Heartland

After two years of Covid panic now we're facing World War III. Discuss?

No matter how aggressive NATO is, or how deep the neo-nazi issue runs in the Ukrainian government, it does not justify expansionist violence from Russia. It is a weak excuse.

After the foreseeable Chinese reaction,
(let's hope they won't take a chance right now on Taiwan),
India has asked Russia to stop the violence ...

I will add this video in which Professor John J. Mearsheimer (x-officer of US Army and now Professor in University of Chicago) explains some things and answers a variety of questions by students at 15th of Feb.

As i see it we will not have an occupation of territories from the attacking forces rather a regime change. There are some chances to see a scenario where we will have 2-3 states in the current territory of UKR.
Trying not to be emotional or read emo articles and stay in a total reason and logic approach of this. During such events propaganda that plays with the emotions hits the fan.
Also i will agree with a yesterday twitter that said in essence: Don't know who will lose but already China won from that.

It's a bit unsettling with it being practically on our doorstep but the general mood here in Hungary is oddly calm.
I have a good friend in Poland who is really frightened though. With their border with Belarus, I think that's fairly understandable.

Putin has been aching for it to turn 5:45 so he can shoot back.

I would like to congratulate the fearless big leader of Belarus, Lukashenko, to now irrevbersibly having become a guest in his own house. Or a small fish in a big one. Pick your favourite. The daily personality building exercise I suggest for him: Try to look in the mirror without thinking "What you see is a pathetic idiot!" in the future!

The fearless leader Putin now has his country which is large in size but an imp in economy left with one single shaky allie: China. With China itself checking positive with the majority of points Umberto Eco listed in his 14 traits of fascism, he is bound to go down the same route as Lukashenko with fascist Russia.
Almost one percent of Russias population are members of the Russian forces. The army is disproportionally strong. They can win wars like that, but they can't win in peace. (Which is what I see made Putin seek aggression over peace in the first place.)
China will get Russia into the debt trap it has used with so many third world countries already, and Putin will end up a guest in his own house, Russia a big fish in an even bigger one. The new silkroad is already under construction in Russia.
Look in the mirror, Vlady, and try not to say it!

The nuclear scare is back. Putin knows that when he starts firing nuclear bombs, his Kremlin and Moscow along with other big Russian cities will turn into glowing radioactive deserts, so I doubt he'll actually take that step, these threats are just a symptom of his newly developed statesman-tourettes.
This war began between his ears, and its end will come from there, too. Either by him returning to decent thinking or something hot flying through there.
With his extremely aggressive rethoric and visible tensions between him and his top den, a de-election by .303 calibre rather than a majority of percentage is not impossible, I guess.

I think this was the end-game for Putin all along; it explains the interference in the Brexit referendum and Trump's election: destabilize the EU and NATO and waltz in to re-impose the Soviet-era boundaries.

markfiend wrote: ↑27 Feb 2022, 16:07 I think this was the end-game for Putin all along; it explains the interference in the Brexit referendum and Trump's election: destabilize the EU and NATO and waltz in to re-impose the Soviet-era boundaries.

Absolutely right.
Not just Brexit and Trump election, the trolls of the St. Petersburg IRA were all over the place! Sars-CoV2-conspiracy theories, hate speech against refugees, wild conspiracy theories against politicians the Kremlin didn't like.
I think the pandemic was viewed by them as a welcome opportunity to kill people without firing a shot. Just use the already existing conspiracy theories about vaccines invented by "Dr." Wakefield and his likes and enhance them with a trained army of mouthpieces for that and the financial elbow grease of an oligarch to present made up news sites and you can kill enemies using their naivity and the plague. How many Americans died from Covid? it's nearly 900000 now, right? I am sure at the very least the impact of the trolls was in the 10 percent range. If you'd ask them they'd probably say they were only joking. Killing jokes.

Since my mostly departure from Heartland over ten years ago, a lot has happened. I became member of a community of antifascists on Google Plus and was pretty active in resisting such conspiracists and I was subject to attention of the St. Petersburgers more than once. I have seen what they do. It's pretty easy to recognise them, actually: When you criticize any Russian activities, they will at some point accuse you of being a "Russia hating racist". Then, when you go on, they will threaten you with legal action. At that point, they will already have multiple of their fake accounts reporting your postings, so the thread and, if they are lucky, you get blocked by the network. They succeeded with that on Twitter with me, for example. I didn't bother to try to get my Twitter-account unlocked again, whoever still uses that network… well, dump it. It's a super spreader for fascism. That company deserves bankruptcy. Twitter is Putler's best helper!
MSNBC reported about evidence that showed that the paid trolls fired up both sides of two opposed groups in the USA, which resulted in clashes in the streets somewhere in the USA. That's how they work. Take existing splits and disagreements elsewhere and seed conflict at that point to widen the gap. If they are lucky they'll inspire hatred and hostility, and they have a soft but effective control over both sides. It's all along the lines the propaganda of the USSR and GDR and so on. It's from Macciavelli's textbook: Divide and conquer! It's the very definition of foul play and abuse of what others built for their purpose. In my opinion, social media like F***book, Twitter nd their likes has been killed by the trolls.

Well, i learned about the attack before 7 a.m. CET so not long after it has happened. I used to start day easy with silly content to mildly numb myslef. But this day i went on the regular news page. I was shocked then whole day i was just and only pissed. So, as russian propaganda want to paint Ukrainina gov the "neo-fasict", was attacked by pure fasistic cleptocracy gang like russian regime. They are about to protect russian minority oppresed so badly on the regions backed up by Moscow where real Ukrainian state was limited. With nearly 200k soldiers, hunderds of heavy military machineires, rockets, prepering themselves for two monthes collecting and saving money for years, doing other changes to prepare for that moment. Just to protect. Totally legitimate. I buy it.
That has nothing to do with his sentiment for USSR, for stating that the army should be the first piority for russia, with his manifesto that he have order to be read for all russian soldiers, that Ukraine will be regain as part of russia. Nothing like this. Once again russia, like with Stalin and Khrushchev times, is a peace dove, only spreading peace. I has nothing that Ukraine take bold steps to become fully indepentend state, wanting to become part of western world, with state of law, democracy, rule of law, and strong civic society. No, it's because Ukraine have planned genocide, and NATO is threatening Russia.

So at the first time UE states mostly acted like asses, of course there was no surprise that Hungary was, is and will be backing Putler, no wonder that miss Le Pen is his buddy, after all she is doing what she was paid for, she got money from moscow via hungarian bank. At the first with the biggest diagrace acted German governemnt, but now they seems to realized what was their part of Putin' and Lavrov' plan. And for f**k sake cut Schoeder from tax payers money.

So anyhow, now, in terms of Europe and the West, i hope that this clarity of vision, Union will last longer than the last shot on this war. That delcaration of independing from russian gas and oil will cause long term investments, finding alternatives.
For Ukraine i wish them to prevail and join EU. Keep the course towards western standards.


And how surprise i am not to see that most of anty-covid restrictions and vaccine supporters and yt celbrities are now backing russia and attacking Ukraine.

On as side note: i am seriously wondering if tsom are gonna play Mother russia now.

P.s.
As i can divide, and am aware of protest against this was in russia, i refuse to be gramatic correct (on purpose, unlike other mistakes i have made in this post, even spme might have happened by autocorrection) and gonna write russia with small "r".

P.s. 2 to our fellow symmetrists, i am aware that at least few military action of the west wasn't really justified, 2nd Iraq war is just the biggest disgrace of all, but if you've been thought the time of protecting (chocking) grip of the russia you'd rather like to be the part of the "rotten" western culture, with its value. But that's a matter of theory and practise.

Bartek wrote: ↑28 Feb 2022, 15:41 And for f**k sake cut Schoeder from tax payers money.

Amen!
Schröder is the one who got Germany into depending on Russian gas. Keeps lobbying for Putler. Destroyed the social security in Germany, caused a massive split of society into rich and poor, put thatcheresque librtarianism for big money into law. Close pals with Josef Ackermann, former head of Deutsche Bank (until it hit its big money laundering scandal and $1Bio. fine in the USA, after that he went to the Bank of Cyprus, one of Russian mafia's favourites and big business partner of Trump, like Deutsche Bank..). This former social democratic party's chancellor is neither social nor a democrat. A cucking funt he is.

Marianna gets to the heart of the matter.

I feel ever more sick about the idea that while Russia is entangling the West into the Ukraine conflict, China is just waiting
for the Paralympics to end before they seriously bear down on Taiwan... what could ever be done to stop them?
Nothing after all. Except a hellish lot more of destruction. It's just disgusting... ...

A decent and informed coment on why a no-fly-zone over Ukraine enforced by Nato would be a bloody bad idea:

I struggle to get information from videos; I assume the "bad idea" aspect is as follows:

If you have a no-fly zone, it has to be enforced. Sooner or later this enforcement would require shooting down a Russian plane. Shooting down a Russian plane would be an act of war against Russia. Bad idea.

Oh the irony

Lynching or attacking Diplomats wherever and whoever they are is not a good sign. Also attacking simple people of any ethnicity with the reason their country of origin is a barbaric and uncivilized act.

Well said. It wasn't the owner of the Russian delicatessen down the street who invaded Ukraine.

markfiend wrote: ↑08 Mar 2022, 11:53 I struggle to get information from videos; I assume the "bad idea" aspect is as follows:

If you have a no-fly zone, it has to be enforced. Sooner or later this enforcement would require shooting down a Russian plane. Shooting down a Russian plane would be an act of war against Russia. Bad idea.

That is one part of what's discussed in the video. The other part is that, in order to be able to deny the airspace to who's not supposed to be flying there, the other party has to be able to fly there in the first place. That requires knocking out SAM sites. A large part of Ukraine can be covered by long range systems based in Russia and Belarus, so in order to be able to put any meat to the bones of a no-fly zone, one would have to attack their territories first.
→Big Bang.
Seeing the story about how the responsibility for delivering some Mig 29s to Ukraine gets juggled and passed around like a hot potato, I kind of wish it were the eighties. Back then, that would at least have been the stuff for wonderful political satire on TV and in cinema. I mean, since when has the West lost all of its finesse? Why is no CIA or MI6 or BND able to find or found some cheesy bank that will grant credits to Ukraine for purchasing such planes from Poland and whoever else still uses them? I learnt yesterday that the USA bought some 25 or so from Moldova to sell them other planes. How hard is it to find some South African arms dealer who will reliably sell them to Ukraine after purchasing them for scrap metal? As if all these twilight personalities had become honest citizens by miracle!
They may be trading Bitcoins now, but the veterans among them surely remember how to get cash into and out off war zones. They've done it for decades! No El Presidente would have been able to fire a shot across any border without them!

My Ukrainian friend trying to get her mum to safety: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60664797

The government has rejected the European Union's approach of a three-year residency without a visa, however, claiming officials had seen people in Calais with false documents claiming to be Ukrainian.

Dirty f*cking liars. Just let people in.

I don't understand the rationale of turning people away at the borders. What? Are the Tories worried they'll accidentally make people's lives better?

eotunun wrote: ↑09 Mar 2022, 08:20

markfiend wrote: ↑08 Mar 2022, 11:53 I struggle to get information from videos; I assume the "bad idea" aspect is as follows:

If you have a no-fly zone, it has to be enforced. Sooner or later this enforcement would require shooting down a Russian plane. Shooting down a Russian plane would be an act of war against Russia. Bad idea.

That is one part of what's discussed in the video. The other part is that, in order to be able to deny the airspace to who's not supposed to be flying there, the other party has to be able to fly there in the first place. That requires knocking out SAM sites. A large part of Ukraine can be covered by long range systems based in Russia and Belarus, so in order to be able to put any meat to the bones of a no-fly zone, one would have to attack their territories first.
→Big Bang.
Seeing the story about how the responsibility for delivering some Mig 29s to Ukraine gets juggled and passed around like a hot potato, I kind of wish it were the eighties. Back then, that would at least have been the stuff for wonderful political satire on TV and in cinema. I mean, since when has the West lost all of its finesse? Why is no CIA or MI6 or BND able to find or found some cheesy bank that will grant credits to Ukraine for purchasing such planes from Poland and whoever else still uses them? I learnt yesterday that the USA bought some 25 or so from Moldova to sell them other planes. How hard is it to find some South African arms dealer who will reliably sell them to Ukraine after purchasing them for scrap metal? As if all these twilight personalities had become honest citizens by miracle!
They may be trading Bitcoins now, but the veterans among them surely remember how to get cash into and out off war zones. They've done it for decades! No El Presidente would have been able to fire a shot across any border without them!

This MIG-29 case is a shamble started on the wrong level (EU), that was catched by the press, then USA said something about "green light" to that idea, which was doubled by UK Defense Minister, but with a warning (no way?! Seriously?!), which was ping-ponged by Poland: sure we're up for this, we can transfer them to Ramstein (or as one of the most respected by centrist and anti-current gov't newspaper wrote twice in two separated articles: "Rammstein"; du hast, du hast Migs, du hast Migs gefragt). Information noise and shamble. Unless it was smoke and mirror to cover something else. Anyway, that was test that NATO didn't pass, but lets move on.
One thing suggests that it was indeed smoke and mirror comes from a fact that Polish Migs were modernized and many systems were replaced, cockpit looks different so Ukrainina pilots would have have learn how to operate them which would took few weeks that Ukraine have not.


But on the other hand, every day when i going on flightradar24.com i see at least two army' transportations aircrafts (different states, today Portugal and Italy) flying from every direction to Poland.

Other thing that pissed me off is how Deutschland is behaving on this matter. Well yes, you've putted yourself into this, but since you have these three nuclear power plants you can keep them working until some alternatives to russian gas will be found, not say something that keeping these power plants working might be econimically unjustified. Cold bloodwd bookeepers with no moral spine. I hope that as with supporting sanctions Germans will push their gov't to change mind.


As for Taiwan, it will not happen, no WWIII, no closure. Relax your pants.

Corona = phase 1
War = phase 2
Simple and totally obvious

Bartek wrote: ↑09 Mar 2022, 22:34 "Rammstein"; du hast, du hast Migs, du hast Migs gefragt).

That is brilliant!

Me, I understand the Ukrainian Pilot's thinking behind the requests for Migs. The Polish planes may have been modified, but they still are the same airframe, same general behaviour, same flight characteristics. When you are on the edge of consciouness due to pulling a fighter through a tight turn, the last thing you can deal with is a having to cope with unexpected stalls or flic rolls or whatnot. You have to be one with the plane you fly. You have to have had experince on the model.
I also think that the Polish airforce could make that a win-win out off such a deal, they could say no to the not exactly modern F-16 and ask for their own model of Eurofighters, which I guess would be exactly the plane Poland needs to make sure no Russian fighter ever enters Polish airspace. A version very similar to the RAF one with optimisation for acceleration and climb speed that gives long distance Meteor and AIM 120 missiles a perfect push into action and has a full integration of the Iris-T is a bite no Russian fighter can swallow. I rmember from the ninties how the Luftwaffe pilots praised the Mig 29 they operated for some time back then. When the Eurofighter was delivered, none of them ever looked back, the new machine outperformed the Mig in all aspects. And that is the German version, which is more fine-tuned for endurance than quick alert interception. As, like with the UK, Poland rather has a need for quick reaction, the RAF version would be a perfect match.
Poland could make a deal right now and secure a bargain price for such planes. Bad thing is now that clumsy diplomacy (The downside trademark of Zelenskyy's public appearance, I fear.) has spilt the milk all over the places, a nicely discrete deal is out off question.

With the energy sector in Germany, it sadly isn't quite as simple. You can't just go and throw out millions of heatings of houses over a weekend and replace them. Also the nuclear power plants that are being shut down mainly were given up as the need for modernisation made operating them much longer look not promissing in the face of the need to shut them down in the next decades due to the impossibility of finding a long term safe storage for the burnt out cores.

It is true that Germany has a bad vulnerability by dependancy on Russian energy. Thanks for that, Schröder! And, actually it's not only him in this case. Angela Merkel is fluent in Russian and was well respected by Putin. I even heard opinions that her leaving the stage might have triggered Putin into enforcing his greater Russia idea as he sees parties he can relate to going away. Maybe that is true, maybe it's wubbish. I can't tell. In her long years of chancellorshgip (And you have no idea how long they felt in Germany!), Germany's dependancy on Russian deliveries only grew.
Now Putin shows us that everbody who warned about Russia being an unreliable business partner was painfully right.

Thanks for inside about the power plants. These details are obviuosly not so well presented on the side of the Oder.

I'm not and expert on aircrafts and aircraft weapon, so i cannot say a word on this.

Fact is that even though mig-29 is mig-29, inside it looks different, equipment gives different output, even scals were changed, so it's still not that right away - jump and fly. But again, what do I know about this - i trust what i've heard.
Fact is the Ukraine I desperated, which is normal in this condition, so they are trying to get anything they can, and sometimes they're "over-try".
Obviuosly for many reasons, due to history of few centuries ongoing fights betwixt Poland and Russia, logic that stands behind Polish spirit - protecting and fighting for independence - awful XXth century, i am rooting for Ukraine. Not to mention that russia is aggressor.

Whoever still hasn't lost his sanity is for Uraine now.

Some of the points Zelenskyy makes come across as ever so slightly populist and not very thought through. I guess that partly is due to him still being a realtively unexperienced politician and that extreme-extreme pressure he is under. It's understandable and nothing I worry about.
Thing is, I heard a former ambassador say that no-fly zone was a euphemism for declaration of war. On probably can't put it any more precise in short terms.
The Russian leadership has bitten all hands that fed it now, hardly anyone is still willing to play with them. The whole world is turning away, and Russia is starting to run into the ground in consequence. They can force borders to shift, but they can't force friendship.
With relatives of mine having been held in cages in the GDR and my own family having been torn on behalf of Soviet kindness (I never got to know three of my four granparents) I understand the dangers Russian oppositon face when protesting.
I think they need to get to use the passive resistance Mahatma Gandhi demonsrated. If half the Russian population refused to continue carrying the state, Putin's reign would collapse quickly and without having anyone to fire a shot at in retaliation. Good faith in the common people of Russia would have its evidence, Russia would be liberated from its fascist den of leaders and an immediate return to friendly relationships would have its reason.
This is what I see as the ultimate way out.

Alternatively, aren't plenty kids of Russian oligarchs currently studying at UK (and other European or worldwide) private schools and universities ...