domain:tracingwoodgrains.com
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
17hr ago
Acquiescence+aftercare from the US was reportedly that the Americans told the Germans before the attack, as well as soon after.
My opinion is Biden could basically call Scholz and say "I hope none of your folks are working on these pipelines of yours, because we're blowing them up tomorrow".
@dr_analog, you got your wish!
That's good! You'd probably have a vision problem if you did. One typically does not see stunning rebukes of foreign, and former, political appointees who are providing rhetorical, financial, and military support to your own side.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
18hr ago
If you believe, as I increasingly do, that most of our societal ills with corruption and collapse of state capacity revolve around the mass importation of high time preference demographics incapable at a genetic level of pursuing generational projects, deporting them is not only a solution, but the only solution.
What? No, that's not true. Granting the (very substantial) premise, the conclusion is obviously going to be "don't let these people run society", but that only requires disenfranchisement, not deportation (except in the edge case of a supermajority that can overthrow the disenfranchising government).
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18hr ago
Do you feel like these snarky comebacks add anything, impress or convince others?
The galaxybrained 'you're just projecting your own ignorance and whenever you point out the silliness in what I'm saying - it's actually you that's wrong and each time you point this out it only shows how wrong you are' approach was fun but it's gotten a bit tired by now. You need a new routine.
ABigGuy4U
18hr ago
Opposition parties remain banned, the press is still under government control, the Verkhovna Rada re-passes the martial law declaration every 90 days with the precision of a metronome. There are no plans for an election in the near future. I’m not seeing any stunning Ukrainian rebuke of what Antony Blinkin said.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18hr ago
The whole Ukrainian govt is on US and EU payroll, about half their money comes from the West vs Ukrainian taxes.
"So I'm on trial for war crimes. Where is the justice? We are all individuals, making our own decisions. I never forced anyone to do anything. This prosecution is based on spooks, naïve conceptions of conspiracy and a simplistic understanding of a complex world of interrelated cause and effect."
"Well you did pay the soldier's wages. You provided them armaments, training and intelligence. You're responsible for their actions, your support is implicit."
Even assuming that this is true, could they really have done it without support or at least acquiescence+aftercare from the US?
Acquiescence+aftercare from the US was reportedly that the Americans told the Germans before the attack, as well as soon after.
As for being puzzled by regional parties whose security concerns Germany dismissed and ignorred in pursuing Nord Stream, I suspect you believe they have a far greater fear and/or positive opinion of Germany than they do. Germany's Nord Stream policy was not exactly considered a benign or neutral policy by its Baltic neighbors. German politicians had not only insisted it was ridiculous to oppose Nord Stream on grounds of Russian concerns, but also that it was ridiculous to believe Nord Stream interests might sabotage Germany's willingness to support its European neighbors security if Russia did do something stupid. Both of these concerns were validated by the German response to Putin.
If anything, rather than a snub the non-cooperation was both a retaliation and a warning. Germany could not defend Nord Stream when it was warned in advance. Germany could not pursue Nord Stream saboteurs without the cooperation of its neighbors in the present. And Germany would not be able to protect any future Nord Stream in the future, if it disregarded its neighbors security concerns. The Nord Stream concept was not a German-Russia bilateral concern. It was a concern of far more people, and far more veto authorities in practice.
Germany was never so adored and/or feared that it could expect other countries to defend Germany's privileged energy relationship with Russian at their own expense. If that surprised the Germans, well it wasn't for a lack of being warned.
phailyoor
18hr ago
The Taiwanese are Chinese. They may be die hard against Communist rule, but they have no history as a state that wasn't thoroughly Chinese. Unless maybe you count the Japanese occupation but I don't think so.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
18hr ago
I wouldn't be so dismissive of the possibility that solutions exist which simultaneously make Ukraine too weak to make it attractive for it to resume the war at a later point and reclaim territories (what is really Russia's minimum condition) and too strong to make it attractive for Russia to do so and capture more. The most obvious option is for NATO to provide a binding, boots-on-ground guarantee to defend it should Russia attack again. As far as I can see, the problem with this option is strictly that neither the current Ukrainian government (which surely would collapse in such a situation) nor the West (for whom a neutral Ukraine with present borders is of little value, and they would have to credibly signal that they would defend it, vs. the option to have it cheaply continue killing Russians and gamble on the absolute bonanza that a surprise Russian collapse would be) would actually want it.
Without EU membership/emigration opportunities/gibs, even the Ukrainian people (who are largely happy to accept a chance of death for a chance of climbing the butter mountains and swimming the wine lakes) would see no reason to accept such a peace, though I thought Russia at one point softened its stance on accepting an Austria-like "EU but no NATO" arrangement.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
I get ya, I just have a hobby of linguistic nitpicking.
phailyoor
18hr ago
their sole foray into Russian Territory
From a purely military perspective the invasion may have been the right move. They inflicted serious losses on the unprepared Russian defenders and diverted an impressive amount of manpower away from the main attack in Ukraine.
But from that perspective they should have cut their losses and run when the Russians brought their entire war machine to bear on the pocket. Trying to replicate attacks like the Kursk attack in other places along the Russian border would probably have been smart. But the fact of occupying Russian land was probably too much to just give up without a fight.
UwU
18hr ago
The population would mostly flee and be happily snapped up by European union which needs wagies. Baltic sea navigation wouldn't be improved, actually seizing the Baltic state could possibly make western Europe close the Danish straits.
If you read the latter part of his post, I think it's pretty clear he means we shouldn't mind the Baltics getting invaded, but of course correct me if I'm wrong.
I kinda hold a similar opinion. I don't really want to care about the Baltics. But they are in NATO, and we (the US) are allied to them, so we do have to mind the Baltics getting invaded. If there's a politically feasible way to extricate ourselves from having to protect the Baltics, like somehow removing them from NATO, then I would support it.
phailyoor
18hr ago
If it's just the position of the front, most available maps should be accurate enough. As biased as the reporting may be, they can't fake the front more than a few miles.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
This social structure is extremely common in history and is dishonestly presented as proof of how people can be “multilingual”.
I do not see what's dishonest about such a claim. Being multilingual isn't the same as being equally or maximally fluent in all the languages of concern. Being able to be conversational at all is the bare minimum, and counts by itself.
anon_
18hr ago
They fought way harder than was reasonable to expect when this first started.
And, for many purposes, they established a very credible lesson about it for the future.
That is to say, even if they end up losing some eastern territory, they will have demonstrated that the cost to get it was extremely high -- both in absolute terms and relative to expectation.
Fortunately the story was fake from start to finish and from top to bottom. Anyone who felt an iota of shame over it was played for a sucker, a cheap mark.
So I think the right choice is to continue to be unashamed and unrepentant, especially when people who hate you are tying to stop the things you want done.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
18hr ago
Or maybe you just can't stop yourself from expressing it in maximally vitriolic ways.
He doesn't, though. AFAICS @WhiningCoil is a lot less vitriolic than SteveKirkland or Bernd.
Like, yeah, he might not be the most pleasant person to have around, but neither is @The_Nybbler. WC's not, TTBOMK, a flaming jackass who tries to drive out his opponents and claim the space.
anon_
18hr ago
Because it wasn't my position that we need to accept 'full scale ethnic replacement' or anything of the sort. Or that the solution is just "be more lenient". Neither of those was actually what I wrote.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18hr ago
It doesn't work like that. Threats don't have unlimited range and effect.
The US can't go 'back out of Ukraine or we'll attack you'. The Russians would call that bluff. The Russians can't likewise say 'end all arms support tomorrow and Starlink too or we'll nuke X, Y and Z'. The US would call that bluff. In the Cold War, there was discussion over whether the US would really trade New York for Paris with reference to nuclear forces. It is not at all accepted that the US would trade New York for Kiev. Credibility is based on proximity of target, perceived value and the provocativeness of behaviour to be deterred. It depends on many factors.
Those who'd pat themselves on the back over 'very, very obvious game theory' should move onto merely obvious game theory.
FarmReadyElephants
18hr ago
Ironically, there's a far stronger natural argument for defending Ukraine against Russia than there is for defending a rogue Chinese province from its sovereign government
This is a hilarious way to compare an anti-communist Western-backed nation that has existed since 1949, versus a province that was ruled by Russia for over 300 years up to 1991 and remained a pretty neutral border state up until 2014
ChickenOverlord
19hr ago
FWIW I've been warned by the mods here a couple times for not being sufficiently charitable towards feminists, and I didn't think what I had written was particularly unkind.
Dean
Flairless
19hr ago
Truly, Antony Blinkin's word is Ukrainian law forever into the future, and 'the State Department isn't going to lean on them' is the same as 'State Department approval.'
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
19hr ago
If you include economic damage to Europe from the sanctions, then easily that much or more. From a 2023 speech:
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/singapore-speech-hrvp-borrell-shangri-la-dialogue_en
if you include the support that the European governments have had to pay in order to help their families and firms to face the high prices of electricity, of food, the subsidies to our people in order to face the consequences of the war is €700 billion
Costs to the US are lower naturally but Big Guy is probably talking about the bloc as a whole.
Yeah that's why pretty much stopped playing - to have a good game takes at least a whole weekend, maybe longer, for pretty much every game I'd enjoy. And I can't justify spending that much time to myself. I played Disco Elysium though recently, and didn't regret it, but probably won't do anything like that again for a while.
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