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The Kiss Your Arse Goodbye Thread

Dogsauce said:
They’re not all rational at all. Prominent media talking heads speak of ‘holy war’, framing this as a last stand of Christianity against satanic nazi hordes, bringing forth the second coming. Some proper lunatic stuff.

This could be viewed as stuff for a domestic audience, but the same were calling for strikes on Ukrainian power infrastructure to freeze people to death a while before it became actual military policy, they are close to the opinions and thoughts of those holding power (else they wouldn’t be in their position)
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Saying they're not all rational at all is just a failure to understand where Putin, his circle, his mouthpieces are coming from. Obviously none of us know exactly what's going on in their heads but it's not hard to get a broad brush idea of where they're at and why the Russian state is acting like it does.

Putin has never been a fan of the Western Liberal economic model. He doesn't want Russia plugged into the western globalised capitalist system, either US or EU flavour, and he doesn't want Ukraine plugged into it either, seeing Ukraine as part of Russia really, even if it has gone independent.

As a small c conservative old man, surrounded by small c conservative old men, he doesn't like godless western Liberal culture, seeing it as all gay marriages and gender reassignment certificates and 'no religion' as the biggest belief in the census data. It's not how he sees Russian culture and he doesn't want these weird foriegn ideas spreading to Russia. That's not unique to him, there's plenty of conservatives in the west who feel the same way.

What's on Russian media is only a slightly exaggerated version of what's on Fox in the US, which is only a slightly exaggerated version of GB News, which isn't that far from Times or Telegraph think pieces.

The Russian State's behaviour over the last 23 years is perfectly rational from this viewpoint. With Putin and his circle's nationalist authoriarian streak, trying to disrupt Western governments, grow Russian influence in what they see as the Russian world and, when Ukraine looks like it's going full EU, invading it to save it from western Liberal economics and beliefs is all rational. Don't judge that behaviour on the most eye-catching nonsense in the Russian media.
 
Dogsauce said:
They’re not all rational at all. Prominent media talking heads speak of ‘holy war’, framing this as a last stand of Christianity against satanic nazi hordes, bringing forth the second coming. Some proper lunatic stuff.

This could be viewed as stuff for a domestic audience, but the same were calling for strikes on Ukrainian power infrastructure to freeze people to death a while before it became actual military policy, they are close to the opinions and thoughts of those holding power (else they wouldn’t be in their position)
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He said, privileging his own superior rationality and coming at this with a great want of knowledge about Russia
 
Spandex said:
Saying they're not all rational at all is just a failure to understand where Putin, his circle, his mouthpieces are coming from. Obviously none of us know exactly what's going on in their heads but it's not hard to get a broad brush idea of where they're at and why the Russian state is acting like it does.

Putin has never been a fan of the Western Liberal economic model. He doesn't want Russia plugged into the western globalised capitalist system, either US or EU flavour, and he doesn't want Ukraine plugged into it either, seeing Ukraine as part of Russia really, even if it has gone independent.

As a small c conservative old man, surrounded by small c conservative old men, he doesn't like godless western Liberal culture, seeing it as all gay marriages and gender reassignment certificates and 'no religion' as the biggest belief in the census data. It's not how he sees Russian culture and he doesn't want these weird foriegn ideas spreading to Russia. That's not unique to him, there's plenty of conservatives in the west who feel the same way.

What's on Russian media is only a slightly exaggerated version of what's on Fox in the US, which is only a slightly exaggerated version of GB News, which isn't that far from Times or Telegraph think pieces.

The Russian State's behaviour over the last 23 years is perfectly rational from this viewpoint. With Putin and his circle's nationalist authoriarian streak, trying to disrupt Western governments, grow Russian influence in what they see as the Russian world and, when Ukraine looks like it's going full EU, invading it to save it from western Liberal economics and beliefs is all rational. Don't judge that behaviour on the most eye-catching nonsense in the Russian media.
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Not sure about any of that small-conservative argument TBH - though they absolutely do put out that such is their belief, the ignorant cynicism with which they treat traditional religion and Christian morality is pretty evident (as of course it is in the US and here with these types) and it is hard to see any evidence that he actually believes it.

I think the big problem for Putin is the EU, or more specifically the threat posed to him and his system of a genuine internal movement amongst the people (and the elites) within Russia emerging that was pro-joining the EU (which would be much more likely if Ukraine and Belarus got closer to the EU and their population's living standards improved thereby). Ironically this is probably a concern that he shares with the US, who would probably see an EU which included Russia as way more of a threat than the Russian / Chinese alliance is.
 
agricola said:
Not sure about any of that small-conservative argument TBH - though they absolutely do put out that such is their belief, the ignorant cynicism with which they treat traditional religion and Christian morality is pretty evident (as of course it is in the US and here with these types) and it is hard to see any evidence that he actually believes it.
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“Do we want to have, here, in our country, in Russia, parent number one, number two, number three instead of mom and dad? Have they gone mad out there? Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools from the primary grades? To be drummed into them that there are various supposed genders besides women and men, and to be offered a sex change operation? Do we want all this for our country and our children? For us, all this is unacceptable, we have a different future, our own future?”

V Putin, 7 Oct 2022

Of course, he might just be saying that stuff for his audience and not believe a word of it. We can't know what goes on inside his head. But LGBT rights have certainly not gone well in Putin's Russia, which puts some action behind his words.
 
Spandex said:
“Do we want to have, here, in our country, in Russia, parent number one, number two, number three instead of mom and dad? Have they gone mad out there? Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools from the primary grades? To be drummed into them that there are various supposed genders besides women and men, and to be offered a sex change operation? Do we want all this for our country and our children? For us, all this is unacceptable, we have a different future, our own future?”

V Putin, 7 Oct 2022

Of course, he might just be saying that stuff for his audience and not believe a word of it. We can't know what goes on inside his head. But LGBT rights have certainly not gone well in Putin's Russia, which puts some action behind his words.
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In my experience these are also the views of a majority of the Russian population, and probably Ukraine's as well-there is a marked difference between what the current Ukrainian elites purport to believe and the population at large. In Poland too, all this stuff is clearly heavily contested, and I wouldn't fancy being gay in somewhere like Bulgaria, Rumania or Albania either.

Visiting the old Soviet bloc, I formed an impression that social attitudes in these countries remained to a large extent stuck in the times that the Communist parties came to power. We have to remember that Communist parties, and the workers' movement in general, in the west were hardly big on stuff like gay rights in the late 1940s, and even less so in the early days of the SU. Feminism was hardly high in their priorities either. Those societies missed the counterculture that swept the west in the sixties entirely, and hence all that permeated western societies as a result. It suited the rulers not to have the boat rocked even when their ideologists were aware of changing attitudes among their sister parties and the wider workers' movement in the west. Since the fall of Communist rule, religion has returned to the scene to varying degrees, as well as pre-Communist era conservative and fascist ideologies, and so social conservatism remains much more powerful in Russia and all its former satellites than in most west European countries, and a powerful component of the outlook of the ruling class. In order to curry favour with the EU, the elites in those countries who have joined it, or remain on the waiting list, are forced to make concessions to liberalisation, but the outlook appears uncertain, especially where nationalist and populist parties are influential. As I said, in Poland the current ruling party is hugely successful by being both socially conservative and just about adequately EU-compliant.
 
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The Kremlin has ordered inspections and repairs on bomb shelters across Russia in a national drive to upgrade the country’s crumbling Soviet-era infrastructure, according to a report.

The overhaul of the country’s bomb shelter network comes amid Moscow’s nuclear sabre-rattling and growing militarisation of daily life, the Moscow Times reports.

Citing Russian officials, the paper writes that local authorities appear to be spending hundreds of millions of roubles to make Russia’s thousands of bunkers, reinforced cellars and other safe hideouts fit for habitation.

One official was quoted as saying:

A decision to inspect the network of bomb shelters was made by the government in the spring. The command for a large-scale inspection and to put things right was given by the emergency situations ministry, the defence ministry and [other] civilian ministries.
Click to expand...
 
RD2003 said:
The Kremlin has ordered inspections and repairs on bomb shelters across Russia in a national drive to upgrade the country’s crumbling Soviet-era infrastructure, according to a report.

The overhaul of the country’s bomb shelter network comes amid Moscow’s nuclear sabre-rattling and growing militarisation of daily life, the Moscow Times reports.

Citing Russian officials, the paper writes that local authorities appear to be spending hundreds of millions of roubles to make Russia’s thousands of bunkers, reinforced cellars and other safe hideouts fit for habitation.

One official was quoted as saying:
Click to expand...

company they have called in for the task


fallout-blanket.jpg
 
mojo pixy said:
Clearly all those threats by NATO to use nukes on Russia has forced the russian leadership to act.
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Surely the point is that by undertaking a shelter upgrade, their minds are on retaliation should they act on their own threats to go nuclear.

How seriously we don't know.
 
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hmm seeming as we have nukes that will leave nothing left or anyone

what the point of the bunkers but to give the sense of false security

one up all up and game over
 
RD2003 said:
Surely the point is that by undertaking a shelter upgrade, their minds are on retaliation should they act on their own threats to go nuclear. How seriously we don't know.
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Maybe, or maybe they're not actually and this is just more Russian psy-ops to underline how super serious their nuclear threats are so that we feeble jellies democratically petition our ever-attentive, ever-caring governments to please leave poor Russia alone because it can't handle this situation it's made for itself. We just don't know!
 
Interesting (pro-Ukraine) article.


www.spectator.co.uk

One year on: how will the Ukraine war end?

In early October 2021 President Joe Biden, the CIA director William Burns and other top members of the US’s national security team gathered in the Oval Office to hear a disturbing briefing from US military chief General Mark Milley. ‘Extraordinary detailed’ intelligence gathered by western spy...
www.spectator.co.uk www.spectator.co.uk

'Zelensky is also in a far more precarious position than his current popularity suggests. He has promised his people total victory, and polls say that close to 90 per cent of voters believe him. Failing to deliver would be politically fatal. So would signing any peace deal that involves a loss of Ukrainian land. That will, almost inevitably, put Zelensky and his western backers on a collision course. If Putin advances, then announces a ceasefire and calls for talks, the Nato alliance will immediately split between those members who want justice and those who want peace. That won’t, in itself, stop Ukraine from fighting on. But it’s Nato which has its hand on the throttle of materiel, and a potential forever war will test the resolve even of Ukraine’s staunchest allies. Even the optimistic scenario of forcing the Russians back to pre-invasion borders would still leave Ukraine dismembered and Putin probably still in power. Tragically, there is almost no realistic outcome for this war that will not end in the Ukrainians crying ‘Betrayal!’. But if the alternative would be fighting World War 3, that may end up being the least bad option.'
 
RD2003 said:
We should all hope so. It's a strange world we live in, however, when many of the generation who went on CND demos out of fear of nuclear war are now blase about it.
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its perhaps ironic that if the unilateralists had got their way in Foot's time we would not now be in the situation of being,at least according to the Americans,no longer a significant military power.
 
Duncan2 said:
its perhaps ironic that if the unilateralists had got their way in Foot's time we would not now be in the situation of being,at least according to the Americans,no longer a significant military power.
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Those days seem so close and, at the same time, a world away. Whether unilateral nuclear disarmament was ever a realistic prospect or not, it seems clear enough that many of those with the same mentality as those who advocated it (as well as some of the very same people), are now enthusiastic liberal interventionists and armchair military experts.

What has changed? One thing is the end of the cold war, which predictably only took a few decades to reinvent itself as a cold war re-enactment society with, instead of a clearly-defined enemy for either side, a scattering of threats, some of which are semi or wholly imaginary. One 'side' doesn't realise, or refuses to recognise, that these threats are completely lacking in the power and reach of international 'communism,' and the other 'side' are more often than not at odds with each other. The quick end of the post-cold war dream took place because the break-up of the USSR was always going to lead to nationalist aspirations by the formerly subject peoples, or at least those who command leadership over them, and led to the temptation of the west to exploit this and so weaken Russia and try to head off any challenge to the neo-liberal model, however modified, by state-driven capitalist regimes, which Russia is now inaccurately presented as epitomising. Resistance from Russia seems to have been almost completely unanticipated. Another is western worries over the unstoppable rise of China. There is a mental block existing in the west about its decline in relation to other parts of the world, which takes the form of a moral high ground stance, almost quasi-Marxist in its certainty that history only evolves in a progressive direction. The last 30-odd years have already proved the fallacy of this.

And then there is the forgetting of history. The very same western regimes that were prepared to back any murderous regime in opposition to 'communist' threats, if not intervene directly with their own brutality, now present a view of the world that simplistically pits 'democracy' against dictatorships, as if they never backed dictatorships much worse than most of the presently existing ones themselves until very recently. They rely in large part on people who remember none of this and are too distracted to form an interest. It's one reason for the current polarisation between those who imagine that the social liberalism they cherish, and those who, perhaps with more understanding of history among the more intelligent of their number, realise that it's quite possibly only an historical blip.

The irony is that the world is now a much more dangerous, unstable and unpredictable place than it was throughout most of the cold war, and seems set to get worse as multiple, inextricable crises close in on us.
 
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RD2003 said:
Citing Russian officials, the paper writes that local authorities appear to be spending hundreds of millions of roubles to make Russia’s thousands of bunkers, reinforced cellars and other safe hideouts fit for habitation.
Click to expand...
appear to be are the operative words here. In reality that money is gonna buy someone a nice yacht.
 
RD2003 said:
The Kremlin has ordered inspections and repairs on bomb shelters across Russia in a national drive to upgrade the country’s crumbling Soviet-era infrastructure, according to a report.

The overhaul of the country’s bomb shelter network comes amid Moscow’s nuclear sabre-rattling and growing militarisation of daily life, the Moscow Times reports.

Citing Russian officials, the paper writes that local authorities appear to be spending hundreds of millions of roubles to make Russia’s thousands of bunkers, reinforced cellars and other safe hideouts fit for habitation.

One official was quoted as saying:
Click to expand...

Embezzling hundreds of millions of roubles to pretend to upgrade bunkers is more likely. A fitting end for Putin would be scuttling into a nuclear shelter only to be squished by a cave-in because some carpetbagging crony of his spent the refit money on a bulletproof range rover and a townhouse in Bloomsbury.
 
RD2003 said:
Those days seem so close and, at the same time, a world away. Whether unilateral nuclear disarmament was ever a realistic prospect or not, it seems clear enough that many of those with the same mentality as those who advocated it (as well as some of the very same people), are now enthusiastic liberal interventionists and armchair military experts.

What has changed? One thing is the end of the cold war, which predictably only took a few decades to reinvent itself as a cold war re-enactment society with, instead of a clearly-defined enemy for either side, a scattering of threats, some of which are semi or wholly imaginary. One 'side' doesn't realise, or refuses to recognise, that these threats are completely lacking in the power and reach of international 'communism,' and the other 'side' are more often than not at odds with each other. The quick end of the post-cold war dream took place because the break-up of the USSR was always going to lead to nationalist aspirations by the formerly subject peoples, or at least those who command leadership over them, and led to the temptation of the west to exploit this and so weaken Russia and try to head off any challenge to the neo-liberal model, however modified, by state-driven capitalist regimes, which Russia is now inaccurately presented as epitomising. Resistance from Russia seems to have been almost completely unanticipated. Another is western worries over the unstoppable rise of China. There is a mental block existing in the west about its decline in relation to other parts of the world, which takes the form of a moral high ground stance, almost quasi-Marxist in its certainty that history only evolves in a progressive direction. The last 30-odd years have already proved the fallacy of this.

And then there is the forgetting of history. The very same western regimes that were prepared to back any murderous regime in opposition to 'communist' threats, if not intervene directly with their own brutality, now present a view of the world that simplistically pits 'democracy' against dictatorships, as if they never backed dictatorships much worse than most of the presently existing ones themselves until very recently. They rely in large part on people who remember none of this and are too distracted to form an interest. It's one reason for the current polarisation between those who imagine that the social liberalism they cherish, and those who, perhaps with more understanding of history among the more intelligent of their number, realise that it's quite possibly only an historical blip.

The irony is that the world is now a much more dangerous, unstable and unpredictable place than it was throughout most of the cold war, and seems set to get worse as multiple, inextricable crises close in on us.
Click to expand...
Democracy v dictatorship of ww2 vintage, thought you'd have cottoned on to that. And before you sputter but but recall if you will the period Sept 1939 to June 1941
 
I suppose this really belongs in the main thread.

Survey finds dip in US support for providing Ukraine with weapons​

Support among the American public for providing Ukraine weaponry and direct economic assistance has softened as the Russian invasion nears the one-year mark, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

48% say they favour the US providing weapons to Ukraine, with 29% opposed and 22% saying they’re neither in favour nor opposed. In May 2022, less than three months into the war, 60% of US adults said they were in favor of sending Ukraine weapons.

Americans are about evenly divided on sending government funds directly to Ukraine, with 37% in favour and 38% opposed, with 23% saying neither. The signs of diminished support for Ukraine come as President Joe Biden is set to travel to Poland next week to mark the first anniversary of the biggest conflict in Europe since the second world war.
 
RD2003 said:
I suppose this really belongs in the main thread.

Survey finds dip in US support for providing Ukraine with weapons​

Support among the American public for providing Ukraine weaponry and direct economic assistance has softened as the Russian invasion nears the one-year mark, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

48% say they favour the US providing weapons to Ukraine, with 29% opposed and 22% saying they’re neither in favour nor opposed. In May 2022, less than three months into the war, 60% of US adults said they were in favor of sending Ukraine weapons.

Americans are about evenly divided on sending government funds directly to Ukraine, with 37% in favour and 38% opposed, with 23% saying neither. The signs of diminished support for Ukraine come as President Joe Biden is set to travel to Poland next week to mark the first anniversary of the biggest conflict in Europe since the second world war.
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There's some support for Putin amongst Republican fans/MAGA, do you think their take on the war havs any sway over the softening of providing weapons, or is it just genuine wariness of the conflict?
 
krtek a houby said:
There's some support for Putin amongst Republican fans/MAGA, do you think their take on the war havs any sway over the softening of providing weapons, or is it just genuine wariness of the conflict?
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I'd imagine that some of it is the influence of elements in the Republican Party and MAGA types, but my guess is only as good as yours.
 
Ax^ said:
hmm seeming as we have nukes that will leave nothing left or anyone

what the point of the bunkers but to give the sense of false security

one up all up and game over
Click to expand...
That's the propaganda. That there's no point trying to live so we don't need to bother with shelters or any sort of plan for the worst. It works on thick pub bore types because they can pretend to be cleverer than everyone else without actually doing anything.
 
Similarly, this one should really be in the main thread. It isn't, however, so...


Ukraine’s allies have said it is unlikely they will be able to supply the number of tanks they previously promised. After a meeting in Brussels of western defence ministers and Ukraine, German defence minister Boris Pistorius told reporters they will not be able reach the size of a battalion.

A standard Ukrainian tank battalion comprises 31 tanks. Poland had offered to give 30 German-made tanks but many of them are in poor condition and need repairs before they can be deployed, said Pistorius, whose government had pledged 14. Portugal has promised an additional three tanks.

Ukraine’s allies agreed to supply tanks after much debate. Ukraine has argued that it cannot win without them.

The bad news comes just after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced Russia had begun a renewed offensive in the east in a bid to take more territory before new western equipment arrived in the spring. Stoltenberg described the situation as a “race against logistics”.

The fighting in eastern Ukraine has increased in its intensity over the last week or so, particularly in the Ukrainian-controlled town of Bakhmut. Russian forces now almost surround the town on three sides.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the defence of Bakhmut as “a wall of living people” on Wednesday. He insisted there was no plan to retreat as the soldiers’ efforts were helping Ukraine prepare for its counteroffensive by “destroying the enemy to the maximum”.
 
Ax^ said:
and your take ?


:hmm:
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My take is that I read it about five minutes before posting it, and that it's a snippet of the reported latest thinking from Ukraine's allies, apparently.

Of course it might be, as some on here sometimes hint, just a ruse to fool Russia.
 
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