xzar_monty

Kreml obviously has absolutely no fear of NATO, as evidenced by numerous decisions during the war. NATO also isn't a threat to Russia, which is also obvious. It would actually be quite interesting to know which percentage of Russians seriously regard NATO as a threat. Putin, quite rightly, doesn't, and neither do his generals and other allies. But the people? I'd love to know, but of course I won't.

Depending on how you define "early portions", playing an Azata ranger, for instance, does give you a significant advantage, almost to the point of appearing unfair. Not to the point of choosing unfair difficulty, however, but still. I mean, high OB + animal + Aivu = power early on.

As much as this may be offensive to some, I think it's interesting how we continue to witness the legacy of WWII in Germany's (certain kind of) staggering infirmity and Israel's unabashed brashness, neither of which are helpful at all. Now, I am not for a moment suggesting that this is all there is to it, but this is there, too, among other things. There's a similar historical tangent to Ukraine: back when the USSR collapsed, we were astonished at how bloodless everything was. But it wasn't. We were simply too close in time to realize that the collapsing hadn't ended yet, and its aftershocks hadn't even begun.

They almost certainly won't -- and in case they do, things are going very seriously wrong on other fronts (literal and figurative) as well. However, Russia is clearly intent on creating havoc inside Finland, and it's also almost certain that we haven't seen much of it yet. It's not going to be pleasant. As one of our politicians pointed out yesterday, the current refugee situation hinges on the fact that Russia doesn't give a damn about any treaties or anyone's well-being, whereas Finland generally tends to be a decent customer and prefers to hold on to what has been agreed to. The downside of this, for Finland right now, is that the country is quite exploitable: start pouring in refugees so that they'll end up either in Finland or dead, and it's likely that Finland will try to absorb at least a significant amount of them. I think it shouldn't, but it likely will -- even if some of those people are Wagnerites, GRU folks or other people of the sort you really wouldn't want to introduce to your folks at home. Russia is also doing its very best to convince the Russian minority in Finland that all of this has everything to do with Finland being evil and none of it has anything to do with Ukraine. At the moment, it's impossble to gauge how well that project is going, but I'd be prepared to bet that most Russian natives in Finland tend to side with Russia, not Finland.

Let us recall what the historian Timothy Snyder said: Russia's #1 import is corruption, and because it is incapable of improving the general situation inside its borders, it tries to weaken everybody else as much as it can. Apart from all other considerations, it saddens me to think what a petty way that is to spend one's time / life / whatever. For instance, how thoroughly cynical and joyless it has to be to work at a troll factory in St. Petersburg.

I don't think there's any doubt about this. However, whether "public sentiment" had anything whatsoever to do with pulling out of Vietnam is a completely different question.

Slightly tangential, but I was immediately reminded of this: There is a school of thought according to which the US ceased its campaign in Vietnam because it was hugely unpopular and caused such uproar among the public. There is another school of thought according to which the above had absolutely nothing to do with it and the US ceased its campaign because it became too expensive to maintain.

Oh, absolutely. Our speaker of the parliament already pointed out that there is no way for us to know whether they are Wagnerites, GRU folks or whatnot. His main point was these people have not suddenly found an interest in a potential asylum provided by Finland, but it's Russia that has suddenly found an interest in getting them into Finland.

Precisely. If they all die in Karelia, this is perfectly fine with Russia. Let us keep in mind that this is a win-win situation for Russia: if Finland didn't close its borders, it could rejoice at the weakness of Finland / EU / the West. Now that Finland is taking measures, Russia is a) claiming Russophobia, b) accusing Finland of human rights violations, and b) using rather touching rhetoric to lament how the relations between these two countries close to each other have suffered an awful lot because of Finland's duplicity. And please note, Russia really is doing all those three things right now. Point B is especially cool, given the circumstances.

I'm not entirely sure where you're coming from with this. If Russia is intentionally directing refugees towards the Finnish border as a means of being a pest to Finland, do you seriously think that Russia will care a damn for what Finland says?

I used to think this, too, but it's just not true. The countries with the most foreign-born residents are, in order, the US, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UK.

Comments like this always intrigue me. The point here appears to be that the world and the people in it are too cynical for their own good, but it is this comment itself that is most cynical here.

You didn't ask me, but I would simply point out that this is a long-standing conflict that an awful lot of people have tried to work on for decades, some with better intentions than others. I think it's preposterous to assume that anyone here could make a reasonable suggestion other than in the most general terms that ultimately mean nothing. Like: in order to play the piano well, you press the white and black keys so that they make beautiful music. That's true, but that's of no use to anyone. You can make similar statements about the conflict, but they don't mean anything.

And so the most recent development on the Russian border situation in Finland is that our president has made a statement that we must strengthen our borders in the name of national security, even if it means that the individual human rights of some people (i.e. the refugees) will be cast aside. He did stress that this is a dilemma (i.e. security vs. rights) not a lot of people want to face or even talk about. Apparently Russia is seriously planning to start a refugee crisis on its Finnish borders, perhaps something like the situation between Poland and Belarus, for instance. In the winter, it's a lot colder in Finland than it is in Poland, so if Russia leaves the refugees in no man's land, many of them are going to die. Russia is currently helping ID-less people get to the Finnish border, providing them with bicycles and just letting them go. It's not great, but it's classic Russia, so that's where we're at. As a consequence of the war in Ukraine and Finland not playing along with it.

Ok, that's very interesting and I didn't know or at least remember that. So thanks! I did read a bit on the fault lines while I was in New Zealand, but that was a while ago already.

"Due" in plate tectonics, though, can be quite different from "due" on a human timescale.

Yeah, I checked the company and noticed the typo, too. I also wondered immediately whether the name was properly researched. I mean, it does sound remarkably stupid if you've more than glimpsed at your Tolkien. (I'd hate to think that the company bosses would liken themselves to earlier-age Middle Earth characters who could properly use the then uncorrupted seeing stones, as described in Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.) Unfun fact not intended to annoy: it just so happens that one of the strands in Ms Catton's new novel really is a doomsday bunker in New Zealand.

Holy hell, that's awful. I can't even remember when I last had a call of that kind. Must be years ago, seriously. And I think I have only ever received one fake text message.

Wow. That's interesting. Was "bombard" hyperbole, or is the situation really that bad? It's fascinating to note that the Northern European model is, in the US, sometimes labelled Socialist or whatever, and it's said that people over here are way too controlled and placed under surveillance and so on and so forth, but I wonder if the opposite is more true, at least when it comes to the US[*]. I mean, being a Nordic citizen, the state has an awful lot of information on me and ever since I was born I've had a similar Social Security Code to what people have been referring to -- but I never get fake calls or texts and I'm not bothered at all by advertisers or salesfolks or people of that sort. (Well, in fact, the last time I was in San Francisco I noticed how often I was intruded upon by someone who wanted my co-operation with their particular commercial interest, and by about the second day I stopped even looking at them[**]. It doesn't happen here.) Yes, I recognize you're talking about Peter Theil and not your government as such. And this is slightly tangential in other ways, too, but never mind. [*] Ha. This reminds me: I once had to do some work concerning the soccer player Megan Rapinoe, and she pointed out how Americans are "more free" than us Europeans. Interestingly, not one single example of how this manifests itself was forthcoming. Not one. [**] My sense is that as far as psychology goes, the necessity of this kind of defense is likely to produce despair in North America. I could be wrong, of course. But it would, in me, if I lived there.

I would contend that that's fair after the Hamas strike. However, what they are doing is much more than that. When he was directing the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov famously said that "When you chop wood, chips fly" (though the saying was not his invention), which was intended as a justification. But you would have to be a particularly cold-hearted person to accept that. Yezhov, of course, fairly soon became one of the chips himself, which I'd again contend was fair -- but the millions of others were not.

Actually, we have not discussed this even once before. You do recognize that your "I dont agree" and "they should be using" sound just a tiny bit callous, don't you? The Israel army is bombing civilians, murdering children and creating wanton wholesale destruction at an astonishing rate while you're going "I don't agree with that in the workplace!" like a proper David Brent.

This whole digital ID thingie reveals yet another example of how what is called progress tends to operate. So, it's not only that new things become possible, which does indeed happen and is not a joke as such, but the equally important point is that previous ways of operating and even living tend to become almost impossible or even totally impossible to maintain. For example, if we look at the Romani people whose whole tradition was based on itinerant life, we can see that they were one of great losers in Europe when the current nation states started to come into being. Their whole mode of existence was made quite difficult, through no fault of their own, and indeed, they tend to be poorly educated and in at least some kind of trouble, as a group, pretty much everywhere. They have not changed, and that has not done them any good, in the eyes of the modern world. I can see a future where certain things are indeed quite simple and effective -- but if you happen to be a person who wants to live outside the digital world, your life is going to be hard indeed, because you will not be able to get anything from anywhere (no cash anymore, etc.), and this is likely to make you quite unhappy. In that kind of world, which is at least partly the world we're already in, a personal struggle against "the government" or something may feel heroic and empowering and whatnot, but I'm not at all sure that it does anybody any good.

Israel's attempt to wipe out Hamas will more than likely just breed and create room for more radicalization, so I'm not sure at all where your rather naive-looking certainty is coming from. The problem itself doesn't go away if Hamas is done for and simply replaced by Hamas II or even The Revenge of the Empire of the Son of Hamas Strikes Back Again. As for the questions you pose, the first looks hopelessly premature and the second is, indeed, quite real, but not really pertinent at this point. We can almost rest assured that Israel will have no interest in any kind of rebuilding project concerning people they regard as expendable and worth murdering just like that. We are, again, at the process of reaping the results of problems that were created at the same time that Israel itself was created. Israel's recent policy has been utterly hopeless and downright terrible, from any kind of humanist viewpoint, and it's such a shame for all concerned that Israel is a) quite effective and b) blatantly murderous at the same time, unlike, say, Russia. (Russia obviously has other flaws that Israel doesn't, but that's another question altogether.)

Fair point. But logistics and planning can both exist and not at the same time. Case in point: when Russian paratroopers landed near Kiev right at the start of the war in February 2022, they were supplied with maps. But the maps were from 1992. So, the places they tried to seek cover from no longer existed as such, and consequently they were easily mowed down.

To quote myself and to add a nice little detail to the story: the asylum seekers keep arriving on the Finnish border on brand new bicycles. Like straight out of a shop. Children's bicycles included, too. There's no question that it's a Russian operation, petty and insignificant of course, just intended to cause annoyance. Great country!