Ukraine Conflict - "History never looks like history when you are living through it."

[Darkpriest]

@Mamoulian War

I forgot to link earlier this segment, which broadly and indirectly explains why there will be no ramp up of production in oil/gasoline in US and by extension in the broader West. Those dimwit politicians and their opinion is not worth the paper they write it on or tape they are recording on (and in the current age, that says a lot) 

 

[Mamoulian War]

Some bad news and some good news... Let's start with the bad... On some places Russians were able to cross Siverskyi Donets, which will make defense on some places much harder for Ukraine. And Sievierodonetsk is still a ****ing mess. But As I have mentioned few days ago, Ukraine is allegedly defending exactly as I have predicted. (from a source which has been marked as credible, by a journalist, whom I know as a very trustworthy person.)

Zelenskyi have officially release number of Ukrainian casualties during since the start of the war. It is now approximately 10 thousands, with 100-200 soldiers dieing per day in Donbas (IMHO this daily number is probably over inflated and used to get more weapons to UA as soon as possible. Who knows...) Even if these numbers are real, they are still lower than the casualties of Russian Army around Sievierodonetsk. According to Luhansk Oblast Head of military administration, Russia was forced to withdraw Buryat units, due to extremely high casualties.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/06/9/7351558/

Now for some good ones:

In Zaporizhia Oblast, the frontline was pushed 5-7kms to the south. The exact width of this counter-attack has not been revealed, but it has definitely happened south of Zaporizhia City. - Source Mayor of Melitopol.

It seems, that UA started counteroffensive at the whole front in Kherson Oblast. General Staff of Armed Forces of Ukraine today confirmed so far 1 village liberated, and three stormed by their army, but according to the above "WarMonitor", UA today liberated approx 20 villages, and are attacking in three directions. He summarized some data from open and closed sources and made some maps to illustrate the counteroffensive. I am really curious about the official information from UA General Staff.

The most interesting info, that I have found on many Ukrainian official and unofficial sources is, but no official General Staff report released yet. The UA artillery destroyed the "hive" of Wagner PMC at Stakhanov (Kadiivka) Stadium deep in "Luhansk People's Republic" south of Lysychanks and east of Bakhmut. Casualties are approximately between 250-300. (Kadiivka is for some reason romanized name of Стаханов (Stakhanov).

Pro-Ukrainian source:

Pro-Russian source:

 

[Mamoulian War]

Oh, and Russian Army destroyed approx 300 thousands tons of Wheat in Mykolaiv silos few days ago. This means, that even if Ukraine would be able to get all of the wheat out of the country today, there will be not enough of wheat to feed all of the Africa and Asia. Russian trolls are already working hard on narrative to blame Ukraine for this. Some insights on this tactics by Timothy Snyder.

 

[Lexx]

Food prices here are already spiking. Today I've paid about 10€ more than last month same time.

/Edit: That said, it already went up in pandemic times. About 10€ over the past 2 years. It's quite easy for me to compare, because I usually always buy the same stuff.

Edited June 11, 2022 by Lexx

[Elerond]

1 minute ago, Lexx said:

Food prices here are already spiking. Today I've paid about 10€ more than last month same time.

Mostly food price spikes because producers are moving future prices in product prices, meaning that many of them are currently increasing their profit margins not because their production expenses have increased.

Reasoning behind it is to prepare harder times by building companies funds.

[Lexx]

Great, but it's still spiking, and I'm sure it will spike some more next year.

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Elerond said:

Mostly food price spikes because producers are moving future prices in product prices, meaning that many of them are currently increasing their profit margins not because their production expenses have increased.

Reasoning behind it is to prepare harder times by building companies funds.

lol.

I mean, that is most definitely (one of) the publicly stated reasonings for raising prices before there's an actual shortage, I certainly wouldn't dispute that; but it's just such a load of old bollocks, for any developed country.

Same basic reason as why 'competition' in health provision is stupid- what are you going to do, opt not to have a heart attack because it costs too much, or pause it so you can find the cheapest hospital? You're not going to stop eating, they'll sell the same amount of stuff, minus some luxuries, which grain most definitely isn't. You (generally sense) just might have to forgo the annual iPhone upgrade and quit your wine club though.

Companies pretty much always make super profits during shortages and high prices, so long as their product is essential.

Classic example which is pretty much directly equivalent: oil companies. Apart from making more profit the higher the price you also find there are some quite surprising dichotomies. Strangely enough bad news means prices have to go up immediately, but if there's good news- better exchange rates, lower crude prices- then unfortunately the oil was bought at the old higher prices and we can't drop the costs for at least two weeks. Amazing how they never bought oil at the old low price so they can hold off on increases for two weeks though, guess they're just really, really, really, really, really, really, really unlucky. Every single time. See also computer chip shortages. They were awful for AMD/ nVidia/ Intel, they suffered through massive profits and selling everything they could produce at whatever prices they wanted. I do hope the children of Yemen or Tigray have some consideration for the terrible time chipmakers had of it. Which may seem a bit of an overkill comparison, but we all know who is going to suffer from the shortages most, and we all know those super profits aren't going to go towards stopping people literally starving.

[BruceVC]

6 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Oh, and Russian Army destroyed approx 300 thousands tons of Wheat in Mykolaiv silos few days ago. This means, that even if Ukraine would be able to get all of the wheat out of the country today, there will be not enough of wheat to feed all of the Africa and Asia. Russian trolls are already working hard on narrative to blame Ukraine for this. Some insights on this tactics by Timothy Snyder.

 

The way Russia is weaponizing famine and starvation is truly reprehensible, I cant say its a new low because I already raised this point

Black\brown people really dont have any friends in Russia unless its suits the Russian political or economic narrative 

[Darkpriest]

5 hours ago, BruceVC said:

The way Russia is weaponizing famine and starvation is truly reprehensible, I cant say its a new low because I already raised this point

Black\brown people really dont have any friends in Russia unless its suits the Russian political or economic narrative 

Like they have in Western countries when it does not fit them? 

[BruceVC]

4 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

Like they have in Western countries when it does not fit them? 

I generally dont respond to whataboutism but where is the West  currently weaponizing famine and starvation?

[Darkpriest]

35 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

I generally dont respond to whataboutism but where is the West  currently weaponizing famine and starvation?

Afghanistan

[BruceVC]

53 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

Afghanistan

I always forget how much you care about the people of Afghanistan 

So I have some good news for you, in February Biden signed an order freeing up most of money frozen in the US for Afghan humanitarian aid and 9/11 victims families. So that should help as the Taliban continue to systematically destroy the country with their  outdated and egregious political and religious views 

https://www.dw.com/en/us-to-split-7-billion-in-afghan-assets-between-relief-9-11-victims/a-60748785

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by BruceVC

[Elerond]

3 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

Afghanistan

After Taliban took control in Afghanistan Western Countries have given it 2 billion dollars worth humanitarian aid (food, water, medicine and other basic need products)

[Darkpriest]

1 hour ago, Elerond said:

After Taliban took control in Afghanistan Western Countries have given it 2 billion dollars worth humanitarian aid (food, water, medicine and other basic need products)

After bombing it, and stealing assets, which would allow to invest in proper infrastructure? (Not that it would help as it seems no business wants to go there after such a great retreat of US from that country and no deals securing assets on site) 

 

Lets look at other great places of US interventions in ME and Africa in the last 30 years and how well they are doing after those. 

[Zoraptor]

$5bn required for 2022, 1.4bn actually raised (a lot of that likely pledged, so not actually supplied) and certainly not all of that from western countries.

The broader issue with western aid is that it's always massively inflated in value. It averaged something around 7bn p/a (that excludes military aid and other costs of roughly 100bn) in Afghanistan, nominal, but was nowhere near that in terms of practicality as a large part of that went in corruption. And not just inside Afghanistan, aid programs were extensively used for corporate welfare.

Yemen is probably a better example though, since it's more directly similar. You don't see Liz Truss talking about Britain running the Saudi blockade or Abe Linken complaining about the genocide there though*, strangely enough, just please sell more oil and buy more weapons.

*though to be fair, prior to February Biden's Administration had been more critical of Saudi- though to be fair about that being fair, a very low bar to pass after Trump and Kushner- it just stopped as soon as they needed them for something.

Edited June 12, 2022 by Zoraptor

[BruceVC]

8 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

After bombing it, and stealing assets, which would allow to invest in proper infrastructure? (Not that it would help as it seems no business wants to go there after such a great retreat of US from that country and no deals securing assets on site) 

 

Lets look at other great places of US interventions in ME and Africa in the last 30 years and how well they are doing after those. 

Retreat? From what, the US announced it was leaving Afghanistan during Trumps presidency. Biden just confirmed the date 

Should the US have stayed in Afghanistan another 20 years? Why, the overall stability cant be achieved and at some point Afghanistan was going to have stand on its own. I thought  we were  all opposed to Western imperialism and Colonialism  but now you expecting the US to stay in Afghanistan for decades?

Besides this is an excellent opportunity for Russia and China to come in and  fix things, we cant always rely on the West to get involved and find solutions to conflict areas and failed states

 

[Elerond]

9 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

After bombing it, and stealing assets, which would allow to invest in proper infrastructure? (Not that it would help as it seems no business wants to go there after such a great retreat of US from that country and no deals securing assets on site) 

 

Lets look at other great places of US interventions in ME and Africa in the last 30 years and how well they are doing after those. 

So western countries aren't using famine as weapon of war in Afghanistan like you claimed

With Afghanistan you somehow forgot that its infrastructure was bombed down by Soviet Union and then civil war that lead Taliban to take control it in 90s. There was quite little infrastructure left for US to bomb in 2001 or assets to steal. In 2000 Afghanistan's GDP was $3.5 billion (). 2020 it was $20 billion.

In 2001 Afghanistan was suffering for famine for third year in row.  WFP estimated that millions would die because of lack of food and carried out emergency programs during summer 2001 to deliver 0.5 million tons of food to Afghanistan. 2002 threat of famine ended in Afghanistan according to WFP. 

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, Elerond said:

So western countries aren't using famine as weapon of war in Afghanistan like you claimed

With Afghanistan you somehow forgot that its infrastructure was bombed down by Soviet Union and then civil war that lead Taliban to take control it in 90s. There was quite little infrastructure left for US to bomb in 2001 or assets to steal. In 2000 Afghanistan's GDP was $3.5 billion (). 2020 it was $20 billion.

In 2001 Afghanistan was suffering for famine for third year in row.  WFP estimated that millions would die because of lack of food and carried out emergency programs during summer 2001 to deliver 0.5 million tons of food to Afghanistan. 2002 threat of famine ended in Afghanistan according to WFP. 

This is a good post Elerond and its based on facts and history around Afghanistan 

I hope everyone reads it 

[Mamoulian War]

In a report by Czech volunteers fighting in Ukraine, they have decided after two months to talk about what they seen... Under the guise of humanitarian aid in Borodianka, a village close to Bucha, Russian army organized a gathering of people. After "enough" of them gathered, they started to throw grenades towards them... Kadyrovites did even worse atrocities to patients in Mental Health Hospitals... And then we are wondering, why some of the people have opinion, that Russia needs to be bombed back to the Stone Age...

[Malcador]

Media here is banging the drum that they are outgunned and on the verge of collapse again as well.

[Darkpriest]

Russiana deploying closer to US. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nicaragua-gives-permission-for-russian-troops-to-enter-country/#app

I wodner what would happen, if Mexico would allow Russian bases. 

 

[kanisatha]

19 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

Lets look at other great places of US interventions in ME and Africa in the last 30 years and how well they are doing after those.

Seems conveniently limiting. Why not also look at Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan? And in Somalia, in the elder Bush's initial intervention in 1992, academics agree the intervention saved a minimum of 1 million people from starving to death.

[Malcador]

Poor solution long term in the Somalia operation, not to mention the US ****ing up so much at the end - gunship strike, incompetence of the raid that scared them off.

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Darkpriest said:

Russiana deploying closer to US. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nicaragua-gives-permission-for-russian-troops-to-enter-country/#app

I wodner what would happen, if Mexico would allow Russian bases. 

 

I wonder? Its unlikely considering the important relationship Mexico has with the US ....they wouldnt want to anger the US by doing something so foolish as allowing Ruskie military bases in Mexico

 

[BruceVC]

2 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Poor solution long term in the Somalia operation, not to mention the US ****ing up so much at the end - gunship strike, incompetence of the raid that scared them off.

Well its the responsibility  of the AU to address long term problems in Africa 

The US only went to Somalia because of a humanitarian UN mission because militia groups were hijacking food and aid and basically weaponizing starvation 

Im not what you expect the West to do in places like Somalia when the AU doesnt even care ?