the ethical point of view it is a terrible dilemma, but raising unhealthy children, that will procreate themselves and produce even sicker offspring, is a road to ruin for a society.

One can argue it has happened throughout the human history and somehow we have managed…:)

The quality of our species has always been very spotty. Humans are very different in our variety from all other species who are more uniformly put together – look at a herd of cows or sheep and a group of humans. I also think in humans the evolutionary pressures are not primarily aimed at the laggards and the unhealthy and in normal circumstances evolution actually rewards conformism, or ‘the ability to adapt’. Only when things go haywire are the more rebellious kinds of people selected and rise to the top.

The deviancy is common to the human species – we are the only ones who don’t automatically eliminate deviant behavior. Instead we first discuss it and then try to fit it in. We are one f..ingly weird animal, there is no way any divinity – if it exists – wanted this to happen. But at this point we are out of control and no force can roll us back.

TBH I don’t know that much about Fugard other than that he wrote some acclaimed anti-Apartheid plays. I know his kind though, old school English speaking liberals, although by his accent I think Afrikaans could have been his first language, he sometimes rolls or burrs his “r”s. I liked him playing in the Killing Fields, a film about the Cambodian troubles, Fugard’s finest moment for me. The Fugard play I would most likely want to read is The Road to Mecca, about the owl woman, an eccentric old SA artist.

The problem for me at the end of Apartheid was that even though I was heavily under the influence of liberalism I was still very much Afrikaner in a love/hate relationship with my people. It stung to hear these effete Pommie assholes pontificate about Afrikaners and Apartheid. I carefully avoided the Anti-Apartheid liberal plays, books and movies bcause I(correctly?) guessed that I would be preached at.

Liberals like Fugard were never deeply invested in Apartheid SA, and were more aware of the injustices of the system than people who realised that the old SA was all we had and that Apartheid was essentially self defence. The liberals had their chance to say I told you so about Apartheid, but 30 years and much typically African government mismanagement of our country later the wheel has turned and now we in turn have our I told you so moment.

Like a lot of people I supported the end of Apartheid because we genuinely thought that we were on the cusp of a better world as the Cold War ended. We were caught between survival instinct and wanting to do the right thing.

…civilization offers comfort allowing for the survival of those who would have been unfit to survive in a more primitive and rugged society.

In other words, civilization is basically organized laziness. It’s an easy and temporary escape from the real life but it dead-ends after a few generations. (My hard-working village cousins have been telling me that for years.)

The real problem is our capacity to produce huge amounts of food using a small number of people. The food is mostly manufactured garbage for survival but it accelerates the devolution. The escape is too easy.

Work is an interesting term: it describes the activities nobody will do unless they have to or get paid (often the same thing). We have transformed work into something else – in the advanced Western societies less than half of the population engages in work. That is what is the ultimate attraction for the masses of migrants, they are escaping from societies where one still has to work.

Cities are full of people in cafes discussing how to get their next innovation grant. Offices are full of people reviewing and auditing them. It is a bizarre rules based roundabout that amounts to organized pretense to hide laziness. It attracts parasites and hustlers from all over the world.

What made Europe great in the past was the willingness – and necessity – of doing hard work. The switch to an easier fake-work life and the cultural celebration of trading doesn’t fit the natives. But it is ready made for the endless surplus hustlers from the Third World.

…their preferred scenario is civil war and fragmentation…they’ll bomb all of Iran’s military stocks

That’s the plan. It was the real plan in the previous Western wars: divide and rule is the main permanent core value. You fragment and weaken your rivals and enemies.

There is little downside. If they trigger a civil war they win, if Iran uses force they also win (propaganda gold). Destroying societies around the world while pretending to do it in the name of making them better will eventually have a very high cost.

…continuous degradation of software and hardware.

Technologies and tools go through a cycle and most of the current ones are already in a downward phase – cars are also much worse and less fun, movies, media, travel…

Quality cannot be sustained. It requires too much continuous and not very profitable attention. Given our modern mentality it’s easier to let go and move to something else. Beyond certain point it makes it worse.

I suspect many ancient taboos were put in place to freeze in place something that was finally working well. Because innovation quickly shifts from being beneficial to being destructive if societies worship and encourage it – as we do today. In the past the frustrated enterpreneurs sometimes met a grizly end, usually for a good reason…:)

It is an attempted overthrow of the government. To what extent it’s frustration and anger versus being driven by paid people will be hard to determine. It’s usually both. Add the local malcontents like the Kurdish separatists and the massive media campaign and we have another mess.

Most likely it won’t work: Iran has 90 million people and is three times the size of France. Also for some bizarre reason the West is pushing for the Pahlavi return. Look up how many tens of thousands the Shah killed and how many tens of thousands his son would if he would return – and 5 to 10 million Iranians leaving.

It looks like the global liberal order is lashing out as it senses its own demise, anyone not fully subservient poses a risk. Since the liberals are ideologically incapable of fixing the lives of their own citizens, they go for an expansion. It fits nicely with the main precept of latter-day liberalism: more of everything is better. Except more of their own happy people at home.

Liberalism is self-destructing in the gap between its permissive openness and tolerance and its mad attempt to become universal. The two don’t go together, they don’t see it and would be unable to choose anyway.

I had a university friend from Port Elizabeth who introduced me to Fugard whose writing felt dated but interesting. I was mostly amused by the drama in the society so different yet familiar. It was after the switch-over and many South African whites were popping up everywhere.

The weird thing was they generally approved of the change or said it was inevitable. I suspect Fugard was part of the internal mental shift in the 80’s, he was not overly explicit but basically said “give up on this“. How do you see him?

Gödel basically showed how to express the logical statement “this statement is false” in Peano arithmetic. If true, it’s false. If false, it’s true.

Gödel showed the incongruity of our terms with the physical world. The words are ours, the world is not, what we call true or false and what we prove only matters in our verbally created symbolic universe. Other systems of words could describe it differently and we may not be able to comprehend them.

The absurdity of our pursuit of knowledge is built into it. It’s still fun.

…The partial destruction of Ukraine is a consolation prize for the West, so their project may be considered partially successful.

The consolation prize is given to the loser. Given the massive Western investment in the Ukraine project the partial success of can only appeal to psychopaths – you will know them by their fruit…:)

We already knew who they were so they don’t have to gleefully celebrate the destruction to show it. All people do bad stuff but only the devil boasts about it. Many Germans in private boast they killed more people in WW2 than they lost, today the assorted Grahams-Merzes-Starmers do the same. But it’s a loss not a partial win.

Western plan only failed by a small margin…the West did not immediately drive Russia out of Crimea in 2014. This was a more important missed opportunity…

Post-Maidan was very amateurish – instead of quickly consolidating power they busied themselves fighting for positions, banning Russian language in offices, and taking pictures of saunas in mansions. There was plenty of time for that later.

The only way to prevent Russia from taking Crimea was by an immediate massive surge of soldiers and weapons to Crimea – even before the takeover in Kiev. Russia had naval bases there and the local population was on their side. Once Russia took Crimea there was no way to take it back no matter how many NATO forces would come to assist.

Ukraine project had a fatal flaw: victory depended on Russia not acting decisively. It was a bluff, when you turn over your strategy to the enemy you usually lose. The small margin you mention played out mostly in Russia – to act or not to act? Once Russia took Crimea what happened after was kind of inevitable, NATO should had cut its losses and settled. They will try again but given how catastrophic the loss in Ukraine is they will have to wait longer and be in much harder strategic position.

The oligarchs hate the people who built the wealth of the nation they profit upon. The proceed to eliminate the people.

The natural human propensity is to fear most the ones right behind you – they are a threat.

The Roman oligarchs substituted the plebs for slaves and foreign mercenaries. It works because almost all people are deferential. The few times people rose up they were massacred, if they temporarily prevailed they are demonized.

The oligarchs always control the media space – that’s how we can tell who they are – one suffering oligarch outweighs thousands of killed commoners. We are still taught to feel sorry for Marie Antoinette.

On the bright side most common people are unbearably gauche and the societies they prefer are even worse than what we have. So bless the oligarchs, if they could just go with the elimination a bit more slowly…:)

The muck on the ground is very thick and Trump has stretched it out too much…

We know who the muck spreaders in the Senate are.

Who the muck spreaders are is a lot less important than the reality of being stuck in the muck.

Trump is doing the best he can with the situations he inherited from the prior White House occupant.

I agree, but today even the best is not sufficient to fix the pre-existing situation. It’s not a malignment, only a gradual realization that it’s almost impossible to correct.

Not being clear – and Trump is not – doesn’t help. There is a reason the ultimate virtue in the past was honor: the ability to act clearly, forcefully, to cease playing a game, face the good and the bad without hesitation. Trump can’t or won’t do it. In Ukraine it means more dead and destruction, but it won’t affect the outcome. Martyrdom is not heroism, it’s simply stupidity covered with pathos.

Trump’s migrant policies are similar. Yes, he has stopped the bleeding and even reversed a small part of it. But he has not changed the underlying reality and backed down from many of his threats (H1b,..). It will be harder after this year’s election, not easier.

The action in Venezuela – whatever it was, it was an event and not an actual policy – is more likely in a few years to result in millions more Latins (and others) flooding into the US. Chaos is one of the drivers of the worldwide migration, your focus on the religious aspect is not that important. Even today more Venezuelans are packing for the US than 2 months ago – and millions of others who can play a “Venezuelan”.

You are spinning a narrative based on a selection of few events in the last few months and you shallowly over-interpret them. The reality is that Russia is winning the Ukraine war – the most important war since WW2. That reality undermines your story: your focus on the minutia and the emotional floats aimlessly on the surface, its only purpose is to distract.

What really happened is the failed NATO expansion and attempt to absorb Ukraine. It is falling apart with Ukraine paying a horrible price. There is no talking you way out of it – it is a catastrophe. Victories are always costly, one has to commit to a high risk strategy. In Ukraine both sides started out tentatively, lots of bluff and offers to go half-way – but eventually both sides fully committed.

In all existential wars at the end there are only two sides – one wins, one loses. No matter how you spin it the US started out on the Ukraine side so they will be among the losers. Trump’s genius is in mitigating and to some extent hiding it, he managed to shift the loss to the hapless Europeans. He is the boss, so it wasn’t too hard.

Everything else is a meaningless minutia – like a blocked river finding multiple meandering slow-moving channels. The only thing that matters is that the river – the NATO Ukraine project – has been blocked. The verbiage put around this loss is amusing but totally irrelevant.

…Trump is not a *European* leader and can readily walk away from the *European* troika’s mistakes.

That’s the crux of your argument. But can he really walk away? And if he indeed can, will he? The muck on the ground is very thick and Trump has stretched it out too much – with each passing day his ability to disengage is less.

There is a value in clarity and focus – it is a more honorable way to act. We have in front of us a potential catastrophic escalation, the focus should be on decisively avoiding it. It is not, all sides are instead playing a game of chicken and evasion.

Already too many people died because Brussels abandoned its own basic ethnic and linguistic equality principles. This is not complicated: is it worth risking life in Europe over whether the Lugansk muni workers can use the Russian language? Even ethnic hatred should have some limits. Trump not saying it is a weasel behavior.

…Many people have a lot to lose so they may figure out a way not to lose it.

True, but there comes a point when the dynamic in the created situation takes over. Then it can go very fast. We are a few random events away from losing control – that’s when the powerful become suddenly powerless. It has happened before, but this time the stakes are much higher.

…”whoever you vote for, you always get McCain”. If we get this with a cabinet that includes Tulsi, RFK jr and Vance, we can elevate that old saying to the category of the McCain Theorem.

The candidate among the available faces who most closely channels the priorities of the system is who you will get. McCain was almost perfect: imperialist economic libertarian with liberal social policies. It turns out Trump is also like that.

For the average American – or European – the life is exactly the same with Obama, Bush, Biden, Trump…nothing changes. The media stuff about migrants, narco-terror, NATO, no NATO, is a remote distraction.

reckless Trump doesn’t confront Russia….we might luck out.

I don’t think we will be lucky – too much time is left and the build-up is now irreversible. What has kept the catastrophe from happening is Russia refraining from reacting – so the West escalates. Eventually it is inevitable they will hit on something that will trigger a reaction. Then the beast will take over.

Greenland or Venezuela can be abandoned in a nano-second, the only way to salvage something from the Ukraine-NATO project is to go for the escalation. At least we all go down together, but it is obvious by now that the Western leaders simply can’t take the loss in Ukraine. That includes Trump, his brinksmanship doesn’t work in this complex situation, you can’t play for both sides and also try to be a referee. But Russia also can’t back down so there is no solution. Maybe an asteroid will save us.

You have a real comprehension issue or as all ideologues you prefer to fight a strawman. The passage of time would help you understand better – it’s not what happens in year one of a revolution, or even in the first 10-15 years. What matters is that revolutions are internally oriented and strengthen the nationalist side of political spectrum – from 1776 US to Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, etc…people rediscover their nations and protect it.

I specifically wrote that Shah came back in 1953 and tried to play both sides – did you miss that? – be so kind and save your lecture, it makes you sound sophomoric.

The issue today is that we have not had any real revolutions for a long time and identities have become a mush. (The colored kind are the opposite of actual revolutions.)

Your musings on demography and mosque attendance are silly – you can randomly pull that kind of data about most of the world. Iran has 80 million people and is 3 times larger than France, twice the size of Ukraine. They will change in their own way and at their own time.

You correctly added the term Zionist to the list of go-to terms that don’t always mean what people using them mean. I think the jihad term is closer to the crusade (bearing a cross) terminology, you listing all the things that use it is another example of your propagandized mind. I could respond with lists of Euro cross-related terms but you don’t seem capable of understanding it. I suspect it reflects your tribal loyalty and unresolved past resentments.

…controlling the Azores and Canary islands is also essential for the defense of our liberties

Absolutely, they should have forward naval bases. To protect them it will be necessary to also control the close-by shores in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, whatever it takes. In the long run there shouldn’t any potential enemy places on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts…Western hemisphere is just out – it’s a backyard and should be fenced in.

I am not sure where it leaves Europe. One idea would be to use it for R&R and gathering dozens of reliable votes in the remaining international organizations. For the votes it would help to make more of Europe: Northern Macedonia (?) was a good start, why not also Southern and Eastern? It can be applied to the others, how about Peninsular Denmark and North-Western Bulgaria? Of course Belgium needs to split into a minimum of three voting countries. The votes against the evil-doers will be even more over-whelming and FIFA may give Europe more spots for the next World Cup.

The future is bright, or should we say golden…:)

… you didn’t heard of French revolution, October revolution, Iranian revolution

French revolution was explicitly nationalistic and France-affirming – it doubled-down on everything French, same with the October revolution. Have you heard of Napoleon and Stalin? Probably not, you are stuck in the initial nihilistic phase.

The same happened with the Iranian Revolution – it became a nationalist country. Shah was a bumbler who played both sides and substituted performances for having a country. That’s why he was overthrown – he came back to power before (in 1953) as a foreign puppet who reversed the nationalization of the Iranian oil, he was never able to shake it off.

(Nationalization is a weird term – in reality it is simply a reversal of the comprador economy with foreigners taking the wealth by paying a little fee to the local intermediaries.)

there is high density of anti-government Iranians

Is there? You only need a few dozen people you buy or blackmail, some may even be genuinly pissed. In a country of 80 million it is literally irrelevant – you don’t seem capable of doing math.

Jihad is their term

Yes, and it doesn’t mean what you mean by it – or the meaning assigned to it in the West. It is their own term for some religious devotion and acts. The same was understood by “taking a cross”, or a “crusade” – it was a religious term, spiritual. Both terms can be used in propaganda, but it’s dumb, it is an attempt to avoid a real discussion. When you do it you show your true colors – a devoted ideologue, probably to Zionism or some other national ideology.

I actually didn’t mean Donald although his surface living looks like a pose – as if he barged into it without much thought carried by circumstances. I am not sure he did what he wanted to do, or if he even knew what he wanted.

He is more like a volatile boat carried by high waters, lucky and energetic, but what is the purpose? He also seems to be starting quite late – he is almost 80! It smells of incoherence.

But I was thinking more of the cursed generation of Merz-Starmer-Macron-Van Leyen-…They seem haunted, one can see it in their faces, the evasive emptiness, fake decisiveness, lack of any actual ideas, they are radicals of the status quo stuck in the mud of their own doing.

US has the fat frustrated Washingtonians who intuitively understand they missed the boat, the time to do the mad stuff was when they were younger in the world that was less resistant. Now they rush and screw it up even more. This is comical, and people die.

…gives some healthy inertia to the status quo.

The inertia rules – it’s the underestimated key to how societies work. To move anything is very hard and it often moves right back. The powerlessness of the ambitious among the elite means they don’t get much done – their failures lead to frustration and they start acting silly, sometimes brutally. We see it today.

There will be no dark age with all the digital stuff surrounding us. I am more afraid of too much light, nothing will stand out.

It makes sense, Maduro definitely looks Dutch with that mustache and his bad dancing…:) But why was he a bus driver? Was that just a clever cover?

The outcome is shaping up as a half-ass mestizo oil state – no more narco – the joyful Venezuelan chicas will have more money for plastic surgery and partying in Miami. Maduro will be pardoned.

I like that Macron stated he is “joyful about what US did but not about how they did it“. That formula can be applied to all contentious issues – “cash from the bank robbery is good, but of course we don’t approve of the robbery“. We are entering a neo-bandit world with a thin layer of soothing words. It’s about time, we need the entertainment.

Countries with long history and deeply established culture don’t flip. You are making your wishes turn to irrationality. Iran rediscovered its religious heritage after a bungled and forced secularism, but you know nothing about how it plays out there (as you admit). There is a strong element of culture, history, economic self-interest – it doesn’t benefit any resources-rich country to turn over its wealth to the West as Iran did under the Shah. That was the key driver of the 1979 revolution and it hasn’t changed.

Nations attacked and demonized develop a strong nationalist mentality. Iran always had it and the post-1979 wars made it stronger. Any changes in Iran will make it more nationalist. If you think people with proud sense of their country will flip and forgive Israel and the West for the random killings and open hatred you don’t understand human nature. Conquering Iran is physically not possible – too big and with protected geography. Do you know how to do math?

(Drop the meaningless terminology like jihad, it’s like calling the West crusaders, an emotional label with no practical content.)

It’s unlikely the slide into mayhem can be reversed: each new war, bombing, constant lying and lack of decorum only gets us ready for more of the same. It’s like an afternoon cocktail, it only makes sense if there are more drinks to follow. The elderly not smart people close to power is very destabilizing – their un-lived youth is haunting them.

Mayhem can be quite enjoyable until it is not. Trump should move on Greenland to piss off the virtues-preaching Euros (I agree, the Danes are among the worst), it would also surround Canada. Greenland is a great place for stop-overs between Europe and US, enough space for giant airports and good fishing.

In the last few days, Trump grabbed Venezuela, Xi announced Taiwan will be re-united, Isreal yells for more bombs (as always), Russian takeover of Ukraine is now irreversible. All of them the fruits of idiotic policies in the last 25 years by the West.

Was Marx right that advanced capitalism inevitably slides into imperia-building and wars? Resources, collateral for money, cheap labor, more of everything. The migrant tsunami real reason is not cultural, it’s simply that having more people of any kind, customers, renters, voters, is built into the system. How the f..k did we let it happen?

Calm down. Neither you nor I have any idea what happened in the Venezuelan election. All we have is the official result that Maduro won – as we have in all countries, we are free to doubt it but it’s their country and Washington is not the global policeman.

What Trump did is on its face illegal – he has no police power in Caracas. If US had evidence they could have started a court case and follow the judicial process. Can other countries kidnap US or any other citizens if they accuse them of a crime? The process to follow is extradition. (Yes, it doesn’t usually work, tough – that’s the nature of the international beast. An alternative is worse, piracy, hypocrisy and gangsterism.)

Trump is self-destructing. With your enthusiasm for the genocide in Gaza you will never understand it. Trump is not focusing on peace and prosperity, so no Nobel…it will go again to a weepy woman who wakes up each morning being paid to save the world. It’s better that way…:)

Trump’s Nobel Price will at the minimum have to be postponed.

He is acting the same as the previous presidents, they all started wars. One exception was Trump’s first term, it looks like they let him run after he promised to correct it.

The big guys are consolidating their neighborhoods – defensive, decorative moves: Don’t even think about playing in my front-yard! The medium guys will follow, what is power for if not getting one’s way? Europeans only have words as if they plan to fight with graffiti on fences.

At the end the military force only changes the upfront faces and who gets most resources – demography and geography always prevail. In Venezuela it will be the muggy jungle mestizos. For now they will be replaced with the Miami-domiciled chicas dreaming of World Pageants…the mestizos will be back.

…A smaller Ukraine will still have plenty of land and resources to prosper if they stop senselessly an agonizing Russia.

But it hurts. Shrinking one’s lands is extremely unpleasant. In this case especially so since it is obvious it didn’t have to happen – there was a doable compromise available.

The West intentionally overlooks the undeniable fact that in the Minsk deal Russia was literally giving back Donbas to Kiev – returning what they controlled and people who wanted to be a part of Russia. Kiev’s stupidity in not taking it is mind-boggling.

You are barking up the wrong tree with the “Islamo” angle – this has almost nothing to do with it directly. It undermines your other points, I will not address your J-Chr chimera – combining two ideas can be done at random but in this case neither one of them would actually exist if they combine, they are very different. Stick to what is observable: Trump has done a lot of good, the Euros are self-destructing, Ukraine is in desperate straits, it will most likely end in 2026.

…AI will help smart people get smarter while leading not so smart people to become less smart.

It’s how all technologies work, even education makes not so smart people more stupid, they lose the intuitive ability to perceive reality on their own. AI is an order of magnitude more powerful and is playing out over a much shorter time – the consequences will be very dramatic.

I recognize free will… AI will make life more dangerous since the people creating controlling AI tend to have poor moral compasses

We all have free will but very few use it – it is societally dangerous. Moral compass is a biological oxymoron (unfortunately). Our species are meant to read the environment and adapt to it, possessing an apriori morality goes against it. Most moral compass societies in the past perished or didn’t do well.

I realize it is a dilemma and sacrificial sainthood has always had its attraction and devotees. But societies losing sight of reality and embracing utopian ideas don’t last. In retrospect they are also often demonized. Dreams are for sleeping.

…large concentration of bright, well-educated people, courtesy of the Soviet Union (mostly)

Eliminating these people, thinning them out, exporting and killing them, was one of the unspoken parts of the NATO-Ukraine project – they can’t be so stupid they couldn’t predict it would happen. They clearly don’t seem to mind – some say it openly.

Many could never be trusted in the military – how would they have a huge Ukie army in NATO with full access when half of them are Russians by ethnicity, language, culture?

But how do such smart, talented Ukie people manage to screw up so badly? Something doesn’t add up – as if the destruction was actually the goal.

important to some Ashkenazi Jewish people who apparently want to lay claim to the area.

It would fix a lot of their issues: lack of land to expand, resources, strategic depth, access to Europe if Ukraine would be in EU. They don’t need a populous Ukraine with 40-50 million, they could never reliably control it. Ashkenazis only need a small population of obedient and not too smart manual workers for their farms.

The crown jewel of that plan – if it actually existed – had to be Crimea. It explains the almost pathological refusal by the West to make a deal, any deal. Without Crimea they seem willing to just let Ukraine go to waste.

What direction…autonomous or aligned with Russia or with Europe?

They all have a direction and then they meet reality. All three options above exist, none is strong enough to eliminate the others. It leaves a permanent conflict or separation. Europe (previously also US) wants conflict and Russia wants separation. Longer it goes on more Russia will separate and gain.

In any case, the large, rich, united Ukraine is gone – it was a self-destruction. It started with post-Maidan bombing of its own Donbas citizens. Can you imagine the Spanish government bombing Barcelona? How do you hold a country together after that?

China’s behind-the-scene 2007-12 power struggle was won decisively by the native side – it had regional support and there was the Western 2008 financial collapse. Obama’s election added an obvious light-weight front man for the planned accelerated soft power attack. Soft power was the rage at that time, we don’t hear much about it now.

The 2012 BBC article basically announced who were their guys. It’s not helpful, they do it for vanity, but by then it was over.

Back to Ukraine: the behavior of the Euro elites doesn’t make sense. There are careers, being stuck, miracle wishing…but it was a much bigger project than it appeared. It was a complete re-do plan: Russia effectively gone, resettling of Ukraine (?), resources and endless wealth. They bet the house on it and have no place to retreat. It can still go much worse, we are one or two random events from a catastrophe (not always random).

Ukraine is a cursed land: simultaneously very rich and strategic but always ruled by different oligarchs (Latin America is similar). It’s a terrible combination and they have never put it together: the riches lead to bad internal behavior and attacks by greedy outsiders – it is too easy or appears to be. Ukies are not a naturally cohesive nation and don’t see the obvious bad faith by their “friends”. They tend to be passive and too many give up. At the end what you do is what you become, nihilism leads to nothing.

…in 1848, it had been the City of London which was critically important for the initial publication and distribution across Europe of The Communist Manifesto

I give British credit for it – they also get credit for publishing other things: off-the-wall, strange, true, humorous, subversive, thought-provoking, radical, all of it.

Why does it matter one iota who and when published anything? It is only thoughts, ideas, words, fragments, stories, good and bad. Why would we ban or censor it?

We have had a few hundred years of ideologues who must control what one can read, see, and ultimately think. The glorious Christian church obsessed about what was written, so did many of its enemies…kings, feudals, merchants, socialists and commies of all flavors, fascists, nationalists, and liberals.

We live in an era of mostly liberal thought-suppression. It’s bizarre – there was never a better argument for liberalism than a complete, unrestricted freedom of speech, writing, thoughts. (The other liberal stuff simply doesn’t work in the long run.) But they couldn’t, it was too much. Give the Brits in 1848 some credit, they were not scared of words. Maybe they thought it was meant to be comedic.

Half-truths? From a guy who consciously overlooks how UK-France-Italy joined forces with the Ottomans in the Crimean War? The only purpose was to prevent Romania, Bulgaria, parts of Greece, from liberation. The UK-France fought a war to make sure the atrocities by the Turks continued for 25 more years!

You use the Crimean War as the huge Western “victory” – in reality Russia lost nothing, the losers were the Balkan nations. None of it is comparable to Russians of all backgrounds serving in the army, same as they did in WW2.

are you suggesting the Soviet invasion of Poland or Finland were in self-defense?

Poland fought on the Habsburg side in WW1 (Pilsudski), they wanted to dismember Russia – they always do. Russia fought back, I am not going to argue if it was ‘defense’, it was mutual, chicken-and-egg.

One more time: you can’t come up with a single case when Russia attacked Germany, UK, France or any part of the Western Europe. It has never happened. While the West attacked, invaded and killed in Russia multiple times. So you lied.

… opened the country for tourism, they could move a lot of the revenue generated it around the flyover areas.

It’s not going to happen – there is almost nothing there for tourists. The flyover country is a dull, desolate, nature-poor, and visibly human poor underdeveloped countryside. The cities are dreadful and menacing, full of very fat people in cars, inedible food, ugly architecture. Why would tourists go there? It is an unpleasant imposition. Today few adventuring types do it for the natural beauty spread out hundreds or thousands of miles apart – it’s better to fly.

The beautiful coastal areas and great natural parks are well connected, but rural Missouri or Miss is worse to visit than Uganda, why do it? For the factory-made biscuits with oil-byproduct gravy?

Washington DC seem obsessed about scaring foreign tourists from visiting.

It is realism not an obsession.Very large percentage of “tourists” are migrants – middle-class Third Worlders use it as the main entry method. Each year around 1-2 million more people fly in to US then leave using tourist visas. The World Cup will be a doozy, millions in LA, Africa, India, Middle East, Asia, even Europe, are saving up for a ticket – it’s once in a generation opportunity. 2028 Olympics will be the same.

Qui frappe le roi, doit le tue!

Euro-morons managed to get the damage from their threats and no benefit. Notice UK quietly shut up when the thieving started to fall apart, Brits like to goad the dumb Euros to go for it, then stay back. They did it to Ukraine, now they are enjoying the bloody show. But that’s what UK has been doing for centuries.

The prudent folks: Meloni, Belgium, cheap Central Euros…at the end Macron. It seems upside down, what the hell is going on with Germans?

I wrote:

Can you give is a single one? When Russia first attacked Germany, France, Sweden, UK? If you can’t, you were lying.

You responded with something about Soviets attacking Poland and Finland. As I pointed out to you both Poland and Finland (as part of Sweden) previously attacked Russia. Sorry, you didn’t answer my question – you couldn’t come up with any case when Russia attacked Germany, France, Sweden, UK.

Because it has never happened, Russia was always attacked first.

Poland didn’t collapse in 1939 due to land additions from WW1.

Well, it unquestionably collapsed. A major reason was Poland’s internal instability: they grabbed huge territories in the east from Lithuania (Vilnius), Belarus, Ukraine. They had millions of unhappy minorities and when Germany attacked they collapsed. Re USSR: not a single square inch of that ‘eastern Poland’ that Poles grabbed in 1920 is today a part of Poland – it’s in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine. What exactly does Russia have to do with it? If Poles have a problem let them call Kiev or Minsk.

Putin currently uses Muslim Chechens

Chechnya is in RF, why shouldn’t they fight? Same as Hawaii, Florida or Puertorico are in US. What is your point?

It’s very different from UK, France, Italy and Turkey attacking Russia in the Crimean War – they allied with the Ottomans who were mass-murdering Christians in the Balkans. The war meant that Turkey did the killing for 20 more years. Are you proud of that?

…Nobody really lost money in 2008

Oh, boy, you use the word delusional?

Derivatives, sub-prime bonds, literally trillions were wiped out. Stocks are a relatively small part of investments, German banks got wiped out buying up – at the end – the worthless derivatives. Germans are tone-deaf, today again with the Ukie-project fiasco. They are picking it up at the end as it collapses. Germans work very hard and occupy the bottom of the pyramid. (And no, I am not a German and I don’t hate anyone.)

But you are not a serious person, learn something first.

…narrow the discussion to 2021

What happened in 2021 is completely the result of the previous years, you can’t look at it in isolation.

Germany would have lost that money anywhere in the world in 2008-2009, not just in the US (and the loss was recoverable via cash injections form the US). This here is so much different.

What? They lost a trillion, others lost a lot less. None of it was “recovered“, they wrote it off. No cash from the US, are you hallucinating? Germans were the dumb money at the end of the investment chain. Germany is playing the same role in the Ukraine-project debacle – 90 billion Euro “loan” will be majority underwritten by Germans. They are the designated suckers, as always. (And Scandies.)

not Russian (which I doubt)

You haven’t been around this forum much, have you? If you doubt something so basic why do you bother?

I was talking anytime between 2014-2021.

Sure, they could have cashed out a large portion at that time. But the discussion was about Nabiullina in 2021 – the year before the war. Russia could had anticipated the “freezing” and they didn’t. Or they found it too difficult and costly to cash out, most bonds are 7-10 years so there would be exit costs.

The big issue is that since Russia had a trade surplus with EU they would have to repatriate the profits – instead they chose or had a deal with EU to keep it in the Euro bonds. Russia also foolishly exited the US treasuries – they bet wrong…:) But this happens all the time, Germany (banks, insurance, pensions) lost a cool trillion in 2008-9 in the US, they were the last ones holding the bag as Lehman, B&S went down – everybody was offloading and Germans were buying…:) Because “America!”

It’s a game, you win some and others lose. But the odds are Russia will get its money back – it’s hard to imagine how Euros avoid paying it back without going bankrupt. That’s why they pulled back last week. It’s a high-stakes game, but Russia still has the upper hand. (Just look at Merz’s face.)

I am not Russian or related to them, to me they are people like any other. If they have non-whites it’s their country, why does it matter? That’s how the world is today.

Wiki says 32 million, Eurostat (EU) 29 million. (I don’t know what worldometer is.) We also know 10 million left and are registered in Europe and Russia, few will come back.

Ukraine has 30 million – drop of 40% in 35 years, catastrophic in modern times and almost none of it was caused by war, famine, plague. It was caused by bad politics, society, oligarchic economy and by foolish expansionist dreams to ‘eliminate the Russians!’

They will have a lot to ponder after this is over. I don’t think Zelko&Co. and NATO will be very popular.

Merry Christmas!

At maturity, you just ask for the money from the issuer.

Right, that’s what Russia is doing – assuming at maturity they will get paid fully. The odds are they will. But if you cash out early you get less depending on the market. Large volumes are always heavily discounted – it’s a forced sale, 50% is a guess, you may get more or less depending on the volumes, interest and availability of buyers.

Most bond purchases by the Central Banks are rolling purchases where at maturity they get renewed with the then in effect interest rate – they are long term reserves. Cash them out early is easy to do in small volumes, but to sell $100-200 billion is very hard – unless you find a buyer and offer a discount. The bonds in 2021 were already discounted because most carried very low interest rates.

There was about $12-20 billion in cash equivalents Nabullina could have taken. Gold rarely gets repatriated – it may not even exist, or is double-triple counted. Germany has been asking for its gold for years…UK is sitting on gold reserves from most Central Euro and Latin countries, they basically stole it – but in the past.

I am not going to argue with you about bonds you don’t seem to understand at all…:)

Russia has roughly 150 million people – at worst 140-145. About a million left after 2022 and war losses are in tens of thousands. I am not interested in their “color”, we could play that game with any country. What % in UK, France or Romania are colored?

But ok, Merry Christmas.

I meant in late 2021 (not 2022).

Russian large buying of the Euro bonds started in 2002-2 and peaked in 2009-14. After 2014 it mostly grew be re-investment of maturing bonds. They could have cashed out at a loss but it would trigger earlier Euro attempts to expropriate the money. (US will do the same if China attempts to sell too many US bonds.)

The mistake was made in 2002-2020, by 2021 it was too late. It takes a long time to unravel bond positions because bonds are long-term and the market for them is not as liquid as claimed – the bonds can be “sold”, but only at huge discounts.

I agree Russia screwed up but it’s more complicated than you present it. I also think the odds are Russia will eventually its money back, some earned interest in billions may be lost, some % may be required to be “re-invested” in Europe, but there is no way short of defeating Russia in the war for Europe to grab it.

…fun of Ukraine’s demographics

There is nothing funny about Ukraine going from 50 million in 1991 to 27-32 million – the largest population drop outside of plague-famine in modern history (exceeds drop in Ireland in mid-19th century). You are wrong about demographics, Russia ranks in the middle. In Europe, Italy, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Sweden have lower growth, and the total disasters are S Korea, Japan and Ukraine. You live in half-baked fantasies, this is an issue all over the developed world. See the latest numbers:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-countries-by-fertility-rate/

Thank you and Merry Christmas!!!

Give us a single case when Russia invaded Europe without first being invaded: Poland, Sweden first invaded Russia (Finland was a colony of Sweden). Minor border skirmishes from Middle Ages don’t count, every country had them. Also post-WW1-WW2 consolidations like Soviets pacifying Hungary in 1956 after Hungary joined Germany to invade Russia.

Can you give is a single one? When Russia first attacked Germany, France, Sweden, UK? If you can’t, you were lying.

Crimean War was a disgusting invasion by France-UK-Italy of Crimea on the side of Ottomans who were at that time mass-murdering Balkan Christians. Of course Euros sided with the Turks! Crimea stayed Russian, but the Balkan Christian nations had to experience 20 more years of Turkish oppression. It was a shameful betrayal by the West, if I were you I wouldn’t boast about it.

Brest-Litovsk was temporary and reversed quickly. After WW1 Poland was given Western Ukraine, parts of Belarus and Lithuania and they couldn’t control them. So they collapsed in 1939. Is that really a victory? Wouldn’t Poland be better off staying Polish?

…people who decide to dedicate their lives to combating “disinformation”…are social vermin. There has to be something seriously wrong with their psyche

Unthinking conformists who combine self-interest and discomfort with any variance. And the auntie types who took over societies: busy-body misanthropes, unhappy with their own lives, telling everyone we must smile when opening Christmas presents…:)

The US sanctions are too mild and the intrusive censoring on behalf of US’s own ethnic taboos makes it incoherent. But it’s a start: it puts unpleasant thoughts in the minds of the eager Euro-censors. The weird world of NGOs is self-defined by what it’s supposedly not but then performs all the traditional roles of a government. They are parasites.

They need to be hounded down and suppressed, they are killing the West from inside. Europe is bursting with them in every institution, media, academia, even in business. There is no knowledge of anything without conflicting views – without disinformation there is no information.

Calm down, you seem to be foaming at your mouth. Are you pissed the Euros didn’t have the balls to go all the way and grab the money? They obviously give a flying whatever.

One more time: that money was invested in the Euro bonds – it was not coming back or circulating in the Russian economy. To sell those bonds on a short notice (less than 1 year) is hard without dumping them at any price – I mentioned before the West could make sure there were no buyers. Russia (Nabiullina) could have cashed out and get maybe 50c on a dollar. Then they would have a hard time transferring it back to Russia. (All $ transactions go through NY Fed and Euro through Frankfurt ECB.)

The mistake was when Russia bought the Euro bonds (and stocks) as investments. By late 2022 there wasn’t much they could do about it. By doing nothing they preserved the option that they will get every penny back as the bonds mature. I don’t see the Euros trying to grab it again – they got burnt really bad. They may try to negotiate some exit condition like more buying of Euro bonds or investments, but the money will stay with Russia even if indirectly.

You musings about the number of Russians is amusing but the variance (exiles+casualties+lying) would not add up to 20 million ‘made-up Russians’. Out of curiosity, how many Ukies do you think are actually left in Ukraine?

Merry Christmas to you too!

Money is just money, it doesn’t decide wars, power, territory. It matters enormously to us as individuals but for countries it’s a pretend game, largely a fiction we create to be able to operate. It is only a must for a foreign trade. But there Russia’s true exposure is the Western systematic undervaluation of Russian (and many other non-Western) currencies.

Lately people have started to understand that money is just a quantified expression of trust. That trust can be in the Fed, ECB, gold, silver, Bitcoin…or in all kinds of private money created by institutions: stocks are money, so are travel rewards and kick-backs for buying something. The main difference is that the other moneys can usually only be used for a specific purpose, but as we have learned from the recent Brussels fiasco that is true about Euros too – if the political will is there, this time it wasn’t.

Russia will get its money back unless they lose the war. The circus EU went through before giving up on the expropriation idea will haunt Brussels for decades. They are not serious people any more and that is fatal in global politics…modern day Idi Amins, they embarrass Europe.

back further, to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and to Sweden

True. Then over the centuries Poland, eastern Baltic, Ukraine became the main battleground and suffered the most.

You are free to laugh, why not, what’s happening is so sad we need some humor. I find Kallas very funny and Merz with his uber-serious look of an accountant caught up in a fraud. Tragedies always have some comedy in them.

What matters is Russia is winning – again, big surprise! Europe is in a mental meltdown. West is good at controlling damage when losing and Russia tends to go soft and give its victories away. Maybe it will happen and “friendship will be restored” – as if there ever was any from the West, money written off, all forgotten for the tempting Louvre vacation. Nobody can help that, Russia has a deep internal self-confidence problem.

But winning is better than losing and Russia tends to win. Nabiullina is a side character, like Kallas or Czech President Pavel: all Soviet offsprings trying to sit on multiple chairs without knowing how to tie their shoelaces. It is quite comical…:)

the same war that started immediately after WWII ended…the West tried permanently to encroach Russia and has eaten its sphere of influence step by step.

It has been like that for hundreds of years: two related sides facing off against each other. Back-and-forward with the aggressor-West and Russia defending and then spreading into the won space.

Europe has had many wars but the wars with Russia are unique. It’s the only time Europeans unite and fight together, in other wars they fight each other. The wars against Russia also have strong ideological content and for their duration are an obsessive social phenomenon with an open kill the beast! tribal subtext.

The big Euro wars on Russia started with Poland, Sweden, France’s massive 1812 defeat, Crimean War led by France-UK-Italy plus Turkey. After WW1 most of Europe, in WW2 all of Europe except UK (Spain and Sweden actively sent volunteers and weapons).

They lost and Russia grew as a result. Europe turns it around as Russia’s expansion, of course chicken-and-egg, but also bitter re-writing of the past by the losers.

The wars against Russia follow a different pattern than the other Euro wars: countries unite to fight Russia, are ideological and claim to prevent the coming Russian aggression. There is the tribal hatred that slips into an extermination fantasy. They lose or achieve little.

What else can Euros do? Europe is a relatively small, over-crowded, resources poor peninsula surrounded on water. And Russia is just there: large, rich in resources, seemingly defenseless and also suffering internally from a deep unrequited attachment to everything “European”. It’s tempting to pounce and see if this time maybe it will work.

We seem to have arrived at that spot again.

…van Leyden not stupid, but Nazi and full of hatred

I don’t know her, but I will go out on the limb to say she is extraordinarily stupid. She suffers from the kind of dumbness that crosses all boundaries and reaches levels that would make weaker species give up (we won’t!). It comes with a detachment from reality and a blase truancy from any consequences. That conscious shallowness and the cheap greed visible on her face are rather unique. Even her Nazi impulses and her unsuppressed yet so seemingly normal hatred, the way she always itches to shut down (and worse) any disagreements, her so-very-German lack of humor – she is one for the ages. We may eventually name a mental condition after her.

…Russia (in its idiocy) thought the EU would be somewhat safer. But they proved to be – surprise, surprise – ejusdem farinae…

EU did appear a safer bet until very recently (2024?). Russia was generating huge trade surpluses with Europe, year after year, and it’s simply not feasible to pull all that money out. Nobody can do it. Instead you continuously buy local bonds and those are required to be kept in institutions like Euroclear. Where could Russia move the money? China, Brazil, Qatar, Turkey? They all have their own risks.

Russia should had insisted on payment in rubles – they did it 2022 and Europe complied. The money is immediately repatriated to Russia. But the West controls the global currency exchanges and so there is a huge risk of devaluation. (Or get paid in gold, but that is so old-fashioned.)

there is an incredible deficit of comprehension in the world, and it dates since very recently. People lose grasp of everything, especially monetary matters. Nobody understands anything anymore.

I agree, we have an unmanageable and too complex a world. (AI is not going to fix it.) There is too much to know, too many interconnected moving parts, too much laziness. We can pump out feel-good fake assets, “money” of all kinds, live off the future – but that is not possible for ever. The key moment will be when the people who provide the material underpinning of our prosperity realize they actually have the power.

That’s why the West is hysterically trying to control all narratives, what you see is not strength – people who are confidently in charge don’t need to censor or lie as much – but a growing weakness. The powerlessness of the powerful…:)

Among the three options I would exclude the second one – deliberate deception – by late 2021 nobody could be deceived. The first one not to ratchet the tensions seems cosmetic and it was already very tense.

I think it was simpler: Russia saw Europe as less of an enemy than Biden’s US. They systematically got out of the US financial market. A lot of that money went to the Euro-bonds and was kept in Euroclear. There are almost no money available to “freeze” in the US (or UK), isn’t that interesting?

To cash out in 2020-21 would mean dumping hundreds of billions in different Euro bonds on the market. Who would buy them? Some were derivatives and too complex to unravel. The immediate losses would be in tens of billions – and for some bonds there could be no buyers. Europe could pressure people not to buy them from Russians.

The mistake goes back decades: why do countries like Russia, China, others, trust their purchases of the Western bonds will be honored? Europe or US. They are loaning money and have no way to enforce the West will pay them back.

Euroclear mess is highlighting this mess – it’s not good for the West. That’s why they shelved it so quickly. But the alternative of trying to issue 90 billion EU bonds is worse – who the hell is going to buy them? They pay no interest, Ukraine can’t pay back and EU is putting complex conditions on them (delays, forced roll-overs). The loan may never happen – it’s a shell game, they are playing for time.

…Such stupidity is singular in the history of mankind….Europeans think of them as the laughing stock.

The singular stupidity in this historical situation was the half-ass, amateurish NATO-in-Ukraine project. Compared to that what Russia did is minor.

The personalities on all sides are weird – Biden, Kallas, Zelko,…they are the laughing stock. Russians are incompetent but connected to reality. Russia is winning: small or big. In existential wars all sides make mistakes and nobody comes out unscathed. Fire them? Probably, but elites stick together – nobody has fired Kallas or van Leyden.

Belgium has a treaty of bilaterally protecting the investments, such treaties usually have an arbitrage clause.

Precisely, they would be hounded for years. Belgium wants EU to own it. Russia can attach EU assets in Russia, then elsewhere – a pirate world. EU doesn’t want that in the long run, Russia is too important economically.

If EU does it they will simply not pay back the bonds Russia kept in Euroclear. It would be a default not new money. Can Europe default only the bonds Russia bought? Maybe, but it’s risky – like two mortgages and you say to one bank “screw you, I am not paying“. That EU is considering doing it shows desperation.

The original mistake was made when Russia bought the Euro bonds. Why? They even sold US treasuries to diversify into Euro ones. If they tried to sell them in 2021 they would get 50-75c on a dollar. That money was never coming back to Russia – they would be forced to simply roll it over indefinitely.

The global financial system stands to fall for ages now, yet it is still in the same precarious situation…

Sure, it can go on for years, decades…but at some point the numbers can’t be sustained. In 2025 it is worse than in 2008 – and 2008 was pretty bad.

…how Europe will effectively made them their own matters very little.

But they already did. That money was previously loaned by Russia by their rolling purchases of the Euro government bonds. (Same as China-Japan-Korea-EU-UK-Saudi purchases of the US Treasury bills.) That’s the way the global financial system functions: some countries have large trade surpluses and others have deficits.

The surpluses are – by agreement – mostly invested in the bonds. It’s a pyramid with US at the top receiving most of the money. Of course, smaller sums are withdrawn for imports, travel, gold purchases, but the flood of new money accumulates.

I have no argument with Nabiullina being an idiot and Russian Central Bank screwed up. They could have liquidated the bonds by selling them at a loss. It was probably a political decision not to do it, they were still trying for a deal. That money was gone anyway – the best scenario was that Russia would roll it over indefinitely and get small interest.

How and where would you sue and on what grounds? These are not easy issues.

It’s not easy, but you can sue for unpaid bonds, Belgium has an arbitration deal with Russia. It’s like suing for any unpaid debt – a court agrees with you and issues a ruling giving you the “legal” right to re-possess assets of the other party. There are plenty of Euro assets in Russia and elsewhere. Euroclear would be paralyzed and eventually have to be restructured.

This is potentially a gigantic mess – it could basically only be done by force: where Russia rules they would repossess, in Europe they probably couldn’t. It would massively destabilize the global financial and legal system taking as back to the 18-19th century. That’s why US, France, Italy… blocked it. It’s not worth it.

My point is that even if the Euros fully repossess the assets, they would be only defaulting on the previous loans – yes, it’s beneficial but they were not paying those loans back anyway. It was not new money. You can’t loan the same money twice by mortgaging it.

Of course they could, the global financial system is now so upside-down that managing it by an edict is possible – but you are back to Rome (or Argentina) declaring that from now on 5 will be 10. It can only go on for so long, the unsustainable numbers eventually prevail.

The whole thing is a mystery and they have intentionally not published details. It is not a “loan” and has no interest only small mgmt charges of 2-3%. It takes $230 from each European, close to $1k per family and sends it to Ukraine.

There is no collateral: $200 billion of the Russian Central Bank assets are mostly Euro treasury bonds – the money already went to the Euro governments and they spent it. “Taking it” simply means not paying the Euro-bonds back, like not paying a mortgage. Each un-paid bond Russia can take to court and attach assets, it’s very messy.

How can you use it as a collateral? It’s financial nonsense, you can’t borrow the same money twice. It would be in effect a default by the bond issuers and could spread quickly.

The only solution would be for Kiev to actually pay back the loan so the collateral is never touched. What are the odds a country with a 120% of GDP debt ratio and losing a war can pay back 90 billion? No, this is cash from the Euro taxpayers to Ukraine. I suspect many countries other than Czech-Slovakia-Hungary will quietly bail as the details are implemented. It will all be paid by Germany-Denmark-Sweden-Nertherlands.

…there has to be some order – 1991 was final

That is a calendar oxymoron: time goes on and nothing by definition can be final.

If Russia was actually defeated and dismembered in 1991 you would have more of a point. But nothing like that happened, it was a SU internal econ-society-political unravelling and it resulted in a one-sided disarmament. The temporary nature of it was built into it. In 2025 the realities are completely different.

do not complain about European rearmament…we’ll be reverting to the “dog eat dog” world. Unchecked aggression because the global security system is being destroyed

We have had unchecked aggression by NATO – US, the West – for the last few decades! Have you paid any attention? Serbia, Iraq… It was unchecked because there was no strong enough opposing force, the West went amuck similar to the way they acted in the Colonial era. Instead of the Christian civilization bulls..t they used the human-civil rights verbiage in the same hypocritical way.

After it settles down and each side takes control in its region there will be more stability. Today we see the fight over the boundaries – consolidation of control over its region: US in Latin America, Russia in Ukraine-Georgia, Turkey-Izrael-West in the Middle East, China in its region.

Europe because of its terminal stupidity is becoming irrelevant. They can re-arm until the cows come home, they are too weak, divided and cowardly to be a world power. They are the Disneyland, place to go for an R%R and enjoy the beauty and Christmas markets.

Western Europe was too naive and too greedy to realize that the trade was risky.

It was equally risky for Russia. Most benefits went to Europe: reliable cheap raw materials and energy, huge open Russian market – money from the trade went to Europe as investments, tourists, real estate… It amounted to 3-5% or more of the Euro economy, Europe is poorer now. Ok, go and fight another war with Russia – tilting at wind-mills.

doctoring…long, intricate conversation…more on the educational side…not as sinister as I made it sound

I get it, but borders on propaganda techniques done all the time. But do you mean mutually for both sides? Or only for Russia? Do you see the missing conversation also in the West, the intentional misunderstanding (lies?), demonizing Russia, often yelling that none of the normal rules should apply?

If not, you have nothing and the doctoring is closer to the milder version of the Nazi ideology – there was some of that too before the blood started to flow in WW2.

But it’s too late, in 2014-2022 it was still possible. Today it is much harder: the future world will be built on blood, winner(s) will shape it and not the Euro slogans: they are bringing microphones to a gun fight. What a bunch of morons!

The funds are in bonds, stocks, CD’s, some cash. That’s the way all Central Banks and corporations keep their reserves. It’s similar to the way many people keep their private retirement funds.

It means most of the frozen funds are not liquid and you have to sell the portfolio before using it. To sell stocks or bonds registered to another entity – Russian Central Bank – is not easy. It can be done but carries huge risks. If you keep your stock-bond certificates with a finance company – or a lawyer in some countries – they can’t sell it for their own benefit. That’s a financial crime.

Freezing the funds is different since no transactions take place and assets stay where they are. But to mortgage them without having the ability to legally sell them is not only illegal but also very impractical. There is not a single finance person who thinks this can be done – there is a fiduciary duty the managers of the assets have and they go to jail if they violate it.

You can say, well, we will do what we want and no Euro court will ever hold as accountable. But you are throwing away the rule of law and contracts, it’s very destabilizing. What is there to keep Russia from taking any assets that Westerners own in Russia and say ‘take us to a Russian court, haha, see if you can win‘.

It took us hundreds of years of effort to create a viable international contracts protection system. Prior to the 18-19th century it was unknown, only assets protected by force were safe. Do you really want to go back to that? This is a level of madness like inching toward a nuclear war. The morons need to get a hold of themselves. They are destroying in a few years hundreds of years of civilizational progress. (And no, this can’t be a “one off” exception, it doesn’t work that way.)

the veto is official. Russian assets will not be stolen.

It was a bridge too far. They will still talk and vaguely promise something. Ursula was visibly pissed even more than women her age usually are. Merz looked like he swallowed a canary. Germans with their Scandie-Dutch allies are are incompetent, they lack the smarts to be players on the big stage. Notice that Macron stayed out of it and Meloni took over as the mad asset seizure idea collapsed – clever Latins carried the day…:)

Ignore the words, they couldn’t pull the trigger – devastating psychological defeat.

The 90 billion Euro loan has a zero interest rate. What kind of a loan is that? It adds up to $230 per EU citizen, so family of 4 has just forked over $1,000 to Ukraine. They will be very happy. And so will a few people in Kiev – the cash is coming, get the wheelbarrows ready…:)

NATO isn’t begging to negotiate.

Pay attention, the progression has been:
Shut up Russia!…we will defeat you!…counter-offensive, ruble will be rubble…Russia is making no progress, ha-ha…Ukraine in NATO tomorrow!

Today? can we have a ceasefire?

Am I missing something? How else would one describe a state-level actor begging?

Most NATO states favor funding Ukraine for two more years with seized Russian assets.

So why don’t they do it? The only one that matters is US (Trump) and he is against. How would ‘funding’ win a war anyway? Would Ukies toss bags of freshly-printed euro cash at Russians?

Ukraine may be better off calling the lines at this point. Or try to bleed Russia…

The loser doesn’t call the lines, that’s what the winner does. Look into basic history if that concept is a mystery to you. It also seems that Ukraine is bleeding more and can afford it less, so more war-bleeding is not such a great thing for them.

NATO did not invade Iraq. Israel is not in NATO. Gaddafi was killed by Libyan rebels

That’s rich…:) So it was “parts of NATO”, “NATO closest allies”, and “rebels created by NATO”? That’s why I used NATO&Co., did you miss it? It makes no difference how it was packaged.

And Serbia: done by NATO in Europe, it preceded all else and killed thousands of civilians. How about that one? Was that an “aggression” and “invasion”? Did it violate the international law? So what were the consequences?

I don’t like comics. They seem so ancient, like something our grandparents got excited about.

I like clarity and honor. If you look at etymology those two abstract terms were originally (in tribal times) seen as the same thing. Maybe we should try it again.

When things are settle…how could Russia expect all that trade and other perks

These things are never settled – that’s the critical error people like you make. Geography can’t be outlawed.

Europe benefitted from the trade more than Russia: cheaper, closer-by resources and a huge market. Small Latvia had big benefits when trading with Russia – today it’s a struggling backwater with barely any economy left and collapsing population.

You are not exposed to it

I have seen some of it, it pales in comparison to the venom expressed in the Euro media. The ratio is 10 to 1 of anti-Russian hatred to Russian hostility. I don’t like either one. Any sane person sees the dominant and ever-present European ‘kill the Russians!’ daily drum-beat. We will not get peace and prosperity this way, it backfires.

because they invaded Ukraine and started killing innocents.

People have pointed out to you that the killing of civilians in Donbas started it – 2.5k civilians (their own citizens) killed by Kiev in 2014-22. You refuse to address it, justify it, explain it – it makes all say very shallow. And NATO murdered hundreds of thousands civilians in the last 25 years, was that ok?
Was anyone ever demonized or held accountable for it?

superior (unearned) attitude…The majority of the Russian population would have to be doctored to become friendly

Wow, is there an earned superiority? The ‘doctoring’ of people borders on the Nazi ideology. You are showing your true colors – if you had your way you would eliminate most Russians, maybe keep a small docile split-nation of a few ‘friendlies’. That’s literally what the NAZI plan was. You won’t get to do it and it drives you mad.

…They were asking for reduced native troops. Without reciprocating on their end.

You are over-simplifying. And if they did you make a counter-proposal to negotiate, you don’t say “it’s none of your business, go away”. NATO today is literally begging to negotiate, why not in 2021? They were in a much stronger position.

…NATO expansion…Poland’s security is connected to that of Ukraine’s

So is Russia’s – I hope you agree – and NATO said “none of your business“. Was that honest or even rational?

…the independence of states should be respected.

Ideally, but what planet do you live on? NATO&Co. attacked and dismembered Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Gaza-Palestine…It is a tough world and respect is a fluid term. If NATO can, why not Russia or China? That you don’t like them is not a valid reason.

Russia’s…could’ve tempered the hostile rhetoric for starters.

I don’t know about that, we are barely exposed to the Russian point of view. But the level of hostile, racist anti-Russian rhetoric in Europe is tangible. Do you also have a problem with that?

Russia is the occupier and the aggressor country

Empty words, chicken-and-egg…what do labels accomplish? Is NATO an aggressor because of Serbia? Or because it supported Kiev’s 2014 bloody attack on Donbas?

…they attacked a militia that had been organized, led and armed from the outside.

Sure. And Nazis burnt villages because the villagers were ‘organized and armed‘ from the outside. And were terrorists who shot at German soldiers. This is silly: you can’t organize an uprising if the people living there are not with you! Majority in Donbas was against Maidan Kiev.

internationally recognized state borders are violated which happened to Ukraine already in 2014.

Look who is talking…:) And Serbia’s, Iraq’s, Libya’s,…borders were not violated? You can’t have one rule for yourself and another for the others. It doesn’t work and makes you look really dishonest.

…slow campaign of attrition was the only military option available

Eventually. But at the beginning Kremlin tried a quick ‘operation‘ to force a deal. Kiev-NATO flatly refused so we got the long bloody attrition war. It may turn out much better for Russia in the long run but at a cost.

more fundamental military aspects of the conflict. The US had been dropping out of nuclear arms control treaties and installing missile bases in Eastern Europe…strategically threatening actions.

This is intentionally overlooked in the West – see the moron JJohnson yapping here, not different from Kallas&Co. They fear facing the reality so they hallucinate.

What would otherwise be the point of the gradual NATO build-up against Russia? Expansion, missiles, bases, dropping treaties. Why do it if there is no goal to eventually strangle or even attack Russia? Things happen for a reason, nobody has ever provided a different one. (The West fearing ‘Russian invasion’ is beyond laughable.)

But what now? The mad project has collapsed, real victims turned out the hapless Ukraine and the Euro economy. There is no way back: US will benefit from the Euro disintegration, Russia will be vengeful, Ukraine will never be what it could have been, Central-Euro regions will be poorer and more marginal.

China will rise and the chance West had to be a player in the Euro-Asian landmass with all its resources is gone. It’s a nuclear level f…up, maybe going for the nukes will seem like a viable option.

…many people don’t follow this principle, you can’t make this principle conditional on the rest of the world following it.

That’s sophistry when it comes to the matters of state.

In our personal lives we can afford to be principled and avoid interactions with people who violate them. But a country can’t do that, it would cease to exist or be diminished to the point of irrelevancy.

Given the context Russia had two choices: fight (it means fight dirty), or walk away and face bigger existential issues down the road. I wonder what US or China would do facing that dilemma. But I think we know.

…for me if achieving a political objective requires killing thousands of innocent people, you should just give up that political objective.

I agree. But it should apply to both sides. If creating a mono-Ukraine in NATO required killing thousands of resisting Russian Ukrainians – as was clear in 2014-15 – then the West should had given up on that goal. They didn’t and persist to this day no matter how many people are killed. Yes, clowns.

Asking Russia to be purer than the self-celebrating West is a bit too much. For Russia it’s existential, for the West it’s not. It wasn’t existential for Kiev when they started it in 2014, but I agree it is now. That’s what makes it such a tragedy.

NATO was not really going to risk collective suicide and attack a nuclear superpower. That idea is hardly more rational that the idiocy that ‘if we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, we’ll all have to learn Russian’. Both sides of the same paranoiac coin.

There is always a huge amount of paranoia in the security circles and it seems to grow with time. It’s hard to make a career saying: who us? don’t worry, be happy. Maybe that’s why we get wars after a few generations, paranoias win over painful memories.

NATO was willing to risk a conflict – big boys with big dreams. They thought they can bluff Russia and Kremlin will complain and do nothing. Or collapse internally economically. It was done gradually with each step small enough not to trigger a Russian response. When Russia would be in an internal crisis – it happens every few decades – they could make a move. In retrospect it sounds stupid, but big boys are often the stupidest people around.

SMO only made sense as a short and decisive campaign.

That’s true, Russia miscalculated and so did everyone else. Big wars often start like that: emotions, small steps, escalations, miscalculations, paranoias, our sacrifices can’t be in vain!…WW1, Civil War, Vietnam.

closer to a nuclear conflict since WW2

Closer than ever. Quite a few events can trigger it – real or false flag attacks, massive loss of civilian lives, assassinations, accidents…Starting the NATO-in-Ukraine project was incredibly stupid. I still think we will make it out all right, the two key players – US and Russia – have sober leaders. If that changes we could be doomed.