xzar_monty

It is instantly refutable, in practice, by almost everyone in the world. Put them at gunpoint and say they will either die or convert. Nearly everyone will convert.

Certainly a big factor that, yes. The US is also an outlier in the sense that it doesn't have long traditions worth mentioning (except indigenous traditions that have been pretty much destroyed), so it has been "built up from scratch" to a much larger extent than almost any other country in the world (well, Australia obviously comes close, with equally awful results for the indigenous traditions and populations). This is a fascinating subject and could go on for ages, but let's not get there. One thing I'll say, though: the question of the individual vs. collective manifests itself interestingly and on many levels. For example, the Western existential angst of the individual is not a common phenomenon in "the East", mainly because people view themselves in such a different way: the focus is not on the self, it is on the social group they are part of. As for social cohesion, trust etc., these things are also dictated by many factors, one of which is, surprisingly enough, climate: Finland, for example, has a very strong tradition of social trust and helping out, which has (perhaps) only very recently started to erode. Well, if you lived in Finland in the 1700s, say, and you were in a bit of a bother and it was winter, without help you were going to be dead very quickly, and everyone knew this about everyone, and this influenced the culture quite a bit. Contrast this with a climate where you can pick fruit from trees most of the time -- it produces a different outlook. And also, while it cannot be proven, a pretty strong case can be made that the deep Japanese ideas of impermanence stem from the fact that there is so much seismic activity in the area, so you better build your home from bamboo and paper and not be too attached[*] to anything in life. All in all, fascinating stuff, sorry for rambling. (And btw, while there is much about the US to admire, I would never ever want to live there. Even all my visits have been quite sad in many ways, much more so than my visits almost anywhere else in the world. There is so much that is so obviously so amiss, and I cannot even see any attempt to try to fix any of it.) [*] How does the Zen master send email? Without attachments.

Yeah, it's crazy, I fully agree, but it wouldn't be any better if there was no war in Ukraine. I'm quite certain that absolutely none of those legitimate issues would be addressed even with peace in Ukraine. The Imperial States of America does all sorts of strange things, like jails a larger proportion of its citizens than any other country in the world -- China, Iraq and all those included. But then, it gets some pretty handy slavery work out of the prison system, so I suppose that's a bonus. There are also all sorts of positive things in the world that the vast majority of countries (or, in some cases, just a vast majority of so-called Western countries) are a part of or have, but the US does not. Go figure. A great country with a pretty substantial "but" right after the epithet "great", I'd say.

It is impossible to point to a specific video or interview, simply because the problem is in ignoring. My sense is that he never once even suggests that Trump's constant and outright lying in any way invalidates him (Trump), and that is something he definitely should say because he is so adamantly against lying. He should be saying something along the lines of "This man is a liar, stay away from him", but he never does anything of the sort -- that I know of. Compare this to how keen he is to point out untruths elsewhere, in people who disagree with his political views. That's not very honest, I would say, and it looks particularly bad because he makes such a show about honesty. This truthful stance of course didn't keep Peterson from claiming "I'm an evolutionary biologist" in a BBC interview, although he is nothing of the sort -- he's a psychologist.

Here's something that's useful for everyone to know: psychological studies indicate that people, as a rule, want justice to be served. However, when they have to choose either justice being served or their friend getting/remaining out of trouble, they overwhelmingly choose the latter. It is precisely this dynamic that explains the Larry Nassar case: horrendous as his child-molesting crimes were, people around him, those that he worked with and was friends with, didn't want him to get into trouble. It is very sad. (So, from this you can probably guess what the same people would be saying about Obama.) There are weaker versions of this strange dynamic, too. One good example would be Jordan Peterson. He is an extremely staunch supporter of being truthful: he constantly stresses how important it is to be truthful and to not lie. So far so good. However, politically he happens to be a right-wing conservative, and from this it follows that whenever he discusses Trump, he is happy to ignore Trump's constant lying about anything and everything. He is also happy to ignore this enormous contradiction in his own behaviour. (If there is evidence to the contrary, I would be happy to see it.)

Well put. The term "witch-hunt" itself is enough to disqualify the claim as one worth taking seriously.

There are also some extremely interesting separatist movements either budding or gaining more foothold inside Russia. Of course it is impossible to tell whether these will ever amount to anything, but I find these processes very heartening: ethnic Russians appear to exist, politically speaking, at a level of inactivity somewhere between Stoicism and catatonia, but non-ethnic Russians seem to be recognizing in ever-increasing numbers that they are used as cannon fodder and that Russia really has and never had any respect for them whatsoever, as human beings. (There is a saying in Finland that the imperialist Russia is nothing but a huge "prison of the peoples", but that may be an international saying and everyone else may well know it, too; I just haven't heard it in international contexts.) Potentially, areas like the rich Sakha, maybe, and definitely whole hosts of various peoples are looking at themselves and Russia(ns) and thinking that we want to get out of here ASAP. This is part of the same process that you describe in relation to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Of course it poses huge geopolitical problems, too (nukes), but it is also one of the best things ever to happen inside Russia... should it ever amount to anything serious. We shall see. As for your question related to "what did they do with the country after Saddam was toppled?", that's the classic problem that all revolutionaries also have to face. It's much, much easier to bring the reigning regime down than to create something stable afterwards. Interestingly, by the way, from a psychological point of view it does appear that the people who are particularly good at bringing about revolutionary measures and processes are most definitely not the people you should trust with the construction of a stable new nation. Which makes sense, when you think about the characteristics required. Of course it's different with multinational entities like Nato or the coalition that invaded Iraq, but the problem still remains -- as was amply demonstrated.

Oh, I remember that game. When the going gets tough, Thorin sits down and sings about gold... Some years after that, there was also a Lord of the Rings text adventure game; or The Fellowship of the Ring game, to be more precise. I started playing it with great expectations but very quickly found out that it was terrible. It was also very buggy, and this was at a time when I hardly knew what bugs were, or that they could even exist. Man, that game was not a good experience! The same company also came out with a game called Shadows of Mordor, or something like that, but I hardly even tried that one. But I did remain fond of text adventure games for some time. The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves... I wonder if anyone anywhere remembers those titles, from (I think) Magnetic Scrolls. They were pretty good, for their period.

I've never read any of the Maclean books, but of course I'm familiar with his legacy -- and I certainly know that he's the guy behind Where Eagles Dare, which for me is mainly an Iron Maiden song (I may have seen the movie, but I'm not sure and certainly don't remember anything about it). There are plenty of names like this that might, in a way, be interesting to (re)check, but I think it's unlikely it'll happen. I've never read any Graham Greene, for example, and I've only read Shogun from James Clavell's works. I loved it at the time, but I have no idea how it would look to me now. As for reading books in languages other than my first, I think the Dragonlance stories may have been the very first books I read in English. If not, they were certainly among the first, say, ten books that I read in English. Stephen King was among the first ones, too. I remember how funny it was, at the time, to be able to read King fairly easily and then try some Poe and find that my vocabulary was woefully lacking.

Fair enough. There is, of course, a massive difference as well: the invasion of Iraq was never intended to either wipe Iraq off the map or obliterate the Iraqis, whereas this current invasion was intended both to end Ukraine as a country and the Ukrainians as a people (either through assimilation or outright genocide). This isn't to say that there was ever anything glorious about the Iraq campaign, but I certainly wouldn't gloss over this difference, either.

Oh, I see. This inspired me to do a quick search, and I found this: https://www.pcgamer.com/disco-elysium-novel-sacred-and-terrible-air-has-finally-been-translated/ I have to say this makes me think the translation is probably rubbish. Perhaps even almost certainly rubbish, as illogical as this sentence is. The first thing I wanted to check was whether the translation was published by a reputable company; then I wanted to check whether the translation was done by a reputable professional; and by the time I got to see how the translations were actually done I no longer had any hope... But, of course it's possible that it's good. (Which says nothing about whether the novel itself is good.) I don't know whether you read any of the discussion concerning the Spanish translation of Deadfire, but anyway: that was done in a manner that seemed decidedly more professional, and the result was still an embarrassment, unfortunately. As for Dragonlance: couldn't agree more! That's precisely the age to read them. Dragonlance at ten, Hermann Hesse at seventeen, etc. There's some stuff that's perfect for certain ages. This is also the stuff that you should not go back to when you're older.

Have you? Is it any good? I didn't even know there was one. Disclaimer: having read at least three Dragonlance novels in the 1980s and Salvatore's The Icewind Dale trilogy in the 1990s I find it almost impossible to motivate myself into reading anything that ties into modern computer games, no matter which way the influence goes. This is not to say that the Disco Elysium novel isn't good; heck, I hope it's superb.

Now, this interests me quite a bit. What was the logical reason? The sense I get is that previous experience with the West had lulled Putin into thinking he can essentially act with impunity because the West are sissies (which I partly agree with). This, compounded with him being surrounded by yes men and poor intelligence, increased the likelihood of the invasion. And then, finally, Covid isolation combined with his essentially paranoid world-view probably tipped the scales. And much of the impetus comes from the fact that he views the fall of the SU as a great geopolitical disaster and he has no regard for the Ukrainians whatsoever, as an independent people. Whether this qualifies as logical I'm not sure, but this is pretty much how I see it, although there are some other, smaller factors, too.

Inertia and critical mass. It's both baffling and extremely unfair, but I don't think there's anything you can do, other than what you just did. Once something becomes popular enough, its popularity alone will make it even more popular -- and this was true before the internet, by the way: you can bet that an awful lot of the sales of Dark Side of the Moon were because it had already sold so much. Conversely, people don't want to go near stuff that isn't popular.[*] [*] An extremely sad point concerning this last bit. There was an experiment intended for people who suffered from great loneliness. Hours were set up at various cafes so that they could meet and socialize. But the experiment had to be discontinuted quite quickly: people didn't turn up. Even lonely people don't want to be with (other) lonely people.

Thirty years ago, this Dutch series was a big thing for me and quite a few people I have since come to know. All the episodes are extremely interesting, although it has to be said that Rupert Sheldrake's credibility is somewhat... less than that of the others. Anyway, heartily recommended. I don't know whether this is the kind of stuff that everyone here is already familiar with. The series was a good example of how pleasant it is to listen to someone who knows what he's talking about.

As a side note, btw, the main media narrative over here lays no immediate blame on either side, as it really could be either one. But experts do stress the Crimea situation: Crimea's water problems are going to worsen, and that's to Ukraine's definite benefit.

My sense is that many will argue that neutrality is not a reasonable option: it effectively means being pro-Russia. Inactivity and/or indifference helps Russia.

And with one of us being terse and the other verbose, as per usual.

This is a complex question, as you will probably agree: it has a fairly large timeframe and it spans a lot of countries. But let us take a look at just one of the culprits, the main one, Germany. Germany was exceedingly foolish to bring down its own nuclear energy sector and make itself overly dependent on Russian energy. While the exchange of energy and funds was in and of itself beneficial to both countries, and would in ordinary circumstances count as reasonable exchange and proper co-ordination between countries, what Germany apparently didn't realize at all and what Russia mainly wanted to ensure was that Germany became overly dependent on Russia, which greatly restricted Germany's options in other spheres.

Agreed. What's happening is that you're bringing up stuff that's only tangentially relevant to what I wrote, if at all. As for the swindle: Russia's main intention with the energy trade was to increase the EU's dependency on Russia, and it succeeded very well, insofar as the EU was very reluctant to first confront Russia's excesses and then to cut its ties. Russia played this part superbly, much better than the EU did: Russia exploited the EU as much as it could, and it was quite a lot. The EU, for its part, didn't manage to move Russia one inch towards transparency / free trade / democratic institutions / what have you, even though the EU made a lot of self-deceptive noise about how this was precisely what it tried to do. An interesting parallel to the last point is all the manifold mutual-aid projects that Finland, for instance, tried to initiate with the Russians and in Russia. One of our former prime ministers was quite downhearted when he discussed this type of endeavour and its complete and utter failure: any kind of win-win thinking and real co-operation was inconceivable for the Russians because their sole idea was to at least cheat and also blatantly steal, if possible. This is why every single project had to be abandoned, no matter how promisingly it was initially put together: the Russians just wouldn't do their part, they couldn't fathom a form of co-operation where both parties weren't trying to out-cheat one another.

No, it isn't. It's an example of how Russia swindled the West very effectively for years, and the West was wilfully blind for an embarrassingly long time, giving Putin all sorts of ideas about what he could do with impunity. Russia's main export is not energy, by the way, it's corruption, and this one is still very much ongoing: Russian troll factories and such have been extremely effective, and the West has been extraordinarily foolish about this stuff.

Nitpicking and somewhat off topic, but dang I must say that one of my pet peeves is the expression "X times less / lower". It just doesn't work, mathematically. Something can be twice as big or happen twice as often or be three times more, but with less and lower than, it doesn't work. So Ukraine's losses amounted to 13.33% of the Russians', methinks, the article is saying. (Yeah, apologies, obviously.)

Timo Soini, the former foreign minister of Finland, gave a sobering assessment of the situation before the war in Ukraine. He said that in the West, economy always wins over ideology, whereas in Russia, ideology always wins over economy -- the Russian imperialist thinking remains paramount. So whereas the West was thinking about tying Russian hands with money, the Russians were thinking about making the West dependent on Russia for energy. According to Soini, Russia was more right, and as much as I loathe his policies otherwise, I think this is a sound point to make.

John Key is referenced but not named in the novel, and the spat is (obviously) not mentioned at all. I think Catton is very tactful throughout, and the whole knighthood thing comes across as tasteless and unintentionally funny, which I think it is, not being totally acquainted with all the details.

Speaking of which, Eleanor Catton's new book Birnam Wood contains plenty of rather interesting commentary on NZ politics / politicians. (Recommended!) But then, Finnish politicians aren't exactly superb, either, when it comes to selling mining rights to our northern regions. While reading Catton, I had to check whether NZ had actually abolished and then reinstated knighthoods and damehoods in the 2000s. And yes, apparently it has. Either I had completely forgotten about or it had received minimal media attention here.