xzar_monty

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!

It has been said in Finland that the Swedish police probably couldn't find Gothenburg, so I'm not so sure about the Swedish government... (The reputation of the Swedish police was made by Palme and others.) Anyway, and seriously speaking, I can see someone putting a lid on the discovery if it's unpleasant.

I would just like to point out that Israel has been deliberately attacking civilian targets and murdering people -- children very much included -- in proportionately far greater numbers and much more effectively than Russia ever has during its war with Ukraine. After that, I'm extremely unlikely to be persuaded by a speech, even if it's a really good one. Words, when compared to actions, mean almost nothing.

Difficult to analyze the situation as of yet, but it's interesting to note that more and more people seeking asylum are now beginning to appear on Finland's eastern border, and apparently these are people who look more like "folks intended to cause logistical and other problems to the Finnish authorities" than "folks oppressed in Russia that seriously need to get out" (as the latter group would likely have been detained on the Russian side). It's beginning to look like another example of Russia wanting to be more and more of a nuisance, along with being a serious troublemaker. All because Finland became a hostile country towards Russia, as we didn't go along with their idea to attack Ukraine. Boy, weren't we evil towards our poor eastern neighbour.

I only have experience of the Azata and the Trickster quests, and the former were so much more interesting than the latter. Everything about the Trickster was just banal, whereas the Azata path had some fun in it, although one of the quests (that came down to collecting pieces of junk) was quite stupid. It would be interesting to be able to compare all the mythic paths, but there's no way I'm playing any other than these two. I mean, the game is long enough as it is, and the mythic path is not big enough of a part.

It has also shown that if France and Germany had got to decide, Ukraine would almost certainly have ended up obliterated already. It has also shown that an attack on a sovereign country on European soil was not enough to unite [sic] the European Union. It has also shown that Europe was and probably still is complacent on many levels, militarily for instance (with the exception of Finland and a few other countries, but not all that many). It has also shown, again, that when Russia and Germany make plans for Europe together, that's spelled DOOM, or possibly DEATH. Not Nord Stream, anyway.