Why Zelenski wasn't accepted to speak at Oscar ceremony

 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.

Comfort blanket

 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 

Why Putin will kindly ask NATO to attack him in Ukraine

The best partner for Putin  to discuss peace is Ukraine not United States.

Because Ukraine has a worse Best Alternative To No negotiated Agreement.

US BATNA: stay away, and sell munitions,grains,oil and gas.

Ukraine BATNA: the whole country to be scorched.

The problem is that Putin's pride doesn't allow him to admit defeat to a bunch of civilians with Molotov cocktails.

Admitting such a defeat will show Russians that he is weak, and his enemies feeling this, they will attack him 

But being beaten by the biggest military alliance, is another thing. It offers a glorious defeat.

Trying to understand the irrationally Putin

 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.

Difference between East and West in Europe

 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.