apparently hope to do in Russia, is likely Libya.
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Xi does not approve of our government. Would China be entitled to try to bring about regime change in the US? Of course not.
Mike,
Are we talking at each other now? Past each other? It seems like it. The government of the U.S. is legitimate. It absolutely is the government chosen by the people. You are way too bright not to have understood what I plainly said above.
This remark is beneath you.
[Edit: It is fine to disagree with me. It’s irritating to hear you ignore my argument in your rebuttals. How about don’t please.]
Note that when we decline to intervene in the internal affairs of a country, we are NOT “respecting the sovereignty of some thug”. We are respecting the sovereignty of a nation.
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And when we do intervene because it is “morally right” then we are imposing our values on a foreign people. Like we stupidly tried to do in Afghanistan.
I’m wasting my keystrokes on a moral subjectivist. Nothings right, nothings wrong, it’s all relative. Sure.
Ciao buddy.
[Relativist, I should have said. Whatever.]
>Mike M. (Comment #210945)
>April 4th, 2022 at 6:38 pm
>Tom Scharf (Comment #210944): “It’s not definitive but the whole >town had been under Russian control for weeks.”
>Do you have the name of the town?
Mike M I believe Tom S was referring to Bucha
mark bofill (Comment #210981): “I’m wasting my keystrokes on a moral subjectivist. Nothings right, nothings wrong, it’s all relative. Sure.”
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I am most certainly NOT a moral relativist. Russia is clearly wrong in Ukraine. It is right for us to help the Ukrainians beat them. If sanctions can help them get an acceptable peace, than I support sanctions for that purpose.
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I generally oppose inserting ourselves into the internal affairs of other countries. I do not approve of punishing the Russian people because we think Putin is a bad guy. I oppose applying endless sanctions on the Russian people in the vague hope that they will get rid of Putin. I especially oppose that when it also likely means starvation of poor people in other countries. I think it foolish to try to overthrow Putin or to encourage unrest in Russia since that almost never ends well.
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When we recklessly apply sanctions we assert our moral superiority while ignoring the great harms done by our actions. There is nothing moral about that.
I dont think anyone in the West has much stomach for policy aimed directly at getting rid of Putin. However, it would be wish to create conditions that ensure his successor is a Gorbachev rather a Putin II.
NATO and Russia are in a fight-to-the death cage match. NATO is only now starting to realize that but the conflict has been going on since Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. Georgia had started talks with NATO in the 1990’s but didn’t get serious until 2003, after the Rose Revolution. NATO sanctions on Russia is not the answer; NATO needs to wage all out economic warfare, like it did to the Soviet Union.
Oh oh…. “One of the most disturbing things I keep hearing on Russian state TV is a repeated prediction that there will be more revelations like Bucha (which they will keep calling “fake” despite irrefutable evidence). They know there’s more to be revealed and are preparing the audience.” https://twitter.com/juliadavisnews/status/1511307653141643264?s=21&t=qWfXQSdvtaPP3y-bhAU_3w
Mike,
Great.
Then I guess you don’t actually believe this:
and I guess this:
has some other explanation as well.
It’d save time, misunderstandings and blood pressure if you didn’t utter arguments you don’t actually believe in. This has been one of the more tedious and least enjoyable exchanges I’ve had here for awhile, so I will be doing my best to ignore the rest of your remarks.
mark,
There is a whole lot of room between moral relativism and moral absolutism. And even a moral absolutist might recognize that others might have equally strong beliefs and feel it is wrong to impose his beliefs on them.
Mike,
Fine.
The WSJ had an article today that presented evidence that the sanctions imposed on Russia are being felt by the Russian people and that the effects are more or less immediate. The article on the whole could be considered pro sanctions.
Yesterday General Mark Milley stated that he believed the war in Ukraine could continue for years. That prediction would appear to be in opposition to the picture painted in the WSJ article. Or maybe not if the scenario is that the suffering of common folk from sanctions will continue for a long time and so will the war.
MikeM
Perhaps. But I agree with Mark that this is moral relativism
That’s saying what is “right” is different for different people. That’s moral relativism.
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Now, perhaps you mean something else. But moral absolutism is the position that somethings just are right and others wrong. When there are disagreements, one side (or both) may be mistaken. But it’s not an issue of that black is white or white is black. And no, the existance of gray doesn’t change this– absolutism really is “black and white”.
Trying to predict the future of this war is like trying to predict covid. It has rapidly identified alleged experts who make over confident assertions and also shown how very few people got it right. You’d have to be in Putin’s head to get the basics right and there aren’t very many people in that place.
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It might be a years long slog and there might be a rapid collapse. We don’t even really know why the Russians pulled out of the west because there just aren’t reliable sources.
What is the Nazi behavior that Ukraine was allegedly doing before Russia invaded? It’s curious that this has never been explained other than throwing around pejoratives and emotional denials. Were they supposedly persecuting Russian speakers and trying to purge them from Ukraine? I have no idea and the western media isn’t very curious.
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It should also be … ahem … understandable that vocal pro-Russia supporters in Ukraine might have gotten a little bit of constructive feedback over the past decade. This subject might even be a bit more emotionally explosive than CRT in schools over there.
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My guess is this is all just Russian propaganda amplifying normal social disagreements to facilitate a war for political objectives, but it struck me that I really have little basis to determine that.
lucia (Comment #210991): “That’s saying what is “right” is different for different people. That’s moral relativism.”
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No, it is not. It is merely recognizing that different people have different opinions as to what is right and wrong. Even if there is one absolute “right”, there is no guarantee that *our* opinion on a specific question is the correct one.
Gorbachev wanted to find a way to maintain the USSR failed long=time experiment with communism. He had some nicely worded ways of doing that that made a big impression with Western liberals. Nonetheless the mighty and powerful state that communism requires would remain. I would hope that a nicer talking Russian leader replacing Putin who was not ready to make fundamental changes would not be so readily accepted as a savior.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #210990): “Yesterday General Mark Milley stated that he believed the war in Ukraine could continue for years.”
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Given Milley’s track record, I am inclined to find that opinion encouraging. I think he previously predicted that the Ukrainians would be overrun in 3 days. And that the Afghan government would hold out for months at a minimum.
Just an aside and not that we need particularly care so long as we use terms consistently, but I read that moral absolutism is actually the idea that actions are intrinsically good or evil regardless of context (I.E., ‘stealing is always wrong’ would be moral absolutism). Moral universalism might be the term we should be using here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_absolutism
I have a hard time keeping the exact semantics straight sometimes.
Lucia,
Thanks, but you are wasting your breath arguing with Mike. I’m done with it. The latest is just another example.
…That’s moral relativism…
It’s pointless. Even though the first idea (imposing our values on a foreign people) has no connection whatsoever to recognizing that different people have different opinions as to what is right or wrong, that’s the reply you’re going to get. It’s at least consistent with the all the rest.
Thanks though.
Tom, here is a New York based socialist commentary on the Nazi element in Ukraine. It is the Monthly Review Online.
https://mronline.org/2022/03/05/understanding-ukrainian-nazism/
I think that socialists like to call attention to anything they do not like as Nazi related even if the Nazi regime in Germany had many elements of socialism where the only difference being direct control of the means of production under socialism and indirect control through regulation and direct orders to private entities in controlling production under the fascist Nazi regime.
The article is over wrought and as such makes obtaining any nuggets of facts and truths difficult to impossible.
Long story short is still “the Ukrainians are really Russians”, evidence is they speak Russian. Most people in the west just stop reading once the Nazi/Hitler pejoratives are dragged out. This is intended for another audience I would guess.
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“The Maidan coup was openly supported and financed by NATO as a way of undermining any Russian influence in Moscow’s own strategic environment. The aim was to make Ukraine a puppet state, commanded from Washington, ending any link with Russia. There was not only the objective to annihilate political, economic, and diplomatic relations between Kiev and Moscow, but also to eliminate cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic ties between both nations.”
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That rhetoric sounds familiar, if mirror imaged. Most people are going to prefer “my local Nazis” over “your outsider Nazis”. You try to let the people decide, and it looks like plenty of Ukrainians are voting with bullets aimed at Russians, at least in the west.
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“Ethnic Russians have been persecuted for the past eight years–even through systematic extermination in some regions.”
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Those kind of assertions need evidence. Killing “Russians” post the 2014 Crimea invasion is closer to an insurgency. Pro-Russia separatists shoot at people and they fire back or vice versa, therefore “systematic extermination of Russian people”. Note the linguistics of Ukrainian Russian speakers = Ethnic Russians. Mexico can claim half of TX and CA with this logic. This is part civil war so splitting the country may be the the only workable endpoint.
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Here is some background from 2018 so it might be a bit more balanced about the situation. Ukrainian rednecks have been fighting the Russians for a while.
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Out of Control: Ukraine’s Rogue Militias
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMMXuKB0BoY&t=835s
Sanctions are forever!
Starting in the 1990s NATO and the West naively brought Russia into its economic realm.
Russia joined:
1992 IMF
1997 G8
1999 G20
2012 WTO
Russia used the West’s economic gifting to build its military, establish a praetorian guard and create a host of oligarchs who are indebted to Putin. That resulted in:
Invasion of Georgia 2008
Invasion of Crimea 2014
Invasion of Donbas 2014
Invasion of Ukraine 2022
Russia has had a penchant for gobbling up its neighbors since WWII, so I am not sure that another leader wouldn’t be just as meddlesome as Putin, but it would be a start. In my uneducated opinion, Russia should remain economically isolated at least until an independent panel of experts examine the DNA of a dead Vlaidmer Putin.
MikeM, I interpret Milley’s comments as the US will not support a peace deal with Ukraine. Indeed, given those comments, Putin is told that negotiating with Ukraine is pointless.
It is likely pointless for Ukraine as they have no reason to trust Russia without security guarantees from the countries that want forever guerilla war against Russia in Ukraine.
I was surprised to see Sean Penn pushing for sending US troops, with Zelensky wardrobe.
MikeN,
I don’t know what about Milley’s comments make you think he’s suggesting the US will not support a peace deal with Ukraine.
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He think the ware will continue. I do too. I think it will continue because Russia doesn’t want peace. That seems to be what Milley thinks to.
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That’s entirely different from not supporting a peace deal if Russia were remotely willing.
I would like to point out that Hillary Clinton supports enduring sanctions so … case closed.
I think the discussion devolved into one of moral relativism. It started with a discussion of sanctions and then into imposing the will of one nation on another which in my view both military actions and sanctions do.
In the current case Russia, is definitely imposing its will on Ukraine and like most wars there is much rationalizing in attempts to justify the actions. The point of what other nations’ actions/reactions should be gets rather complicated. To this point other nations have deferred direct military actions in defense of Ukraine and primarily because Russia possesses nuclear weapons and the threat of WW III. That leaves sanctions as a recourse and along with providing Ukraine with weapons and other aid.
A nation has no legal obligation to come to the defense of another nation, just as an individual has no obligation to come to the rescue of another individual that is assaulted. The morals in these matters would depend on the circumstances and previous commitments to principles. In the case of nations, one could be morally correct, at least in my view of things, in considering that getting involved would cost more individuals lives and not resolve the matter at hand. If a nation had announced and maintained neutrality in all wars involving other nations that could be a moral stand against wars in general, just as an individual could be a pacifist. Totally immoral action in my view would be for a nation leader to use their nation’s involvement to further their politically standing or agenda.
I judge that a moral argument could be made for being opposed to sanctions or giving aid to a nation that is being invaded based on both actions only prolonging a war and taking more lives or destroying lives of the living and destroying property of individuals. One might consider in these situations individual well being over the issue of sovereignty or might feel that aid and sanctions will delay an eventual settlement. If a defending nation, and more importantly the individuals in that nation, without aid or sanctions want to continue to fight on that is their decision to make. Another moral issue in giving aid and sanctions to a defending nation could depend on what that nation does in the heat of battle. Does it draft its military? Does it suspend political parties? Does it reduce the freedom of speech that is antagonistic to the war?
I do not see moral equivalency or moral relativism here; it is a matter of what your morals are. If war is considered inevitable and that war is hell by its nature then there are no morals applicable to wars and people taking this stand can hardily invoke any morals no matter how convenient that might be.
It would be interesting to know what both sides in this war are willing to settle for in their negotiations. An open forum in these matters would help the involved nations know what they are supporting. I wonder why the UN has not pushed for this or really pushed for anything that matters with regards to this war.
MikeN (Comment #211002): “I interpret Milley’s comments as the US will not support a peace deal with Ukraine.”
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I wondered about that. Biden has implied that he thinks the war will go on long enough to significantly impact world food supplies and has supported regime change. We are dragging out the provision of weapons to Ukraine with the excuse that we can’t dip into our own stores, so the rate of supply is controlled by the rate of manufacture. Blinken has indicated that sanctions might outlast the war. It sure seems like the administration is prepping people to expect that this will go on for a long time.
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The question is whether a very long war is merely the expectation of the administration (which is all they own up to publicly) or whether it is the policy of the administration, as you suggest. The latter seems consistent with their behavior, but that is not proof. I hope it isn’t so.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #211006): “It would be interesting to know what both sides in this war are willing to settle for in their negotiations.”
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No negotiator ever reveals that, at least not publicly.
Kenneth,
Thanks for your comment. I will read it carefully and think about it when I have time tonight.
FWIW, I actually was initially responding to this:
And I regret having done so at all at this point. I don’t know what Mike meant by ‘acceptable’ or why this was a ‘much more fundamental problem’. I no longer really care at this point what he meant.
Shrug.
We basically had a collective yawn to the invasion of Crimea. We allowed Russia to have a low impact takeover that yielded little civilian cost, at least relative to what we have now.
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An argument here is that this decision to look the other way only led to even more impactful events, so now the strategy needs to change if we want a different outcome. We could logically analyze the inevitably of each Russian action and say the least impactful tactic is to allow Russia to win and Russia could bite away large sections of its neighbors.
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Do we want a different outcome? Are we willing to sacrifice for it? How much?
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A perfectly valid response is “we don’t care what Russia does until they cross the NATO line” and be very clear in back channels what the response is going to be when that happens.
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What we can’t do is back down once the NATO line is crossed.
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An even more self serving response is actually to fight proxy wars on other people’s lawns to stop the behavior before it reaches the NATO line. I think that is the thinking here, make this war costly. We are effectively fighting the next war now to minimize the next one while more or less accepting at least a partial Ukrainian defeat.
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Maybe people believe Russia will just stop after it has righteously got all its Russia speaking lands back. I’m not inclined to put trust in that.
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The morals of our behavior are very fuzzy but I see this as more chess and less college philosophy debate. The main guiding moral principle is protecting the tribe. The tribe doesn’t want to be ruled by Russia. It’s not much more complicated than that. Proxy wars are gray areas, and Ukraine should be fully aware they are being used.
“I wonder why the UN has not pushed for this or really pushed for anything that matters with regards to this war.”
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The simple answer is Russia is a permanent security council member and they have veto power. Russia likely isn’t interested until there is more clarity on the battlefield.
MikeM
What do you mean by “the latter seems consistent with their behavior?” As far as I can see, the war being long being merely an expectation of the administration is equally consistent with their behavior. So if you mean: what they are saying is equally consistent with both possibilities, then I agree. Otherwise, I’m not seeing what you seem to be seeing.
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Tom Scharf
I definitely think they will not stop after that. At most they would pause to regroup. Eventually we would hear Putin’s theory about why Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania aren’t real countries, are filled with Nazi’s are oppressing Russian speakers. Absent strong protections, Russia would invade them. That’s why the Baltic republics are nervous.
lucia (Comment #211012): “So if you mean: what they are saying is equally consistent with both possibilities, then I agree. Otherwise, I’m not seeing what you seem to be seeing.”
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That they expect a long war would be equally consistent. But several things seem more consistent with dragging things out: (1) Not dipping our stocks to provide weapons. (2) Leaving open the possibility that we might say no to dropping sanctions to get peace. (3) Biden calling for regime change. None of those demonstrate that we want a long war, but all three seem more consistent with that possibility.
“A much more fundamental problem is that this would set us up as arbiter of what sort of government other countries are allowed to have.”
I think it would be better to say that the West very much care about what about sort of governments other countries have, because a world full of liberal democracies is a safer place. It doesn’t mean the West thinks it has a right to try and impose such governments on an unwilling population, but it does mean that West should be trying to create conditions whereby that is the government of choice for everyone.
Phil Scadden (Comment #211015): “I think it would be better to say that the West very much care about what about sort of governments other countries have, because a world full of liberal democracies is a safer place. It doesn’t mean the West thinks it has a right to try and impose such governments on an unwilling population, but it does mean that West should be trying to create conditions whereby that is the government of choice for everyone.”
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I very much agree with all that. It is one reason that I think the US national interest is served by helping Ukraine defend itself.
It may be that in most cases liberal democracies tend toward better outcomes for their citizens, but often that’s a step too far for many countries culture. People really care more about law and order that allows them to live their lives than what type of government they have. Afghanistan and Iraq come to mind. Sometimes an interim autocrat or few is what is best for those living under it. If you could wave a magic wand and replace Putin or even XII with a true democracy chances are in 5-10 years they’d be back to where they are now or worse. They have no history of democratic structures, public service, and checks and balances to ensure that they can function at that level.
MikeM,
I don’t see it that way.
Sure. Our entering full bore could end it faster. Or not. I don’t think or not entering is leans toward our wanting it to not end.
I don’t think doing something utterly idiotic like reducing the bargaining position of the Ukrainians would end the war more quickly. And, I not think not doing this suggest we don’t want the war to end. I know you have a some idee fixe about this, but it’s nonsense.
Biden is a senile fool. I don’t think this means he wants the war to continue. I think it means he’d like people to push Putin out and end the war. He’s mistaken that it would necessarily end the war. But I don’t see it as a sign he doesn’t want the war to end.
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I get that you seem to somehow think totally appeasing the Russians and giving them whatever they want is the way to end the war. It might temporarily end it– at the extent of subjugating the Ukrainians. But the war would restart in 5 years when the Russians would decide they want more.
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I don’t think not wanting to sacrifice the Ukrainians means someone is against ending the war. They just aren’t willing to totally give up everything for the sake of Putin’s imperial ambitions.
lucia (Comment #211019): “I get that you seem to somehow think totally appeasing the Russians and giving them whatever they want is the way to end the war.”
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Yeah, except that I never said anything of the sort.
Incredible video… I have been following this source and trust him. Ukrainian artillery blasts Russian Artillery as it is setting up. Maybe, just maybe the Ruskies are gonna get their butts kicked in the East too.
https://twitter.com/osinttechnical/status/1511867981596434434?s=21&t=4M2J5LcKbCiTZP3xLVg-Qg
It’s 8 AM in Kyiv and I can find no US or NATO spy planes in the air in Eastern Poland or Romania. This is the second day of this. I surmise the fighting in Eastern Ukraine is to far away for them to see anything. There are heavy military transport aircraft and Blackhawk helos working.
Nostradamus time again with happy predictions.
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Putin put in prison by the Russians.
100% increase in British household energy costs.
CSL shares to go through the roof.
Hunter Biden to share cell with Jussie.
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2022 to be 12th warmest year.
angech,
Putin is going nowhere.
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British energy costs will continue to rise until their nutty green policies change, which may well be never; the war in Ukraine just makes the situation a bit worse.
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Neither Jussie nor Hunter will be in a jail cell any time over the next 2 years, if ever; which is not to say they shouldn’t be in prison…. they clearly should.
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No matter the estimated global average temperature in 2022, green lunacy will continue to dominate in every country where it currently dominates. Like all religious zealots, green lunatics are immune to influence by reality.
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Phil Scadden,
Lots of places (including much of the Muslim world) firmly reject the basic principles of ‘liberal democracy’. They prefer a murderous regime based on strict compliance with Sharia, or a murderous regime run by someone like Putin. It is a fools errand to expend time or treasure trying to make liberal democracy an option in these places. I say forget about it and leave them to have the kind of government they want and richly deserve.
MikeM,
Insisting they are guaranteed the end of sanctions before they even ask or even come to negotiations is simply a “total appeasement” move.
SteveF (Comment #211024)
“Putin is going nowhere.
Neither Jussie nor Hunter will be in a jail cell any time over the next 2 years, if ever; which is not to say they shouldn’t be in prison…. they clearly should.”
Factually very true, I did say happy predictions.
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It would be very interesting to see Joe give his son a pardon post midterms.
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The other interesting story in US politics is the apparent increase in the number of electable Republican candidates to mention a few.
Nikki Haley, De Santis, Cruz might try to give it a shot.
Rubio, too smarmy, and Pence, too thick to realize that Republicans are awake to him, are really not in the race.
Trump himself, if his health survives and legal problems are resolved, seems to be making slow progress upwards, though still in negative territory he is the best of the current established leaders in the polls.
Who knows he may crack 50% soon.
angech
Let’s hope not. I was hoping the ill-timed pro-Putin sounding blurts at the beginning of the war would sink him for good with people who might otherwise be borderline.
angech,
There is almost no chance Joe Biden would allow his son to be prosecuted, and zero chance Hunter will ever spend time in prison. Yes, both father and son are deeply corrupt, but they will never suffer any consequences….. much like the Clintons.
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WRT Trump; I remain terrified that Trump will get the nomination, lose the general and, worse, will drive turnout of those who oppose him and allow the Democrats substantial gains in Congress and the individual states. Trump is bad news; not his policies, which are mostly reasonable, the problem is Trump himself. He can’t control himself, and his behavior is most always beyond obnoxious.
Steve,
I think the same thing. I really hope he doesn’t win the nomination when the time comes. Unfortunately I have to admit I think it’s more likely than not that he wins it. But things could change [between now and then].
Correction: By late in the day both NATO and Sweden were flying spy planes near Ukraine’s Eastern border. One NATO plane, NATO11, seems to be monitoring the Black Sea
https://www.flightradar24.com/NATO01/2b6926e9
https://www.flightradar24.com/NATO11/2b6980d9
https://www.flightradar24.com/SVF642/2b69aa53
lucia (Comment #211025): “Insisting they are guaranteed the end of sanctions before they even ask or even come to negotiations”
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That is an unfair spin on saying that the purpose of sanctions is to encourage peace and that they won’t be turned to some other purpose if peace is at hand.
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lucia: “is simply a “total appeasement” move.”
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Wrong, even with your mischaracterization. Saying that we will support peace is not appeasement. Arming the Ukrainians to the teeth is certainly not appeasement.
Russell Klier (Comment #211031)
How useful are spy planes given modern satellite imagery?
MikeM
I don’t consider it an unfair spin. The push to guarantee end of sanctions before Russia has shown the slightest interest is simply to appease them. It doesn’t matter what your reason for wanting to appease them, it’s just appeasement.
Saying that we must guarantee end of sanctions is not saying “we will support peace”. It isn’t even if you keep trying to insist it is.
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We can perfectly well say we support peace without making appeasing moves . We can certainly say it without endless calling for making appeasing moves toward a party who is making zero effort toward peace.
Electronic intercepts on spy planes. Radar. AWACS. JSTARS, etc. Unclear if they are doing all these or not. It can be a pain in the butt for everyone. Accidentally shooting down a US plane flying close to the border is a mistake nobody wants to make.
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One can bet the Navy is listening in the Black Sea as well.
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Of note the US is moving on to other platforms as a big plane emitting large radars are going to be rather simple targets. Drones and space based stuff.
lucia,
I don’t understand your position and it seems that you don’t understand mine.
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I imagine a situation where Zelensky says to us “We have come to the conclusion that it is in the best interests of Ukraine to end the war. We have negotiated an acceptable treaty with Russia. The treaty requires the end of sanctions. Will you end the sanctions?”
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I think that the only acceptable answer to that question is “yes”. Do you disagree with that?
Kenneth,
It’s hard to know without knowing classified information. How complete is our continuous spy satellite coverage of any particular area of interest? … I don’t know, and if I knew I’m sure I wouldn’t be allowed to say.
All things being equal, however good one’s tech is, I’d think resolution will always generally be better if the sensor is closer to the target.
“We have negotiated an acceptable treaty with Russia.”
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1. It depends on the deal.
2. It depends on the deal.
3. It depends on the deal.
4. Go to 1.
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If the deal is complete unconditional surrender because their military has been defeated, then no end of sanctions. You are asking hypotheticals without filling in the vital information that would be known at the time of the decision.
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You keep wanting an unconditional release of sanctions without saying those words, then you say things like “No negotiator ever reveals that, at least not publicly.”. It’s not making any sense.
Mike M. I know you didn’t ask for my input but here goes anyway. I think the US has to hold the US interests paramount. I believe it is in the US interest to maintain [and increase] sanctions long term. While supporting Ukraine is important in my mind, it is not more important than long term US interests.
Electronic signal level falls as an inverse of the square of the distance so being close matters a lot. It’s not hard for the CIA to drive a van into the war zone and listen or get the Ukrainians to do it for them. Visible, IR, and space based radars are all around and have good capability. I worked for a defense contractor in the space division a long time ago and all I can say is they work diligently on this problem.
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The bad guys should be using encrypted communications, but reports are they haven’t been in many cases.
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One assumes it’s not hard to see large military formations driving around and the Russians probably barely bother to hide it since even if all the US capability was missing about 20 people with cell or satellite phones could do the same thing for that purpose.
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Precision targeting information is different. Knowing exactly where mobile targets are * right now * so they can be attacked is different. If you want air dominance you have to be able to take out mobile air defense. It’s very hard. That’s why Russia aircraft are still being shot down.
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One thing really new here is the use of small low cost drones. Artillery spotters, scouting, etc. I have literally seen the same drone I have in use in Ukraine.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #211033)
“Russell Klier, How useful are spy planes given modern satellite imagery”
I don’t have military experience or training, so maybe others here are more qualified to answer that. My impression is that spy planes are very sophisticated listening devices. [Think flying ears] and satellites are sophisticated looking devices [Think flying eyes].
The also receive info from satellites, ground radar, drones and other sources and feed this into onboard mainframe computers
They have a crew of about 30 experienced war geeks who analyze all this stuff.
The final products are transmitted as battlefield maps to front line commanders for targeting and planning.
[All of this post may be wrong!]
https://www.airforcemag.com/weapons-platforms/rc-135v-w/
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104608/rc-135vw-rivet-joint/
I think what I am hearing here about my spy plane and satellite question is that spy planes are better at picking up sound. That is something to which I had not given thought. Satellites can fly directly over a battle area while that could be a problem with a spy plane.
How easy would it be to shot down a satellite? Do satellites have any defense mechanisms? What if Russia shot down a satellite belonging to a NATO nation?
Justice Ketanji Brown confirmed!
‘Ketanji’ is a fun name to say. I know, I’m easily amused.
Shooting down a military satellite is an act of war. Advanced militaries have anti-satellite capabilities and satellites have little ability to evade and are easy to track. At least Russia and the US have tested anti-satellite weapons. The Russians annoyed everybody this year with a test that cause a lot of space debris which threatened the space station.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvdQcDDUV1o
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The US launches a high profile secret satellite, then Russia launches a satellite later that gets very close to take a look at it. It’s all so spy vs spy stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4C-ydEpN58
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The first phase of a real war would be taking out as many opposing satellites as you can. They are expensive to put up and expensive to take out. It’s all very hush hush what the actual capabilities are, one thing for sure is Russia knows rockets. Things like launching satellite full of anti-satellite missiles are possible, etc.
Russell Klier (Comment #211039): “I know you didn’t ask for my input but here goes anyway. I think the US has to hold the US interests paramount. I believe it is in the US interest to maintain [and increase] sanctions long term. While supporting Ukraine is important in my mind, it is not more important than long term US interests.”
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That is a nice straightforward answer.
MikeM
You mean after they’ve negotiated? I already said after they negotiate, we can (probably) end sanctions. That’s Blinken’s position– which you previously disliked.
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But you’ve been saying thigns like this
You are pushing for NATO to agree to to the end of sanctions before anyone has negotiated anything.
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I get that you might not see the difference between negotiating the end of sanctions during the negotiations and guaranteeing them before hand. But there is a very big difference. Insisting that Biden, or NATO or others “should” agree the end of sanctions before negotiations is appeasement for the sake of appeasement. And it would be a counter-productive loss of a bargaining chip.
Kenneth,
You know, I actually never considered that. Spy planes probably actually do listen for and record audio. I was thinking more along the lines of sigint when people were talking about ‘ears’. I don’t actually know why a satellite wouldn’t be just as good for this — for all I know satellites are just fine for this purpose. But maybe somebody knows of a reason they are not that I’m not aware of.
Tom already covered this, but it’s a fun video anyway. Here the U.S. Navy shoots down a satellite using an SM-3.
One reason is audio sound doesn’t travel in the vacuum of space, ha ha. I’m sure everyone knows this but many a sci-fi movie likes their space explosion sounds across space.
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I don’t know what the limits of audio sound through air actually are, but the distances are pretty short. They use those big hand held domes on the sidelines of football games to pickup audio. I think wind is a big deal in dispersing audio along with the inverse square law. I can only hear certain roads near my house when the air is very still.
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I have also seen some applications where lasers are focused on windows and it picks up the slight audio vibrations on the window panel from the room.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/ukraine-russia-lists-goodwill-gesture-for-talks-but-has-a-condition-to-end-war-101649239938256.html
April 8 (In India)
The sides are obviously not close on a peace settlement. Russia is clearly making heavy demands:
(a) amend your constitution to our liking.
(b) give up territory to us.
(c) give up other territory to separatists.
Russia clearly wants what it wants. If Ukraine had been willing to do all that they presumably wouldn’t have gone to war. This war is going to go on a while.
Meanwhile, the Russians have finally admitted they’ve sufferred significant losses:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-says-russia-has-suffered-significant-losses-ukraine-2022-04-07/
That probably means losses sufficiently high they can’t hide them from their own people anymore.
LOL. Thanks Tom. I meant I didn’t know if a satellite wouldn’t be as good as a plane for sigint, for radio / electromagnetic signals. Yes, I definitely agree it’s hard to hear where there’s not enough matter for sound waves to propagate.
Lucia,
Yup. I fully agree. It’s going to be awhile.
This assessment is several weeks old but is a good summary of the war anyway. Written by adults it seems.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russia-crisis-military-assessment-the-weapons-ukraine-needs-most-to-win-the-war/
“So far, the Russian Air Force has shown almost no ability to find, identify, and destroy mobile targets. The fact that the mobile S-300 SAM systems are still operating is a powerful indictment of Russia’s ability to conduct dynamic or time-sensitive targeting.”
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This was a big problem in the gulf war for the US. Saddam firing mobile truck mounted Scud missiles into Israel. We could detect launches, we could find them in satellite data if we looked hard enough but it was never fast enough to target them. Useless.
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The US has made a lot of progress since then in tying all its information systems together to for example allow at a minimum to detect launches, then follow that launcher wherever it goes and target it promptly. Things like ground units having access to near real time satellite surveillance data (now available with a $1000 drone, US cost = billions). Ground units passing exact targeting information directly to loitering pilots and drones for fast targeting. Striking moving vehicles. It’s a huge amount of work and expense.
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These are very interesting technical problems and we have a lot of very smart people working on them but it would be nice to live in a world where it wasn’t necessary.
“I have also seen some applications where lasers are focused on windows and it picks up the slight audio vibrations on the window panel from the room.”
Now I had not thought about that method. How much does a window move from normal sound? Would that work from a laser in space? Does it require some calibration?
They could agree to let the Ukrainian people decide what they want. It would be interesting to see which side objected to that proposal. Have the UN come in and monitor a voter referendum. Let’s say we split the vote between a boundary in east/west Ukraine and they get to choose:
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1. Be part of a single Ukraine
2. Be part of a split Ukraine.
3. Be part of Russia
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There is some overlap there so there might need to be multiple rounds of voting or ranked choice. Some other choices could be on the list, the point being is let the people tell everyone what they want and the tanks get to go home.
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My guess is Russia won’t be a fan. I’d go out on a limb and say the people of Mariupol have seen their support for Russia drop a bit lately.
Not sure it would work from a satellite, but lasers have been bounced off mirrors left on the moon during Apollo from earth for exact range finding. It still works today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment
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I think this was also used to prove we actually landed on the moon to the naysayers. The signal levels are pretty small by the time they get back.
https://wtop.com/science/2019/07/the-experiment-still-running-on-the-moon-and-tv-re-runs-50-years-later/
“You do need to have a high-powered laser, which is going to set you back about six figures, you have to have the right detector, which is 10 grand or more, the right computers, and of course a $10-to-14 million telescope, which aren’t just laying around”
Tom Scharf
I also guess that Russia won’t be a fan of the idea that the people in the ‘breakaway’ territories or Crimea decide. They also won’t be a fan of UN supervision of any election.
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Russia has made noises about the possibility of Sweden and Finland joining NATO. I’d take the Finn’s in a heart beat. Those guys have balls!
Kenneth,
“Now I had not thought about that method. How much does a window move from normal sound?
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Might work with single pane windows, not likely double.
Kenneth,
Wikipedia has a brief article on it here. I read that:
Seems reasonable to me that a laser interferometer could measure the tiny vibration without trouble, but I don’t have any experience with that sort of thing.
Lucia,
Sweden has on several occasions had a spy plane flying in consort with the NATO effort.
Here’s a simple video of a poor man’s version with a photosensor instead of an interferometer.
[Edit: There are other similar homegrown videos]
Here’s an old video with a British accent guy of a working setup, so it’s 007 approved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTpZsKCUvcc
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Like all things it likely fails in practice a lot for various reasons. It’s probably easier to just hack your cell phone and turn on the mic.
Pelosi, Schiff, Garland have covid, yawn. About 15 other left wingers caught it at the same event where almost everyone was maskless. A superspreader around 3 tables or so. The legacy media unsurprisingly gives them a pass. At least the lectures will end. If the geriatric crowd in DC all survive covid (Pelosi is 82) then people are going to gauge the risk a bit more realistically. The death rate over 80 is about 15%. Pelosi is in pretty good health and I’m sure she has her anti-virals handy even if she has the wrong skin color.
While I am not a big fan of them, i hope they recover.
Lucia, I think you are making the same mistake again.
No one is saying sanctions must be dropped now, or at a specific date.
Just that sanctions would end once a peace deal is reached.
If Russia will continue to face sanctions after a peace deal, then that is an additional reason to agree to a deal.
It appears to be a moot point, given the negotiating positions of the two sides. At one point Russia also demanded a change in Ukraine’s constitution to place Russian on par with Ukrainian in schools.
It’s 6:30 AM Friday in Kyiv and the USAF is flying a spy drone, callsign FORTE11, over the Black Sea. It’s a Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk Flying at 53,000 ft. Remember NATO flew an AWACS Spy plane over Eastern Romania most of the day yesterday and it flew in a pattern that also looked to be monitoring the Black Sea.
Once again the USAF drone seems to be crowding the Russian zone. It is flying about 120 miles further North than all other aircraft.
Something may be about to happen.
https://www.flightradar24.com/FORTE11/2b6ac95c
It’s 2:12 PM in Kyiv and I’m still tracking spy planes
The USAF [Jake11] and Swedish AF [SVF64] seem to have spy missions working in tandem. They are flying parallel patterns near Belarus and Eastern Ukraine. Also, the USAF drone [FORTE11] is still looking at the Black Sea.
I have posted screenshots of the current flight logs on Twitter:
SVF645…
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1512387680994271237?s=20&t=s1GtRV-2RPd29-11Q0RJMA
JAKE11….
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1512386919824601091?s=20&t=s1GtRV-2RPd29-11Q0RJMA
FORTE11… https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1512386303345709059?s=20&t=s1GtRV-2RPd29-11Q0RJMA
If they are still in the air you can track them here:
https://www.flightradar24.com/JAKE11/2b6b61b8
https://www.flightradar24.com/SVF645/2b6b743f
https://www.flightradar24.com/FORTE11/2b6ac95c
MikeN
I am making no such mistake.
Someone is saying that we must announce or promise they would end once a peace deal is reached. We should make no such announcement. That vitiates them as a bargaining chip.
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That doesn’t mean we need to make any pre-agreement or announcement before negotiations. When we get to the end of the peach deal, that will be negotatiated. Ending sanctions will surely be a part of it. As Russia leaving Ukraine must be. But that doesn’t mean that gets announced or pre-agreed to.
MikeN (Comment #211068): “If Russia will continue to face sanctions after a peace deal, then that is an additional reason to agree to a deal.”
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I think you omitted a “not” somewhere in that sentence.
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lucia (Comment #211072): “That vitiates them as a bargaining chip.”
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Sanctions are not now a bargaining chip since they are now in dependent of the negotiations.
The Ukrainian position at the table must be that they have no control over the sanctions. The Russians must negotiate in the belief that the negotiations can not result in removal of the sanctions.
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lucia: ” When we get to the end of the peach deal, that will be negotatiated.”
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So the Russians must first agree to a peace deal and then negotiations on sanctions will begin? If so, then there will never be a peace deal.
Huh? Something being dependent on negotiations is by definition a bargaining chip.
(a) Nonesense. But (b) if so, then the decision must be left to NATO make after the peace deal, based on what the “deal” is. It cannot be that the end of sanctions is pre-determined no matter what the “peace deal” is.
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Some possible “ends” are not “peace”. If, for some reason, Ukraine ends up to agreeing to be occupied, that’s not “peace”. I don’t think Ukraine will agree to that– the same way I don’t think Russia will agree to leave without end of sanctions. But that doesn’t mean we “pre-agree”. These are terms of negotiations.
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No. Negotiations on sanctions happen simultaneously with a peace deal.
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And you know what? While I think there will be no peace deal without end of sanctions, I could be wrong. Russia is having lots of losses. Maybe they will be ready to exit and stop slaughtering people with out end of sanctions. Maybe they would stop bombing and leave provided they get to keep Crimea.
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I don’t expect that to happen. I don’t predict it. I think they will want end of sanctions to stop warring. But their wanting end of sanctions and not having them pre-promised with no caveats is what makes it a negotiating chip.
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Not “pre-agreeing” leaves that open possibilities. Pre-agreeing removes flexibility. Removing flexibility is an idiotic negotiating tactic.
I don’t know what to make of the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022. Is it more political theater, or do we actually intend to lend and lease warplanes and tanks and other substantial hardware that we have refrained from supplying Ukraine with previously for fears Russia would go nuclear? I guess we’ll see.
It still needs to pass the House anyway.
lucia (Comment #211074): “Huh? Something being dependent on negotiations is by definition a bargaining chip.”
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Right. And something independent of negotiations is not a bargaining chip.Oops. It seems that earlier when I meant to type “independent” it came out “in dependent”.
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lucia: “the decision must be left to NATO make after the peace deal, based on what the “deal” is.”
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In which case Ukraine has not control.
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lucia: “Negotiations on sanctions happen simultaneously with a peace deal.”
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What does that mean? Negotiations take place either before the deal is signed or after it is signed. If you mean that negotiations on sanctions happen along with negotiations on other aspects of a peace deal, then I agree. But that requires someone at the table with the power to negotiate on sanctions.
Yes, Mark and Tom, I had read where interferometry is the go-to method for measuring very small distances with lasers , but I was concerned about the distance between the laser and target. I then read that there is no upper limit for this distance. I do suspect that, as Tom’s post suggests, in practice it takes some powerful and sophisticated equipment to do it.
It appears that at least some of the Russian atrocities against Ukranian non combatents were rationalized as their being signalers for the Russian positions. If the technology was clear that their positions could readily be detected using other methods those attacks could no longer be rationalized so readily – not that it can be rationalized under current conditions.
The laser is going to disperse in the atmosphere, hitting clouds, dust particles, etc. In the movies they use fog machines so you can see a red/green laser beams, this is actually dispersing the beam and weakening it.
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Also I think it is really hard to maintain a point beam at extreme distances. It’s probably as big as a city by the time it gets to the moon.
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Ironically a good defense against a laser weapon is a mirror. Naturally the details matter, this assumes a perfect and clean mirror with super high reflectivity at the laser’s wavelength. Stormtroopers should be using mirror armor, they fixed that in more recent movies, ha ha.
MikeM
The only way for end of sanctions to be a bargaining chip is if they are not promised before bargaining ends. Then they can be bargained for. You want to pre-promise the end of sanctions. It doesn’t matter that the end only happens after the peace agreement is here. Pre-promising that they will end makes it not a bargaining chip.
MikeM
Sure. So? Ukraine will need to discuss with NATO. Just like a car salesman talks to his boss when negotiating the price of your car. Of course the boss lets him sell you the car and agrees to any reasonable price the saleperson offers you. But the boss doesn’t pre-agree that you will get whatever the salesperson offers. There is always the possibility that the offer the salesperson makes will not be approved.
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The WSJ has a good article today about civilian deaths in Bucha.
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Horrors of Ukraine’s Bucha Laid Bare on Yablunska Street
Russian soldiers were polite at first, but as their losses mounted they turned on the civilian population
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-invasion-war-crimes-horrors-of-ukraines-bucha-laid-bare-on-yablunska-street-11649365202?st=wkmd7jd147dzj5h&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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A common war story. Russians want to be nice as long as the populace is compliant. A bunch of Russians get killed, suspect the population for giving up their positions, then begin a terror campaign because they are losing their friends and have bad local leadership. Everyone with a military background is summarily executed. Civilians are shot on site in certain areas.
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It’s more like gang warfare because of the breakdown of discipline on the Russian side. It’s also hard to believe everything, very hard. The Taliban killed villagers who cooperated with the US. You only have to do this a couple times and all local cooperation ends. It’s entirely believable the Ukrainians killed Russian collaborators as well. The dead don’t have signs on them telling you what happened.
Define “at the table”. NATO and Ukraine are almost certainly in near constant communication.
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Negotiations are verbal. Parties to the agreement discuss on various channels.
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When the verbal agreement seems to be reached, the agreements are written up. Parties pass around the written agreement– which includes provisions. Then, all parties who are to be bound signed.
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Until everyone signs, there is no binding agreement.
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The provisions for peace and the sanctions can all be wrapped up at the same time.
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I don’t know what’s hard about this concept. The same thing happens with bills in Congress. The same thing happens when you buy a house. You want the dishwasher thrown in with the house? You discuss that, put it in the agreement and it goes there.
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YOu want to make the sale contingent on the bank approving the loan? Put the contingency in. This is not hard.
lucia (Comment #211080): “But the boss doesn’t pre-agree that you will get whatever the salesperson offers.”
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I don’t think that is true. I am pretty sure that if you and the salesman agree on a price, it is binding. Otherwise, the dealership is guilty of bad faith bargaining.
MikeM
Nope. Salesman always tell me they will need to get the dealer’s approval. It’s not bad faith if they tell you that they will need to get the dealers approval.
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There is generally good enough communication the salesman knows. But they always go back to submit the final deal with the dealer– always have when I’ve bought a car.
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You can also walk out if there was any misunderstanding about what the written agreement will be. I’ve seen “misunderstandings” about interest on loans, and sent things back to the “dealer”.
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Until you’ve signed, the deal isn’t done. That’s the way negotiations work.
If sanctions go away, Russia will use its windfall profits to rebuild its military. Russia has had a belligerent attitude toward its neighbors, NATO and the US throughout Putin’s reign. The US must not go back to “business as usual” with Russia, no matter the outcome of the Ukraine negotiations. We cannot let Russia reap profits from the West as long as it is bellicose at its core. If you want to eat at our table, you abide by our house rules.
Is the CIA running the Russian missile targeting campaign? How do you launch a missile on a train station that has been full of people trying to flee for days and days? Then the back of the missile has “For The Children” painted on it? Wow. That is beyond nuts, it’s like really bad fiction.
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Really, it’s so out there that one questions it. There is little doubt that the Ukraine military is using trains to transport equipment but Russia might as well have texted CNN and told them to setup cameras for a major propaganda event.
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“Moscow has denied targeting civilians in its military assault on Ukraine and has called the video and photographic images of Russia’s alleged targeting of civilians in Bucha and elsewhere staged.”
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The outrage cup is going to overflow soon and it’s quite unclear what is going to happen then. One likely outcome is Ukraine is going to find some Russian citizens for payback, then the war escalates to “protect Russian citizens”. This is how these things get out of control.
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People need to maintain discipline, the Russians are tarring their reputation for a generation here. Let them do it.
On the salesman talking to the manager
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/what-happens-when-a-salesperson-talks-to-the-manager/
This is the SOP.
It doesn’t mean a customer shouldn’t want to talk to the salesperson. It doesn’t mean the salesperson can’t bargain. But not all parties to the detailed negotiations need to be “at the table”. Some can get up and confer.
This is SOP in negotiations.
lucia (Comment #211084): “Salesman always tell me they will need to get the dealer’s approval.”
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Of course they do. But if the salesman says that, goes on a coffee break, then tells me that the manager agreed, I am entitled to assume that he speaks for management and that the deal is binding.
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The important thing is that the Russians know that sanctions are open to negotiation and that they can trust that anything agreed to will be binding.
Car deals are the worst case of good faith negotiating, although it changes dealer to dealer. I’ve had both good and bad experiences. The salesman pretty much knows what deals will be accepted and which ones won’t and doesn’t bother bringing duds to his boss. However there are some things like trade-in value or loan interest rates that have to be OK’d. Many customers just care about a monthly loan payment amount and then there is bickering between high sales price with a lower interest rate and which fiefdom gets how much of the profit. Lease deals have enough degrees of freedom that who knows how much you are really paying for a car?
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I basically only buy cars on a cash deal, no trade in, and negotiate on the out the door price to prevent the usual miasma of financial land mines that the dealer has. This keeps my head from exploding. Looking at cars now, many are going for MSRP or more due to supply chain woes, but used car prices are also sky high.
The link below from the Washington Post references claims of Ukrainian soldiers shooting captured Russian soldiers in their legs. I have noticed other articles about other claimed incidents of Ukrainian soldiers doing violence against captured Russian soldiers.
I would hope that confirmed violence of this kind on both sides of this war are publicized, for no other reason than showing what happens in wars are actions that in normal times would not likely occur and that wars are nasty and should be avoided.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/28/ukraine-russia-pow-video/
Negotiating with car dealers is probably not a good analogy for a peace negotiation. The car dealer negotiates every day while the buyer does it (for a car anyway) maybe every 5 years or longer.
I make my conditions clear when I walk into the car dealership. I have a best price from a research source in my possession and I ask the dealer rep for that same information. I ask him if he or she can make the deal without the ploy of going to their boss. If they say yes we proceed if they say no I tell them that in that case I will go elsewhere. I would usually tell the rep something that my much nicer and friendlier wife did not like me say and that was that I am here to buy a car and not be your friend.
In todays car buying environment this approach might not work and I would thus postpone buying a car.
The last several cars I bought via email negotiation (I will not answer the phone) and ended up buying out of town. I do a test drive but usually just leave. All the dealers have an internet person who negotiates these type of deals. For whatever reason I have noticed that out of town dealers tend to negotiate quicker and fairer. The in-dealer experience is pretty miserable for me, intentional delays to induce psychological commitment or something.
“The last several cars I bought via email negotiation (I will not answer the phone) and ended up buying out of town.”
That is probably how I will buy my next car.
I seldom had a trade-in to negotiate even when we always had a car for the wife and one for me. My wife insisted that they go to the kids. One car (a Buick LeSabre) was used at different times by every member of the family then sold by the last family user to a friend who then sold it to a friend of his. I was considering getting rid of it after the fourth to last user but relented by having the computer and fuel pump (which was in the fuel tank) replaced. After that it appeared the car would run forever.
MikeM
That sounds like a change in position on your part. Of course everything agreed on is binding.
With end of peace negotiations, the agreement is the final written thing everyone signs. It’s not earlier things. Otherwise, there can be varying claims of what was agreed on.
There was a written agreement at the end of WWII
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-surrenders-unconditionally-to-the-allies-at-reims
These things are done in writing.
lucia (Comment #211098): “That sounds like a change in position on your part. Of course everything agreed on is binding.”
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It isn’t.
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lucia: “With end of peace negotiations, the agreement is the final written thing everyone signs. It’s not earlier things.”
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THE agreement is written. But there must be *many* agreements on various point before you get to THE agreement.
MikeM
These are provisional during negotiations. Somebody might always say, Now we move on to X. We want “X”. And then you may have to step back to W because whether or not they get W depended on X.
Also, no points of negotiation need to be done before negotiation even starts. You’ve been saying things like this
And, in context, you sure as shooting seem to be suggesting the say these things now. And you sure and shooting seem to be unhappy that Blinken doesn’t get out in public now< and say things like "If X happens, we promise sanctions will end." . Biden, Bliken or others making promises now is counter productive. It can only lead to the appearance of broken promises which is precisely what will make the other side think people won’t stick to negotiated agreements.
Several car dealers refused to make offers in e-mail or over the phone, insisting I come in to the dealership to discuss.
The issue over promising end of sanctions, is I feel that US/NATO/EU doesn’t want to end sanctions or the war regardless of what Ukraine wants. If the existence of sanctions is placed under Ukraine’s control, then Ukraine has a strong bargaining chip. How strong is up to debate, since the ruble is stronger now than before sanctions were put in place.
Without this promise, it is really the US that is in control of negotiations.
lucia,
And who is going to enforce the agreement? (real question). The Russians and the Soviet Union before them only follow supposedly binding agreements as long as it suits them. If the Budapest Memorandum had actually been binding on the Russians, then they never would have annexed Crimea, much less anything else. They also deny that they are violating an agreement or treaty as long as they can rather than formally withdrawing. The obvious reason for Ukraine joining NATO is that they don’t trust the Russians to keep their word.
The bio labs in the Ukraine were originally financed and constructed by the Soviet Union. Our initial involvement was supposed to be making them safe(r). Eliminating any bio-research capability in Ukraine would have left a lot of trained people looking for work wherever they could get it. Probably not a good idea.
MIkeN
In which case, I assume you refused and they didn’t sell you a car. That’s part of negotiating. Sometimes no deal is made.
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They can’t be placed unilaterally under Ukraine’s control because it’s not Ukraine’s act. This can be negotiated as we go along. That’s a bargaining chip.
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Peace negotiations overall are going to be complex. There is no way to make them not complex. But saying Ukraine gets full control of NATO, the EU or the US ending sanctions is like saying a husband has full control of giving away the keys to his wife’s car as the tradein. Maybe the wife will be willing to give it away in the end, but she might have her own conditions. She should retain final say and it can be contingent on what the agreement is. The husband and wife can be in communication. She can let him know the circumstance in which she’ll give up the car.
DeWitt
That issue seems prominent in the proposals from Zelenky’s side. He’s suggested a subset of NATO countries (including us.) I think I read Turkey. Etc. It’s clear there needs to be an enforcement clause under the circumstance.
Because they haven’t generally.
Trump may crack 50% soon.
Lucia.
“Let’s hope not. I was hoping the ill-timed pro-Putin sounding blurts at the beginning of the war would sink him for good with people who might otherwise be borderline.”
SteveF
“WRT Trump; I remain terrified that Trump will get the nomination, lose the general and, worse, will drive turnout of those who oppose him and allow the Democrats substantial gains in Congress and the individual states. Trump is bad news; not his policies, which are mostly reasonable, the problem is Trump himself. He can’t control himself, and his behavior is most always beyond obnoxious.”
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I’m a turncoat.
My sense of fairness demands that he be given a second proper chance without all the bluster and rubbish thrown at hi m by the Democrats , press and establishment.
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He has been abysmally treated and defined and ridiculed.
his behavior is obnoxious, he is petty and vain at times but I would rather have a petty, vain and obnoxious person trying to do the right things most of the time than the sycophantic and non truth telling Democrat and republican options.
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one good shake up and then he is gone.-
Admit it everyone, life was more fun and exciting with Trump in than now.
Was that Gomer Pyle or Forest Gump or Garp ?
Angech,
Trump genuinely wanted and expected Mike Pence to overturn the election. In my view, that would have (at best) set a damaging precedent that would continue to hurt us long after any [other] impact of Trump had disappeared and been forgotten. Had it happened, we would see Vice Presidents overturning elections regularly for the rest of forever. The damage to our Republic would have been profound. It took me till the end to understand how unfit the man was for the office, regardless of the fact that many of his policies were good.
I am done with Trump.
It doesn’t much matter – I really don’t believe he would win the general election. He might win the primary is my only concern.
mark bofill,
That’s what I think too.
I hope to *** that both parties manage to nominate solid candidates. I’m afraid neither will.
Lucia, yeah. But who among the Democrats today could amount to a solid candidate? Remember the clown parade of candidates from the last go round, and of course Joe Biden seemed to be the best of them.
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Never thought I’d miss Obama. Yet here we are.
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Maybe DeSantis or somebody will prevail. We can hope.
Mark,
I’m sure there are democrats who could hypothetically be a good candidate. But when a party holds the presidency, it is very difficult to get anyone nominated other than the sitting president. So I despair of the Dems replacing Biden with a good candidate. (No: Kamala is not good.).
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Let’s just hope the GOP not only sees Trump is no good, but sees it early enough for people to be looking at several contenders for the nomination when the time comes.
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I’ve always hoped for Thor to toss his hammer and take Trump out. It would make things simpler. But these pagan gods just don’t cooperate.
The Dems will get Biden not to run if they possibly can. Maybe they’ll manage it. Maybe the poor man will have had enough or lost enough of his faculties by that point not to care.
The trouble with the hypothetical good democratic candidate is that I doubt they could carry the primary. I think anybody who [could] run the far left progressive gauntlet to win the primary would be too far left to win, particularly after President Biden. Unless voters are left with another really unpalatable option, such as re-electing Trump.
It’s a mess.
Maybe I should try getting drunk and having a bonfire. I’ve heard pagan gods like that sort of thing.
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[Edit: They (Dem party) could always use Hunter to wipe Joe out. I’ve read that some think that’s what might be beginning to happen now, actually.]
angech
I’m more concerned about how the presidency affects the entire US and the world than for “fairness” to Trump. He should not be president again. It will be bad for the country.
Trump->Biden->Trump is 12 years. That’s much too much time with really truly presidents!
If a good candidate for either side emerges then hopefully they will get up.
De Santis, Haley for the Republicans.
Elon Musk, anyone?
Bill Gates, no.
Zuckerberg??
That Hawain girl for the Democrats?
Bill Barr.
Will Smith or the other man in black, Billy Bob Thornton might do a Ronald Reagan for the Democrats.
I would vote for them.
Tom Cruise??
The Royal Danish Air Force’s entire fleet was supplied by NATO countries. Backbone is 33- F-16 Fighting Falcons from General Dynamics. They also have 4 advanced, stealthy F-35 Lightning IIs from Lockheed martin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Danish_Air_Force#Current_inventory
They have recently deployed 4 F-16s to fly with NATO: “Denmark’s F-16s to deploy for Nato’s eAP mission in Lithuania”
https://www.airforce-technology.com/news/denmark-f-16s-deploy-nato-eap-mission/
“The jets and 70 personnel will join Polish and Belgian F-16s and operate out of Šiauliai Air Base.”
Denmark has a permanent representative at NATO with a very active Twitter account: “Denmark at NATO @DK_NATO”
https://twitter.com/DK_NATO?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
angech
Will Smith?
Actors seem to make good Presidents.
Ronald Reagan.
Alec Baldwin.
Will Smith has the charm, style , dress and sense to make a good President. Despite anger issues he stood up for his wife when she was insulted.
Sean Connery , unfortunately deceased and Arnold Schwarzenegger had gravitas and presence although Annie might not qualify?
He was married to a Kennedy which would help
And he might be so entertaining. A president deciding to slap a reporter who asked an inconvenient question would give us something to talk about.
Seriously? There is some weird going on with Will and his wife. What he did is not “standing up for his wife”.
Will’s wife may be an emotional abuser….
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[Edit] and gets it on with the son’s friends…
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There’s probably a good reason for his anger issues and the solution is divorce.
I might could think about voting for Elon. He wouldn’t run. He’s got bigger fish to fry like getting humanity to Mars and reforming Twitter. I mean, how much can we really ask of one man.
[No, South African by birth. Disqualified.]
DaveJR,
I think Will needs individual therapy without his wife around. A good therapist might very well manage to get him to escape that wife. If their marriage was really truly open, I’d be like “well…. ok”. But I’ve seen the videos. That’s not what he wants. She’s got some sort of spell on him.
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His career is at least temporarily over. (Actors can come back. It happens.) But he has enough money to live, so financially he will be fine. But he needs to get away from Jada– and not fall for someone similar immediately after. With luck, and effort. (It will take luck though. He needs somethign that makes him see that he needs individual therapy and some break from Jada.)
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She probably also needs a therapist. Acting as an armchair psychologist based on videos and news reports (which we all expect to be 100% accurate. : ) ) , I don’t hold out much hope for her “healing”. Her healing would require her losing everything first– but she hasn’t lost much.
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Jada as first lady? Oy!!!!
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Still, one thing is for sure: Will Smith should not be US president anytime soon. Maybe if he gets himself cured and turned around, he could grow into something useful in 20 years. But he will be too old then. And while actors can be good presidents, in the US it’s better to first be a Governor, not just become president.
mark bofill,
I’ve been cheering Elon on this year. I wasn’t previously a fan. But I’ve been a big fan ever since this:
lucia and mark,
Unfortunately, the worship of the Norse gods involved human sacrifice, not just drinking a lot. The Vikings hanged victims from oak trees for Odin, for example.
Schwarzenegger was born in Austria so he’s out for President also.
Human sacrifice you say. Hmm. I have a little list…
No, I guess that won’t do. No lightning bolts for us.
I don’t really know much about Elon Musk’s views. He seems to understand from the receiving end how government can make conditions bad for manufacturing. He’s purported to be a free speech absolutist. Some of his companies have done impressive things. He’d at least be worth looking into in my book, were he eligible and interested. But alas.
Bold prediction with no real foundation: Mark Cuban goes after the Dem nomination in 2024.
I used to think Musk was just a poser, but he’s shown time and again he isn’t afraid to stick it to the establishment when he didn’t need to. He brought Starlink to Ukraine, and then refused to censor it. He seems to be a man who stands by his principles, even when doing so is damaging.
Elon is doing much more for humanity not being president.
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I’m all for the Thor solution to Trump. Stop the Steal was the end of Trump support for me. I get it that some people really believe the election was stolen, so that doesn’t bother me, many on the left think other elections were stolen without evidence. It’s the people who are smart enough to know the election was very likely legit (enough), have no evidence, and still want to overturn the election that are a problem. It’s a bit of group psychosis.
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DeSantis is the most likely contender, the left has been trying to take him down for over a year now. He’s the sane Trump. Not sure anyone can hold up to years of political smearing though. It amazes me people want to.
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I find it very hard to believe that the left would put somebody up who isn’t to the left of Biden which would make it hard for them to win. Harris needs to be hidden away, she’s become pretty unlikable.
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Zelensky could probably get elected over here before 99% of the other candidates on both sides, ha ha.
“He’s purported to be a free speech absolutist.”
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By today’s standards, yes. After he got on Twitter’s board there was a bunch of hit pieces on his views in every left leaning media outlet, they all use “free speech” in scare quotes now as if it is some communist propaganda.
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I never liked the phrase “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it” but I think this applies to the recent rethinking of free speech. It would be an interesting exercise for Musk to buy a controlling share of Twitter and invert the thinking on allowable content to be right leaning and banning of left leaning thought as “dangerous”. The howling that would happen would expose the blatant hypocrisy in place now.
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Thank God, Thor, or whoever, for the Supreme Court. These people are the real defenders of free speech and equality under the law. Trump’s crowning achievement, although he probably barely cared.
As for Twitter, which I don’t use so disregard as necessary, there ought to be an opt-in policy for content moderation. We don’t need to have some uniform committee that decides for everyone what can’t be viewed.
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Moderation is probably necessary as all these places turn into toxic sewers either through trolls and bots or just the totality of people who have too much time on their hands and are very angry. The reality is the vast number of people will likely opt-in and anyone can opt-out at any time to see what that’s like at any time or to view info they know is not showing up. The point is to make content moderation selectable and individually customizable.
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Things like the banning of Trump and Hunter Biden affair need to be corrected. I told my phone to stop putting in Trump stories in my news feed but that is my preference. It was mostly hysterical hit pieces anyway. That was going on for years and it got so tiring to sort it out that I just stopped it. My choice.
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I also found it quite interesting that there was never an option to stop stories on social justice.
Obvious entrapment efforts by the FBI lead to two not-guilty verdicts in the Whitmer ‘kidnapping’ case, and two hung juries for two other defendants. There were more FBI informants and agents involved in the planning an execution of the ‘kidnapping’ then there were ‘domestic extremists’. I predict there will be more not-guilty verdicts and dismissed charges.
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FBI entrapment is blatant, clearly criminal, utterly dishonest, and frowned upon by the public. Ultimately the FBI will suffer substantial political consequences. I note the FBI was deeply involved in instigating the January 6 riot as well. Like the CDC and the FDA, the FBI is an agency which actively promotes a leftist political agenda.
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1) Defund, 2) shrink, 3) restrict legal jurisdiction, and 4) fire most all managers of these Federal agencies, are the best options when Republicans next have control of Congress and the White House. Most of all: the law should be changed so that any FBI involvement in entrapment leads to long jail sentences for the perpetrators and their immediate supervisors. The FBI must change.
SteveF,
You mean become what it’s supposed to be but never was? To quote a line from a cheesy, short lived fantasy TV series, Wizards and Warriors: “Does the phrase ‘fat chance’ mean anything to you?”
I’m with DeWitt. I won’t say the FBI does nothing but gestapoism, yet I will say the FBI have basically been the political police since the beginning. It’s just that they are leftist gestapos now instead of rightist gestapos.
I like your solutions Steve. It’s either that or abolish, and I expect they do enough useful things that it’d be a net negative to abolish them. Just trim them down so they can’t get up to so much mischief.
mark bofill,
I wouldn’t say the FBI does nothing. I would say that half of what it does seems to be politically motivated garbage. The FBI desperately needs to be reigned in, and its actions restricted to interstate and international crime….. and no entrapment efforts or anything with the smell of entrapment. The FBI needs to stay the Hell away from defining parents yelling at school boards as ‘domestic terrorists’, and focus instead on human and drug smugglers, organized criminals, Muslim terrorists, and the like.
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That said, I agree it will not happen unless Republicans control both houses and the presidency. But woe be the FBI if that happens, even if the negative career consequences among FBI scumbags are richly deserved.
Desperate times can shine a spotlight on unlikely heroes… Video of Isolated Ukrainians using the Starlink system that Elon Musk established to reconnect with their distant families. https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1512901036498989057?s=20&t=Iy4XPWQvxefI-r6P8XM_tA
The FBI did some near entrapment of domestic jihadists as well. Didn’t follow it close enough to really know but some of it sounded quite suspect. Entrapment is pretty shady and doing that for political crimes needs to be avoided at all costs.
Germany has finally figured out that Russia has been at war with NATO for 20 years and Berlin is only 300 miles from Kaliningrad. While I agree that Norwegian entry into NATO would be a positive development, the really positive developments are happening in Germany:
They are dramatically increasing their defense spending:
“…an increase in annual defense spending to more than 2 percent of gross domestic product….. The announced increase translates into an annual defense budget of about 71 billion euros ($78 billion), up from about 47 billion euros ($50 billion).”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/06/germany-defense-spending/
Norway has had a defense budget of $7.3 billion in 2020, which was 1.94% of its GDP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Armed_Forces
So Germany’s INCREASE in defense budget [$28B] is four times Norway’s TOTAL [$7.3] defense budget.
Even more importantly, Germany is planning on halting Russian oil and gas imports.
“Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression runs on the money Russia gets by selling fossil fuels to Europe. And while Ukraine has, incredibly, repelled Russia’s attempt to seize Kyiv, Putin won’t be definitively stopped until Europe ends its energy dependence.
Which means that Germany — whose political and business leaders insist that they can’t do without Russian natural gas, even though many of its own economists disagree — has in effect become Putin’s prime enabler. This is shameful; it is also incredibly hypocritical given recent German history.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/opinion/germany-russia-ukraine-energy.html
“Germany could end Russian oil imports this year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, signaling the urgency driving Europe’s biggest economy to wean itself off energy from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-could-end-russian-oil-imports-this-year-scholz-2022-04-08/