Discussions

[BritinBritain]

It does make me wonder just how separated from reality Russian audiences would have to be to buy that, one of the smallest nuclear powers nuking the largest would be suicide.

Exactly.

I'm wondering just how intelligent the Russian public are taking on board such garbage.

For the second day running RAF Jets flew over the house at a high rate on knots, en route to the North Sea, I havent heard of any reports of Russian ~Bears~ aircraft heading into British airspace.

 

[MontyB]

Exactly.

I'm wondering just how intelligent the Russian public are taking on board such garbage.

For the second day running RAF Jets flew over the house at a high rate on knots, en route to the North Sea, I havent heard of any reports of Russian ~Bears~ aircraft heading into British airspace.

It isn't just the Russian public there are brain dead wonders all over the world parroting idiotic conspiracy theories (just look at all the COVID conspiracies), I have no idea what has happened to people's ability to think critically but it has most definitely gone.

 

[lljadw]

People's ability to think critically has not disappeared today : it was not better in May 1940 when a lot of people believed the media lies about German paratroopers disguised as nuns .
There is a big difference between what people think and the lies of the media .
The media told us that Dallas 1963 and 9/11 were the work of the CIA .People did not believe them .
In August 1914 German soldiers were shooting on each other in the city of Leuven /Louvain and than cried that it was the work of franc-tireurs and they burned the city and killed 272 civilians .
In September 1914 there were stories in Lvov about shootings by Jews and the Cossacks murdered more than 40 Jews .
The same thing happens now in Ukraine and is amplified by the media, for commercial reasons.

 

[MontyB]

People's ability to think critically has not disappeared today : it was not better in May 1940 when a lot of people believed the media lies about German paratroopers disguised as nuns .
There is a big difference between what people think and the lies of the media .
The media told us that Dallas 1963 and 9/11 were the work of the CIA .People did not believe them .
In August 1914 German soldiers were shooting on each other in the city of Leuven /Louvain and than cried that it was the work of franc-tireurs and they burned the city and killed 272 civilians .
In September 1914 there were stories in Lvov about shootings by Jews and the Cossacks murdered more than 40 Jews .
The same thing happens now in Ukraine and is amplified by the media, for commercial reasons.

Which is why the ability to be able to think critically is just as important now as it has been in the past.

I have this view regarding the media in general and that is that it doesn't lie it just tells you it's version of the truth, it is up to the individual to search out other data both corroborating and refuting the story and come up with a story that is accurate.
The problem is that people are no longer prepared to have their views challenged so rather than look for reasons they may be wrong they gravitate to media sources that support their beliefs.

I have often mentioned that I am an Occam's razor follower and as such I find it hard to understand how people who outwardly appear "normal" can believe 9/11 was a demolition job, democrats are running a child sex ring from a pizza shop, Russia invaded Ukraine to rid it of Nazis or that the Holocaust didn't happen and I don't understand how society can allow these views to perpetuate, the only thing I can put it down to is a massive failure in man's ability to think critically which is borne out in this "study"

https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/the-state-of-critical-thinking-today/523

 

[lljadw]

Which is why the ability to be able to think critically is just as important now as it has been in the past.

I have this view regarding the media in general and that is that it doesn't lie it just tells you it's version of the truth, it is up to the individual to search out other data both corroborating and refuting the story and come up with a story that is accurate.
The problem is that people are no longer prepared to have their views challenged so rather than look for reasons they may be wrong they gravitate to media sources that support their beliefs.

I have often mentioned that I am an Occam's razor follower and as such I find it hard to understand how people who outwardly appear "normal" can believe 9/11 was a demolition job, democrats are running a child sex ring from a pizza shop, Russia invaded Ukraine to rid it of Nazis or that the Holocaust didn't happen and I don't understand how society can allow these views to perpetuate, the only thing I can put it down to is a massive failure in man's ability to think critically which is borne out in this "study"

https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/the-state-of-critical-thinking-today/523

If we allow the politicians to decide which views can perpetuate, it will be very fast the end of democracy .
Politicians will forbid climate sceptic views, euro sceptic views,views that are hostile to the Islam , to the LBGT lobby,views that defend fossil energy, views that are hostile to Big Pharma, etc, etc,....
And I don't think that outside Russia there is anyone who believes that Russia invaded Ukraine to rid it of Nazis .

 

[MontyB]

And I don't think that outside Russia there is anyone who believes that Russia invaded Ukraine to rid it of Nazis .

You may be surprised, I run into idiots who believe this nonsense on a daily basis and they all have one thing in common, they all distrust mainstream media to the point that anyone saying the opposite must be telling the truth.
It is the most flawed logic I have ever encountered, it is a parallel to the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic which totally ignores the idea that the enemy of your enemy could be a bigger problem.

 

[lljadw]

You may be surprised, I run into idiots who believe this nonsense on a daily basis and they all have one thing in common, they all distrust mainstream media to the point that anyone saying the opposite must be telling the truth.
It is the most flawed logic I have ever encountered, it is a parallel to the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic which totally ignores the idea that the enemy of your enemy could be a bigger problem.

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but my ally and even not always .
The USSR was since June 1941 the enemy of Germany,thus the ally of Britain ,not the friend of Britain .
Til September 1943 Germany was the enemy of Britain which was the enemy of Italy,thus Germany was an ally of Italy, but suddenly in September 1943 Italy changed side and Britain became its ally and Germany its enemy .
Till December 1941 Japan was the enemy of Communist China which was the enemy of Germany, but Japan and Germany were not friends, even not allies as Germany was selling weapons and a military mission to the KMT which was an enemy of Japan and Communist China .
This means that Germany was doing business with 2 countries ,claiming it was their ally, which were fighting again each other .

 

[MontyB]

If we allow the politicians to decide which views can perpetuate, it will be very fast the end of democracy .
Politicians will forbid climate sceptic views, euro sceptic views,views that are hostile to the Islam , to the LBGT lobby,views that defend fossil energy, views that are hostile to Big Pharma, etc, etc,....
And I don't think that outside Russia there is anyone who believes that Russia invaded Ukraine to rid it of Nazis .

Politician's don't need to make these decisions for us common sense based on an adequate education should allow us to make these decisions for ourselves or more precisely common sense should enable us to disregard the idiotic theories.

As for no one outside Russia thinking that story was true goes I have two people that I work with who have swallowed the story hook line and sinker and in both cases they also think COVID is a hoax and 9/11 was George Bush covering up missing gold in all cases the American government was behind it along with the "Deep State".

The interesting thing is you can see their logic process in action, they refuse to believe anything in the "mainstream media" and access all of their information from one or two fringe websites which are so dodgy my email client detects their links as spam.

 

[lljadw]

Politician's don't need to make these decisions for us common sense based on an adequate education should allow us to make these decisions for ourselves or more precisely common sense should enable us to disregard the idiotic theories.

As for no one outside Russia thinking that story was true goes I have two people that I work with who have swallowed the story hook line and sinker and in both cases they also think COVID is a hoax and 9/11 was George Bush covering up missing gold in all cases the American government was behind it along with the "Deep State".

The interesting thing is you can see their logic process in action, they refuse to believe anything in the "mainstream media" and access all of their information from one or two fringe websites which are so dodgy my email client detects their links as spam.

Well : it depends on what you are calling Deep State .
In a lot of countries,bureaucrats ( especially secret services ) are opposing and conspiring against the policy of the elected/ non elected government .
5 years ago ,Dana Bash ( from CNN ) said publicly ,warning Trump: If you cross the Deep State,they will get back at you .Even if you are the president .
Source : realclair politics May 17 2017 .
And , let's not forget Hoover , the Missile Gap, etc .
Deep State exists also in France, in Germany : in Germany Adenauer wanted to put in prison Gehlen, boss of the Bundesnachrichtendienst ( German CIA ) who had worked together with Langley to eliminate Strauss who was minister of Defense .
And Austria where a secret service had conspired to eliminate the liberals who were in the government .
Italy where one of the spy chiefs was paid by the US .
And Britain (yes ! ) :
Yes PM, Yes Minister are not fiction .
Before the war groups in the FO and MI6 conspired against the appeasement policy of Chamberlain, after the war against the appeasement policy of Eden .
And in Germany the Abwehr and the SD Ausland had their own policy, independent from that of Hitler. Hitler was very angry .
And the same tendency can be seen in Russia /USSR where the Ochrana worked together with terrorists and the Tcheka invented spies in the army .

 

[MontyB]

I am curious how long will last the enthusiasm in the West to support Ukraine : very soon a lot of parents will have to decide if they will heat their children or if they will give them food .
The German minister of economy, energy and also climate action ( he is a Green ) Robert Habeck said Thursday that he was not in favor of banning energy imports from Russia .And he gave the following figures :
Russia provides Germany with
55 % of its natural gas (Germany's production of natural gas is meaningless )
50 % of its coal ( the German coal production has stopped )
and 35 % of the oil (Germany has no oil )
consumed by its inhabitants .
Source is :telesurenglish.net
And maybe senator Graham (GOP SC ) should stop its exhortations to kill Putin .
After all, there is a strong possibility that after the war, US will still have to do business with Putin .
Meanwhile Biden is asking Congress to take an additional 10 billion dollar from the American people to give it to Ukraine .
He forgets that there are in November mid term elections .

Looking back at this it doesn't appear the west has lost a lot of enthusiasm to supply Ukraine and Russian actions in the field have solidified public support behind Ukraine, there will no doubt be a point where the west "loses interest" but I think a lot of that will come down to a number of things:
1. US elections.
2. How far the Russians think they will go beyond Donbass and whether anyone is going to believe that is the end of their designs on bits of the world.

The ability to supply Ukraine has reached a point where we now need to start seriously looking at supplying western systems and that means a lot of retraining which slows things up considerably.

Regarding the western need for Russian resources, I think this is more a problem for the Russians than the west, as western countries find and increase their use of alternate fuels supplies and resources it becomes increasingly unlikely they will need to renew Russian contracts in the future.

Ukraine will become a second Afghanistan ,and the partisan war in Afghanistan resulted in the retreat of the Soviets and of the US .
Russia can't afford a second defeat .
The difference with Afghanistan is that the Ukrainian partisans will chase and kill Russions over the whole world .
There is a strong Ukrainian diaspora in Canada which is growing up with the myths of the Holodomor . How long will it take them to kill the Russian ambassador,to attack the Russian embassy ?
What would be the reactions in Boston and New York if Britain invaded Ireland?
And, if Zelensky would accept to go to Minsk (which is a modern Canossa ) ,he will be considered as a traitor and suffer the fate of a traitor .
There are millions of Ukrainians waiting to see a Russian and to kill him .

At this stage, it looks as though you were fairly accurate and by the way things are going it seems Russia is regressing at a great rate of knots, its military is now down to 1960s armour and it is fighting a WW1 artillery battle in the east.

 

[lljadw]

About the Western support for Ukraine:how long will the politicians be able to continue to give Ukraine billions of money that belong to their electors?
The Belgian PM promised Ukraine 800 million Euro,without any consultation of Parliament ,this is 70 Euro per inhabitant .This will cost him a lot of votes,especially given the fact that countless people have lost everything because of the anti-Covid measures,imposed by the same PM .
The presidential and legislative elections in France are a dire sign for Macron .
The German PM (Scholz ) decided to increase the military budget by 100/150 billion Euro in 3 years ( as usual the numbers are contradictory ),which means an increase of taxes of 1200/1800 Euro for every German . While there is for the moment a lot of support for the decision, it will not last long :the moment when people will receive their tax bill,the support will very fast collaps: there are a lot of pensioners in Germany and a lot of them have a monthly pension of less than 1800 Euro .While they will blame Putin, they will punish Scholz .
Meanwhile the German minister of agriculture said that the price increase for food products will continue : you ain't seen nothing yet .And we know what taxpayers ,who are also electors,will do when bad times are coming back again .
In Belgium a bread costs now 3 Euro and a lot of pensioners have only an income of 1500 Euro per month .The price of petrol is now more than 2 Euro per liter. The government is claiming that everything is the fault of Putin, but how long will people accept this claim ?
Stagflation with increasing taxes is not something that the taxpayer will accept for longtime .

 

[MontyB]

About the Western support for Ukraine:how long will the politicians be able to continue to give Ukraine billions of money that belong to their electors?
The Belgian PM promised Ukraine 800 million Euro,without any consultation of Parliament ,this is 70 Euro per inhabitant .This will cost him a lot of votes,especially given the fact that countless people have lost everything because of the anti-Covid measures,imposed by the same PM .
The presidential and legislative elections in France are a dire sign for Macron .
The German PM (Scholz ) decided to increase the military budget by 100/150 billion Euro in 3 years ( as usual the numbers are contradictory ),which means an increase of taxes of 1200/1800 Euro for every German . While there is for the moment a lot of support for the decision, it will not last long :the moment when people will receive their tax bill,the support will very fast collaps: there are a lot of pensioners in Germany and a lot of them have a monthly pension of less than 1800 Euro .While they will blame Putin, they will punish Scholz .
Meanwhile the German minister of agriculture said that the price increase for food products will continue : you ain't seen nothing yet .And we know what taxpayers ,who are also electors,will do when bad times are coming back again .
In Belgium a bread costs now 3 Euro and a lot of pensioners have only an income of 1500 Euro per month .The price of petrol is now more than 2 Euro per liter. The government is claiming that everything is the fault of Putin, but how long will people accept this claim ?
Stagflation with increasing taxes is not something that the taxpayer will accept for longtime .

While true I am not sure it is as bad as you indicate, most people understand that the "peace dividend" has come to an end, while food prices are a concern but if the rest of the world is like this place smart, seasonal buying offsets the price increases to a large degree and we will see a return to things like home gardens to reduce costs, I can't really talk about petrol prices as we replaced our ICE vehicles with electric last year and I expect this will drive the move to alternative fuels sooner and faster than expected.

The thing is that as solar, wind, electric, hydrogen, nuclear or what ever generation systems are rushed in to replace Russian gas and oil it reduces future need for Russian gas and oil as such their economy is pretty much shot long term.

This leaves the question, how much longer can Russia afford this war?
From a New Zealand point of view it is the perfect war, New Zealanders aren't risking anything, Russia grows weaker by the day and all for the cost of a few million dollars.

Putin on the other hand has a country being fed ludicrous propaganda about this being the beginning of a new Russian empire (not sure how they think this rabble of an army are going to perform against NATO as I doubt they would make it more than a few miles into Poland before they are destroyed), how are they going to take a war that has decimated their economy, killed a large number of their youth and left them with giant pile of rubble in eastern Ukraine as the reward?

 

[lljadw]

While true I am not sure it is as bad as you indicate, most people understand that the "peace dividend" has come to an end, while food prices are a concern but if the rest of the world is like this place smart, seasonal buying offsets the price increases to a large degree and we will see a return to things like home gardens to reduce costs, I can't really talk about petrol prices as we replaced our ICE vehicles with electric last year and I expect this will drive the move to alternative fuels sooner and faster than expected.

The thing is that as solar, wind, electric, hydrogen, nuclear or what ever generation systems are rushed in to replace Russian gas and oil it reduces future need for Russian gas and oil as such their economy is pretty much shot long term.

This leaves the question, how much longer can Russia afford this war?
From a New Zealand point of view it is the perfect war, New Zealanders aren't risking anything, Russia grows weaker by the day and all for the cost of a few million dollars.

Putin on the other hand has a country being fed ludicrous propaganda about this being the beginning of a new Russian empire (not sure how they think this rabble of an army are going to perform against NATO as I doubt they would make it more than a few miles into Poland before they are destroyed), how are they going to take a war that has decimated their economy, killed a large number of their youth and left them with giant pile of rubble in eastern Ukraine as the reward?

About the economic future :Jamie Dimon (CEO from JP Morgan ) predicts an economic catastrophe :he said that an economic ''hurricane ''is coming,caused by the war in Ukraine,with rising inflation pressures and interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve .
JP Morgan and the Bank of America have lost this year 18 % of their value .
About electric cars : here most people can't afford such a car : he cost more than 3,7 euro on electricity per hundred km and the cheapest one costs 20000 euro .
A battery of such a car lasts maximum 8 years and to replace him cost a fortune : a new battery of an Audi costs 38000 euro ,which is 63292 NZ dollars .
To upload an electric car to drive 100 km lasts 30 minutes .

 

[MontyB]

About the economic future :Jamie Dimon (CEO from JP Morgan ) predicts an economic catastrophe :he said that an economic ''hurricane ''is coming,caused by the war in Ukraine,with rising inflation pressures and interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve .
JP Morgan and the Bank of America have lost this year 18 % of their value .
About electric cars : here most people can't afford such a car : he cost more than 3,7 euro on electricity per hundred km and the cheapest one costs 20000 euro .
A battery of such a car lasts maximum 8 years and to replace him cost a fortune : a new battery of an Audi costs 38000 euro ,which is 63292 NZ dollars .
To upload an electric car to drive 100 km lasts 30 minutes .

With regards to electric vehicles, I have the Audi e-tron 55 quattro Advanced and by no stretch of the imagination is it a small vehicle but it comes with a 10 year full replacement warranty on the battery (Not a major consideration given that I replace my car every 3-4 years), I get roughly 550km from a single charge which costs me roughly $3 NZD at home, in the 12 months I have owned it battery deterioration has been undetectable, charging at a fast charger takes you from 0-80% in less than 30 mins, the only drawback is the cost of the vehicle which was $165k but the positive is $3-6 in fuel costs per week.

The wife on the other hand has a Hyundai Ionic 5 and that costs about the same to charge, has the same 10 year battery warranty, charges faster and goes just as far for $70k NZD.

In my opinion other than the initial purchase price there is no longer a down side to owning electric vehicles over petrol ones and given the cost of fuel locally people are paying $200-300 in petrol a week just to go to work you could pay off an electric car in fuel savings now.

 

[MontyB]

1 Kazakhstan is already a Russian ally.

Just figured I would respond to this theory strangely enough using a blog and Russian article because they don't seem particularly close to me.

https://www.jamesmdorsey.net/post/is-kazakhstan-russia-s-next-ukraine

https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/12/24/terpi-kazakh

 

[lljadw]

Just figured I would respond to this theory strangely enough using a blog and Russian article because they don't seem particularly close to me.

https://www.jamesmdorsey.net/post/is-kazakhstan-russia-s-next-ukraine

https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/12/24/terpi-kazakh

Dorsey said that Putin and Nazarbayev ( dictator of Kazakhstan ) had a close relationship :when Nazarbayev got Covid, Putin sent him doctors to treat him .
OTOH ,I have no faith in Dorsey,who is a biased and interventioning journalist who labeled Russian nationalists as far-right ,while remaining silent about nationalists from Ukraine, Kazahkstan, Syria, Africa, etc .
Every one who has a little understanding of these things,knows that far-right, right, far-left,left,etc are European notions from the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries,who have no place outside the continent .