xzar_monty

Here's an extremely interesting piece on the war and Russia's military capability in the light of it. Note the date: this is slightly old now, but still worth a read. We can be thankful for the fact that Russia is based on corruption and theft, and the entire society is rotten. Otherwise things would be a lot worse than they are now. An especially hearty recommendation goes for @kanisatha. This, in my view, is proper writing. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2022.2078044#.Yveg_FmrhUc.twitter

You do recognize that I specifically write other atrocities, don't you? Hence implying the deeds are rather terrible. I have made no attempt to justify any war crimes, and wouldn't. Trust me when I say that I know my stance on this better than you do. Also, I wrote mutatis mutandis to prevent quibbling that is nearly always possible when something is demonstrated with an imaginary example from somewhere else. Clearly, the idea didn't work. I suggest we stop wasting bandwidth now.

Apologies for the double quote (I am not good at this), but no, the progression is not logical. It is terrible, as far as logic goes. You are mixing up occurrences and the question of blame, whereas in fact they're in different "realms" altogether. Let's look at another example. Guy #1 runs his car into guy #2's car, triggering a cascade of events. -> Guy #2 getting up, walking to guy #1 and hitting him in the face is one of those events. -> The physical violence has been triggered by guy #1. -> Guy #2 is still to blame. Not for the crash, but for the violence. The same applies for the war, mutatis mutandis. I'm honestly quite surprised you even think I'd follow the progression in the way you describe. It is entirely logical up to the point where you start attributing blame, but then it goes completely off the rails. You asked why bring this up at all, if the point is not to lay all blame on Russia. This is a good question. The answer is that while bringing it up ought to be irrelevant, it is not. Even on this forum, there has been plenty of arguing along the lines that although something less than marvelous has possibly been happening somewhere in Ukraine, maybe, what we should really focus on is the pathological hatred people have for Russia, and also let us not forget how awful the collective West has been in its dealings throughout its history. So that's why it felt other than irrelevant to point out that which is, as you quite rightly say, obvious: the whole cascade of events has been triggered by Russia. Not by other evil powers wanting to put down poor Russia.

Which reminds me that when I pointed out that Russia clearly has the alternative to cease the operation, you argued quite strongly along the lines that it has not.

This goes on for too long so the humor thins out, but the first minute or so is absolutely hilarious.

Wow. I don't speak Belarusian so yes, I had to rely on google translate. It's hard to tell how much is due to that and how much is just vague wording, as you said, but that's a strange message to put out!

Reports coming in about another attack on an airbase in Belarus, with 8 apparent explosions. I would certainly not regard this as confirmed just now, but if it's true, it's a bold move.

Satellite images would appear to confirm at least 7 aircraft destroyed with many near them probably damaged to at least some extent. (I wouldn't trust my own estimate as to how damaged and inoperable they might be.) With the lowest possible number being 7, I am not sure what the maximum is. In any case, a serious hit.

Please do not twist my words out of shape, it is unethical of you. I am reminded of someone who recently suggested that journalists struggle with their own biases. I wonder if this might also apply to someone who apparently isn't a journalist. The 2nd one with which you claim I agreed with was, in your post and in your words: "well they started it, therefore everything is their fault so we cannot commit war crimes". What I agreed with and called a "salient point" was: "You know what else is a war crime? This entire Russian war against Ukraine. Nothing of this school-schmool thing would have happened if not for Russia's imperialistic delusions backed by tiny waxy garbage man's issues." The whole cascade of events has been triggered by Russia's brutal attack and invasion -- this is a salient point. I have absolutely not agreed with anything suggesting that "we [in this instance, Ukraine] cannot commit war crimes". Ignoring war crimes is out of the question.

I agree that whatever we both say is only speculation. Now, here's something that is not an example of the same thing but may illustrate this weird phenomenon that might be described as attachment to blatant untruths: Trump supporters insisting that "Trump has never lied". https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2022/08/10/trump-supporters-palm-beach-pkg-kaye-nr-ldn-vpx.cnn There is something particularly sad about the way the claim is worded. "I still support Trump" would sound much less pathological, wouldn't it? But to say that "Trump has never lied" and mean it is obviously a bit mad. Everyone has lied, surely. I happen to know a case from northern Europe where a fairly large amount of people were robbed of their money in a swindle that was essentially a reasonably clever pyramid scheme. Things got interesting in the aftermath when it became obvious that a substantial minority of the victims were not able to acknowledge the fact that they had been fooled and robbed: they insisted, and with great force, that the man in charge was the genuine article and that the collapse of the scheme was due to a conspiracy set up by the legal authorities. I read a piece on this written by a renowned forensic psychiatrist who pointed out that this kind of thing is not unheard of; whatever terminology we want to use, the fact remains that some people's "identity", "sense of self" or whatnot is not strong enough to sustain the idea that they have been taken advantage of in a big way, and in order to deny this truth from surfacing, they will use extremely strong powers of denial to persist in their fantasy. (A related silly-sounding tidbit: whenever a doomsday cult declares the end of the world and the end of the world does not arrive, the popularity of that cult will immediately increase.) How this happens is not clear, because we cannot penetrate other people's thought-processes, but apparently it's not as if a person like that is faced with a conscious choice and chooses to support the obvious untruth -- what happens is much more unconscious, i.e. there is no moment of choice, the clinging to the untruth happens on a level outside that person's conscious control. This is one reason why it's extremely difficult to argue against a person who has seriously committed to a conspiracy theory or is clinically paranoid: whatever you say can be used as additional proof supporting the conspiracy or paranoia. The Russian media has been extraordinarily virulent since at least the beginning of the 2000s, and to the extent we can even talk of a "collective mindset", much of it in Russia is probably extremely confused. This, obviously, has been the aim all along. (It is not that different from what happened in the Soviet Union at various times, unfortunately. Some of the more keen observers pointed out straight away that when Putin came to power, the Soviet Union would return, one way or the other.) (Small addition: Russia has just breached Estonian airspace. Boy they're good guys.)

In an earlier response to @Gorth today, I pointed out how during WWII "the Russians knew that life is awful", and here's a good illustration how this experience probably carries to this day. This is a particularly rough example of Russia's brutality, as prisons tend to be rough places nearly everywhere, but the response -- or, rather, lack of it -- of the authorities is very telling. Life is not worth much in Russia. This is also significant in the sense that Russia is currently recruiting people from prisons (according to some reports, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin has been touring the prisons himself (https://zona.media/article/2022/08/06/prigozhin). When they get to the front, it's easy to imagine the kind of carnage they are more than happy to cause. So, the BBC article about what's going on in Russia: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62465043

It would also be interesting to receive some kind of confirmation as to the amount of damage the strike(s) caused. It does look pretty substantial.

The fact that it may narrow down the number of possibilities as to what actually caused those explosions.

Are they? Where, and by whom? In my view, both claims are stupid enough to sound like something equivalent to a strawman -- and anyone making claims along those lines certainly isn't worthy of respect, or worth taking seriously. So yes, it is neither of the claims you describe, but both the claims you describe are utterly ridiculous, and I haven't seen any proper source making claims along those lines. I've followed the coverage since the war began and genuinely haven't seen what you describe; perhaps our sources are just utterly different.

Do you have a cogent view on how Australia ended up like this? The situation is awful if it is as you describe, and even if it isn't that dire, I do know that it's not particularly good. But it would be really interesting to know how it got to be that way. What was the starting point and what were the steps. As much as there are things to be deplored in state-funded media, their Scandinavian version appears to work remarkably well, especially because commercial media exist right beside them (and therefore state-funded stuff is not the only stuff you get, like in perhaps North Korea). So, there are these media outlets whose interests aren't entirely 100% commercial and who have at least of degree of impartiality. I think this is good. I know that the US, for instance, has stuff like the NPR, but it's such an insignificant player that it makes no difference. The world where all media is strictly commercial has a tendency to make people more cynical, because there is always ample room and reason for the question, "What are they trying to sell me by saying this?" Like David Foster Wallace pointed out in one of his essays, the average American citizen is inundated with so many commercial messages that he finds it difficult to conceptualize the idea that there might be messages whose interests aren't strictly commercial. This cynicism sometimes manifests itself in such a way that when I say something like this, I get a response where I'm regarded as a hopelessly naive and brainwashed child of socialism. The conversation rarely progresses much after that.

I wonder if the Russian-built Crimean bridge will become a target soon. Surely the Russians must regard it as a realistic possibility, unless they hold on to the fantasy that these recent explosions resulted from careless smoking or too much beans in the soup or something. But bridges, of course, are notoriously difficult to destroy, so it might be viable for Ukraine to target something else.

Regarding the strikes / explosions in Crimea, I found this very interesting:

Agreed. Another WWII lesson perhaps less pertinent to this is that Russians may not back or break down. In WWII, the incidence of psychiatric breakdown (stress, mental fatigue, madness and all the rest of it) was much higher among the allies. Various speculations have been put forth. Probably the most likely answer is that the Brits and the Americans were used to something resembling a good life, whereas the Russians knew that life is awful, the Germans were rabidly nazified and the Japanese had their code of honor which always gave suicide as a good option. So, the shocks of war were most shocking to the Allies. The Italians, according to Hemingway(*), were likely to cry "Il Duce!" in the event of a fairly painless flesh wound, but a shattered bone or a shot in the stomach raised almost no patriotic fervor at all. (*) in an article written somewhere and subsequently published in the book By-Line. Not going to check out the direct source now.

I agree with much of this. But the paradox remains: the story of Russians as a people who do not trust their leaders -- but do trust them now. Why?

This is a very salient point. All the other atrocities stem from Russia's initial atrocity. But of course, there are plenty of people, even outside Russia, who blame other parties than Russia for that, too. Which is a bit strange. But then, there are so many strange things about the whole conflict. Like, reportedly, people in Russia "learn not to trust anyone because they know their government is corrupt and lies", or something to that effect, as is often claimed. But then the question arises, why do they trust Russian state propaganda right now, with this war going on? It's baffling.

Which list -- where is it proclaimed and what does it contain? By comparison, can you name an occupation whose representatives do live up to their list of virtues? This second question can also be phrased: do you regard journalists as worse than any/all people in other fields? My experience in journalism started in the late 1980s, and I have, for example, interviewed an awful lot of people, including what might be called major world stars. My experience in the field doesn't confirm your claim, as I have seen, over the years, plenty of people work with impeccable integrity. Of course there is dross in journalism, but your blanket claim doesn't seem to hold true at all. Perhaps you're mostly referencing your world, i.e. the English-speaking one? I wouldn't hesitate to say that the rags in that culture are remarkably awful, although there is superb journalism, too.

Translation is the only field in which I'd claim some authority, as I have, among other things, 25+ years of experience and close to a hundred books to my name. It is an underappreciated field and one in which mistakes are much more common than people often recognize. Also, subtleties are very often lost (I remember Malcador pointing to a strange term in the words of the president of Finland, but this was yet another mistranslation, which M obviously couldn't know, as I'm almost certain he doesn't speak Finnish). So anyway, this stuff is to expected. It's a crying shame, of course. There is so much of it in the papers every day. One interesting thing that the recent world developments have brought about is that English-speaking people often tend to speak far fewer languages than many other people (indeed, apparently most of them speak just the one). So, in my experience, they have more difficulties appreciating the question than perhaps some other people do (like, try living in Belgium and you'll get to understand the phenomenon pretty well even if you never talk about it specifically). But that's just my experience, I'm not claiming anything more general than that.

This makes so much sense that I suppose it's never going to be implemented. I'm fully in support of all the good things about the United States, but the rampant and utterly careless waste of human resources makes me quite sad. Jobs, health care, education: these are such simple solutions, but there just doesn't seem to be much interest in making it happen. (The "jobs" part is the hardest, I suppose.) The US doesn't have universal health care. Education puts people in huge amounts of debt. I live in Northern Europe, and these problems look just staggering: why are they doing it? And yes, I understand the history of the country, and I also know that smaller countries are easier to govern than large ones. But still. I've traveled rather a lot, and the city on whose streets I've seen the most amount of people with untreated cancerous tumors is still New York. It's a wonderful city, BUT. Also, altruism doesn't have to have anything to do with any of this. As someone pointed out (when talking about various developing countries), even if your only goal is to get to make more money, it's still in your interests to get the girls as well-educated as possible.

I am not sure how realiable this is, but for the technologically oriented people: provided that this is true, shouldn't this bomber be extremely easy to locate if it uses GPS like this? https://twitter.com/KreusHarri/status/1552365144830877696/photo/1

Please, good people, do not do this. Even for propagand purposes, this is remarkably foolish: