domain:furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com
RollingInMud
1d ago
actual wars he/Russia involved in since 1991
Also in the article wasn't mentioned intervention in Kazakhstan, behind-the-scenes FSB operations in Belarus, Montenegro etc., or simply acts of terrorism like Skrypal poisoning, or murder of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin, or dozens of similar acts around the world. It indicates that Putin is "adventuresome" and prone to risk-taking, even at the cost of worsening relationships with other countries who do not threaten him. Having nuclear weapons is certainly an additional factor of why he is so bold, coupled with masterful utilization of useful idiots in the West, both on the left and the right, who'll cry about escalation every time someone will threaten to respond in kind.
RollingInMud
1d ago
Ukraine started responding to its economic malaise by stealing gas meant for transit to EU customers to help itself meet its own demand
Wasn't it just propaganda? Just like Russia banned Latvian canned fish imported to Russia every time they had a dispute about Soviet legacy in Latvia and the status of Russian language? On flimsy pretense that the fish was spoiled, or whatever. I still remember numerous reports on Russian state TV about Latvians trying to poison Russian population with their rotten fish, Georgians -- with their vine, Moldavians — with their apples...
The same with "stolen" gas -- you still need to keep "technical gas" inside the pipes to keep the pressure, and as countries westward of Ukraine still consumed their (as they paid for it), Ukraine had to siphon gas off some in order to keep operating the compressor stations. EU also didn't find any proof that the gas was stolen IIRC. But at the core, Russians hated that Yushchenko was the president of Ukraine, and not their puppet Yanukovych. That's why they raised the price of the gas from something like $50 to $250 in the first place -- as to pressure Ukraine to submit.
No hard questions about who shot first.
True. But if you do your diligence, you'll find that we (Russians) were rarely good guys.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
Pretty much. People radically overestimate how hard it would have been for the Ukrainians to disassemble the Soviet nukes and make their own triggering device.
Which is what most of nuclear arms security comes down to. When nuclear munitions have unlock codes in the first place, the 'failsafe' mechanisms are failsafes in the sense of 'this trigger device will be borked.' They are not failsafes in terms of rendering the underlying material unable to be used, only unable to be used by the specific device.
Replace the device, and you have a possibly less efficient, but still effective, nuclear device. Which is among the less challenging parts of the nuclear problem.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
Specifically, North Korea had enough artillery in range that the casualty estimates for the first day of shelling were on the scale of a Hiroshima/Nagasaki, i.e. a nuclear weapon.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Pro- one country and anti- another is one thing, I thought we were talking about why it's dangerous to antagonize one country, but somehow safer to antagonize a bigger and better armed one.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
Look closely at the comments. The moderator imposed a ban, not on BurdensomeCount, but on the poster of a filtered reply to BurdensomeCount that you can't read.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
The world is in a similar state today
Not really.
There were two main dynamics to the state of geopolitical affairs that let WW1 be WW1. One was the treaty situation, in which most involved states on both sides had staked their security policies / international prestige / credibility that they also needed for other interests into the alliance system. The second was the fact that four great powers (France, UK, Germany, Russia) were competing for influence in a very constrained geopolitical area (peninsular Europe) that they could all project power into. The later is what led to the former is what led to the domino effect.
There is no equivalent concentration of competition or overlap of treaties. As much as the Russians have tried to style a [insert term of choice for grouping] of resistance to the US amongst Iran, Russia, NK, and China, the relationship between them has been fundamentally transactional, not alliance based, and the last few years have emphasized that. The US alliance network similarly does have overlapping effects- there are very few obligations (by design) for out-of-regional issues. Relatedly, most of the non-US actors in the modern system cannot project power to each other if they wanted to, and most US allies in different regions cannot and would not project power to the other as a 'we will fight together' sort of way.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
1d ago
The mods? The admins? It's seemed like a legitimate, good faith question to me.
Yes, the world at that point was a powder keg, and you can name at least a dozen incidents before the assassination that could have set it off. The assassination was far from the root cause, but it was the proximate event in a spiral.
The world is in a similar state today, and normalcy bias is what prevents us from seeing it. Seemingly minor events can trigger repercussions far out of expectations if conditions are right.
Lizzardspawn
1d ago
Although it seems far-fetched, it also seemed far-fetched that an assassination of an archduke could spiral to a world wide conflagration.
That is absolutely not what happened. The war was inevitable at this point. It is not surprising that the killing of the archduke lead to the war, it is surprising that it had taken so long for something to lit powder keg.
dogfish
1d ago
The best way to convince a country not to get nukes is to not be hyper aggressive towards them.
And to not have nukes yourselves. People warn that if Iran gets nukes, it will trigger a regional arms race, and Turkey, Saudi, etc will also have to get them, but that arms race already began when Israel acquired nukes and created an imbalance.
ThenElection
1d ago
The elites of the USA (who are often to be said to be captured by the left) are pro-Ukraine, pro-Israel, though. A substantial fringe of academics and student protestors doesn't change that.
ThenElection
1d ago
The risk is that this escalates to a broader conflict. Not Iran vs whoever--Iran is a paper tiger, and all other factors being equal it's good that it's now further from getting nukes than it was (one hopes). But I'm worried this triggers a series of international incidents that leads to a Taiwan war. Although it seems far-fetched, it also seemed far-fetched that an assassination of an archduke could spiral to a world wide conflagration.
Iran needs to respond somehow, for domestic political reasons if nothing else. And, one thing leads to another, and Hormuz ends up mined, and China decides, well, the world is going to suck for a couple years and the US is otherwise occupied, might as well take advantage of the moment.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
If the context was unimportant, why not include it yourself? Even if we assume that you didn't mean to imply what people think that you were implying, at least you surely understand that your post could easily be read in such a way without that context?
The pro-Ukraine, anti-Israel crowd is not small. It's the default position of the western left.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
I've long been interested in how people, when talking about Ukraine, use generic terms with little meaning like "increasing escalation" to make comparisons of things that obviously aren't comparable - in this case, the direct use of the American bomber fleet, which obviously hasn't been happening in Ukraine and does not seem like something that is happening.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
I mean the objection is that no one could remain a public figure after suggesting I want to “end” any group other than whites. If he’d been talking about “ending Jewishness” or “ending blackness” or “ending femininity” he’d have been fired rather publicly. In fact, reading his statement he doesn’t say “I object to Jewishness, like other forms of bigotry.” He said “I object to antisemitism, like all forms of bigotry.”
If he’d worked with a group that suggested that treason to blackness is service to humanity, he would never be in a position to have anything else he said taken seriously. He’d probably be banned even on Twitter.
In the end, Iran will have nukes. They’re too large, too developed and have a relatively good academic pipeline in the hard sciences such that it’s inevitable. It might be a year, three years, five years, but they will have them.
A ground invasion of Iran by the US is impossible. The only hope for regime change is either that there’s some mass minority uprising against the Persians (very unlikely, they’re not staunch ethnic nationalists and have mollified most of the minorities quite well) or that there’s a middle-class ‘color revolution’ in Tehran and the mullahs and IRGC just kind of give up in that late stage GDR type way and melt away into the crowds (which is also extremely unlikely because they know what they have to lose).
At the same time, Iran’s near term options for retaliation are limited. They can’t shut down the strait because the Chinese will hit the roof and selectively bombing ships is a bad idea (the true shutdown scenario, as I understand it, would be mining the strait, and that’s not going to distinguish between Chinese ships and Western ones). If they bomb Saudi oilfields it will only hasten the return of Abraham Accord type stuff just when they’d achieved some diplomatic successes with the Gulf Arabs.
aardvark2
1d ago
so Russia's favorite strategy of sending 10x people in and having 5x killed but still coming ahead on the numbers
what?
aardvark2
1d ago
I get rejected a lot, who cares?
You get rejected at 50% rate, average man get rejected at 99% rate.
Crowstep
1d ago
Holocaust denial censorship is best understood as part and parcel of bans on Nazi symbols. Holocaust deniers aren't disinterested historians searching for truth. They're Jew-haters who are threatened by the idea of a genocide of Jews because it undermines their beliefs that Jews rule the world.
Fortunately, I live in a country which bans neither Holocaust denial (our vibrant Muslim underclass are very grateful) nor Nazi symbolism. The Holocaust deniers have failed to win in the free marketplace of ideas because they are wrong (and motivated by transparent ethnic animosity), not because the government won't let them post on the internet.
aardvark2
1d ago
In other instances, (gynephile) trans men reported that they found dating as a man was a lot harder.
without having to worry if they’re in the <5% that’s attracted to you
do you realize that this is exactly how women see average man? median woman considers median man repulsive. This is only advantage for cishet males who are in top 5-10% and/or in low population density. Homosexuals have had their solutions to dating which serve average gay in big cities better than average heterosexual.
you can just follow a preset script
"script" used to be, now it's gone along with arranged marriages.
Counter-example: Hezbollah is refusing to help Iran after Israel’s campaign against them.
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