Yesterday Italian prime minister Menținut, reminded italiana about the fight against communism and the support of the Ukraine.
She mentioned the self immolated chezckoslovakian martyr Jan Palach, the efforts of Pope John Paul 2, the fall of Berlin wall but she forgot the Romanian revolution where 2000 young people died for freedom.
Poor sould forgetfulness is worse than death for a hero.
Religion makes life epic, heroic, meaningful.
Marriage is union of masculine and feminine under the watch of God.
Birth is coming a new soul in this world, death is ascension to heavens
Modern world has transformed epic struggle of the people to feed themselves, by hunting, sowing and harvesting, in a uneventful 9 to 5 job and a trip to supermarket.
Marriage is a social contract, birth a medical procedure, death a disease.
Everything is uneventful and predictable, that becomes boring
Compare the dullness of modern life with the passion of religious life. Man is an actor in the divine plan. Devil and God, fight for his soul.
His actions have cosmic consequences, he and people could in hell or in heaven.
No wonder that people will return to religious life and reclaim their individual importance.
While I was reading Dune, I heard about the religious war between the two contenders for Brazil presidency: Lula supported by Catholics and Bolsanaro supported by protestants.
I think Dune by Frank Herbert should be mandatory reading in schools to see how religion is used for political purposes.
I just read a book regarding Romanian secret service during world war one.
The image painted by Romanian spies of the Austro Hungarian empire after first year of war it of war , is of exhaustion. The contingent of men in their '40 and '50 was drafted, the wheat flour was replaced with maize flour and sugar in production of bread.
In Budapest there were food riots.
Austro Hungary and Germany seek to make peace and they even thought of giving some land to Romania to avoid that it entered the war.
And yet, war continued for 3 years
Austro Hungary didn't have the ethnic homogeneity of Russia. It didn't had the resources. It didn't had the internal control, the secret police, and a recording device in pocket of each citizen. But it dragged on for 3 years in the war.
Russia could drag also 3 years.
The situation from word war one should be lesson for Russia too. People then supported much heavier difficulties than now, and didn't gave up.
So if Putin is imagining that high bills will overthrow governments in west and stop the support for Ukraine, he is wrong.
Many pretenders competed for beautiful Helen. Her father feared that if one wins, the other will kill him, and then they will fight each other. He asked Ulisses what to do.
Ulisses proposed that the pretenders swear to defend the one who wins.
Replace Helen with world peace and pretenders with nuclear powers.
If all nuclear powers will retaliate in case someone strike first, do you think that someone will dare to use nuclear bombs?
He cannot hit all the world at once, and he will be exterminated.
I hate when distance separates me from friends, and when the time takes away my loved ones.
There are a lot of speculations about why Putin decided to invade Ukraine.
In ethology it is a game that explains this:
It is called the game of hawk and dove and it applies to the bird's territorial conflicts .
Imagine 2 birds who are fighting for same territory, they can choose 2 behaviours:
-be a dove: avoid the fight, avoid injury, be content with less and survive. Usually dove live with doves and cooperate
-be a hawk: search to maximize the gains, and take aggressive actions that can kill you. ("Greed is good" Gordon Gekko, "Wall street"). The hawks are stopped/killed by other hawks.
It is clear that Kremlin is inhabited by hawks. You don't survive communism and wild capitalism be being a pussy.
On the other side the situation is more complex:
Let's define other side: Ukraine, EU and USA.
In birds ethology naturalists observed a 3-th behaviour: to be a bourgeois: if you are attacked you defend the territory, you don't enter in other territory. The bourgeois fights off a hawk. This is Ukraine.
EU, in particular Austria,Germany and France behaved as a dove with Kremlin, seeking always to avoid conflict and compromise. This worked inside Europe, because nobody has to gain something by using aggression.
With respect to Ukraine and Eastern Europe, EU was like a selfish herd, with Western Europe in the middle, and Eastern and Southern Europe at periphery, as a buffer against Russian and Middle Eastern threats.
The corruption of European politicians, the infighting, the narrow interests produced contempt at Kremlin and underestimated Europe. Gerhard Schroeder ex canceler of Germany is still on the payroll of Gazprom.
USA is a hawk and it will be a hawk for a long term.
USA was created by people who behaved hawkish, they crossed the ocean, they killed native americans and took their lands. Also it is protected by 2 oceans, and by biggest and most technically advanced armed force in the world, so the external security risks for USA are minimal. The only attack on american soil after WW2 was on September 11 2001 , and then USA behaved hawkish, chasing the authors of the attacks all over the world and killed them.Other countries didn't take the same actions. For example Spain retreated from Irak after Atocha attacks.
Putin as a hawk saw a bunch of doves and decide to attack. The big bald eagle was oceans away and without support of Europeans it can't help a country isolated from big oceans.
So what went wrong ?
Well, the EU wasn't a dove, it was a bourgeois all the time. It wanted to maintain the status quo, with minimum effort, so it made concessions.
Eastern Europe was traumatized by Russia and Western Europe by WW2, Putin invasion was felt like threat to all. The politicians that were friendly with Putin felt betrayed.
In order to maintain the status quo, Ukraine had to be helped. This was dictated also by cold state interests, if not by human solidarity.
In this 4 actors game, EU want the status quo to be maintained: to have access to raw materials from Russia and Ukraine. This is impossible for now.
Ukraine wants to maintain its territory, economical and political independence from Moscow. But you have what you can defend. West sends weapons, but Ukraine will have the manpower to man those weapons?
The decisive factor in Ukraine will be manpower, West might have better equipment by the supply chain is long while Russia has shorter supply chain and a competitive equipment. Technologically on the battle field they are balanced.
I think Russia is afraid to declare war on Ukraine and mobilize it's troops, because behind curtains it was sent the message that NATO will intervene.
NATO intervened in Afghanistan which is thousand of kilometres away against an enemy who didn't pose the same threat as Russia, and it will not intervene at it's borders?
If Russia doesn't cooperate and it doesn't attack NATO an incident in Kaliningrad enclave or in Black Sea can be created to convince public opinion that the war is necessary. Or a global famine will make countries plea for NATO intervention in Ukraine to free the wheat.
France and Spain can recruit in their Foreign Legions Africans starved by Putins blockade to fight in Ukraine.
If the current mobilisation is maintained. The conflict will be long. Russia can't push in Ukraine, and Ukraine can't push in Russia.
If Russia mobilise all the reserves, it could lead to WW3. I hear more often on youtube, stuff like: a small nuclear is explosion doesn't damage too muck the environment, after 2 weeks radiation is gone.
USA had neutron bombs ready to use against soviet tanks in Germany who was more densely populated than Donbass.
USA can follow it hawkish strategy for a long time, even if Biden lefts the office, the next president will feed military industrial complex with aid money for Ukraine.
Support for Ukraine means support for Taiwan, if USA waivers in Ukraine, China might risk taking Taiwan, and drag USA in a war, which it will be more costly for USA, in terms in of manpower and money.
China is an self reliant economic giant, with a huge and modern army. The only weakness is oil and food.
How long Russia can hold its hawkish attitude ? Putin and Co cannot retreat from Ukraine now. The empires has to win every battle because they have many enemies that seek for a chink in the armour.
Troubles from northern Ireland lasted from 1960 to 1998. It was was a slow burning conflict localized conflict. It will be the same with Ukraine ?
Or it will be like on WW1 Western front, a trench warfare?
I estimate that the war will take minimum 2-3 years and maximum 10 years.
In 2 years maybe EU will decoupled energetically from Russia and apply more sanctions, and send more weapons. Germany lost in WW1 because it was starved and USA supplied weapons to Entente camp.
EU will be in an economic crisis, but the orders for weapons will flow to keep the economy.
Meanwhile Russia can diversify it's clients selling to China and India or other countries, and EU will have to replace Russian raw materials with those from Africa and Latin America.
Russia can rebuild it's armament industry in 2 years, but the problem is the capable people. Moving the factories from Western Russia beyond Ural mountains in WW2 was a gigantic feat. But Stalin still got engineers, patriotic people who worked hard on the cold, half starved t rebuild factories and NKVD for people who lacked patriotism.
Putin has only NKVD. Smart people left Russia.
Hitler was a painter.
Stalin loved symphonic music and literature.
Mao wrote poetry in his spare time.
Caravagio was a killer.
Francois Villon a thief.
Why the art didn't soften these men ?
Why it didn't made them sensitive to the evil that they were doing ?
Up until 19 century, the main foreign threats to China came from north.
There they have built the great wall to stop nomadic warriors tribes like xiongnu,huns,mongols,manchu from raiding China.
China in the north can be threaten by chaotic warrior tribes, or by a powerful empire like mongols,czars or Soviet Union.
Putin's Russia is neither of this, it has internal order but lacks power to conquer China.
If Russia breaks, the eastern provinces can come under American influence due to cultural ad physical proximity.
China doesn't want an American foothold near its border, that's why it supports North Korea and it will support the future North Korea: Russia.
In short Putin's Russia is a buffer from global western influence.
The real threat for China comes from south, those countries had clashes in the past with China, and China sequestrations of water from Tibet's rivers doesn't help.
They are densely populated countries with physical barriers such as Himalaya and jungle in SE Asia so a "special military operation" is not feasible if those countries get help from US or Australia.
A bellicose China might move then in West's side.
Yesterday the "Fresh prince from Bel Air" slapped Chris Rock because he made a bad joke about his wife.
The difference between what Putin did in Russia and what Will Smith did, is the scale
Putin regime tells journalists to keep the mouth shut. Smith does the same with comedians.
Putin tries to kill a comedian Zelenski, Smith slaps a comedian Chris Rock.
The same hubris and same arrogance in both and the same idea that force can solve things.
They both live in a bubble and think that their actions don't have consequences.
What you expect from a Hollywood that accepted sexual abusers in they ranks ?
To support independence and freedom ? To keep at least a moment of silence for victims from Ukraine ?
In WW2 Hollywood stars advertised war bonds, now they go against their country interests because it is trendy.
Hollywood is good also to distract, everybody now speaks about Chris Rock and Will Smith fight, everyone has forgot about Ukraine, Zelenski, Mila Kunis, and Sean Penn.
Sean don't melt the oscars, sell them and donate the money.
Children when they are upset, they have a blanket to hug it and cover them.
Adults have the delusions as comfort blanket.
Many people including Zelenski said that there will be no invasion. Many though that it will be only in the East.
Now Moldova says the same thing now.
PS. It seems to me that this Ukrainian Russian war is similar to Chinese Vietnamese war from 1975.
China tried to conquer Vietnam or as it claim to teach them a lesson that their ally Soviet Union is too far.
They were reppelled.
Even if Ukraine push back Russia. This war showed the limits of US-Ukraine alliance
Many people are trying why Putin is doing evil stupid things
So they try to blame it on the more rational actor, the West.
West was quite rational, it picked fights that it can win and had a gain of it.
So the narrative that I hear it so often is that actions of rational actor (NATO expansion to the East) triggered actions of an irrational actor (Putin).
Putin was irrational when he used the excuse of bomb exploding in building blocks to attack Chechnya in 1999.
Bombs put by his men: some dwellers notice some strange persons, transporting 'sacks of sugar' in the basement and called the police. Later they announced that it was military exercise.
Invasion of Georgia is not rational, because the gains were minimum, a patch of land, and if he hadn't influence in Europe, he could have harsher sanctions earlier.
Anyway, the main topic is that in its narrative Russia demands justice because US broke it's promise not to expand NATO
First from legal point of view, there is any treaty? If James Baker promise something verbally in '90, it is James Baker who promised not State Dept. If US and Soviet Union sign a treaty, State dept has to implement the treaty regardless of who is in charge.
Even if this treaty exist, it applicable to a thirty party which doesn't know about it?
Hey, Volodemir, I George and Mikhail, have decided that you owe us some money.
How does this sounds?
Like extortion and robbery.
When Russia condemns US for not keeping it's part of the deal, it is condemning it for not keeping it's part in a conspiracy, a extortion racket.
Third E Europe is composed of people, is not a company that can be sold or bought.
And when great powers trade territories, they trade people, like in Tzarist Russia you traded land with serfs.
So when Russia condemns US for not keeping the deal, it says in fact that US is no longer trading slaves as it use to. US slave trade was a major argument of Russian whataboutism.
Some countries want to match US economically, technologically, culturally. To exceed US in some positive way.
Only Russia tried to match them in atrocities: US killed native Americans, we can kill to natives. US had a slave trade, we have Gulag, they threw 2 nukes, soon we will do it too
This is my impression from their what about ism.
I tried to explain to a friend the difference between West and East in Europe, but just now an example came to my mind.
Philip 2 of Spain has a secretary that he wanted him dead. The secretary found out and run to Catalonia. Despite being few km away from Madrid, the king of Spain, Netherlands,Portugal and of America, could not fetch him, because local parliament opposed.
But Philip couldn't just invade the place cut heads of parliamentarians, and pillage the city like central Asian Hordes did?
No, the powerful king choose to respect the treaty that gave Catalans their rights, and choose to sent inquisition after unfortunate secretary
King James of England, asked himself what is the difference between him and a tyrrant. The difference he said is that I act within the law .
Friedrich the great wanted to buy a wind mill from a peasant, in order to build his palace. The peasant didn't want and sued the king of Prussia and won.
Machiaveli notices the difference between France and Turkey.
In France the king had the power limited by the lord's, it was hard to rule France, and even harder to conquer it After you overthrow the king you had to defeat the lords one by one.
Sultan of Turkey had more power because it hadn't lord's and could rule easier but the country was easier to conquer: you remove the sultan and everyone obeys by force of habit
Ukraine is more like France, and Russia is more like Turkey.
The reason for this situation in Western Europe is geography and history.
Mountains and big rivers limit the expansion of empires, and in remote regions minorities can survive fragmentigs the political power : bascques in Pirrinee, celts, in Ireland, Bretagne,Cornwall and Walles.
All the Western powers formed by agglutination of smaller entities:
The land of free peasant was taken by counts, counts married or were conquered and formed duchies, and dukes, formed kingdoms or were allied with royal family.
Anyway during this period privileges of the small entities were preserved
And the king's tolerated them because the political mentality then was to keep the things how they are, to rule better
This ended with Napoleanic wars, when France uniformizez everything inside, and force other countries to the same.
In the East in the other side you have big planes that are no obstacles for empire expansion, the defense is expensive because you need cavalry.
There is cultural diversity and this means that intermarriage between ruling families is low. Mongols/Tatars and Turks were Muslim, Russian,Ukrainians, Romanians were orthodox,Poles and Hungarian Catholics
So a low transfer of customs and respect for privileges
Also this cultural diversity didn't help in creating a common way of conflict resolution.
In the East it was always total war. Tatars burned down villages and cities of Romanian and poles, and sent their captives in slavery
Vlad the impaler impaled people in Ottoman empire and in German cities from Transilvania.
Meanwhile up till reformation, all the west was catholic, so they didn't burned down the monasteries and cathedrals.
Also in early middle ages, to prevent human losses, kings preferred to have a duel and the winner to call the victory.
This habit was seldom used in the East.
In short the fact that the west had small and equal entities with a common Christian culture, help them to develop a rule based society, basis for parliamentarianism,pluralism and democracy.
I wanted to post this idea earlier, but the news that Meta's share price dropped, determined to do it.
https://youtu.be/CRE6SqdranY
First digitisation appeared in Summer when a scribe used some simbols to describe the reality of a flock of sheeps.
The reality of the flick was simplified into symbols and numbers for tax purposes.
Since then we simplified our universe using ecuations to describe, stars and atoms
Even AI algorithm are some simplifiers, who filter out useless information.
Metaverse is trying something different, it tries to build a reality based on abstraction.
From basic information to make useless information.
Business don't like this. Already the work force is jammed with useless information.
They want seamless simple process.
General public? Maybe it will cool for a while, but they will get bored. An virtual apple is unidimensional, beside visual information you can't smell it,taste it.
It doesn't trigger emotion, and it is generic.
I argued in a previous post that people are not born free and they will never be free.
How the desire of freedom appears?
If everyone is in chains then they will consider themselves to be slaves ?
I think the desire for freedom appears when you see other options.
When serfs saw that commoners like them: city dwellers, had more options, they wanted them too, and they started to want be free.
So long only a elite separated by blood, had more rights like them, they didn't want freedom, because their options were limited at birth.
As in apartheid system, the ban of intermarriage between classes, kept the privileges.
So long you couldn't obtain those options not even by marriage, you didn't want them, you didn't have hink of them and and ceased to exist in your mind.
With extra options ceasing to be exist, you will be content, happy, and you will think you are free.
The generations born in serfdom an slavery will inherit the set of options from their parents, and up to a point they will consider themselves free.
Till they want an option not available to their class. Like marrying a free woman/man. Then they will see an option that they want and they can't have and they will demand freedom.
2008 crisis didn't pool people on the streets of west, as it is pooling now the anti COVID restrictions campaign, because people didn't see as an option to held responsible the financial elite.
Now with restrictions people see as an option to go to restaurant. It is an option that exist and I they can have it so they demand their "freedoms".
So people of NK consider themselves free because they don't see other options, and the few options that they have are monopolized by a narrow party elite.
