Kadyrov has struck me from the beginning as someone looking for an opening to run off and do his own thing.
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
Kadyrov has struck me from the beginning as someone looking for an opening to run off and do his own thing.
In a war with a lot of potentially bad outcomes, a Russian civil war and a reversion to a loose federation of states isn't a bad outcome.
The resulting turmoil might get rid of a lot of bad actors, and give some people a chance of a better life.
Life for everyday Russians isn't great, sure the war phase would be bad, but what comes after might be an improvement.
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I expect the Chinese will be trying to rope in any breakaway countries into their Belt and Road Initiative.
I do think that a fractured former Russian Empire would be good for much of the rest of the world. Many, if not all the countries would be pretty corrupt, but they probably would be a minimal threat outside their borders. Some might take a page from Ukraine and become a stable democracy.
To be kind, Ukraine 'stability' is a very recent development, the new part is a determination to defend.
Frankly, I doubt that anyone actually expected that the new photogenic, articulate and culturally flexible Ukrainian government could do anything even close to what they are doing.
As for the fracturing, that is what gave the world Putin too. Frankly much of the world is finding aggressive populism attractive. We should be very cautious about our hopes; the world is not at all healthy now.
Germany, France, US, Brazil and many smaller countries are flirting with extremist populist control. China, too, has found a global foundation which they never have had before.
How much separatist sentiment is laudable? How much is deplorable?
Even in the present crisis most of the world's countries are essentially abstaining. The EU and NATO are almost all enthusiastic, but rather a consequential part of both are reluctant snd close neighbors are quite ambiguous.
I wish this were not true. When we look closely the cracks in the US, Germany, France, Italy etc appear. When we look at details cracks in basic support for democratic norms have not only appeared but are growing rapidly.
Hopefully Ukraine can help the world move towards a more positive direction. Hopefully...
petit_bateau
Active Member
The Ukrainians have probably been strongly encouraged to clean up their act to tell the world that they aren't Russian and to make the contrast as clear as possible. The war has done nothing but supercharged that image.
The war may deal a serious blow the the nationalist movements around the world too. We know that Russia fueled those movements in the UK and in the US via online media and other manipulation. They manipulated other countries too.
All these countries have genuine nationalists who have been there a long time. You can find evidence of white nationalists and extreme groups like the American Nazi party around for decades, but they were fairly small and politically powerless. The US also has had a small extreme left communist or communist leaning people too.
Back in the late 1980s when I worked at Boeing and they had a particularly bad battle between one of the unions and management a flyer from the Seattle Workers Party was floating around. I suspect it was a handful of people cranking these out at Kinkos, but it existed.
The bulk of humans are pack animals though. They go with whatever their pack is doing and don't personally care all that much about various causes. Some humans are very independent thinkers and go their own way and quite a few like to think they are independent thinkers, but are really pack animals when push comes to shove. I've thought that might be why cats and dogs are the two most common pets humans have in most countries.
Dogs are a pack predator, just like humans. Dogs bond to humans as pack members. Cats are solo predators and they make up their own minds. They bond too, but as family rather than a pack. Humanity are dogs seeking to become cats. But that's just my crackpot conjecture.
Social media and the algorithms of social media are perfect to prey on the pack instincts of most humans. Through fake accounts that are crafted to express a certain set of opinions combined with advertising national bad actors can manipulate the pack members into thinking the pack thinks a certain way and it does end up thinking that way.
Even before we had computers authoritarians had some understanding of this. In Mao's Cultural Revolution they killed most of the educated people because that was a population more likely to think for themselves. In countries like Russia and China, the news is strictly controlled and pumps out whatever the government wants.
In countries with open medias like the US, there is a broad spectrum of news available, but to the delight of authoritarians, people tend to self select the news they consume and they can keep their followers in a controlled universe of only the news they want their people to see. The fact that other news is available makes it more difficult to these people to take and hold power. There are too many people outside the nationalist pack. (They may belong to a different pack, but they are beyond the authoritarian's direct control.)
Coming back around to the fallout from the war, if Russia becomes wrapped up in its internal struggles and Putin is gone, this might dramatically weaken the Russian influence machine, or eliminate it. As a move to try and get sanctions lifted a post Putin Russia might hand over their playbook on the influence operations to the US or some other countries with open societies and let their authorities shut down the operations outside of Russia.
The Chinese and North Koreans have been playing cyber games too and they might take up the influencing game from Russia, but I think they would struggle to be as good at it as Russia. Russia is a very different culture from western Europe, but their intelligence services have worked to manipulate Europeans and Americans for 100 years with only a few years quiet when Russia was struggling in the 1990s. They are a different culture, but they knew how to speak the language like a native. They have been blind to some things in western cultures but they have been very good at identifying the cultural fault lines and exploiting them.
North Korea would be hopeless at taking up this mantle. Culturally they are alien to everyone else on the planet at this point. Their learning curve would be massive. China has a better shot. They have been trying to understand the west and working with it for about 40 years now, but compared to the Russians their propaganda is tone deaf. One of their biggest causes has been to change western attitudes about Taiwan and make themselves out as the "good" China. They have succeeded a little with the latter, but have pretty much failed with the former. They have made more inroads in the developing world where they are introducing their own satellite TV services with Chinese TV shows and movies translated into the local languages.
Without Russian influences in western societies I think it's possible that the nationalism we have seen in a lot of countries will whiter and die back to where it was 30-40 years ago. We saw the beginning of this earlier this week when Macron beat LaPenn by a fairly good margin in France. That was more due to Putin tarnishing the nationalist brand than his influencers going quiet. With the influencing operation quiet we might see a bigger swing back to the center.
Democracies are healthiest when a wide range of views are out there, but the bulk of elected leaders are a mix of center-left and center-right. The center-left is still there in most democracies because Putin has not been as effective in radicalizing the left, but he has almost obliterated the center-right in a number of countries, turning them into extreme right nationalists.
Lots of reports that US is sharing more intel than before on Dunbas.
Germany is supposed to be days away from being able to embargo Russian oil. Germany and Poland are taking over russian owned refinery, importing oil through German and Polish ports.
finance.yahoo.com
Discussion on nationalizing large refineries owned by Lukoil in Italy
Germany is supposed to be days away from being able to embargo Russian oil. Germany and Poland are taking over russian owned refinery, importing oil through German and Polish ports.
Germany Prepares To Expropriate Russian-Run Refinery
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck says the government is preparing to take control of the country’s PCK refinery
Discussion on nationalizing large refineries owned by Lukoil in Italy
Interesting comments:
One of his quotes:
One of his quotes:
Terminator857
Active Member
Contrast is obvious. One has the latest hitler, the other doesn't.
Russian Twitter isn't doing so great since the war started.
hedonometer.org
Though adoption and sentiment in Ukraine is pretty astonishing and rebounding quickly.
hedonometer.org
Hedonometer
Hedonometer.org is an instrument that measures the happiness of large populations in real time. The hedonometer is based on people’s online expressions, capitalizing on data-rich social media, and measures how people present themselves to the outside world.
Though adoption and sentiment in Ukraine is pretty astonishing and rebounding quickly.
Hedonometer
Hedonometer.org is an instrument that measures the happiness of large populations in real time. The hedonometer is based on people’s online expressions, capitalizing on data-rich social media, and measures how people present themselves to the outside world.
Thankfully I’m an old git and only use LinkedIn for work, FB for a few actual face to face friends (not ppl I’ve never met) & WhatsApp (again for work). Outside of those uses I pretty much ignore everything else on any of them lol. I’d still rather pick up the phone and talk to someone or do my own research rather than rely on anything on any of those sites that may randomly pop up
Thankfully I’m an old git and only use LinkedIn for work, FB for a few actual face to face friends (not ppl I’ve never met) & WhatsApp (again for work). Outside of those uses I pretty much ignore everything else on any of them lol. I’d still rather pick up the phone and talk to someone or do my own research rather than rely on anything on any of those sites that may randomly pop up
People who truly think for themselves are hard to influence.
I had to take a basic Psych course in college and the prof was kind of a rebel in the field. Since that class the Psych profession has shifted it's views closer to his. He talked about several instances where the Psych experts got things completely wrong. In the Korean War they thought that those who were inquisitive about the world people who thought for themselves would be most vulnerable to brain washing when taken prisoner because they were always seeking new information. It turned out that the more someone thought for themselves, the quicker they were to see through brainwashing efforts. The people who were most vulnerable were those who were generally not that curious about the world. They just accepted what they were told instead of thinking through everything they heard.
Another curious thing came out of a study where researchers were able to anesthetize one half of a person's brain. Then they presented them with logical arguments with glaring logical errors or even contradictions that anyone with a fully functioning brain would catch. Then they asked people what they thought. When the right hemisphere was asleep, people would tend to believe anything they saw, even arguing that something that was clearly false was true. When the left hemisphere was asleep, people would be able to tell something was wrong, but couldn't explain why. I found that quite interesting.
Most university programs also teach at least some degree of independent thought. One of my favorite classes at uni and one of the most useful in the world was an argument and reasoning class that was required. The prof would bring in articles that made some kind of case for something and he would challenge us to spot the fallacies, or to come up with either a counter argument or supporting argument. I can't remember the names of all the fallacies anymore, but they stand out like sore thumbs when I see them.
This forum is the bulk of my social media these days. I read Twitter, but I've posted so little that the advertising algorithms have no idea who I am. I pretty much gave up on Facebook some time ago. The sorts of social media I have done have tended to be more narrow focused and most don't have advertising or easy to ignore advertising, plus they probably don't have many state sponsored trolls. There is the occasional person who causes trouble here, but I doubt they are on Putin's payroll. It's a pretty poor investment to try and push a political agenda on the forum that generally discourages political discussions.
Tiger
Active Member
Tell me about it, try to influence or sway a FoxNews audience, QAnon or TDS victim and it's impossible.
Doggydogworld
Active Member
Macron won by 16 points. Five years ago he beat her by 32 points.
The article: "Germany and Poland are now said to be nearing the end of discussions on a concerted effort to zero out Russian crude oil imports to Germany, with new sources re-routed through German and Polish ports."Germany is supposed to be days away from being able to embargo Russian oil. Germany and Poland are taking over russian owned refinery, importing oil through German and Polish ports.
Germany Prepares To Expropriate Russian-Run Refinery
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck says the government is preparing to take control of the country’s PCK refinery
Discussion on nationalizing large refineries owned by Lukoil in Italy
The are no "new sources", of course, just existing sources that currently go to other countries. Those importing countries will have no choice but to replace their lost supply with Russian oil.
It's nothing more than a giant shell game.
The only way to deprive Russia of oil export revenue is for the west to reduce consumption by 5m bpd until truly new sources come online.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
This former VP at Gazprom Bank (one VP of many) is pessimistic about Russian economic collapse being able to stop Putin. He thinks it will have to be regime change (from within?) or Putin's own death.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
In the first round Le Pen got 23.15% and Zemmour got 7.07. Almost 70% of the French voters chose one of the other candidates.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Hardly. Put them in a prison camp with daily interrogations of the type they like to wish on others and watch what happens. Or take their their shake and fries
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SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
I don't think it works as simple as that however. India is the obvious exception, but from other comments, there are plenty of countries that extra Russian oil can't easily reach at the moment, due to logistics constraints. So in the short term at least, it would directly hurt Russia. Some sources may also be spurred to increase production. It's not exactly a zero sum game.
