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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, Feb 2022 - tangentially related crap



Fareed Zakaria short video touches upon a couple of books highlighting the demographic crisis occurring inside Russia and how Russia is basically not prepared for modernity.
 
Dogsauce said:
A laughably poor Russian propaganda pamphlet reportedly found in a trench near Bakhmut. The phrase is something like ‘That’s the difference’.

View attachment 381534
The first frame appears to show a Russian soldier abducting a child, something they’re clearly not ashamed of. They also seem to have a thing against baths, the soapdodging freaks.
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Nah, that's conventional Russian family vs two Ukrainian soldiers in a tub I think? i.e just straight up homophobia. I guess the stripes around it are supposed to be a rainbow, though they look like the Z ribbon stripes.

Although Russia has apparently just admitted to abducting 700,000, so this does not negate their actions. Sorry 'bringing them from the conflict zones'.
 
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This is interesting, although it’s from last year, there hasn’t been much follow up that I’ve seen.

paywall removed…


The Foreign Students Who Saw Ukraine As A Gateway To A Better Life - Will Europe Let Them Stay? by The New Yorker.
 
Tanya1982 said:
This is interesting, although it’s from last year, there hasn’t been much follow up that I’ve seen.

paywall removed…


The Foreign Students Who Saw Ukraine As A Gateway To A Better Life - Will Europe Let Them Stay? by The New Yorker.
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I guess the answer to that question depends on how Europe decides to class someone who left a stable Country where they still have nationality to a place that later became a war zone?, Migrant or refugee?
 
_Russ_ said:
I guess the answer to that question depends on how Europe decides to class someone who left a stable Country where they still have nationality to a place that later became a war zone?, Migrant or refugee?
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the issue is not whether the country is stable - saudi arabia, for example, being stable - but whether they might be persecuted in their country of origin.
 
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The39thStep said:
Boycott Marmite?

www.bbc.com

Unilever: Cornetto maker defends decision to stay in Russia

Unilever said exiting was "not straightforward" as its operations would be taken over if it abandoned them.
www.bbc.com
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Well, they have ceased advertising, plus stopped imports and exports, which seems the most important things to me.

If they walk away from their production facilities, they will just get taken over by the Russian state and continue to operate as usual anyway, so I see their point that it wouldn't actually make much difference at all, in fact it could actually be beneficial to Russia. 🤷‍♂️

We also want to be clear that we are not trying to protect or manage our business in Russia. However, for companies like Unilever, which have a significant physical presence in the country, exiting is not straightforward."
The company, which employs around 3,000 people in Russia, said that if it were to abandon its brands in Russia, "they would be appropriated - and then operated - by the Russian state".
The consumer goods giant said it had been unable to find a way to sell the business that "avoids the Russian state potentially gaining further benefit, and which safeguards our people".
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I have more concern about Shell still trading in Russian gas, unless they are just trading it within Russia, which could explain their comment that it does not violate laws or sanctions.

This week, Shell was criticised for continuing to trade in Russian gas more than a year after pledging to withdraw from the Russian energy market.
The oil giant said the trades were the result of "long-term contractual commitments" and do not violate laws or sanctions.
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.
 
cupid_stunt said:
I have more concern about Shell still trading in Russian gas, unless they are just trading it within Russia, which could explain their comment that it does not violate laws or sanctions.
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Presume that'll be those futures deals that seem common in the energy sector and that some provision will have been made for it in the small print of the sanctions measures.
 
Pickman's model said:
the issue is not whether the country is stable - saudi arabia, for example, being stable - but whether they might be persecuted in their country of origin.
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Saudi Arabia is not particularly stable either in the South West around the Yemeni border or on the oil producing, predominantly Shia East Coast. That's why they're executing so many protestors. There are also literally thousands of princely brothers and cousins who would like to throw the current Crown Prince out of a helicopter it under an executioner's sword.
 
tim said:
Saudi Arabia is not particularly stable either in the South West around the Yemeni border or on the oil producing, predominantly Shia East Coast. That's why they're executing so many protestors. There are also literally thousands of princely brothers and cousins who would like to throw the current Crown Prince out of a helicopter it under an executioner's sword.
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What I meant by stable is the government is unlikely to be overthrown, something you don't really deny. I don't mean nice. I don't mean pleasant. I don't mean faces no opposition.
 
Pickman's model said:
What I meant by stable is the government is unlikely to be overthrown, something you don't really deny. I don't mean nice. I don't mean pleasant. I don't mean faces no opposition.
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If the Crown Princling wasn't worried about being overthrown he wouldn't have imprisoned and tortured so many of his cousins in the Hyatt Hotel five years ago; put so much effort into suppressing both religious and secular opposition; and had Kashoggi bumped off so publicly.
There is always stuff bubbling underneath the surface in Saudi Arabia, which is why the regime is so paranoid and so heavy handed.


It's a country where big surprises happen seemingly out of the blue.
 
tim said:
If the Crown Princling wasn't worried about being overthrown he wouldn't have imprisoned and tortured so many of his cousins in the Hyatt Hotel five years ago; put so much effort into suppressing both religious and secular opposition; and had Kashoggi bumped off so publicly.
There is always stuff bubbling underneath the surface in Saudi Arabia, which is why the regime is so paranoid and so heavy handed.


It's a country where big surprises happen seemingly out of the blue.
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And it's an awful and bloody regime which has lasted many decades, a country from which the UK has received a number of refugees. As anyone who recalls the presence on TV of Saudi dissidents resident in UK long before the yemen imbroglio began will aver.
 
Pickman's model said:
And it's an awful and bloody regime which has lasted many decades, a country from which the UK has received a number of refugees. As anyone who recalls the presence on TV of Saudi dissidents resident in UK long before the yemen imbroglio began will aver.
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And during those many decades it's seen one king deposed in a palace coup, another king assassinated by an embittered nephew; the uprising in Qatif and the seizure of the Makkah Mosque complex in the early 80's. The attacks by militants on Western targets and the BBCs Frank Gardener in the early 2000s; and incursions from Yemen in the last few years.
 
tim said:
And during those many decades it's seen one king deposed in a palace coup, another king assassinated by an embittered nephew; the uprising in Qatif and the seizure of the Makkah Mosque complex in the early 80's. The attacks by militants on Western targets and the BBCs Frank Gardener in the early 2000s; and incursions from Yemen in the last few years.
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most people don't consider 1979 to be in any of the 1980s, early, late or otherwise.
 
Pickman's model said:
And yet the Saudi regime endures
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As they said about the Bourbons in 1788 and the Romanovs in 1916. However, it's never endured in a particularly stable manner. As was seen clearly in 1979 etc.

A lot of young Saudis have high expectations about the future in particular around Neom (including the Line) and other megaprojects. These are likely to go tits up. This demographic, many of whom have been in part educated outside the country, and so have seen how different life can be, are likely to see their living standards hit, because oil is not going to gild their cages as delightfully as it did for their parents.
 
tim said:
As they said about the Bourbons in 1788 and the Romanovs in 1916. However, it's never endured in a particularly stable manner. As was seen clearly in 1979 etc.

A lot of young Saudis have high expectations about the future in particular around Neom (including the Line) and other megaprojects. These are likely to go tits up. This demographic, many of whom have been in part educated outside the country, and so have seen how different life can be, are likely to see their living standards hit, because oil is not going to gild their cages as delightfully as it did for their parents.
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So what you're saying is not that it isn't wobbly but it might wobble in the future. All states disintegrate, the thousand year reich is a fantasy. And if predictions are correct all of us can look forward to a very unpleasant future within 20 years
 
Pickman's model said:
And yet the Saudi regime endures
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Everything endures until it doesn't.

Saudi Arabia also doesn't have even fig-leaf versions of democracy or human rights. That situation never lasts forever, it is inherently unstable because of the amount of repression you need to sustain it.
 
Haven't large parts of SA been effectively uninhabitable for thousands of years? Most of it is a giant fucking desert.
 
Pickman's model said:
So what you're saying is not that it isn't wobbly but it might wobble in the future. All states disintegrate, the thousand year reich is a fantasy. And if predictions are correct all of us can look forward to a very unpleasant future within 20 years
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No, my point is that Saudi Arabia is wobbly and has had some near terminal wobbly wobbles in the past and that in the future it might reach critical wobble.
 
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