xzar_monty

The situation may look completely different depending on where you view it from, what is the level of your historical knowledge or how cynically jaded your world-view happens to be (and of course there are other factors, too). There is no question that I side with the ones who regard Ukraine as defending far more than its territory and culture. It's very hard to say what the potential repercussions of the war and its eventual result may be, but there is no question that Ukraine is, in a way, also defending Finland[*], along with the countries you mention. As for what is laughable, I think there's an observation by the late David Foster Wallace that bears repeating every now and then: we in the west have managed to create a culture where no writer, for instance, dares to bring forth a novel that sincerely discusses questions of morality and heroism (in the, say, Dostoevsky vein), but ridicule of those concepts is very common. This is not meant to imply that Ukraine is an unblemished good guy, because the country had some pretty serious problems before the war and probably hasn't rid itself of any of them, but it certainly is a small guy that doesn't deserve to be obliterated by an unhinged big guy. [*] Although Russia's antagonism towards and more or less overt attacks on Finland have actually increased since the war began. Russia, of course, and to absolutely no one's surprise, considers that Finland is the aggressor in every single case.

Sorry to comment upon such a minor detail, but one's faith in American presidents' likelihood of actually doing anything was somewhat shaken by Obama pointedly drawing a red line in Syria and then just ignoring when it was crossed. (Well, there was very little to cheer about in the whole Obama presidency, though you've gotta say the guy was not altogether useless in the rhetoric department, which is something a creature of language like me will tend to note.)

Of course I am not ignoring it. Don't be silly, please. The negative emotional outcomes from both having an abortion and not having an abortion can be quite serious, to the point of derailing a life for quite some time. My question was whether the pregnant woman herself is the person who gets to choose whether to have an abortion or not.

Indeed. The practicalities of the elections would be immensely difficult. Ukraine has extremely serious problems with corruption which I don't suppose anyone has forgotten about or would disregard, but despite that, not doing the elections now is probably the right thing.

Sounds impossible, unless they're actually owls and not artillery shells. But, seriously: that's interesting, and do you have a source?

So you are in effect saying that the choice is not for the woman herself to make and that someone other than the woman herself knows better. That is quite odd, in my view, but of course, this is precisely what the religious right, for instance, in the US if fighting for, sometimes quite literally. As for you bringing up 14-year-olds, that looks like a cop-out to me, because 14-year-olds are minors and therefore not permitted to make many other choices, either.

Are you implying that the decision to abort or not is for someone other than the pregnant woman to make? If not, why is counseling and other similar support necessary, and what is wrong with the cheap pill option? I accept that the situation is extremely complicated. A comparison: alcohol can and does create real long-term mental problems like depression, and is also a significant contributing factor in most violent crimes and homicides. Yet, we have cheap booze everywhere. Should it be otherwise, in your opinion?

There was a time when music was not everywhere, albums were expensive and we were rather young, so we were quite limited in what we could hear or listen to. During this time, there was a period when I could only hear Def Leppard's superb Pyromania album at a friend's place. That time may not have lasted more than one summer, but since we were rather young, that time is still strongly fixed in my memory. So whenever I hear this track, I remember the rooms at my friend's place, I remember how we played cards and listened to Pyromania, among other things. I think this song is still brilliant. The extended middle section is particularly great. The 1980s were bad in many respects, but when it comes to melodic rock music that is more complex than it sounds (just pay attention to how cleverly Def Leppard switches keys), the 1980s were marvelous.

Zaluzhny was strongly against the much earlier offensive in the northeast, arguing that it would drain resources from a much more necessary offensive in the south. While the offensive in the northeast was very succesful, it can still be argued that Zaluzhny was probably right, but Zelensky, as president, had the final say.

Indeed. I suppose that one thing that follows from this is that Russia will never attack either China or India, through sheer force of numbers.

The Finnish president Urho Kekkonen said sometime in the 1960s that the cause of the conflict is the human race via the UN, meaning that the project was seriously flawed from the start "but now it's there and we have to learn to live with it". We haven't, as of yet.

Exhaustion, defined in the physical-medical sense, may well set in. But what I find interesting (and what has been written about in our press and commented upon by Zaluznyi and others) is that apparently Russia really doesn't care about its own losses of personnel. This is really quite something, and this war has really hammered it home for me, among others.

One major problem here, and one major difference compared to the Ukraine conflict, is that Israel has been pursuing an extremely bad policy for quite a long while already, and its very recent developments (say, past two years or so) have been downright shocking, from the point of view of things like democracy and human rights. I mean, Israel has been looking like an Apartheid country with extremely harsh and punitive attitudes towards certain parties close to it. So, to answer your question: Israel's strategy should have been much better a long time ago, already. I'm also somewhat confused by how Israeli intelligence managed to make such a blunder as to allow the attack to happen in the first place. I mean, clearly that is a major failure. As for the specifics of its response to the attack, I don't think there's any question that it's not necessary for Israel to deliberately target civilians and deliberately murder children.

Well but they are, that's the whole point. Or at least they appear to be surprised, and at any rate they are quite concerned. I wonder how you refuse to see this. It's interesting that you're extremely critical about Russia (which is fine) and at the same time you appear completely blasé about the fact that Israel is currently murdering civilians, particularly children, much more brutally and effectively than Russia ever has in its war with Ukraine. But then, you were also completely blasé about how Saudi Arabia murdered Khashoggi. So there appear to be certain very strict limitations to whose lives and welfare you care about at all, which seems strange. And do correct me if I am wrong, because I obviously haven't read everything you've written.

Classic Finnish recipe for sounding Danish: put a hot potato in your mouth and speak Swedish. (Probably not the first time you hear the joke.)

I wonder if you note that your response has almost nothing to do with the point made in the post you commented upon.

Ok, thank you for that. Clearly you are better informed about this than I am, so let's see (and hope).

Very interesting! Likely to be meaningless, too, in the sense that the money is never going to be paid. Which reminds me: I was recently listening to this superb series by Timothy Snyder, and he argued and explained how the Soviet system relied on the complete lack of responsibility (for all the terror it caused). Absolutely chilling stuff. It seems to me that this continues in Russia today. Check out this episode and the next, although you probably know this already. But @BruceVC will probably find this fascinating, too:

It's the same problem as with the theoretically admirable position of the pacifist: the lone pacifist will be killed. Genuinely good morals don't help much there.

But I didn't say that. I said that our international organizations, such as the UN, are useless in stopping things like this. I did not say they are useless because they cannot stop things like this.

It would be very hard to disagree with this, I'd say. However, needs to stop is easy to say. There are no checks in place to make this kind of thing stop. I think both Ukraine and now Gaza are excellent demonstrations of how our potentially superb international organizations like the UN are just great for flower arrangement and stuff, but when the going gets tough, they're useless. The needs to stop is somewhat equivalent to how an international body condemns or strongly condemns and in very dire situations even unequivocally condemns something that's not a good thing to do in front of the children, but in truth, it means nothing. Back in the 1980s, there was an overlong but wonderfully conceived sketch on Finnish TV. The Soviet Union had yet again breached Finnish airspace. Finland sent two diplomats on a mission to Moscow, to deal with the question. These guys went to see the Soviet big guy who heard them and then said, "So what?". The Finnish diplomats reiterated their message and made it extremely clear that the Finns were absolutely outraged about the Soviet Union's disregard for everything that's good and decent and nice and wholesome. Again, the Soviet big guy listened to them and then said, "Ok, but so what?". The Finnish diplomats huffed and puffed and said they were fart-sucking angry and outraged and whatnot and so on. Again, the Soviet big guy listened to them and then said, "Yeah, so what?". The Finnish diplomats looked at each other, looked at each other again and were silent for a while. That's where we're at. It's awful, I agree, and what Israel is doing is several times more cruel and devastating than what Russia has been doing, especially when it comes to the children. But Israel doesn't care one bit. And it needing to stop doesn't actually change anything.

It's not looking good. If a proper fatigue sets in on the Ukraine question, Russia will eventually score at least some kind of victory, and will ultimately perhaps swallow even the whole of Ukraine. That will be a lesson for all autocrats everywhere: simply be persistent and ruthless, and "the west" will give up. Now, there is no question that "the west" is, in many ways, very weak, although it is quite strong in other ways. And the more one looks into the near history of the Ukraine conflict, the more obvious it becomes that Putin was justified in regarding the west as weaklings and idiots (I mean, everything from Syria to Trump and beyond). The question is manifold and complicated, but I think there's definitely one significant contributing factor: when life gets too easy, a lot of people will become uninterested, unengaged, complacent, uneducated, very easily shaken and lazy.

Oh, absolutely. That's all it takes, and it's extremely simple. But it also shows yet another example of the human hierarcies of thinking, this time the fact that a lot of the time, humiliation is worse than death. Of course the people being humiliated are not the ones who are dying, but that's essentially what a lot of it comes down to. Another thing is that once enough resources have been allocated to something, it's easier to allocate even more resources than it is to stop the whole thing, even if it's abundantly clear that the project is idiotic. (Italy did the same thing rather remarkably and famously in the 1930s, if I got the decade right.)

Shoigu has made a statement with a newish flavor in it. Whether it means anything, I don't know, but I doubt it. Here it is, as reported by The Guardian: "Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has spoken at a Beijing defence forum on Monday, claiming that Moscow was ready for talks on the post-conflict settlement of the Ukraine crisis, and on further 'coexistence' with the west, but that western countries needed to stop seeking Russia’s strategic defeat. The conditions for talks had not yet been met, he said." The fact that he insists on the west stopping to seek Russia's strategic defeat implies, to me, that Russia is seriously worried, but that may not be the case, nor Shoigu's intention: I'd like to know Russian so that I'd be able to tell what he's actually said.

Recent Russian losses appear significant: