trayloader
Member
In this regard Elon was right. There is no outcome, since the "System" Putin will never give up. It´s much bigger than the Nuremberg trials.
So what is the consequence?
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
So what is the consequence?
trayloader
Member
Goes much deeper. We have massive problems with infiltration in Germany and funding of alternative parties.
The AfD is circulated to be backed by the Kremlin, heck maybe one day we´ll hear of parts of the SPD our second biggest party being bribed.
In that regard Putin was smart and thought in decades dating back to the Mr. Schroeder era and the aftermath.
Strategic corruption is the term and I would bet the Trump family fell for it, parts of the dems I see in there too.
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trayloader
Member
You are correct however with the periscopic view out of a save island.
We have the freaks around the corner. Italy fell, Austria under scrutiny, Orban in effect et al.
We have a lot on our table.
petit_bateau
Active Member
Yes, I fully agree.
The UK has suffered grieviously as a result, this is very obvious. It will take true bravery by real political leaders to cleanse the UK of the consequences, and I'm afraid I don't see that soon.
(UK, USA, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Greece - they've been trying everywhere. Some societies have shown themselves to be more resistant than others.)
The good news is that renewable-energy and renewable-driven economies are intrinsically much less susceptible to capture by way of the high value streams, as they tend to have more diffuse value streams. Clearly there are other control points, but at least one set of control points are off the table.
Seriously? The Maidan Revolution was back in 2014. Do you want to tell us that there was no opportunity to wrest control from the pro-Russia oligarchs in the meantime? The Ukrainian government certainly didn't oppose the export of Russian gas to Germany (and to many other European countries), quite the contrary.Let's be absolutely clear.
Originally the control of the Ukraine (and wider Comecon) gas (and oil) pipeline network was firmly in the hands of the post-Soviet oligarchy structure. I hesitate to call it only the Russian oligarchy as there were (and are) lots of post-Soviet oligarchs in the lands beyond Russia, including in Ukraine. The normal way of these things was that only those who were favoured in the Kremlin got control of the key assets, and the sweetheart contracts to make those assets profitable/valuable/attractive. The oil & gas pipelines, the refineries and petrochem complexes, and the downstream distribution networks (city gas systems, power stations, fertiliser plants, retail vehicle fuel stations).
The asset sales themselves were often a way of shunting cash into the favoured hands, but so too was the use of the asset with a sweetheart cheap gas deal, or a attractive transit tolling deal. The ongoing oil & gas sales, and the ongoing pipeline usage revenues were also a very convenient way of moving hard currency in very large amounts into the favoured pockets.
This was the system that Putin took over when he gained control of the Kremlin and the mafia network of oligarchs.
So basically every time you hear about high-level corruption the hairs should go up on the back of your neck, and you should transpose that to "Putin's stooge".
Why do you think Hungary is run by someone like Orban ? Where do you think the money came from to do the politicking that got people like Orban into power. Or ditto in Ukraine ? or for that matter in Austria. Go drive around those countries and look at the pipeline networks and the big petrochem assets and you can practically trace out the flow of corruption emnating outwards from the Kremlin.
It is precisely because the Ukraine people want to stop this sort of corruption that the Maidan uprising took place in 2014 and Putin's stooge Yanukovych fled Ukraine. The ongoing Russian invasion is the continuation of Putin's attempt to wrest back control.
There is a fine line between not understanding this and being an unwitting useful fool; and deliberately seeking to be ignorant so as to seek to spread confusion. The latter are getting increasingly short shrift. The former need to wise up fast.
What about all the other accusations of corruption? The support of Zelensky by Ihor Kolomojskyj, an Ukrainian Oligarch who is accused of embezzlement, fraud and money laundering in several jurisdictions? Zelensky and the Pandora Papers?
I'm all for the support of Ukraine, yet most certainly I'm not willing to accept all sorts of BS.
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Ukraine rank moved up 1 point (continues progress of slowly becoming less corrupt):
CPI 2022 for Eastern Europe & Central Asia: Growing security risks…
CPI 2022 for Eastern Europe & Central Asia: Growing security risks…
Exactly, while Hungary has an Armenian minority it was not enugh to stop him from trading this genocidal turkman for oil, he is now a celebrated hero for bludgeoning a sleeping man in cold blood in the EU, only for being Armenian.
petit_bateau
Active Member
Wresting back control isn't exactly an overnight activity. Not when going up against very powerful and wealthy people whilst still needing to respect the rule of law, keep economies from crashing, and everything sufficiently stable so as to get through the next democratic election. This stuff has been going on since the early 90s, we are now into the second generation of the mafia-style oligarchical families that are all over this, by now with a lot of veneer applied.
(Just look at how hard the struggle is in Italy to actually get at the real mafia. These situations keep on mutating and basically taking over the democratic process.)
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
I still don't understand how Belarus is ranked as less corrupt than Ukraine...
Tiger
Active Member
I've seen no evidence that China is providing direct military aid to Russia. China makes a lot of the same calibers Russia uses and could be providing ammunition and arms to Russia. There are people examining shell fragments for manufacturing dates and other clues of where ammunition is coming from and it doesn't appear any is coming from China. Russia's petrochemical industry is pretty strong, but their other chemical production is poor. They are probably buying large quantities of ingredients from China which does have a pretty broad chemical industry.
China has probably replaced a lot of the consumer goods that used to come from the west and are now not available.
China is limited in the kinds of industrial machines and electronics it can provide. They do produce some electronic goods, but they don't make the high tech specific purpose ICs Russia needs for some of its weapons. The Russians may have worked out some Chinese work arounds in some areas.
Other than petroleum products Russia does export a lot of raw materials or near raw materials (like pig iron). They haven't been big exporters of manufactured products except for military hardware and I expect the exports of those items have stopped. They are probably trying to find new markets for their ores and partially refined ores now that the west isn't taking any of them. I would not be surprised if that's the bulk of goods flowing out of those ports.
OK, corruption was all the fault of their overlords? We are getting sold a lot of nice stories about Ukraine now. Dealing with corruption and oligarch power was a defining element of doing business in Ukraine. You may want to look at cases like this:
A Canadian is fighting for change in Ukraine. So far, he's losing. - Macleans.ca
Michael Yurkovich launched a solar power project in Ukraine. The profits were good, the future was bright. Then he started to learn more about the neighbourhood.www.macleans.ca
To my knowledge it ended with the Canadian investor disassembling his solar energy plant. There is a reason why Ukraine was an economic basket case even before the war, despite its natural riches.
It is not the fault of any overlords. Corruption creeps into a society on all levels. For example contrast the police in the US and Mexico. There are corrupt police in the US who would be willing to take a bribe, but it's highly risky to offer a bribe to a cop in the US unless you already have a good idea they will take it. A blind offer of a bribe is more likely to get you arrested.
In Mexico, it's widely known that many cops are on the take and while there is still a chance you could get arrested for offering a cop a bribe, you are much more likely to get away with it.
In many countries it's pretty much common knowledge that if you want government agents to do anything for you, you need to give them a bribe, but in low corruption you are much more likely to get arrested for trying to bribe an official.
It boils down to the overall cultural tolerance to corruption. It happens in non-governmental areas too. I worked in one company where it was pretty common for people to take home office supplies. Probably half the office supplies were stolen every year. That was the corporate culture. I heard when I worked there that this company was one of the biggest buyers of office supplies in the entire US every year. It was a large company, but not the largest.
Most other companies I've worked for there has been much less of a corporate culture of office supply theft. There probably is a little bit going on, but it's much less than that one company.
Russia took control of the eastern part of Ukraine in the 1600s and the western part about 100 years later. Russia made several attempts to fully Russify Ukraine which only partially succeeded. Eastern Ukraine was settled by ethnic Russians to some extent starting in the 17th century.
Russia always had a certain degree of corruption, but it got much worse in the Soviet era. I recall reading somewhere that Lenin realized the communist revolution had failed before he died. Instead of the dreamed of worker's paradise Russia became even more centralized than under the Tzar with better surveillance of the system thanks to industrialization. Supplies of even basic goods like bread became difficult to come by so a lucrative black market cropped up. People needed to use the black market just to survive so it touched everyone's lives directly.
When official channels for anything were clogged with lazy bureaucrats who had no incentive to get anything done, people found ways around everything.
The USSR became a fundamentally corrupt place top to bottom. Russia and the other former Soviet republics inherited this corruption. One of the reasons the army is in such bad shape today is that corruption is so rampant that most of the money and gear for the army gets stolen.
The places that were under Moscow's thumb the shortest time have had an easier time fighting the corruption, but it's been an uphill fight for most of these countries. Some have done better than others. Hungry is a corrupt mess now, Poland is a bit better, but is not great. The Baltic Republics have probably done the best job of rooting out corrupting of any eastern European countries.
Ukraine is in the process of getting away from the Russian style of corruption. Before the war the government was facing a lot of resistance both inside and outside the country because it's just the way things are for so many people and they can't get their mind around a system that doesn't have petty corruption.
The war has opened the door to rethinking everything. The new memes are corruption is the old Russian way of doing things and being non-corrupt is the European model Ukraine wants to live by. Another way of looking at it is that any form of corruption helps the Russian army, so if the corruption stops, it helps the war effort.
There are still those who are fundamentally more selfish and will still try to steal, but they are more likely to get caught because their neighbors are now less likely to look the other way and the overall mood of the country is becoming less tolerant of it. When only one or two people are stealing they also are more likely to stand out when the forensic accountants look at the books.
The war is a major boost towards a more honest system, but it will take a generation or two to get the corruption down to noise levels. Most countries today with low corruption had periods when corruption was vastly worse than it is today.
It's only been over the last decade, but the Russians got good at social influencing countries. They found existing fault lines within cultures and exploited them on social media. In the US 2016 election they were working both sides to sow division. It worked better than they hoped on the right, but it worked on the far left too.
At the same time they had agents on the ground who were playing influence games. For example one angle was to have agents pose as Russian gun's rights activists to lure the American pro-gun people into their fold. They had astroturf organizations for Russian pro-gun rights groups that really didn't exist. Private gun ownership isn't legal in Russia, but they appealed to the gun lovers in the US by making it appear they had kindred spirits in Russia.
They also lured in some far left people by pitching modern Russia as a sort of communism perfected. Third party candidate for president Jill Stein was wined and dined in Moscow by Putin to get her feeling warm and fuzzy about Russia. To her credit it appears she did figure out she had been duped after the election. Many on the right who were duped still haven't figured it out, even when some of the Russian agents were caught and convicted.
Russia played the British during Brexit fanning anti-immigrant feelings in the population, even though Brexit really wasn't about that directly. The immigrants most of the anti-immigrant crowd are most worked up about aren't from Europe, though there was some anti-Polish immigrant sentiment too.
In Germany Russia took a different approach. Germany wanted to do business with Russia in the hopes that economic ties would prevent Russia from doing anything too rash. Russia played Germany along to get all it could economically and materially out of Germany while plotting to stab Germany and Europe in the back.
The parallels between what happened in the lead up to WW II and now are amazing. Hitler played almost the exact same game on Stalin. Ultimately not to Germany's favor.
The Chinese have been playing their own influence games too. It isn't just Russia.
At this point Russia has blown decades of carefully crafted shell games to dupe westerners and western governments. Some are still working. The US still has a pro-Putin component and some of those people are in government. But the war has weakened their control. I'm sure the Russians have had some hooks into some Democrats, but it's been much more obvious with Republican politicians, some of whom were pretty chummy with the Russians before the war.
There are political problems in Europe. Italy is back in the hands of some neo-fascists, but it appears they are still supporting Ukraine for now. Orban is a pain in the side of NATO and the EU.
I don't know how this war is going to end, but Russia is going to come out of it drastically weaker than it was before the war. The markets for their goods have been badly upset, the war is going to leave deep scars on the culture, and many of their foreign influence operations have fallen apart. Russia has also burned up a large part of the stockpile of weapons left behind by the USSR. The army as an institution has been badly damaged and just restoring their training regimes is going to be tough.
Russia's allies in the west are going to suddenly be fairly lonely and they may fall out of power as a result. Hopefully Hungry returns to something sane after Orban. Anti-Russian nationalist parties like Poland has might get stronger though.
They say it's the perception of corruption. So whose perception are they measuring?
From what I've seen of investigative journalists who dug into QAnon, it appears that it is not the creation of Russian intelligence, but it's another fault line they exploited and made their own.
The way the Russian and Chinese influence operations have different goals. China is trying to make the world believe they are more benevolent than they are. They want the world to ignore the human rights abuses and their military build up and see them as the guys who make everyone's stuff at a cheap price. The global discount store.
Russia is trying to clear everyone out of the way who might interfere with putting their empire back together. They want to cripple their opponents. China might be willing to cripple someone if they have to, but they just want to clear the way for a new world order based on their merchant empire.
Russia has had territorial aims for some time, China doesn't. China has learned from the US period of world dominance. It's much easier to be the dominant world power through economic means than militarily conquer everyone else.
China has never been all that interested in conquering the world. They have had a few territorial ideas close to home, but the rest of the world they are not interested in physically ruling.
Just before the European age of exploration began China was exploring the oceans with their own ships. Very little mark is left from their voyages of discovery because they had no interest in colonizing other lands. They were just looking for trade. They went so far as to neuter all their sailors so they couldn't leave children behind in other lands.
The Chinese never castrated large numbers of sailors. The Eunuchs were used primarily as subservient advisors and attendants(frequently for women) in the Emperor's courts. Zheng He was a famous eunuch admiral/explorer/mariner. The sailors aboard his ships were pretty much all intact.
A post was deleted in this thread for politics, but I have no idea which one so don’t know what is verboten. But seriously, how do we discuss Ukraine/Russia without discussing politics? No wonder I haven’t been here in months until a few days ago.
A couple got deleted. One of the moderators must be a little touchy on the subject. I wouldn't stress over it. It's funny how only American politics seems to be off limits, but whatever.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
No they didn't. A lot of people try to say that the memorandum meant the US and UK promised to defend Ukraine, but it makes no such claim (look at the actual text yourself, it's not that long):
The closest thing was this part:
"Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used"."
Putting aside no nuclear weapons have been used so far, all that promises is seeking Security Council action, which the US and UK did, but it was trivially vetoed by Russia. The veto power makes it quite worthless when a member is the aggressor.
Russia blocks Security Council action on Ukraine
Russia definitely violated the memorandum, the US and UK didn't. I know however a lot of media try to push the story that somehow US/UK didn't meet their obligations (usually while also pushing a story about promises not to expand NATO, which also is false). But these myths don't stand up to a simple look at the actual documents in question, which aren't that long.
I don't know a lot about EU politics, but from your own link, the Dutch vote was a vote against the EU system, not necessarily against Ukraine:You may also want to look at this:
2016 Dutch Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement referendum
That gives you an indication of the popularity of Ukraine in Europe prior to the war.
"In an interview with the Burgercomité EU, the members admitted they didn't really care about Ukraine at all, but are against the political system of the EU."
Basically it's a similar wave as Brexit, except people took out their emotions on this referendum on Ukraine.
As sanity check, the Dutch polling on "Nexit" showed that such a large proportion of the Dutch disliked the EU so much that they wanted to leave in 2016, with polling showing even 48% Leave vs 45% Remain.
Dutch withdrawal from the European Union - Wikipedia
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I only see posters who are a little touchy because a post got deleted. It’s not like a limb has been cut off.
It should come as no surprise that posts suggesting or flat out stating that Putin controlled the Trump administration have no place on this forum. It injects toxic politics into the discussion and as past experience has shown nothing good comes out of it.
It’s also in breach of the Terms and Rules of this forum, to which every member has agreed: “TeslaMotorsClub.com is not the place for debate on religion, sex, politics, or other such controversial posts;”
Subject closed.
It's possible there is cross contamination of sources, but everything I've seen has said their exploration vessels had eunuch crews.
Well, it shouldn't be too hard to find references for that, if true. I'd love to see some if you can find any.
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