Good to see Labour finally standing up to the fascist appeasers. "Stop The War" have been recognisably as bad as they are now for more than a decade, this is desperately overdue.
Particularly pleasing to see Corbyn humiliated, apparently he tried to get them not to back down, but evidently the whip is more important to them that Jeremy from Islington.
EACLucifer wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 6:37 pm
As of yesterday, Russia's apologists were planning a rally this week not against Putin and his cowardly thugs, but against NATO.
You'd think the fact Putin is constantly dissing Lenin and praising Trump might make lefties think twice?
EACLucifer wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 6:37 pm
As of yesterday, Russia's apologists were planning a rally this week not against Putin and his cowardly thugs, but against NATO.
You'd think the fact Putin is constantly dissing Lenin and praising Trump might make lefties think twice?
Tankies don't even think once, they are quite incapable of it.
Lefties capable of sensible thought are opposing Putin. There's leftwing Ukrainians fighting right now.
It feels odd that the Russian attack wasn't utter devastation on day 1.
Maybe that's because we're used to western airforces and cruise missiles destroying defences, then land troops charging with massive overwhelming strength? The west can't afford too many casualties because of popular opinion back home so only attack when there's total domination.
Russia had all these forces on the border but doesn't seem to have blitzkrieged.
The Hostomel airport has been recaptured by Ukrainian counter attack, according to reports, with the Russian airborne force scattered. That just never happens in an attack by the west on Iraq or wherever - any potential counter attacking threat is long since destroyed.
lpm wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 10:53 pm
It feels odd that the Russian attack wasn't utter devastation on day 1.
Maybe that's because we're used to western airforces and cruise missiles destroying defences, then land troops charging with massive overwhelming strength? The west can't afford too many casualties because of popular opinion back home so only attack when there's total domination.
Russia had all these forces on the border but doesn't seem to have blitzkrieged.
The Hostomel airport has been recaptured by Ukrainian counter attack, according to reports, with the Russian airborne force scattered. That just never happens in an attack by the west on Iraq or wherever - any potential counter attacking threat is long since destroyed.
Give it time. Precisely because of what you mention about the west not liking to take casualties, its (offensive) wars are designed to last no more than a couple of weeks. Ukraine is 10% larger in area than France; you can't drive from one end to the other in a single day in daylight in a nice Mercedes, never mind a tank. Russia presumably isn't in such a hurry. (On the other hand, I wonder if 190,000 men is enough to occupy a country that size. It's one person for every 220 Ukrainians and 3km².)
That said, if Hostomel has really been retaken (when the Fog Of War meets the Fog Of Twitter anything is possible), it would be quite a blow, because presumably they didn't fly in the non-elite troops of the 48th Demotivated Conscript Brigade to take it.
Something something hammer something something nail
secret squirrel wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 8:09 am
Another thing is that during the Soviet years, despite fears in the West, the USSR had no interest in expansion after WW2, and was very wary of antagonizing the US*, as the archive material now available apparently demonstrates (see for example 'A Failed Empire' by Vladimir Zubok). Putin on the other hand seems eager to expand and create confrontation.
As an aside, the Bush Jr. administration can take some of the blame for this situation, as they adopted a policy of 'freezing out' of Russia that undid a lot of the mutual good will that developed during the 90s.
I'm sure the USSR had no interest in an Afghanistan invasion until the situation required it. Just as it agreed to split Korea and let the U.S. have the southern part, until Stalin changed his mind.
Had western Europe decided not to build up an effective defensive capability, how would individual countries resist the kinds of demands Molotov made of Finland? No self-respecting totalitarian would resist the open goal of a country foolish enough to neglect its own security.
Speaking of which, I don't think people realise just how dangerous a second Trump term would have been for Europe:
In fact, Trump had privately indicated that he would seek to withdraw from NATO and to blow up the U.S. alliance with South Korea, should he win reelection...“Yeah, the second term,” Trump had said. “We’ll do it in the second term.”
Pishwish wrote: Fri Feb 25, 2022 3:48 am
I'm sure the USSR had no interest in an Afghanistan invasion until the situation required it. Just as it agreed to split Korea and let the U.S. have the southern part, until Stalin changed his mind.
Had western Europe decided not to build up an effective defensive capability, how would individual countries resist the kinds of demands Molotov made of Finland? No self-respecting totalitarian would resist the open goal of a country foolish enough to neglect its own security.
Speaking of which, I don't think people realise just how dangerous a second Trump term would have been for Europe:
In fact, Trump had privately indicated that he would seek to withdraw from NATO and to blow up the U.S. alliance with South Korea, should he win reelection...“Yeah, the second term,” Trump had said. “We’ll do it in the second term.”
Read Zubok's book if you're interested in this.
Edit: Specifically 'A Failed Empire' as this is concerned with USSR foreign policy.
Tessa K wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 2:40 pm
How would sanctions against a country as big as Russia with so many of its own resources have any effect?
It would mostly be like an individual going on a hunger strike in response to their local supermarket stoppong carrying their favourite breakfast cereal. The effects would be through opinion and publicity and quite likely to hurt the person taking the action far more than their target.
lpm wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 10:53 pm
It feels odd that the Russian attack wasn't utter devastation on day 1.
Maybe that's because we're used to western airforces and cruise missiles destroying defences, then land troops charging with massive overwhelming strength? The west can't afford too many casualties because of popular opinion back home so only attack when there's total domination.
Maybe it gives a hint of what Putin wants. If he wants Ukraine to be part of Russia he may not want a totally devastated province that will need lots of expensive rebuilding. I assume you're thinking of things like the invasion of Iraq, where the invading forces merely wanted to destroya regime and had no plans to incorporate it into their own countries, so they could destroy without having to worry about how they would make use of it later.
Maybe it’s to do with motivation. There are reports coming out that Russian troops are arriving in Ukraine and realising they are there to kill ordinary Ukrainians upon arrival. It wasn’t briefed to them. There are also photos coming out of captured Russian troops who are really, really young. These are ranked soldiers, and they look to be about 16-18.
Ukraine’s army is highly motivated to defend…perhaps Russia’s forces aren’t as highly motivated to kill, or be killed, on a mission they don’t really understand. Especially as Ukrainians are so similar to them.
Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova said Thursday that a platoon of Russian soldiers surrendered to the Ukrainian military, saying they "didn't know that they were brought to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians."
At a press briefing, Markarova said, "Just before I came here, we got information from our chief commander that one of the platoons of the 74th motorized brigade from Kemerovo Oblast surrendered."
"They didn't know that they were brought to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians. They thought they were doing something else there," she added.
lpm wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 11:28 pm
And what's the amphibious fleet doing wandering about? Why aren't they going ashore at Odessa or going home? Aren't they vulnerable out there?
Some of this looks like grandstanding or for propaganda purposes. Maybe not this, but paratroopers? Such airdrops do look impressive and bring back memories of 1930s propaganda reels but even by 1944, they were only useful in very limited roles due to their lack of mobility and heavy weapons when on the ground. There's a reason why airborne brigades in the West (and USSR) used helicopters.
The story I’m reading on various forums is that the Russians tried to go for a quick decapitation strike, with the spetznaz raid on Kyiv airport being key. Now that has gone astray we might see the Russians fall back to massed assaults and bombardments. It could get very very nasty.
lpm wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 11:28 pm
And what's the amphibious fleet doing wandering about? Why aren't they going ashore at Odessa or going home? Aren't they vulnerable out there?
Some of this looks like grandstanding or for propaganda purposes. Maybe not this, but paratroopers? Such airdrops do look impressive and bring back memories of 1930s propaganda reels but even by 1944, they were only useful in very limited roles due to their lack of mobility and heavy weapons when on the ground. There's a reason why airborne brigades in the West (and USSR) used helicopters.
Airdrops work if you can get ground troops to follow up very quickly. D-Day was a successful use of paratroopers. Crete was a nearly pure airborne operation and pretty much the only one that succeeded. However the German paratroopers were so badly mauled by the very tepid opposition that they never tried it again. Market Garden, that didn’t go so well.
Humans always gravitate to "one simple trick". The more complicated a thing is, the more we want it solved in a single sentence.
SWIFT is the current thing.
It would be useful to ban them and would inconvenience Russia, but it's just a messaging system. When you transfer £10m from HSBC to Barclays a SWIFT message goes with it, encoding all the useful information. All automated, nice and easy, if there's any problems someone can check the SWIFT and see where the money went.
Russian banks (and banks within Russia's sphere of influence) have replicated SWIFT with their own system. So transfers from Belarus to Russia would still be fully automated. And transfers from Russia to Switzerland would still happen - not having SWIFT would require a manual workaround but is not inherently prohibitive. Money launderers in particular are skilled at moving money between minor banks that have useless systems - in fact they set up these banks as fronts and rely on humans to do everything manually, rather than invest in automated IT. And Moscow does not have a shortage of money laundering experts...
I'm sure there are better actions than targeting SWIFT. I guess it's become symbolic but there's stuff that would hurt Putin more.
Woodchopper wrote:
But we should still be worried about the prospect of a nuclear war. People make mistakes, leaders miscalculate, conflicts can escalate. As Carl Sagan pointed out many years ago, confrontation between nuclear armed states is like "two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five".
I had reason to translate that quote a few years ago and the respective numbers of matches were 9000 and 7000. I'm not sure how 3 and 5 got to be so popular (those numbers dominate the quote sites on the Web) but here's the original: https://youtu.be/PdYMLq7NY_M (05:00)
(Apologies for the pedantry, but I think that that and some silly banter are probably all I'm going to be up for in the next few days.)
Thanks for that and pedantry is always welcome.
I suspect that the reason for drastically reducing the number of matches is that the image of two enemies waist deep in petrol and holding matches is profoundly disturbing. But them holding thousands of matches in their hands seems absurd. Even if the matches were in boxes they'd have to be balancing towers of boxes in their hands.
lpm wrote: Fri Feb 25, 2022 8:36 am
We should not be seeing photos of POWs. Remove?
This is being discussed by the mods.
Lol, bless you lovely mods, you really do like to weigh everything up. "Shall we comply with the Geneva Convention?" "Hmm, there's pros and cons." Not natural tyrants, you lot.
Awarded gold star 4 November 2021
