Humor Random Comments Thread

[N_Molson]

I would say, Putin just triggered the second fall of the USSR.


He'll find out why...

He resurrected NATO too, maybe even European Union. That's something. Sometimes a good kick helps.

 

[Urwumpe]

He resurrected NATO too, maybe even European Union. That's something. Sometimes a good kick helps.

Not sure on the second, but yeah, NATO suddenly at least can go back to its initial purpose instead of having to learn new tricks. And Putin did it all by himself.

 

[N_Molson]

Update : Putin orders the Red Army to "restore order in the Donetsk/Lughansk provinces". It obviously means the "white" regions on the map I posted above, where the ukrainian forces are. It is likely the tanks are rolling by now. ?

This place was a huge tank parking earlier this weekend :

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Possibly a digression and I'm asking out of ignorance, but who invests in the stock market in Russia? In the U.S. it seems that everything from pension and retirement funds down to college kids with school loan cash and a phone are throwing money into our market. Does a 21%+ drop in the Russian market directly impact normal people there?

 

[MaxBuzz]

president of Ukraine said that we will not give anything to anyone (there will be an attack on the republics from Ukraine)

 

[Urwumpe]

president of Ukraine said that we will not give anything to anyone (there will be an attack on the republics from Ukraine)

Small advice. When somebody asks you "Your life or your money!", his life is also an option.

 

[N_Molson]

The tanks are arriving in Donetsk, as expected they were covering in the forests nearby. ?

Tanks And Military Vehicles Spotted On The Outskirts Of Donetsk - Tanks and military vehicles were reportedly spotted on the outskirts of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine by a Reuters reporter, according to Reuters.

The reporter allegedly saw around five tanks on the edge of the city of Dontesk, and two more tanks in 'another part of the town'. They said they did not spot any insignia on the tanks but that they were spotted just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties declaring Donetsk and Luhansk independence.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

After the loss of the Ukraine, Russia is sentenced to become an Asian empire mainly. Influential ideologues in Washington and many Europeans already look forward to the eastward expansion of NATO. But at least Germans have to know that there is a city only 300Km away from the border of Donbass, that was named Stalingrad. And only another 100Km eastbound, the Central Asian territory and mainly Muslim republic Kazakhstan begins.

Don't the swaggering members of the European parliament realize, that they fuel a nationalist rebellion in Russia?

That's a quote of German Journalist Peter Scholl-Latour from a TV report called something like "Russia in a pinch grip", 16 years ago...

 

[Urwumpe]

That's a quote of German Journalist Peter Scholl-Latour from a TV report called something like "Russia in a pinch grip", 16 years ago...

Didn't really improve the image of him. Long dead, still people drag him out, when they need somebody reinforcing colonial prejudices of the Arab world.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

Didn't really improve the image of him. Long dead, still people drag him out, when they need somebody reinforcing colonial prejudices of the Arab world.

Yeah, maybe. But it doesn't really matter. His TV report just shows that the current situation was actually predictable, when one tries to see it with the eyes of Putin and his supporters. I was just surprised it took so long until force once again determines power relations (which also contradicts the old and very simple saying of "violence is no solution" - it somehow always was in history).

 

[MaxBuzz]

He resurrected NATO too, maybe even European Union. That's something. Sometimes a good kick helps.

let's hope NATO will hold out for some more time and NATO will not collapse. war inside NATO is completely unnecessary now

 

[Urwumpe]

Yeah, maybe. But it doesn't really matter. His TV report just shows that the current situation was actually predictable, when one tries to see it with the eyes of Putin and his supporters. I was just surprised it took so long until force once again determines power relations (which also contradicts the old and very simple saying of "violence is no solution" - it somehow always was in history).

Except that he got things wrong all along. He bought the idea of this being simply a reaction to the west and Russia having no other choice. But thats wrong. Russia had a lot of choices. They simply decided to fight for satellites states around them to improve the wealth of Russia at the cost of the others. That worked great for the Russians during the Soviet Era and led to the rapid decline of the USSR. Especially the baltic states show the difference. In the USSR, they had been exploited. Outside they prospered. In the EU they thrived, while the NATO membership prevented any Russian interference there. There was no finlandization, countries enslaving themselves to not provoke the big neighbour.

Also its pretty late to "predict" a rise of nationalism in 2016. It was already out of control in 2013, after Putin established the old symbols again.

The problem is now: We have little choices how to react. We COULD interfere militarily in what will come, on invitation of Ukraine. But seriously: Most, if not all NATO members would prefer another option there. It would be expensive and risky, and we would be fighting on terms that favor Russia. More realistic would be supporting partisans, which Putin will label terrorists and which will involve Neonazi groups - no good future for Ukraine as democracy. There could be a decision in the UN security council, but I would not bet on it. So, what is left are economic sanctions. And there the question would still be: Diplomatic with the option to return to peaceful relations or a massive chain reaction, that would not just devastate Russia, but actually bring many countries in economic trouble? Also, with the latter option, military options would still be an option.

 

[Urwumpe]

let's hope NATO will hold out for some more time and NATO will not collapse. war inside NATO is completely unnecessary now

Its not like we didn't already have war inside NATO during the peak of the first cold war (Cyprus 1974). And nothing collapsed. It just caused too much paperwork.

 

[steph]

Its not like we didn't already have war inside NATO during the peak of the first cold war (Cyprus 1974). And nothing collapsed. It just caused too much paperwork.

And the small incident of Turkey shooting down russian jets. But I think it happened more often than people think. Fighters in the Korean and Vietnam war getting flown by Russian 'instructors' etc. In a way, I'm amazed this is for now limited to just the two 'independent' regions. ( for now). It may be that he realized how costly a 'big war' would be, and sanctions would hurt Russia even more. And he may have realized that he can 'free' those regions and still get Nordstream 2 flowing etc.

As for the nationalism, it's ugly but I don't know what can be done. It goes hand in hand with depopulation, of which Russia suffers too. It''s a bit like the opposite of what happened in Ukraine, with it becoming more pro-EU and NATO than before. Since everyone and their dog and extended families left for the west, what's left is a quite boomer and nostalgic voter base, which are also avid voters, while the rest are disorganised, and may not even vote at all. There's this joke in eastern europe about the old people on the block threatening the kids with 'you'll see', and instead of punishing the kids they just went and voted for the ex-communist establishment . Of ccurse, this comes hand in hand with corruption and organizing the vote so that those in the west can't vote easily, but that's partly how you get regimes like Orban etc. Ukraine, outside Schenghen and the EU, has it much harder for its people to leave, so the whole pro-EU voter base is there and very polarised.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

Except that he got things wrong all along. He bought the idea of this being simply a reaction to the west and Russia having no other choice. But thats wrong. Russia had a lot of choices. They simply decided to fight for satellites states around them to improve the wealth of Russia at the cost of the others. That worked great for the Russians during the Soviet Era and led to the rapid decline of the USSR. Especially the baltic states show the difference. In the USSR, they had been exploited. Outside they prospered. In the EU they thrived, while the NATO membership prevented any Russian interference there. There was no finlandization, countries enslaving themselves to not provoke the big neighbour.

Also its pretty late to "predict" a rise of nationalism in 2016. It was already out of control in 2013, after Putin established the old symbols again.

The problem is now: We have little choices how to react. We COULD interfere militarily in what will come, on invitation of Ukraine. But seriously: Most, if not all NATO members would prefer another option there. It would be expensive and risky, and we would be fighting on terms that favor Russia. More realistic would be supporting partisans, which Putin will label terrorists and which will involve Neonazi groups - no good future for Ukraine as democracy. There could be a decision in the UN security council, but I would not bet on it. So, what is left are economic sanctions. And there the question would still be: Diplomatic with the option to return to peaceful relations or a massive chain reaction, that would not just devastate Russia, but actually bring many countries in economic trouble? Also, with the latter option, military options would still be an option.

Well, his concerns regarding Russian reactions just turned into stone-cold reality. And the same also applies to the failing engagement of the Western world in Afghanistan by the way (although not hard to predict). That TV report was from 2006, so 16 years ago. And I don't think he assumed that Russia has only one option. He assumed that Russia will only chose that one obvious option, based on the worldview of Putin and parts of the Russian society. There is always "shoulda coulda woulda". But things are what they are at the end of the day. Of course Putin could act different. Just like humans principally could act different to live in peace. But "man is not like that" (Scholl-Latour ).

I don't have a solution. And I'm not even qualified and also not assigned to find one, and not paid to wrack my brain. All I can see are two sides of a medal, and that certain things are not very hard to foresee. Talking to Russian people that live in Germany, it turns out they simply have a very different view on political and social stuff than "we" have...

 

[steph]

I don't have a solution. And I'm not even qualified and also not assigned to find one, and not paid to wrack my brain. All I can see are two sides of a medal, and that certain things are not very hard to foresee. Talking to Russian people that live in Germany, it turns out they simply have a very different view on political and social stuff than "we" have...

I don't know. The Ukrainians and the one Russian that I know are all pro-west to the bone, but of course, they're not local russians. As for Putin, it might be a sort of 'cascade effect' of him staying in power so long, because if you piss off enough moderates (or enough the 'heavy weights' in russian politics become so heavy that they start falling from the balcony) , all you have left to rely on are the nationlist hardliners. Putin's just the bad guy spewing threats on live TV , but behind him may be a bunch of generals with dreams of seeing actual combat before they retire and a bunch of oligarchs who'd love to get their hands on Ukrainian industry and resources.

 

[Urwumpe]

Scholl-Latour was great in assuming. Sadly he was really bad in observing. That is why he is really popular among those groups, who are better in assuming things than in taking the time to observe a situation. He would never have been able to tell, how Putin would decide and how to counter-act it. He would simply follow his colonial-style thinking: Everything east of the Oder-Neisse line would then simply DESERVE to be colonies of Russia, since they don't deserve independence and their own development. That works great for an audience which loves Lawrence of Arabia style reports.

But badly fails to notice that the "colonies" simply have no interest at all in being colony again. That is what drives this conflict. What you call the west isolating Russia, is actually an Russia, that failed itself a development, that all Baltic states and former warsaw pact states achieved. Ukraine was on the way to do the same, when he attacked it in 2014, after former Soviet autocrats like Kutchma and his intended successor Yanukovych had been busy for years to prevent this. Putin was the result of the similar arrested development in Russia. He wasn't the antidote for the corrupt oligarchy that spawned in those post-soviet countries. He perfected it.

I would even go so far to claim: "Experts" like Scholl-Latour made us blind to what was already brewing shortly after Putin came into power. The poisoning of the Ukrainian president candidate Yushchenko was already a fall back into the darkest cold war times. Still we pretended that Putin is an improvement after Yeltsin. We had been so wrong.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

I don't know. The Ukrainians and the one Russian that I know are all pro-west to the bone, but of course, they're not local russians. As for Putin, it might be a sort of 'cascade effect' of him staying in power so long, because if you piss off enough moderates (or enough the 'heavy weights' in russian politics become so heavy that they start falling from the balcony) , all you have left to rely on are the nationlist hardliners. Putin's just the bad guy spewing threats on live TV , but behind him may be a bunch of generals with dreams of seeing actual combat before they retire and a bunch of oligarchs who'd love to get their hands on Ukrainian industry and resources.

Mhhh... but is it that much different to the Western world? Putin is dreaming of a Russian empire, of course. Strategists in Brussels and Washington are dreaming of a Western empire, of course. I often hear these words that "we" have to compete in a powerful union against Russia and China. No one seems to be satisfied with a small d**k in this department. And at the end of the day oligarchy also drives the Western world.

In Germany it might not be a "cascade effect", but elections mainly based on the media landscape and therefore something like "sympathy", that assured the CDU party staying in office for 32 years with only two candidates and a social democratic break of 7 years by Gerhard Schroeder, who ironically is a buddy of Putin and soon part of the corporate board of Gazprom. This is just one concept of democracy, which surprisingly is supposed to be based on "change"... ? The only exception here might be the free enterprise economy and power structures. It seems more peaceful and we just have more wealth (and less Novichok-deaths). But I don't really know whether it is better to see something like Putin or Donald Trump taking place. Probably none, while Putin somehow seems to be a little smarter.

And as for combat, I think no one does it more impressive than the US.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

Still we pretended that Putin is an improvement after Yeltsin. We had been so wrong.

I don't know. Yeltsin was probably more drunk than sober. I think we underestimated Putin and overestimated ourselves.

 

[Urwumpe]

I don't know. Yeltsin was probably more drunk than sober. I think we underestimated Putin and overestimated ourselves.

I don't know. I think its opposite. We used overestimate Putin as great statesment and good strategian. But in reality, he stands for stagnation in Russia, a slow creeping decay in an advancing world. He has maneuvered Russia into a situation, in which he does not even have a successor for him. It can't be Putin-Medvedev-Putin-Medvedev until the universe freezes over.