Masterful "soviet" propaganda schemes to appear weak... — ssu

Obviously you didn't get the satire.

The claim the Russians have a masterful "soviet" propaganda scheme machine going was to support the idea not only did Russia blow up their own pipelines but they went the extra several hundred miles to blow them up right on Denmark's border under NATO's nose ... and also used several tons of explosives for additional emphasis.

This has already been clearly described by many including people like Vlad Vexler, focusing on the shift from Soviet propaganda before the wall fell to Russian propaganda today. — Christoffer

And if you don't believe this wild conspiracy theory of Russian and essentially perfect, one may say masterful, covert opps and 5 dimensional propaganda move:

Bombing the pipeline while Germany is already dismantling their need for it has no function. Russia however, just as with their propaganda strategies, aims to split the west into conflicts with each other so as to not have a united front against Russia. That's their aim and it's well established. So, what does a bombing of Nordstream at this time? Russia directly pointed blame against Ukraine, then the west, then the US, just as they already do with other propaganda strategies. The intention is to seed doubt so that the west starts to blame each other. And you are among the ones who they play like a fiddle in order to spread this doubt. — Christoffer

Then you are the one who:

the one who's making a fool out of himself. You don't even understand the conspiracy rabbit hole you're stuck in. — Christoffer

Now, as for the single tank on parade. That's just common sense. Had they paraded their whole inventory the same Western talking heads laughing at a single tank would be going on about how insane it is to parade your entire inventory during a war (which it is ... and maybe why the Russians didn't do that).

However, what could actually be staged is Prigozhin's midnight comedy blowout theatre show, and when I point that out suddenly the idea Russia has some propaganda tricks up their sleeve is ludicrous and certainly the Russians couldn't put together a simple plan of telling the enemy what they want to hear so that their own propaganda networks seed your message for you and your enemy basically "trusts" one of your commanders and take everything he says at face value.

And if that's not the case, why is he still alive?

Nothing easier than arranging an "accident" in a war zone. When it started, maybe he had gone rogue or something, but it's been going on for months so at some point it's difficult to interpret people's actions that are on the same team as something other than team work.

Noticed the Russia-bellends have kept schtum in this thread as of late. Ukraine appears to be morphing into an Eastern European version of Israel. — Changeling

You mean we aren't doing victory laps over the capture of Bakhmut because we aren't "Russia-bellends" but view the war as an immense and easily prevented tragedy?

Or perhaps it's because our analysis is so spot on there's nothing much to add.

What have been my recent points?

1. A Ukrainian offensive would have all the problems (just a lot more because Russia has capabilities Ukraine lacks entirely) as do the Russian offensives. The difference being that Russia can attrit the Ukrainians with artillery and standoff munitions.

2. The latest weapons systems drip fed to Ukraine (aka. Western tanks and Patriot missiles) would fail to deliver any meaningful change on the battlefield and the talk would immediately move on to the next weapons system (aka. the F-16s).

3. Sanctions continue to not collapse the Russian economy or cause some new Russian capitalist revolution.

4. For these and many more reasons (such as Russia heavily fortifying their position for an entire year), it is essentially impossible for Ukraine to remove Russian forces from all the previously held Ukrainian territory, and even trying would cost hundreds of thousands of lives and be unlikely to succeed; in the unlikely event it did succeed the war would still not be over and the tragedy would simply continue into the next chapter.

5. Nuclear blackmail does work, which is what explains NATO not intervening directly or "escalating" with the weapon systems that Ukraine would actually need to win.

6. Diplomatic resolution is the only remotely possible end to this conflict and continued fighting erodes Ukraine's negotiating position rather than strengthens it.

7. The idea sacrificing Ukraine to harm Russia makes the US and/or Europe "safer" is of dubious moral foundation and highly speculative if that's even happening. Historically, winning a war, and in many cases even losing a war, makes a country far stronger militarily, rather than weaker, and there is no evidence this case is an exception.

The only thing to add to this analysis is:

A. That not only has Russia conquered Bakhmut but they've done so with mercenaries.

If the Western narrative is true that Russia uses "waves" of cannon fodder, then that just fixes the other part of the Western narrative that these mercenaries are all psychopathic criminals.

Whereas the truth is Wagner has proven to be efficient and the people upset about prisoners winning freedom by fighting would likely be far more upset about more people they know dying.

A lot of these mercenaries are foreigners, who will continue to signup insofar as Russia is winning.

B. Western equipment has changed nothing and is starting to be destroyed which is a great advertisement for the Russian arms industry, the second major industry in Russia after oil and gas.

To make things even worse, there's interviews with Ukrainian soldiers describing Russian tanks super difficult to deal with and a major reason for retreating from Bakhmut. We can conclude from this that not only has Russia not run out of tanks (actually has more than that 1 tank on parade) but they've become proficient at the combined arms tactics needed to counter anti-tank missiles, other tanks, mines, APC's and so on.

C. If anything is some masterful "soviet" propaganda scheme, it would be Prigozhin's v-blogging adventure. And if not Soviet (presumably if Soviet propaganda methods were so effective they'd still be around), a single tank on parade and some mercenary businessman continuously complaining about ammunition is just lifted directly out of an old book popular among war planners:

Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. — Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

I believe even some Western war military academies have copies of this manual.

Thanks for the work.

Calm down. You're crossing a line here. — Baden

I actually miss Olivier5 calling me a Russian agent.

Not only was it comedy gold but of great insight into how people maintain their world view.

And to be fair, I did just liken discussing with to sifting through the debris of a vapid soul, as a retort to being called:

A normal useful idiot for Russia basically. — Christoffer

"Go take your medicine or whatever" is just the banalist of weak sauce at that point in the exchange.

The weakest of sauces.

And at least Olivier5 was discussing the issues of import: was the war justified, is the price worth it, can Ukraine win, is Ukraine winning, what would be a win, etc.

We had different opinions, but it did move the conversation forward on the key issues.

I have already described three times now what the possible motives are, but you don't care. Your mind seems to wander through conspiracy-land being both confused and paranoid. — Christoffer

You do realise you're the one proposing the conspiracy theory that the Russian did in secret (i.e. conspired) to blow up their own pipeline, a crime against property holders in both the EU and Russia.

I'm pointing out the undisputed fact (what the US president said on live television, location of the attacks, minimum bound on how much explosives were used, control of the crime scene, lack of material evidence etc.) your conspiracy theory doesn't even address.

Whereas my position relative these known facts is:

1. Sure, both the US and Russia had the means to carry out such an attack, both have ships that regularly patrol and carry out manoeuvres in the the Baltic and would have reason to be there.
2. I do not deny the intra-NATO tensions that would arise if the pipes blew up and people suspected the US did it.
3. It's totally reasonable to primarily suspect the US considering the US president publicly promised to "end" the pipelines if Russia invaded.
4. So, if it was Russia and they did it because it benefits them ... then obviously it was pretty dumb for the US to basically set themselves up for being an obvious suspect (some would even go so far as to say the party that overtly promised to do the thing that then happened would be the lead suspect in any competent criminal investigation).
5. There's a whole bunch of motivations (decades of economic leverage) we'd need to believe the Russians don't care about, and to such an extreme degree that they don't even mitigate the damage to the pipes ... don't even take advantage of the president's words to carry out a lesser attack and closer to their border in seas they control.

I'm not saying I know what happened. When material evidence of the crime scene is available, even then I don't suspect I'd come to any strong conclusions as people who's job it is to deceive with billions of dollars and / or rubbles at their disposal may very well succeed in deceiving me.

It's you who claims to have knowledge of the conspiracy to the level of confidence:

It was rigorously verified using a former Navy operative in England and through advanced satellite tracking. With confirmation from navy intelligence officers going over the material, simply concluding "With this evidence it is much more clear who was responsible". — Christoffer

You're the one with the conspiracy theory that was "rigorously verified" and makes clear "who was responsible".

I subject your conspiracy theory to critical scrutiny ... and that somehow makes me the conspiracy theorist?

Which, is a label I don't actually mind ... the whole reason we have a long list of laws with the word "conspiracy" in it is because conspiracies do in fact happen and for them to be uncovered someone at some point needs to theorise as to what may have conspired, such as what you are doing vis-a-vis the Nord Stream "sabotage", which, I think is worth mentioning it's being called "sabotage" instead of "terrorism" because not a single brown person has been alleged to be involved in any of the theories proposed so far (Ukraine, Russia, US, Poland ... all white people, so blowing shit up for political pressure is all of a sudden the work of "la di da fancy dancy saboteurs").

Also notable, on the subject of meaning, the sentence "With this evidence it is much more clear who was responsible" could actually mean it's obviously the US that's responsible, for all we know, he doesn't actually say.

Why would I agree that the US had the opportunity or reason to? I specifically gave a motivation as to why the US wouldn't, which, as with everything else just wooshes right over your head. — Christoffer

Yes ... so ... why did the US president first threaten to put an end to the pipeline and then when challenged double down and "promised" the world they would bring an end to it and then tripling down with the assurance that they for sure could be able to do it?

What's the motivation to threaten to do something you have no motivation to do?

Additionally, Nord Stream 1 continued to operate and it was the West accusing Russia of purposefully kneecapping the flow and "weaponising" the gas, so if your theory is based on Germany deciding all by themselves to fully cut themselves as permanently as possible from Russian gas, that's not what happened, and therefore no need to "end" the pipelines, and Russia (seeing this permanent refusal of gas supplies from Russia, which no competent analyst of international relations would conclude the policy would be "permanent", if it existed at all, which it didn't as Germany kept on buying whatever came through Nord Stream 1) saw the only value in the pipes remaining to be to blow them up to throw shade on the Americans ... none of that stacks up because at no point did Germany have a policy to disconnect entirely and in as permanent way as possible from Russian gas, and even if Germany did have such a policy no credible analyst would conclude a country announcing something "permanent" to actually be permanent. Things change.

You never fucking understand what hindsight bias is, do you? And you never understand that your entire argument is based on what you believe his speech meant. — Christoffer

Really? You really find the following words ambiguous?

Speaking at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Biden said, "If Russia invades... again, then there will be longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."

When asked how he would do that, he responded, "I promise you we will be able to do it." — Reuters

Ok, well ... what does he mean then?

Enlighten us.

↪boethius, nice story, sort of. I suppose you'd have the UN being "war-mongers". — jorndoe

What story?

At no point did I recount a story.

What I did was outline the key questions a story that it was the Russians would need to at least address to be a minimum credible.

The fact that it's not an easy story to tell is a fact not some counter-story.

Why is it difficult?

First, the Russians not-attacking their own stuff has several advantages:

1. They get to keep their stuff and who knows what use it may have in the future. True, Russia is going "all in" with China, but even then have leverage to potentially be able to sell gas to Germany in the future is still useful even if China remains the main buyer and relations with China are good: every bit of leverage allows increase pressure on the price. Indeed, before the attacks the accusation from the West was Putin was "weaponising" the gas exports. So if this accusation was true ... why wouldn't he continue to do that? Why voluntarily giveu-p a "weapon" in a time of war?

2. Biden "promised" the world he would "end" the pipelines if Russia invaded Ukraine. So, not-attacking the pipelines puts the US in the position of being weak if they don't fulfil their promise ... and if they do, then Russia would get all the benefits is going on about but not only without any of the risks but the added benefit that, if not the general public, non-US NATO intelligence are far more likely to conclude it was the US, if it was actually the US.

Which us to the operational parameters. These attacks were not some casual jaunt through a meadow and "just so happens" a ton of explosives was handy for some spontaneous vandalism.

It's a complex operation and the risks of things going wrong is very real.

So, the story that Russia attacked the pipelines not only needs to completely ignore the leverage some 20 billion dollars of infrastructure that takes decades to build and supplies a resource of fundamental importance (that for the short term benefit of creating intra-NATO suspicions Russia is willing to permanently give up immense leverage in all their international relations for the next decades) but that the Russians would also conclude that Biden literally stating they would "end" the pipelines was not enough to create the aura of suspicion they are seeking, but they need to use enough explosive to guarantee complete destruction of the pipes as well as do it right under NATO's nose on the marine border of Denmark and Sweden ... rather than basically any point between there and Russia.

And control of the crime scene in this sort of operation is always of immense benefit, as there's never any guarantee the operation isn't a complete clusterfuck and there's always a threshold of clusterfuckuppery which is so fucked it can't be spun as "enemy schemes". The divers and / or mini-sub could die or then nearly die and NATO goes out and pulls these corpses / near corpses from the water.

Likewise, in this sort of game, you cannot know your opponents capabilities. What if a US sub shadows the entire Russian operation and then NATO goes and "discovers" these explosives before they blow. There's a real possibility of getting caught red handed in this sort of operation ... unless you do it in waters you control and can easily control the crime scene afterwards as well ... you know, right in the middle of all your sonar and listening devices tracking everything that goes through Denmark (if you're the US) so you can be pretty damn certain no one else is around and also be sure no one goes and checks anything out ... something you couldn't at all guarantee if you were Russia doing the operation right in the middle of the US' backyard.

We're talking about massive operational risks with massive geopolitical implications and risk of embarrassment if anything goes wrong.

So not only does the idea the Russians did it make no sense on pretty much every point but to even entertain the idea we need to just suddenly forget the US is a Naval superpower with all sorts of surveillance capabilities with high motivation to track anything going near and through the Danish straights ... and the whole reason Russia launches subs from the flipping arctic is just paranoia because Russia could just sale right up to Denmark and blow shit up this whole time with the only line of defence some retired Swedish captain on an island with a radio and a hobby or some bullshit along those lines.

And on-top of all the suspension of disbelief to even listen with a straight face to such a story, we also need to believe that anyone pointing out the US president literally "promising" to end the pipeline is somehow a conspiracy theory to discuss what someone says to a journalist on television.

You are still unable to understand that this does not equal guilt of the bombing. — Christoffer

You're position is literally:

This was reported by a collaboration between top investigative journalists in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. It was rigorously verified using a former Navy operative in England and through advanced satellite tracking. With confirmation from navy intelligence officers going over the material, simply concluding "With this evidence it is much more clear who was responsible". — Christoffer

Now you're walking back from "much more clear who was responsible" to "conjecture".

I have already described three times now what the possible motives are, but you don't care. Your mind seems to wander through conspiracy-land being both confused and paranoid. — Christoffer

We don't disagree what Russia's motives would be. I literally say:

For the Russians, attacking their own pipelines would be a PR thing — boethius

What you fail to do is account for the undisputed fact the US threatened to blow up the pipelines.

If you want to propose an alternate theory, you need to take into account the undisputed facts.

You need to say "I have this theory that it was the Russians that conspired to blow up the pipelines and make it look like the US did it by taking advantage of the fact the US said they would do it, all while totally not being a conspiracy theorist conjecturing about this conspiracy theory I have" (or is it only a "conspiracy theory" if it's not the Russians somehow?).

You do not even have the beginnings of a proposal.

I get it, Western media simply ignores the US president threatening to blow up the pipeline as there's simply no way to fit it into a pleasant narrative: either the US president means what he says, threatened to blow up the pipeline and then did exactly that to maintain the credibility of the US' word ... or then he's a moron that makes empty threats that the opponents of the US can easily take advantage of.

So, because the Western media ignore this obviously pertinent fact you think that's "smart".

Blowing up the pipeline had no purpose for the US when the invasion had already had the effect of moving Germany and Europe away from dependency on Russia. The changeover was already happening so there's no point in bombing a pipeline and hurting allies. Russia, however, have everything to win by the chaos it produces. You are just blaming the US because it rhymes with your personal opinions. — Christoffer

So ... why would the US threaten to blow up pipeline if it serves no purpose?

Even in the realm of conjecture, you're idea should cohere with the known facts.

As I say above, if you're theory is the Russian's did it and Biden is a moron for doing the Russians the favour of making empty threats about the pipeline, I don't have a problem with that theory. Conjecture all you want Russia is the master of strategy and perception and US officials are dunces that have no idea what they are talking about or why.

For, if it was the Russians, the only reason this pipeline thing causes the:

the intended effect, you're here playing into exactly what Russia wants to have; the west fractured by gullible people and muddying the waters to the point that when there's even tangible evidence of the act you continue to push for your personal opinions, using every bias and fallacy possible. — Christoffer

Is only because the US president threatened to blow up the pipelines in Public.

So, at least start your presentation with "Yes, the US did threaten to 'end' European infrastructure, and that wasn't a good idea to threaten the interests of your own allies, the US should of course respect the sovereignty of Germany to decide for themselves to buy Russian gas or not, which is what this whole war is about supporting sovereignty so just the threat on this infrastructure and deciding things for the Germans, however right the outcome is, already, in itself, is going to cause unneeded tensions between allies ... but even worse! sets the stage for crafty ol' Putin to take advantage of this empty threat and blowup the pipeline himself as everyone will for sure think it was the US considering they threatened, actually more than threatened, promised! to 'end it'."

For someone who does so much mental gymnastics, you're not doing nearly enough to avoid the obvious conclusion which is:

The US president saying:

We will bring an end to it. I promise you. We will be able to do it.
— the president of America

Sure, doesn't prove who did it, but declaring you'll "end" something and then that very thing you promised you'd end does get ended, results in two possibilities:

1. You did it, just like you said you would.
2. You're a fucking moron. — boethius

Which, again, where is the disagreement?

We both agree both the US and Russia had opportunity to blow up the pipeline.

If it wasn't the US then how do avoid the conclusion that Biden is a fucking moron for threatening to do it before hand ... if it actually benefits Russia in their Soviet style perception mastery?

No, what I refer is that navy and military investigators, as well as independent ones who went over what the journalists found agreed that what they found is significant. That is a confirmation of it being important, it doesn't mean this investigation is in any form of alliance with these military officals and investigators. It's like you don't even attempt to understand any of this but just boil everything that is said down to some unintelligent interpretation. It's like speaking to a child. — Christoffer

Discussing with you is like shifting through the debris of a vapid soul.

It is not worth my time for something as low stakes as the question of whether Russian ships (civilian, military, covert) are in the Baltic doing what they would normally be doing in peace, and much more-so in war time.

However, since no one is debating at the moment anything remotely important (such as if the cost of the war to Ukraine is worth the benefits so far or then expected benefits in the future and if whether the Western policy to supply is in Ukraine's interest, the West's interest or then just the arms suppliers interest) I will pick apart your delusions for the benefit of the casual follower to this discussion.

"lead suspect" is something you have made up. In no way is the US any lead suspect other than through Russian propaganda and people gullible enough to eat that propaganda without a second thought. It's this presumption that makes you acting out bias towards what you already believe, and me only referring to the evidence at hand. — Christoffer

Sure, I have zero problem defending that I am defining the US as the lead suspect.

In any crime, someone who credibly states they intend to do that crime beforehand makes themselves the lead suspect.

You accuse me of ignoring this "important evidence" of some messages or whatever, while completely ignoring a party to this affair literally declaring their intention to end the pipeline.

To make a credible case it was someone else, you need to first explain why this threat by the US was not actually credible and we should dismiss it. For example, perhaps it was a bluff ... or perhaps it wasn't a bluff but the US and Russia were in a race to blow up the pipelines first and Russia just so happened to win that race because they are so competent and crafty.

If it was a bluff, then you're simply agreeing with my position at the start of this discussion with you:

Sure, doesn't prove who did it, but declaring you'll "end" something and then that very thing you promised you'd end does get ended, results in two possibilities:

1. You did it, just like you said you would.
2. You're a fucking moron. — boethius

For, if it's actually in Russia's interest to blowup the pipeline because they are "masters of perception" a la Soviet:

The whole idea behind it being a post-soviet propaganda system that doesn't act on trying to convince Russia to be right, they only need to plant doubt into populations of other nations in order to get them into conflict with each other instead of focusing on Russia. It's the foundation for why Russia wanted Trump to win. Vlad Vexler has gone into those things describing the difference between propaganda before the wall fell and after. — Christoffer

Then obviously, if making a bluff to blow up the pipeline plays right into the hands of the "Vlexler" you are a complete fucking moron for making that bluff, as it's literally blown up in your face.

Now, if it wasn't a bluff why didn't the US blow up the pipelines before Russia, or just not get around to it, forcing Russia's hand to blow up their own pipelines?

If you're argument is "Biden's a fucking moron, delusional senile ol' goat that is liable to say whatever comes into his mind on live television and his words should be ignored, just unfortunately in this situation the damage of the president's incompetence is like super high because a lot of people will mistakingly assume US blew up the pipelines because the US president basically said that and the motive is clear" then you have no disagreement from me. Biden being a senile imbecile that was hallucinating when he was talking about "ending" the pipelines and then Russia took advantage of that blunder to cause strife and consternation is as plausible a theory as the US did it.

We are not, in fact, in disagreement. You just don't want to call a spade a spade or then offer some other theory as to what Biden's words meant, why they don't matter, or why did matter but the Russians got to same plan first ... in which case why is it in Russia's favour if the US was planning to do the exact same thing?

Do the wretched Ruskies not have access to a stopcock somewhere, if they want to cut off the flow? — unenlightened

Nord stream 2 never got permission to open from the Germans, so it's difficult to see a motive for the Russians blowing it up.

Nord Stream 1 wasn't flowing because of "turbine maintenance" depending on Seimans who sent them to Canada who couldn't send them back to Russia due to sanctions, which the Western media assumed was bullshit.

Which is the central problem behind the idea the Russian's blew up their own pipelines, as there was far less destructive means to shut them down, restrict gas supplies while also keeping the leverage on the table in the future.

Indeed, even if we elaborate the scenario where the Russians wanted to take advantage of the US stating they'd "end" the pipelines (for example to create tensions in NATO), it's difficult to imagine any rational for blowing up both Nord Stream 1 and 2 and so destructively. You could get largely the same result by blowing up only one of four the pipelines, create the same tensions and keep 3 quarters of the leverage.

And not only is there little reason to blow up all the pipelines, but there's degrees of destruction to choose from. There would be little reason to use so much explosives:

The lawmaker was also told that more than 1,000 pounds of "military grade" explosives were used by the perpetrators. — 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, wikipedia

If it was the Russians and they used a measly 100 pounds of explosives to cause repairable leaks, would there really be a risk people find that a non-credible attack?

For the Russians, attacking their own pipelines would be a PR thing, there would be no fundamental motivation to destroy their own stuff in a non-repairable way, so you really need to get to very advanced levels of PR kung fu to come up with a model where the Russians conclude not only is it a good idea to attack all the pipes, but do it so close to Denmark and Sweden (rather than somewhere they could get to and control the crime scene first), and in such a destructive way.

The findings by the investigative journalists that were just released. Are you illiterate or just ignorant? — Christoffer

You seem to claim this is some sort of backup for NATO's claims.

You literally state:

With confirmation from navy intelligence officers going over the material, simply concluding "With this evidence it is much more clear who was responsible". — Christoffer

But if you want to pretend there's some "independent journalism" that is stronger evidence than the lead suspect saying they will do exactly this thing, believe what you want to believe.

That's the whole point of suddenly finding Russian ships are in the Baltic is exactly for people like you who find this a surprising fact.

If you actually lived on the baltic (as I do) it's considerably less surprising.

I did not doubt Russia had opportunity to blow up their own pipelines before. Finding out there are Russian ships "actually in the Baltic, including military ships!!!" is literally zero new information.

Both the US and Russia have opportunity. The only thing worth analysing with the information we have (absent actual material evidence, which even then wouldn't be conclusive considering the means of the two suspects, but at least interesting) is motive and intent.

If you want to argue the US literally declaring their motive and intent on television is weaker than speculations as to Russia's motive, go ahead and make that argument.

If you want to continue to make the case that Russia has ships and Russia's ships sometimes ship through busy shipping lanes, it was not previously in doubt.

No, it's about their behavior and their function. Once again, dig into the actual findings instead of continuing this biased charade. — Christoffer

What findings?

You literally just said yourself investigation is "on-going" so they'd be stupid to release any actual evidence that would allow the culprits to get their stories straight.

You can't have it both ways, saying the lack of countries releasing evidence on the one hand is investigators being "smart" and on the other the very same countries releasing "some evidence" that tells you what you want to hear are "findings".

The evidence of Russian ships being in the Baltic is poor even if we assume it's true. Where else would they be?

If it merely establishes that Russia had opportunity to blow up their own pipeline, no one's ever disputed that.

That's not the evidence, maybe you should just shut up and watch it in detail before guessing what it's about. Thinking this is about ships in a busy shipping lane just shows how ignorant you are. — Christoffer

The evidence you are talking about is literally ships near the scene of the crime.

Civilian ships, military ships, covert ships. Any kind of ship with any kind of person for any kind of purpose is not surprising to be in a busy shipping lane.

How would Russian civilian, military, covert ships go to and from St. Petersburg and the Atlantic?

Literally right through Danish straights.

Now, in terms of ignorance, you seem to believe:

Spy satellites that something like CIA uses require specific targets. They are super-advanced with high-resolution resolution, but you can't go back in time and just pull out images from all around the globe and you could do it less for tracking an object if you didn't know its location in the first place. — Christoffer

There are civilian satellite photography taken every day of the entire earth that you can purchase.

And you think CIA spy satellites would need a "specific target" to track something as large as a ship in critical waters in the heart of NATO ... during a war in the region?

But let's put that aside, because you literally state:

Uhm... because ongoing investigations do not share such things? There are a number of investigations going on as well. Have you ever heard of investigations sharing evidence in real time? That's a good way for the perps to adjust their stories and prepare for when they're caught. Not a good strategy of justice, which is why such things aren't publically exposed.

And if you don't trust NATO you can check other people investigating. Like, for instance, what I've referred to. — Christoffer

So, if the investigation hasn't shared all it's evidence, and that's just normal, why would we come to any conclusions?

The problem here is these countries (who have material evidence) coming out with partial evidence without presenting the rest, so we can't see if it even coheres with the material evidence they possess. Presenting partial evidence pointing to one party means absolutely nothing other than trying to shape the narrative for people who want / need to believe it wasn't the Americans (such as giving a plausible basis for European policy makers to continue to be bitches; not that there's any risk of them being something other than bitches, but this way is more comfortable for them compared to considering the possibility the US does not have Europe's interests at heart, but rather their own interests ... surprisingly close to exactly what they keep saying for the last 5 decades to explain nearly all of their policies; as crazy as it sounds, people could just mean what they say sometimes, such as "protecting US interests" means "protecting US interests" and not European interests).

Bad faith at best, fraud at worst (if we're pretending to be in court and 'normy' laws apply to the parties involved).

And isn't Denmark coming out with statements such as:

Denmark’s overall military command authority confirmed to the Financial Times that it had taken 26 pictures of the special Russian ship SS-750, which had a rescue mini-submarine on board, on September 22 to the east of the Danish island of Bornholm, close to where the sabotage of the twin pipelines took place. — Financial Times

Doing exactly what you say is incompetent for investigators to do?

Isn't that a ....

a good way for the perps to adjust their stories and prepare for when they're caught. Not a good strategy of justice, which is why such things aren't publically exposed. — Christoffer

If anything you seem to be criticising the investigation.

What you haven't done is point to any evidence even remotely stronger than the US President publicly declaring his intention to "end" the pipeline.

If you think some stories of ships in the Baltic (where we'd very much expect them to be, including military and covert ships) is somehow stronger evidence, all while chocking up the lack of presenting the material evidence as "a good strategy of justice" but coming to conclusions anyways, that's called: believing what you want to believe.

Actual tracking of Russian operatives connected to the time of the explosion is stronger evidence. What you are doing is conjecture. Get some basic justice knowledge if you want to conclude what is "strong evidence". — Christoffer

You are completely delusional.

Placing someone where they would likely be (a busy shipping lane) = weak evidence.

Someone threatening to do something, indeed promising to do it = strong evidence.

Purposefully withholding evidence (such as all the material evidence of a crime scene) while accusing someone of a crime = fraud.

And speaking of court, if you want to argue on that basis, "who dun it?" we cannot say conclusively based on the available evidence, but what we can know in this "court" you are imagining, is that prosecutors purposefully withholding evidence is a serious procedural violation (mistrial at best) and arguably fraud.

NATO has access to the crime scene ... so why don't we see pictures of the crime scene, reconstruction of the explosive devices, any basic investigatory work at all?

For these claims to be something other than propaganda, the material evidence should be presented.

Of course, people could still say it was a setup, doesn't necessarily resolve anything, but the material evidence should be consistent with this story that the explosives were laid a few days before (or then a pretty good explanation of how the Russians faked how long the explosives were there) if that's what NATO is claiming.

No prosecutors (outside a circus court) could ever possibly get away with making a case while not only making zero effort to make their story consistent with the material evidence of the crime scene ... but hiding all the material evidence of the crime scene to boot.

In terms of criminal process, it's just dumb.

NATO has not made a case, they've thrown a bone to the people who want / need to believe it wasn't the Americans ... in a way that increases, rather than decreases, the suspicion it was the Americans to any attentive observer.

Now, if we had seen pictures of the crime scene, catalogue of the materials used, reconstruction of the devices, would it prove conclusively who did it? No. But it would at least be a plausibly good faith investigatory process where we could argue based on actual facts of the actual crime scene.

Try that in court against the other evidence :rofl: — Christoffer

What planet are you living on?

Saying you're going to do something ... then that thing happening would definitely be used against you in court.

Mafia bosses who say they will whack a guy, who have incentive and means to whack said guy, and then that guy turning up whacked is court admissible evidence.

In itself, is it enough to convict? No. But it's pretty strong evidence.

Definitely "exhibit A: the defendant is recorded as threatening to 'what him'" type evidence.

As for your evidence, being placed at the scene of a crime only matters if it's somewhere you would not normally be. Being placed at your home or at your work ... or in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world (as a ship) "a few days before the crime took place" is extremely weak evidence.

Why wouldn't the Russian ships be there? This narrative is spun like the Danish straights is in the middle of some random place in the pacific.

This was reported by a collaboration between top investigative journalists in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. It was rigorously verified using a former Navy operative in England and through advanced satellite tracking. With confirmation from navy intelligence officers going over the material, simply concluding "With this evidence it is much more clear who was responsible". — Christoffer

This is not very good evidence at all, considering Russian ships regularly go through the Baltic and you have to go through the Danish straits (basically where the explosions happened) to get to and from the Atlantic.

So it's not some unusual thing that Russian ships would be there.

With this, any claim that someone else than Russia committed the act requires a much better foundation of evidence than what has been delivered by these investigative journalists. — Christoffer

The US president saying:

We will bring an end to it. I promise you. We will be able to do it. — the president of America

Sure, doesn't prove who did it, but declaring you'll "end" something and then that very thing you promised you'd end does get ended, results in two possibilities:

1. You did it, just like you said you would.
2. You're a fucking moron.

Feel free to go with 2, but don't pretend that what people say they're going to do doesn't matter and is not strong evidence.

We are not disagreeing.

I've mentioned a few times that hypothetically NATO has trained and equipped an entire new army, maybe even provided a whole new airforce of F-16s ... or even F-22's and F-35s, whatever it takes "to win".

We agree on both points.

The problems Ukraine is facing in military terms do not mean they cannot be solved. I have difficulty imagining how they could be solved, but that's more an invitation to speculation.

You have been saying that resistance is futile since 2/22. We will see. — Paine

I have not said resistance is futile since 2/22.

I made clear I would myself sacrifice a few thousand men to arrest the initial invasion and stabilise the lines.

Continuing to fight beyond that point of maximum leverage (where a smaller force can leverage the damage and chaos it can deal to a larger force, thus motivating a peace to avoid said cost) is simply negative returns on the blood invested in my particular moral system.

Especially as Russia was offering autonomous Donbas (still part of Ukraine from what I understood) which is far better than annexation and the language repression of Russian speakers is not actually a good thing.

We don't go around telling Germans to not speak the "language of the Nazis" or various colonised people to not speak English.

Ending the civil war (that had been going on since 2014) with more autonomy for the separatist region is not exactly some geopolitical world ending result. Pretty banal.

As a Anglo-Canadian, I don't tell Quebeckers not to speak French, and last I heard they're a nation ... inside a country. Which, as an anarchist, I think is the right direction.

However, I never used the words futile. Depends on what you want to achieve. If your moral system is one of maintaining the "rules based world order" and you're willing to sacrifice Ukraine to do that, then maybe it's not futile. Although, even then it seems to me far from clear that Russia will in fact be damaged more than the West when all is said and dead. Situation is complicated.

Some thoughts as to why an imminent Ukrainian offensive seems unlikely:
- the attrition rate at Bakhmut
- the closing window of opportunity while the Russians are occupied at Bakhmut
- the state of Ukrainian air power and air defense
- the lack of Ukrainian armor
- the Russians having dug in all across the frontline

I'm kind of curious what positives someone who believes in an imminent offensive would look at to think it is feasible. — Tzeentch

The narrative of a Ukrainian offensive is that NATO has trained and armed many brigades and this will be a game changer when they arrive at the front and start their assault.

Of course, that's hypothetically possible but seems highly implausible, mostly for the reasons you mention in addition to potentially electronic warfare and glide bombs being a game changer for Russia.

It's also difficult to come up with some way it's even feasible to not only train and equip an entirely new army, but do it with new systems, less people available, less capabilities (in particular AA systems as you note), degraded civilian infrastructure, and somehow be several factors, maybe an entire order of magnitude, more effective than last summer, which is what would be needed to achieve what last summer's offensive did not ... and against hardened lines and more Russian troops.

The only theory that makes a little bit of sense seems to be:

If you're Ukraine, don't you think that if you hold out long enough, eventually the Russians will just get sick of it all? — RogueAI

Which not only as points out is a theory that didn't work for the Chechens, but there's little reason for the Russians to simply get up and leave if losses were indeed a problem, they'd just stop offensive actions, as Ukraine would have the exact same (likely a lot more) problems in doing their own offensives and have zero advantages in a war that transforms into mostly just artillery firing back and forth (as they have significantly less artillery and other standoff munitions).

And that's if statements like a "estimated 100 000 killed or wounded" are even remotely true or just made up for propaganda purposes as they seem to be. For all we know, the estimate is simply assuming Russian losses are similar to Ukrainian losses and the pentagon knows Ukraine has 100 000 killed and wounded in this time frame, so let's just assume it's the same for the Russians.

However, these sorts of "rules of thumb" can be wildly wrong when there's differences in capabilities. Russians have more artillery and more types of artillery, electronic warfare (i.e. drone advantage), and now deployed glide bombs that Ukraine has no AA capabilities to stop, and so on, and their losses could be nothing like Ukrainian losses.

Not to say that's what this US estimate is based on, but it's an example of how you engineer what you want to hear in a bureaucratic setting. In itself, there's nothing wrong with coming up with an estimate based on some given assumptions, so an analyst given this task can carry it out without lying, then you can declare this estimate exists and just omit the part that there's no reason to believe it's true.

↪boethius, so, Russia rolls into Ukraine at the Gremlin's orders, bombs blazing, grabbing land, Ukrainians defend with foreign aid, and the defense are labeled war-mongers? — jorndoe

What's war mongering is the assumption that supplying arms is somehow necessary to the exclusion of peace talks and diplomacy. That declaring things like Ukraine will negotiate only after Russia withdraws, which is just stupid, is some purist being "tough" on Russia etc.

Obviously, you negotiate to get what you want, not after you already get what you want.

A logic that excludes peace is, by definition, mongering for war.

Likewise, simply assuming Ukraine is entitled to arms supplies and it's all "Ukrainian agency" is just cowardly war mongering, such as stating "Ukrainians defend with foreign aid". Ukraine is not entitled to arms supplies, if they didn't manage to navigate their international relations to avoid a war and didn't manage to create with their own taxes and policies a conventional deterrent, that's their business and doesn't morally bind anyone to supporting their war effort; supplying arms is not some moral position (plenty of countries get invaded and the West doesn't supply arms because it's "the moral thing to do"), it is a policy position taken in the West's, particularly the US, (at least perceived) interest to have a prolonged giant war.

If that policy is not in the average Ukrainians interest compared to the Russian's initial offer of autonomous Donbas, neutrality, giving up claim to Crimea, but in the US' interest (that all of a sudden after decades of the US going on about their interest as the explanation of all their policies ... is somehow no longer the case?) then, again, it is war mongering because the US wants a war.

For, without not only the arms but promises that are obvious lies (such as giving Ukraine "whatever it needs" and "for as long as it takes") fighting a long war would not even be possible for Ukraine. Had the truth been told: that Ukraine will be supported insofar as it serves the US, at least perceived in the White House, interest (and enough to also justify twisting the arms of NATO members against the war), maybe that would have been pause for thought for Ukrainians, and even Zelensky.

Ukraine has no friends in this situation, only war mongerers who want war today. The day war in Ukraine is no longer fit for purpose, the narrative will change overnight to: "oh well".

If you disagree, you believe this war is some moral imperative based on absolute values, then all I hear is a lot of talking and not much fighting in your holy war.

I talk because I owe nothing to Ukraine, sworn no oath and have given no promises, and believe in peace and not war, and peace is achieved by talk. If you believe in war and not peace, then you should do war and not talk.

If you are back to being some impartial observer of things without skin in the game and a horse in the race, then observe there are war mongerers on each side, and for now they are the victors.

For people curious about the use of ChatGPT in legal analysis, definitely has limits, but also has it's uses.

For example, with the simple prompt: "What crimes are committed or alleged in the following email:"

And the c/p (one single) email I receive, ChatGPT produces:

Based on the content of the email, it appears that the following crimes or alleged crimes may have been committed:

1. Fraudulent representation or misrepresentation - The sender alleges that the recipient, B, is not the legitimate CEO of the company and does not have the authority to represent himself as such. This could potentially constitute fraudulent representation or misrepresentation.

2. Breach of fiduciary duty - The sender accuses B of acting against the interests of the shareholders by issuing loans without proper authority and compromising the voting process for his own benefit. This could potentially be a breach of fiduciary duty, which is a legal obligation to act in the best interests of others, such as shareholders.

3. Embezzlement - The loans issued by B, which the sender alleges were not valid, could potentially constitute embezzlement, which is the illegal appropriation of money or property that belongs to someone else.

4. Forgery or falsification of documents - If B did in fact issue loans without proper authority, he may have forged or falsified documents to do so.

5. Conspiracy or collusion - The sender suggests that B may have been trying to compromise the voting process to keep his position on the board, which could potentially constitute a conspiracy or collusion to manipulate the outcome of a vote.

It is important to note that these are only potential crimes or allegations based on the content of the email, and any actual criminal liability would need to be determined by a court of law based on the evidence presented. — ChatGPT

Whereas, as a null case, I asked the same thing, "What crimes are committed or alleged in the following email:", and c/p'd Moby Dick's chapter "The Advocate" (hoping that's a challenge) and ChatGPT simply responds:

There are no crimes committed or alleged in this email. The email is an excerpt from the novel "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville and is a defense of the whaling industry against the perception that it is an unpoetic and disreputable pursuit. The author argues that whaling is an honorable profession that has contributed significantly to global exploration and trade, and that whalemen are deserving of respect and admiration. — ChatGPT

Of course, maybe that's easy as it's public information (but still, good on ChatGPT to know that).

So, same experiment with a pretty random chosen business email of similar length, just to make things harder it is an email that discusses legal concepts:

Based on the content of the email, it appears that there are no crimes committed or alleged. However, there may be potential violations of contractual agreements and breach of confidentiality if any confidential information is used outside the scope of written agreements. The email discusses the need for a formal written agreement to move negotiations forward and to avoid presenting undefined or loosely defined collaborations to investors. Additionally, the email suggests that a more detailed engineering study is required to ensure the success of the projects mentioned. — "ChatGPT

So, pretty good. Definitely based on these experiments you "need something" to get ChatGPT to start listing crimes such as fraud, embezzlement, conspiracy, etc.

You can of course lead ChatGPT on (i.e. instruct it to make the argument a crime has been committed), but if that's not your goal, you can make very simple neutral prompts (which on null experiments does not produce a positive result). Likewise, you can ask ChatGPT to make arguments for and against a given crime it identifies as potential, as well as instruct it to make cases for and against, by the sender or receiver of the email etc. and keep things balanced.

Answers are pretty sensible.

However, what ChatGPT doesn't do is get into any jurisdictional analysis, it does not even ask what jurisdiction the email is sent and received, nor build any nuanced theory of potential motivations. It will just state that the email is perhaps coercive to control an outcome.

Conclusion, ChatGPT is not a very good lawyer and can't really build a case. It does spit out key words and basic arguments that you'd start a legal analysis with, and also that it comes to similar interpretations does perhaps lend "impartial" weight that those interpretations are at least credible to consider, but not with any nuances.

I have to agree with here, when I mention most of the world (especially most of the world's leaders) are closer ideologically to Putin than the West: that's not a good thing in my opinion, but necessary to understand the geopolitical situation and the chances of Putin's uno reverse "authoritarian rebel alliance" (love it).

Of course, I wouldn't say most Western leaders are anti-authoritarian either, but their brand of authoritarianism in the name of liberalism doesn't go down well in most of the world, who respond mostly with "why not just be authoritarian in the name of authoritarianism; what's with all the extra steps? And also we really hate gays. What's with the gay loving? You're gay, is that it, gay!"

Evidently the belief in the new Novorossiya isn't at the ground level the same as in the propaganda. This was happening already before February 24th of last year. — ssu

Because of the war in Donbas?

What's interesting is that pro-Russian human accounts have influence and pro-Ukraine bot accounts have influence.

One could speculate that if there is a massive AI based bot influence campaign to promote Western policy, people with that bias want to hear more of it but then also experience cognitive dissonance when they encounter human criticism of the bot-generated-narrative, then people go back to the bots to maintain their perception.

We could also speculate that if your basic bias is being promoted all over the place by bots (whether you perceive / suspect them as bots or not) you feel no need to create content, whereas if your view is not represented by bots then there's more motivation to get a minority view out there.

It's like someone invents a super weapon which changes the fortunes of any war, they go bankrupt and no-one else even bothers to pick up the patent. — Isaac

Abstract. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine emphasises the role social media plays in modern day warfare, with conflict occurring in both the physical and information environments. There is a large body of work on identifying malicious cyber-activity, but less focusing on the effect this activity has on the overall conversation, especially with regards to the Russia/Ukraine Conflict. Here, we employ a variety of techniques including information theoretic measures, sentiment and linguistic analysis, and time series techniques to understand how bot activity influences wider online discourse. By aggregating account groups we find significant information flows from bot-like accounts to non-bot accounts with behaviour differing between sides. Pro-Russian non-bot accounts are most influential overall, with information flows to a variety of other account groups. No significant outward flows exist from pro-Ukrainian non-bot accounts, with significant flows from pro-Ukrainian bot accounts into pro-Ukrainian non-bot accounts. We find that bot activity drives an increase in conversations surrounding angst (with p = 2.450 × 10−4 ) as well as those surrounding work/governance (with p = 3.803 × 10−18). Bot activity also shows a significant relationship with non-bot sentiment (with p = 3.76×10−4 ), where we find the relationship holds in both directions. This work extends and combines existing techniques to quantify how bots are influencing people in the online conversation around the Russia/Ukraine invasion. It opens up avenues for researchers to understand quantitatively how these malicious campaigns operate, and what makes them impactful. — The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia-Ukraine war

What's with this obsession with what 'The Ukrainians' say? It's our decision to send weapons, our decision to support propaganda efforts, our decision to supply intelligence, our decision to avoid and block negotiations... these are all our decisions.

Stop hiding under the skirts of what 'The Ukrainians' say and have the balls to make up your own fucking mind. — Isaac

The West has managed to develop "woke warmongering" somehow.

Not-supplying-arms would be a micro-aggression against the mythical representation of the oppressed Ukrainian: all further discussion is taboo.

The shortest answer is that to assess such responsibility one should be able to distinguish what is feasible (by the ruler) from what is desirable (by whom? The ruler? Humanity? You?). Being the most influent and powerful ruler on an “anarchic” international system doesn’t necessarily imply that the ruler has enough power to reset the world according to what is desirable on a global scale (BTW the scientific investigations on the global environmental effects of human development, its promotion and popularisation are all integral part of the US-led world, so global environmental self-awareness are also a product of the evil American demiurge). — neomac

This does not in anyway even contradict the my statement:

Why wouldn't the party with the most influence and power in setting a policy, not be the most responsible for the results? — boethius

Everything you said doesn't comment on who's most responsible for the result of a policy. Sure, the most influent party does not control events, but they would still be most responsible. If all the nation-states together push for this policy (to do nothing about environmental catastrophe) the most influent party would still be the most responsible.

The idea that environmentalism is a US policy to begin with is truly remarkable, but we could continue that discussion in the climate change thread.

Who would? — neomac

The question is not who would, the question is "would you?"

You can answer no. Now, I'm pretty sure many members of the Nazi community in Ukraine would genuinely have no upper bound on the sacrifice of Ukrainians they are willing to make to fight the Russians.

Give the example and tell me how many losses would be worthwhile to you (if you had to choose)? — neomac

Deflection, deflection, deflection, as soon as it's "what cost is reasonable" it's somehow all of a sudden a ephemeral netherworld of philosophical speculation we can hardly even scratch the surface of.

I don't think the scenario of removing Russia from Ukraine is feasible, so this question is more relevant to people who think it is feasible, who support the Western policy that explicitly has this as the goal.

However, I have no problem answering these sorts of questions on the premise it was feasible.

I'd be willing to sacrifice 30 000 troops if that would achieve removing Russia from Ukraine entirely and completely end the war that way. Beyond 30 000 I would start to be uncomfortable that the cost is worth the outcome and would believe it is better to give up territory to preserve lives and end the war that way.

However, if there was some credible way to just remove Russia from Ukraine and completely end the war and achieve peace (something that I don't believe is actually feasible, but if I'm assuming it is) then 30 000 killed I'd find a reasonable cost, I'd hope for less but be satisfied if spending 30 000 lives achieved this military objective and bought peace with such methods.

In the real world, an attempt to remove Russia entirely from Ukraine by force I would expect would cost hundreds of thousands of lives and not succeed, and, even if it did, would not result in peace but the war would still be on.

I'd also expect Russia to deploy nuclear weapons effectively, if such a campaign were to start to succeed, bringing an end to the campaign and getting more people killed for the foolishness of Ukrainian and Western leaders.

Give the example and tell me what’s the number you start feeling uncomfortable with. — neomac

Obviously, negotiating a resolution based on the accepting the Russian's offered terms before the war, the main one being not joining NATO (which is only useful to join before the war ... not after the war), is my first choice.

However, if I was in Ukrainian government and was advising negotiation and the war breaks out anyways because no one listens to me, I'd be comfortable with a few thousand losses to arrest the initial Russian invasion and stabilise lines. This is a reasonable objective due to the logistics of invasion.

There is some value in "national pride" and contract soldiers sign up to do this particular duty, so it is, to an extent, part of the social contract. Of course, the point of arresting the initial invasion, of a larger force that cannot be defeated in any reasonable analysis (there is no scenario where Ukraine marches on Moscow), is to create negotiation leverage by demonstrating the capacity and will to fight.

The larger force can very likely win, true at massive losses to your own side but nevertheless substantial losses to the invading force as well, that represents both military and political risks of all kinds. There are big incentives to reach a resolution even if the larger force can likely win by brute force.

Losses beyond this I would be uncomfortable with. The negotiation position does not get better and simply gets worse the more the war continues. A resolution after a few days has the big advantage to the invading force that the cost has been very low, therefore they do not need to gain much for it to be a win for the domestic population. The higher the cost paid, the more the stronger party requires compensation for the cost, not less.

Of course, I don't like the Nazi's in Ukraine but they can be dealt with in another way; it's not reasonable to get ten's of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people killed and traumatise and displace millions simply because some Nazi's would die too.

Had the negotiation at the start of the war succeeded, and 2000 to 3000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, I'd be satisfied with the result and military performance and it a reasonable cost in lives to negotiate independence and a lasting peace for the rest of Ukraine.

What you want to achieve militarily and politically in this sort of situation is stable lines by falling back, inflict cost but preserve forces, rely on logistics stabilising lines anyways, and then negotiating the best possible deal with the leverage one has.

If the deal isn't "what is desirable" as the least influent party in the situation, that's just how politics goes sometimes.

Conclusion: I don’t answer your questions not because I’m emotionally uncomfortable, but because I’m intellectually uncomfortable to answer heavily framed questions for which I can't provide a meaningful answer (even if I was tempted to answer them exactly the way you would answer them). I’m interested to argue about morality and geopolitics, not about morale and military. — neomac

Your analysis made no sense and I'll ignore it, does not support your conclusion, and your conclusion is false anyways.

These are not heavily framed question, it is the business of war to sacrifice lives to achieve military outcomes by force. You cannot speak of outcomes without also speaking of the lives reasonably sacrificed to achieve those outcomes. That's what war planning and the consideration of war is about: we are wiling for these people to die to achieve these objectives. That's what sending soldiers to die is premised on: that it is a reasonable sacrifice and the people making the decisions are comfortable with the expected results.

Can unexpected things happen and more people die than is reasonable? Yes. That is called a mistake, disaster, catastrophe. Why? Because more people died than is reasonable to achieve insufficient objectives.

However, to start the analysis an idea of what amount of lives is worthwhile to spend to achieve what must be posited.

I discuss policies as any avg dudes who is neither a politician nor an activist. And since I’m in a philosophy forum, I’m interested to explore assumptions and implications without feeling pressed by political/military/economic urgency, or frustrated out of lack of expertise. — neomac

Well, thanks for clarifying you have no idea what you are talking about.

However, if you're interested in assumptions, the assumption of commanding soldiers to fight in a war is that there is something that can be achieved militarily and the cost in lives is reasonable. The implication of war is people die.

If there is a way to avoid more people dying through talk that is preferable. Sometimes it is not possible, the Nazi's could not be talked out of their mission and neither the Japanese, insofar as there was the slightest hope of victory. However, the Russian-Ukraine war is far closer to a border dispute than a campaign of world or hemispherical conquest, there is no pathway to outright victory (except Russia employing nuclear weapons, which they are unlikely to do) and so talk is the only viable pathway to peace and will happen sooner or later.

Concerning the question about Finland/Europe, you shouldn’t ask me, you should ask Russia. To your questions, I would add mine: e.g. was there any scenario in which Ukraine was invading Russia? Was there any scenario in which NATO or the US was going to invade Russia?
NATO enlargement can grow the military and reputational costs and threats against Russia’s imperialism. That’s the point. — neomac

You made the claim Finland joining NATO is some big geopolitical strategic loss to Russia, I pointed out it doesn't really change anything ... and now you say I should ask Russia about it?

The difference with Ukraine compared to Finland is that there is an important Naval base in Crimea, there are lot's of Russian speakers in Ukraine, Ukraine is a former soviet republic, and there is first and foremost an economic conflict over Ukraine (spheres of influence of the major powers).

Finland was never part of the Soviet Union, was squarely part of "the West" and never part of Russia's sphere of influence. There is no conflict between the West and Russia over Finland.

This conflict is the US wanting to expand it's imperial influence in Ukraine and diminish Russia's imperial influence, made the bold move of orchestrating a coup to replace a legitimate leader willing to compromise with Russia (i.e. not insane and in power because many Ukrainians did, maybe still do, support compromise with Russia over conflict and warfare).

There are two empires sorting out the question of who indeed does have more influence over what happens in Ukraine at the end of the day.

Neither empire has a moral case.

The Rest is not an economic-military-technlogical integrated block yet as much as the West. And again power must be understood in relative advantages, timing, trends. You are unnecessarily focused in the present (which is not what geopolitical agents do when engaged in power struggles). Things my look very differently over the next decades depending on how this war ends. — neomac

That's because actual evidence exists in the present and only speculation exists about the future.

To conclude one speculation is better than another, turns out requires evidence in the present to support.

Until EU will build enough unity to support of common foreign strategy and cumulate deterrent/coercive power against competitors like Russia, China and the US.
This war suggests that the EU is not only far from that, but things may go awfully wrong if the alliance with the US will break. The void or significant weakening of American hegemony in Europe can likely boost the economic/military/ideological competition between European countries (the premises are already there, see the divergence between the UK and the EU, Eastern European countries and Western European Countries wrt the war in Ukraine, the rivalries between north Europe and South Europe about the immigrants) which can’t rely on the Western-lead international order, and between global powers (now including the US) which will bring their competition in the heart of Europe worse than in the past decades (including during the Cold War). And will more likely encourage authoritarianism even in Europe, to control ensuing social unrest (the right-wing turn in many European countries may favour this trend). — neomac

This seems accurate.

I don’t claim to be an impartial observer if that means that I do not have preferences or that I didn’t pick a side: I prefer an avg life in the West than an avg life in China, Russia or Iran. I side with a strategy that weakens Russia’s aggressiveness as much as possible. But this partiality is perfectly compatible with objectivity in understanding how the game is being played by competitors. And presenting it as honestly as possible (at least if one is not doing propaganda!). — neomac

This literally means:

“A proponent of US foreign policy” — neomac

If you are supporting the arms supply to Ukraine and the policy of not-negotiating, even frustrating any attempt to do so, but "let them fight".

If you are starting to doubt if the lives this policy costs are worthwhile to spend, then "preferring the Western avg life" does not exclude the idea that Western intervention in Ukraine is not leading the avg Ukrainian to the avg Western life, but to trauma and sadness and death.

What you describe is definitely the recipe, just to me seemed like more work, and higher risk, to coverup crime that happened in another country anyways. But I guess they'd still have to talk to me and that would be work.

Whistleblowers tend to be accused of something to shut them up. Nobody wants to investigate middle class and upper class crime, — unenlightened

Here's how ChatGPT summarises the accusations against me contained in a single email:

Based on the context you provided, there are several potential crimes that could be involved:

Embezzlement: If the accusations of the CEO issuing loans without the authority to do so are true, then it could be considered embezzlement.

Fraud: If the CEO deliberately misled investors about the company's financial situation or the legitimacy of the loans, then it could be considered fraud.

False representation: If the CEO is falsely representing themselves as the legitimate CEO of the company and issuing loans without proper authority, then it could be considered false representation.

Shareholder oppression: If the CEO is using their position to gain personal advantage at the expense of other shareholders, it could be considered shareholder oppression.

Breach of fiduciary duty: If the CEO is not acting in the best interests of the company and its shareholders, then it could be considered a breach of their fiduciary duty.

It is important to note that without more information and investigation, it is not possible to determine definitively if any of these crimes have been committed. — ChatGPT

Email literally contains the statement:

All other options will reveal serious accusations with the risk to damage the reputation and valuation of the company. — Absolute Madlad, member of the board of directors

Which is basically copy and pasting the definition of blackmail from the dictionary into your email and pressing send.

If the accusations aren't true ... it's just really, really dumb blackmail.

But, kids, if you want to extort someone, do it over the phone. Simple, clean, and if it doesn't work you can just deny the whole conversation ever happened or not "what you meant, what you actually said was this different thing" ... you happened to have come up with after discussion with your lawyer.

I guess this guy thought I would go along with it and wanted to entrap me in an actual crime of the coverup (covering up the allegations of wrongdoing is still a crime even if the wrongdoing being alleged turns out to be false) and hiding things from investors and auditors, so that I'm still committing serious fraud even if I realise later the original accusations aren't true.

Bold, but stupid.

Of course, my response the next day was:

If what you say is true a serious crime has been committed that I have, as an “illegitimate CEO”, been fraudulently representing the company these past years and everything I have signed is invalid.

If what you say is true, a second serious crime has been committed in that you are soliciting me to engage in a conspiracy with the other board members to cover up this crime, under the threat of blackmail of a poor performance review as well as the reward of a recompense of the CTO position.

There is no other interpretation of your letter I am able to arrive at. — Boethius, CEO

What may also surprise you even more is that this goes on for 7 pages of dense type ... with some paragraphs underlined and in bright red, which definitely indicates to me the work wasn't even finished (which in some ways supports your observation of a half-educated rookie but I think a rookie would be particularly concerned about the formatting and not leaving red editing markings on the document).

It's mostly just rambling about points of law (in English, so not that useful in a jurisdiction where English isn't an official language) without even tying these observations about the law to the case, including some that seems to contradict the main claim that I have no evidence at all, just perception:

There is therefore no requirement of certainty or a high probability of an offence having been committed. When considering whether to initiate a criminal investigation, it should be borne in mind that the purpose of a criminal investigation is precisely to investigate an offence instead of settling any other legal disputes. A mere allegation of an offence does not exceed the threshold required to initiate a criminal investigation. Appropriate concrete grounds for the decision to initiate a criminal investigation must be presented. In borderline cases, the interest of solving a crime is relevant, and it is more important in the case of serious offences — National Special Prosecutor

So suddenly borderline and not a "high probability" just a "good probability" of serious crime?

Is he claiming this case is borderline ... or just casually observing that this would be true if the case was borderline (i.e. a bunch of evidence existed), but we actually know it's not borderline at all and Boethius is a raving lunatic imagining things.

Which definitely seems odd to bring up the borderline concept if you're main conclusion is:

Boethius has not presented any concrete, objectively observable evidence to support his claims. A mere allegation of an offence or a person's own perception of a criminal incident does not cross the threshold for a criminal investigation. — National Special Prosecutor

Seems pretty strong words to me, nothing borderline about it.

Also, why would it take 7 pages to explain there is absolutely nothing to see here.

What is shocking is the lack of clarity about what are undisputed facts and what are your claims and what are 'their' claims/interpretations. This is so basic and important in matters legal, that the report is actually useless and uninformative. I don't think the quality is good enough for it to be a big conspiracy; it looks more like like some half-educated rookie saddled with making a report to close the 'case', that was never really opened, and no one was ever going to look at. — unenlightened

Oh totally, it was totally shocking to me receiving this document, totally floored.

It's actually difficult to imagine a prosecutor sitting down and writing a sentence with the word "murder" in it and not then reviewing that it means exactly what he intends to mean and there is no room for this sort of conversation. Especially if your goal is to avoid there being an investigation, the word "murder" is easily a land mine that can be counter productive to that goal.

I'm careful about what I say in completely banal emails about the most trivial stuff as a board member of small companies ... so the idea a prosecutor would not write carefully about murder is truly incredible.

Now, indeed, does seems like "some half-educated rookie saddled with making a report to close the 'case'" so what makes this document even stranger is that it's written by the third or fourth senior prosecutor in the entire country, the special prosecutor directly under the deputy prosecutor, under the prosecutor general, equal, or then just below, the senior prosecutor that runs the national prosecution authority. I also went through the whole thing with other national prosecutors, who initially told me the investigation had already started (as the evidence is overwhelming; especially that the initial statement of police to not investigate, that I made a mere accusation, cannot possibly be true, a "mere accusation" is exactly that, just making an accusation without any evidence at all (not even testimony: just accusing someone, no further details, which is indeed insufficient to start an investigation); so seeing tons of evidence, hundreds of attachments, recordings etc. they were completely panicked).

As for conspiracy, does seem I'm alleging that, but I actually went to some lengths as to explain the motivations of police to claim I'm making a mere accusation without any evidence at all makes zero sense, especially as it's not even their jurisdiction and all they have to do is forward the evidence to the Financial Intelligence Unit.

This is what puzzled me about attorney's telling me exactly this would happen (certainly they've seen this before, and it's just "the way of police" basically), but I really had a hard time imaging why.

None of the people I'm accusing of laundering money even live in my country, so all local police needed to do is forward the evidence to the Financial Intelligence Unit who would forward it to Interpol. It's a lot more effort to (as you point out) to write hasty analysis that can be easily proven false. Now, if that happened (evidence forwarded along) and nothing came of it, which seems likely, then there wouldn't be any issue, certainly no way to allege a coverup. The evidence is "somewhere" and I'd go about my business, maybe ten years from now some detective is interested in the story as the same names come up with similar allegations; that was honestly my expectation.

The police also make there initial decision that I'm making "mere accusations" without even phoning me. Which honestly just seems dangerous, as even if you wanted to coverup the crime ... you'd be even more motivated to understand what evidence exists in order to craft your narrative.

Of course, they could have easily just stone walled on "no investigation, police discretion, we'll give no reasons" but the problem that arises is that they put me under investigation instead, so now the investigation is started which should be unbiased and consider equally my evidence against the people accusing me. This is what causes the whole catastrophe with police, as it's simply bad optics already on the surface that someone reports money laundering and then the person involved in that reports them for a crime and police start an investigation into the whistle blower (classic retaliation that's supposed to be illegal).

From what I can tell, police just do these big favours for the attorney's of the people accused of money laundering (I was put under investigation, told I'm going to jail, for what no one can say, but told all claims would be dropped if I signed the severance package, took the money, a cool million Euros ... though, to be clear, not real money, but a promise to find it later ... maybe, but a 20 000 Euro down payment to ease my suffering).

But why do these favours? Get these reports, hear a story from the counter-party attorney's, not even bother to phone me to followup on the crimes I filed and then put me under investigation ... but also not even phone me about that either.

I very much doubt police got any benefit, it just seems that's what police do about money laundering.

But what's clear is that once the coverup starts, it's a strong commitment of the whole system, then it just snowballs until you get the above kinds of paragraphs making false statement about what evidence the Financial Intelligence Unit has and what they have said, or not said, which is aggravated fraud to misrepresent an authority's statements, and particularly aggravated if we're talking about a police unit that investigates organised crime.

What I can say in this experience, is that criminals are really stupid and not at all the cunning planners we see in movies and series ... which kind of makes sense when you think about it, as if you're smart (which I expect all participants of the forum to be) and you sit down and weigh the costs and benefits of being involved in organised crime, it's really hard to say it's worth committing crime to risk being murdered and also need to worry about police catching you for decades. Smart people do legitimate business.

Rather, the reality seems to be that criminals are really dumb, but society organised to finance organised crime (through prohibition), and police are woefully under staffed to catch these dumb criminals most of the time, so they have the habit of just dismissing cases. Now, normally that's fine as as most cases you don't find the key evidence if there's no investigation. What's unusual about my case is that I'm sent the paperwork, then blackmailed (accused of signing illegitimate loans) ... in an email.

Absolutely stupid. If you're going to extort someone, have the decency to do it over the phone so there's no need to report it to police.

If you ask ChatGPT this question it responds:

"The statement says that Boethius has "justified cause to believe" that the police are planning to murder him due to the reports he has filed. This suggests that he has some evidence or reasoning to support his belief, rather than it being a mere speculation or assumption."

Further enquiry leads to the conclusion:

"You raise a valid point. It is possible that the prosecutor who wrote the statement did verify that Boethius contacted the National Bureau of Investigation's Financial Intelligence Unit and did not receive a reply or enquiry. The prosecutor may have based the statement on Boethius claims as well as any available records or evidence that support the claim.

However, it is also possible that the prosecutor did not independently verify the information and simply included it based on Boethius' claims. In any case, it is important for authorities to conduct a thorough investigation and verify all relevant information and claims to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information."

Which sounds reasonable enough, definitely whatever the truth of these statements is, should be verified.

Interestingly, ChatGPT does understand the implications of contradictory evidence:

Would not the existence of a response make the statement in this report that there was no response false?

ChatGPT: Yes, if it is true that Boethius received a response from the Financial Intelligence Unit, it would make the statement in the report that he "did not receive any reply or enquiry" false or inaccurate.

If there is evidence that the Financial Intelligence Unit did respond to Boethius email, it would be important to clarify this discrepancy in the report and determine why the incorrect information was initially presented. It could be an honest mistake or a deliberate misrepresentation, and it would be important to understand the context and implications of the error.

However, the fact that Boethius received a response from the Financial Intelligence Unit does not necessarily prove or disprove the validity of his claims or the existence of any wrongdoing. The prosecutor would still need to conduct an independent investigation and evaluate the evidence presented to determine the facts of the matter.

Prompt: What good faith and bad motivations could there be to make this false statement?

ChatGPT: There could be several reasons why someone might make a false statement, knowingly or unknowingly. Some possible good faith and bad motivations that could lead to the false statement in this report are:

Good faith motivations:

1. Lack of knowledge or information: The person who made the statement may not have had access to all the relevant information and may have assumed that no response was received from the Financial Intelligence Unit.
2. Miscommunication: The person who made the statement may have received incorrect information from a source and believed it to be true.
3. Memory lapse: The person who made the statement may have genuinely forgotten about the response from the Financial Intelligence Unit.

Bad motivations:

1. Cover-up: The person who made the statement may have deliberately concealed the fact that a response was received from the Financial Intelligence Unit to cover up any potential wrongdoing.
2. Misdirection: The person who made the statement may have intentionally created a false narrative to mislead the prosecutor and prevent them from pursuing an investigation.
3. Malice: The person who made the statement may have acted out of malice towards Boethius, and deliberately provided false information to harm his credibility.

It is important to note that without additional information, it is difficult to determine the motivations behind the false statement. The prosecutor may need to investigate the matter further to uncover any potential wrongdoing or misrepresentations. — ChatGPT conversation

It is very strange. I don't know the law of your country because I don't know where you are from, but in my country (Spain) it is illegal to make official requirements or communications in a language that the interlocutor cannot understand. — javi2541997

Yes it is very strange. explanation is a good one, but even then the original decision should be in the official language and then there would be a translation for Interpol. Certainly they can just email each other in English and maybe some reporting mechanisms specific to Interpol that would be in English, but since neither is the case here it's just sloppy work (and certainly they don't expect me to get this document anyways; so, corruption breeds in darkness).

But yes, law is likely exactly the same as in Spain, that decisions and procedures (anything "official") are in the official language and that in some cases you can have thing translated (for instance anything to do with crime) and in other cases you'd have to pay your own translations. Some bureaucracies have service in English and in some narrow areas you need to talk through an interpreter (when there's potential legal consequences of the conversation, bureaucrats will speak through an interpreter so that they are certain they are following the law).

It is true that you have English skills, BUT I personally think that the prosecutor acted with bad faith or at least with bad praxis. Can you ask your lawyer ask or inquire something related to this issue? — javi2541997

I have asked attorney's and lawyers; they just say it's of course strange and unusual. There's not really any doubt about what the language act says, and I've also recorded law enforcement also clarifying this on multiple occasions, and they like giving their speech that of course we're in this country and decisions are in the official language, establish language dominance.

Does the law of your country allow this kind of procedure? — javi2541997

No, it's really clear that all legal procedure is in the official language in the language act, then a whole bunch of paragraphs of who non-native speaker has right to translations and interpretation in what context etc.

The reason that legal procedure must be in the official language is that the only law that exists here is in the official language, and attorney's have on multiple occassions explained to me the subtle differences between the official English translation (that even comes with the preamble that it's not official for purposes of law) and the actual law, in connotation, scope, and in some cases seems just bad word choice on the part of the translators. Mostly reading the English translations is pretty accurate, but because there are differences, all legal decisions and procedures must be in the official language.

As is the case in every country (there's an official law, in an official set of languages, and the law is practiced in that official language). It's as strange this decision is in English as it would be if it was in Swahili or Chinese, as far as the law is concerned.

It will be quite incredible when a judge needs to order the translation of the above document, written by the National Prosecutors of the same country, for the document to be submissable as evidence in court.

And I'm also in an EU country, and all these language laws are pretty standard as they also relate to European citizen rights in other EU countries, so probably pretty much the same as in Spain.

I'm a native speaker, not a lawyer, but somewhat familiar with formal language. — unenlightened

Really appreciated your analysis, thank you.

Yes, it's badly written, which is another point I've made which is just "how do we even know what's meant?"

Of course, the whole thing could be easily solved by prosecutors just issuing a clarification that "this means that", which they haven't done. I expect because then that creates further paper about this report that's made in English ... that's already a legal problem in itself.

The author of this report stated in an email (asking me to rewrite everything as he didn't understand the mentioned emails) that "English isn't my working language" (which I don't see how rewriting things in English is going to solve).

But yes, certainly we can interpret things as just badly written hodgepodge of claims we are dismissing.

Which is what I expected, what the summary says which is purely dismissive, no explanation, nothing to see here.

But it just bothered me that it was called a summary, that's really unusual in this sort of paper work, it's usually "decision this or that".

And this has been my main point, that this paragraph, at minimum, should be clarified what the author claims the meaning to be. But authorities can't even do that: send me a short message that this sentence does not mean what you say it means.

My guess is that since I never made this claim (only that I feared police), if they clarify they are saying I've made this claim they know my response will be the whole entire letter I wrote clarifying I am definitely not claiming I know police to intending or planning to murder me, but it is a reasonable fear in this kind of situation after the police assaulted me (how do I know they would draw the line at assault).

Is it possible that your complaint had an international aspect and that this was a token arse-covering report to Interpol or someone? — unenlightened

This is a really good point. I didn't think about that, but would be a good explanation.

The person who I'm told is behind the deal (and told this to the prosecutor -- the name that was so alarming and I went to police originally for protection from) has a red notice from Interpol, as we speak, for money laundering.

One reason I've pressed forward in this, I'm not accusing anyone of laundering money who isn't already accused by Interpol of laundering money. And these engineering projects are literally for diamond mines in Africa, in the countries at the very top of the risk of money laundering list, and I have all the paperwork about them, so I'm pretty far from making any fantastical claims at the end of the day. It's not like I'm accusing the Norwegian Sovereign wealth fund of some crazy corporate scheme, I'm accusing someone already accused of laundering billions of dollars, a colonel (some reason you need a colonel to do engineering in Africa), and then a bunch of middlemen that arranged the papers, licences and engineering documents (that apparently I'm supervising).

The other reason is they send me all the paperwork of these deals, which I can for sure tell you is money laundering as they put me down as senior manager (in charge of an engineering project budgeted at over a couple hundred million dollars). So, I'm pretty sure the senior manager of a money laundering operation can clarify if it's about laundering money or not. And, if I might be murdered / disappeared as a loose end anyways, I'd rather people have a chance to know why.

For people's curiosity, the summary was a one page document with a bunch of boiler plate and simply stated:

"No concrete grounds have been presented in the case to support the allegations made by [Boethius] in his writings. There is no reason to suspect an offence in the case. No pre-trial investigation will be initiated."

However, this is only a statement about a very narrow jurisdiction over police, not the underlying money laundering.

So why it's so important to state that I already sent all the evidence to the Financial Intelligence Unit (in internal prosecutor documents I'm not intended to see but other prosecutors may review) and did not get a reply (implying the evidence was not actionable enough to even reply to me), as that would explain no record of ever transferring the evidence that is not in their jurisdiction to the proper jurisdiction and also heavily implies there is no evidence and it's all just my "perception" (the word this prosecutor used elsewhere in the document); as obviously, if there is evidence of money laundering, police don't investigate, then I claim police are covering it up, assaulted me etc. it's bad optics at best if it turns out to be money laundering all along, makes my accusations against police more credible if my accusations of the underlying money laundering are also supportable (so, therefore, if other prosecutors, for example who also got all my evidence to start, may wonder what the Financial Intelligence Unit would say about all the evidence of money laundering, certainly would ease their minds to know the Financial Intelligence Unit as the same information and has not acted).

So, it's a really important phrase that accomplishes 2 important legal things to claim I already sent the evidence to the Financial Intelligence Unit and they did not even reply (implies there is so little merit the experts on money laundering don't even reply).

So, a really brazen levels of fraud ... that can be proven to be a false statement in a criminal process with simply producing the response from the Financial Intelligence Unit.

Of course ... I'd need to be alive to do be able to do that (presumably, it is philosophy forum after all, so we should keep an open mind, but still, I think the point can be defended).

I am not a native speaker, but at least I understood the same and I guess I am following your point. The fact that a specific police department is conspiring against you. — javi2541997

Thanks for your input. As for a native speaker, the author isn't a native speaker either, so it's also useful to get the impression from similar English levels.

On the other hand, I can't understand why you want to use English in your procedure, or I am not seeing your strategy clearly. — javi2541997

This is not my choice.

It's absolutely incredible that this document is in English to begin with. I receive lot's of correspondence from the government about all sorts of things, it's always in the official language of the country (why wouldn't it be) and in some very limited cases there's an official translation that comes with or after the official documents. For instance, all the other internal documents I received in my requests for information are in the official language.

It's also in the law that legal procedure is in the official language, as with every country this is an important legal detail of what language we're even talking law in.

Also, considering I was not sent this document when the decision was made, but only a summary, it's not in English for my convenience (if that was even a valid reason) as I wasn't supposed to get this internal document. I had to phone half a dozen times making the argument that "summary" must be a summary of something more complete and I want that more complete document.

They'd be like, "document, what document" and I'd be like "well, when I write a summary, which I do often as a corporate executive, it's usually a summary of a thing, if it was just the thing I wouldn't call it a summary ... I'd just call it 'the thing', so please go double check because I don't understand how the summary doesn't summarise something longer of which there's merit in writing a summary to begin with."

Eventually they just sent me this document some months later.

It's not only not for my convenience but would cause all sorts of problems if I did get this document, the mere fact it it's English is of course reason to retract the decision (it makes no reference to official law, which is in the official language; I've gotten this lesson a dozen times over the years that arguments, statements, representations, in English of or about the law may not be accurate and cannot be official; the official translation into English of the law makes clear it's not itself officially the law etc.).

I was honestly floored to get this document in English. Indeed, my request was I wanted the official complete decision and an official translation (I have a right to translations if it concerns crime).

So, the only explanation I can find is that it's in English for the benefit of other prosecutors, that writing in the official language with reference to the official law wouldn't make sense to people legally trained in that language. And these are national prosecutors and I went through everything with a few other prosecutors before they made a case and then gave the decision to this prosecutor (probably because of their level of English).

On the main point of the issue: reporting crimes such as corruption or money laundering is a very serious issue. Keep in mind that in these crimes will be involved police departments, politicians, judges, prosecutors, etc... It is like opening up the Pandora box. Prepare yourself with the consequences, because all the dirty public workers will go against you. — javi2541997

Yes, the point of my second comment was I was well aware of the consequences. Police told me to talk to attorneys and they all said the same thing, like literally 2 dozen of them.

However, if my evidence wasn't absolutely clear and all recorded in email and recorded phone conversations (which I have a right to do in my jurisdiction) then definitely there'd be no point, totally agreed.

But, on the rare occasions you're simply delivered the evidence (for years I suspected the deals of this other board member was money laundering, but of course did nothing as I had no evidence, and I guess he got overconfident and so one day he just sent me the evidence), then everything with the police I recorded, it's a surprise and not something I looked for, but I feel a deep responsibility to go the distance.

Of course, I'd rather not be murdered, and if this is simply what this statement says police are planning to do, then additional opinion that's what it appears to say is really useful. Likewise, if people have a different impression, then maybe there is less cause for alarm. The false statement about the evidence the Financial Intelligence Unit has is already pretty bad ... just not as bad as being murdered.

Also, to satisfy people's curiosity, the reply to my email requesting advise of what to do and my evidence be reviewed was the following:

Dear Mr. [Bothethius],
In response to your email on April 8th, 2021, we would propose for you to discuss with a [national] attorney / law firm many of which can be found on the internet and have information on their webpages also in English. They would be able to advise on what the civil and criminal law options would be in this case and would be able to provide support in filing a criminal complaint to the [baddass] police if that were the solution you would choose or possible civil law litigation options.
Sincerely yours,
[Baddass police officer] — Baddass Bureau of Investigation

Which to me definitely looks like a response and not not-a-reply and also makes clear they didn't get, much less review, any evidence (which they didn't, I sent a short letter asking for advice), and they would only do so after I file a criminal complaint, which is indeed the law (and you cannot report crime directly to them as a normal citizen, only to local police, which I then do).

And to be clear, "money laundering" was in the subject of my email "Request for advice on irregular business patterns - money laundering always one explanation".

I then did consult with attorneys, although I didn't see why I should pay for the analysis of actual money laundering nor what usefulness that even has, what matters is evidence and whoever is in charge of money laundering in police should have it and decide what to do, if anything, and maybe it's evidence that's useful in 10 years because same stupid people keep doing the same stupid shit.

Anyways, every attorney I talked to agreed the evidence I had was reasonable suspicion of money laundering, that the specific crimes carried out to coverup the money laundering was in any case clear crime ... but recommended not to report it to police. I'm like "what, why shouldn't we report money laundering to police?" most would then not answer just say they couldn't help me. One told me that what would happen is the police will never investigate the money laundering and I'd be put under investigation instead, even without evidence, and the police would try to put me in jail, but in any case destroy my career. One attorney told me that even if it was them in my situation with the same evidence, that that they agreed was unambiguous crime, that even then, reporting this sort of thing as an attorney, the police would not even investigate (and put them under investigation instead and try to destroy her career, just from being under investigation for crime as an attorney, isn't a good look). One attorney just flat out told me that they did not trust police to investigate this sort of crime.

Now this was truly incredible to me as in nearly 2 decades of managing organisations, dealing with institutions, dealing with lawyers and attorney's and auditors (both acting for and against my interest), and all sorts of legal issues, law this, clause that, regulation such-and-such, proper procedures, cross those t's and dot those not i's, definitely pay the taxes, not a single time did any legal professional ever present the idea or give the impression that the law, at the end of the day, simply does not matter at all, and to not report crime to police (which there is no risk, at least in the law, of doing when it comes to money laundering, as the threshold of evidence is incredibly low, "irregular business pattern" suffices; and, in other situations, it was super important to report crime as a board director as then you can't be liable for covering it up, or from lost funds due to the crime that even if the money won't be recovered, if you say the invoice was fraudulent and paid by accident then it's important to report that for your own liability and for auditing reasons etc.), so this was entirely new legal concepts suddenly coming from this class of individual, that it's now important not to report crime because police will commit crimes against you if you do that.

Naturally, I had to see this for myself.

I’m neither arguing that “climate change isn’t happening” nor that “won't be extremely bad”. I’m questioning your way of assigning responsibility and its implications. — neomac

Ok, well good to know we agree on the scientific facts.

You also seem to agree the US is the world's super power and global hegemon ... and not merely today but, most critically, in the 1990's after the fall of the Soviet Union and before the rise of China US was even more top dog than it is now, and it's that decade that was the most critical for setting climate and environmental policy.

Why wouldn't the party with the most influence and power in setting a policy, not be the most responsible for the results?

I already argued against this miscaracterization of my views.
- your basic framework of "US good” as opposed to your basic framework “Russia good”, “Iran good”, “China good”, “North Korea good”?
- the war in Ukraine is morally justified if it is sacrificing Ukrainians for this US "rules based order” as opposed to “the war in Ukraine is morally justified if it is killing,raping,deporting,destroying Ukrainians for Russia anti-West order?
- without any benefit to Ukrainians: as opposed to “without any benefit to Russians”?
I questioned the assumption that the West “is sacrificing” the Ukrainians. — neomac

I'm not mischaracterising your views, I'm literally asking questions that you keep deflecting from. That the questions are uncomfortable for you and you prefer not to answer them simply emphasises the incompleteness at best, and inconsistencies at worst, in your position.

You should not have a problem answering the question of how many Ukrainian lives you'd be willing to sacrifice to achieve what. And, for the sake of argument, let's just say you're able to decide the number and the goals. This would be the start of defining your position.

Would you be willing to sacrifice a million Ukrainians on the battlefield and still lose, a more-or-less fight to the death scenario, as the principle is more important than the result?

Do you find it acceptable the losses since Russia's offer last spring (assuming the offer was genuine: give-up claim to Crimea, independent Donbas) in the event the lines do not change further?

Would the losses since the Russian's offer be worth it in the event Ukraine outright loses?

Finally, to achieve the goal of removing Russia further from Ukraine, both including and excluding Crimea, how many losses would you (if you had to choose) be worthwhile?

If you want to discuss, don't deflect further with "Ukrainians want to fight it's not my decision, the West is just supplying arms", but engage in the argument and put yourself in the position of choosing the number of lives for the given scenario. Certainly you'd be willing to sacrifice 1 Ukrainian to achieve complete removal of Russia from Ukraine if it was both possible and your decision to make (I'd make the same decision; one life for the complete end of the war? no hesitation, will obviously save many more lives than the war continuing), so just keep increasing the number from there until you either reach a zone where you start to be uncomfortable (100 000, 200 000, 500 000) or then never become uncomfortable and inform us every single Ukrainian life is worth sacrificing to remove Russia from Ukraine.

And these sorts of decisions are part of NATO military training (which I've done) that the cost in lives must be justified by the worth of the objective achieved. The mere fact the other side is presumably "bad" (otherwise why are we fighting them) does not justify fighting at all cost to both your own troops as well as civilians. We are willing to sacrifice X to achieve Y is the fundamental framework of all military decision making.

For example, I think we'd agree the North Korean government is a terrible dystopian tyranny and if there was some easy way to topple the current government and put in a new one (even just our normal Western track record of how these things go is still likely far better than the current North Korean government). We could get rid of the tyrant, bring some brand of freedom to North Koreans, generations of benefits. So why don't we? Because the evaluated cost is too high. No one's willing to risk Seoul being nuked to free the North Koreans and likely so many North Koreans would die in such a war that the argument that we're helping them is tenuous at best.

I can’t answer such a question if I don’t know how I am supposed to do the math or if it makes sense. — neomac

Then you have no place in policy discussion about warfare, because that's what it's about.

An example of this sort of math is that when the allies cracked enigma in WWII for that to be useful they needed to ensure the Nazi's did not figure out they figured it out.

Therefore, they did the math and calculated how many U-boat attacks they need to let happen in order for the Nazi's to not get too suspicious.

Why don’t you pick whatever historical example and show me how YOU would do the math? Here is an example: ”Civilian deaths during the war include air raid deaths, estimates of German civilians killed only by Allied strategic bombing have ranged from around 350,000 to 500,000.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II). By taking into account that the civilian deaths were estimated in the range of 350,000-500,000, do you calculate that it was morally worth bombing Nazi Germany or not? How did you calculate it?

Exactly why strategic bombing is so controversial is that it's difficult to argue it saved more lives than it cost, which is the usual framework for these sorts of calculations. The allies needed to let some ships (that they knew would be attacked) sink to the bottom and thousands of sailors dead because keeping the information advantage and destroying the U-boat fleet slow enough for the Nazi's to not realise their communications are compromised would save far more lives in total than maximising the short term benefits of the information, which would have no other explanation than communications had been compromised.
— neomac

It has already harmed Russian’s political standing:
- Reputational costs: e.g. Russian military standing didn’t impress on the battlefield — neomac

Certainly Russia's reputation is decreased in the West ... but is it really true world wide? Vis-a-vis China, India, most developing nations? Certainly not enough for these nations to stop trading with Russia.

- Security costs: e.g. NATO enlargement and the rearming of European countries — neomac

Is there any scenario in which Finland / Europe is going to invade Russia? Does any of that actually matter in the current geopolitical "power struggle" as you put it?

- Economic costs: e.g. economic decoupling between Russia and the West
It’s Russia which increased power and influence, or it’s Iran and Saudi Arabia that increased power and influence over Russia? — neomac

That's how political blocks work. If you are in a geopolitical power struggle with the West, then being economically tied to the West exposes you to coercion (the whole point of the sanctions). Sure, Iran and Saudi Arabia (and obviously China and India) have more influence with Russia, but there's no evidence right now these parties are seeking to harm Russia through those economic ties and influence, whereas that's very clearly the West, and in particular the US', stated policy since decades (containment, no "peer competitors" can rise in any region etc.).

In short, I'm not at all convinced the war has increased Western power and influence in the world and decreased Russia's. If you want to point out China's power and influence has increased even more than these parties, I'd agree, but I don't see how that's good imperial stewardship on the US's part.

What might be the lesser evil for the US is to break a Western-lead globalization which was benefiting more EU, Russia and China than the US. And re-compact the West in a logic of political, economic, security blocks as in the Cold War. But this attempt may fail not necessarily because of Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia have significantly increased power and influence. But because of EU, in particular Germany and France ,are fed up with the US. Or because of a domestic internal crisis in the US. — neomac

The primary reason Germany and France would be fed up with the US is that the US creates this mess in Ukraine and then also blows up European infrastructure.

But, otherwise, I agree that the US' main competitor in this conflict is the EU and the possibility of the Euro emerging as a "peer competitor" to the USD.

We discussed that already. I’m not a “proponent of US foreign policy”. One thing is to try to make sense of what the US is doing, another is to decide what do about it. As far as I am personally concerned, independently from what the US does, I can only say as much: I’m a person who prefers to enjoy standards of life, freedoms or economic opportunities of avg Western people instead of enjoying standards of life, freedoms or economic opportunities for avg people living in authoritarian regimes like Russia, China or Iran. Therefore I’m inclined to see as a threat an increase of power and aggressiveness of such authoritarian regimes at the expense of the West. If the West can and wants to do something against such threat, then I would welcome it. And since I’m aware of how messy and dirty human history is, I limit myself to reason in terms of lesser evil. — neomac

It's difficult to interpret this as something other than being a proponent of US foreign policy.

But if you really want to believe yourself to be some impartial observer, then we can discuss on that basis. If that's true you should have even less problem answering questions of what you feel is a reasonable sacrifice to achieve what, as you can be more objective in evaluating the costs and the benefits.

However we can use the Russian actions to make an educated guess and my view is that the Russians leaving Kherson voluntarily points towards it neither being particularly stragetically relevant, nor the Russians being willing to pay a high cost for holding it. — Tzeentch

Something that is worthwhile to note is that in any city the Russians held and then left, mostly the pro-Russian population would immigrate to Russia.

According to this UNHCR data sheet (https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine), some 2 874 806 Ukrainians have refugee status in Russia.

Since a big part of the value of territory is the people living on that territory, causing these population movements is an equally important method of imperialism as territory, of which the West is equal partner in, nabbing some 5 million Ukrainian refugees to help bolster EU GDP.

“Setting most economic policies on the planet (what and how things are produced) has been the US” may have significantly contributed to many events: triplication of the World population, peace/ greater wellbeing/cultural emancipation in Europe, technological progress, rise of competing powers (like China and Russia), not just destruction of “the ecosystems we require for survival” or its destruction on a “unimaginable scale” (whatever that means). — neomac

It's only within the last 100 years that humans believed species could even go extinct, so what is happening previously unimaginable.

However, if you want to argue climate change isn't happening, species loss isn't happening for this and a bunch of other reasons as well, or this environmental destruction, to the extent you agree it's happening, won't be extremely bad, better to argue that in the climate change thread.

For this thread, I'm sure you can appreciate that someone who concludes the environment has been grossly mismanaged and the US primarily responsible, won't assign much moral superiority to US foreign policy.

Of course, the debate remains, even in your basic framework of "US good", as to whether the war in Ukraine is morally justified if it is sacrificing Ukrainians for this US "rules based order" without any benefit to Ukrainians.

As well, even assuming it's true that it's morally justified to sacrifice Ukrainians (or let them sacrifice themselves for Western purposes), if the war is actually harming Russia and benefiting the US.

As yet, no pro-US policy proponent here has answer the question of how many Ukrainian lives are worthwhile to sacrifice to accomplish what objectives.

Likewise, if Russia survives sanctions, as they seem to be doing, and stabilise the front, which they seem to be doing, and continue their arms manufacturing, which they seem to be doing, how exactly does this war harm Russia's geopolitical standing, compared to increasing power and influence and put them in a position to strike deals with Iran and Saudi Arabia for example?

Now, if Russia is gaining power and but China even moreso, for all the reasons we've discussed and you seem to agree with, ok, sure, maybe Russia's relative power vis-a-vis China is decreased, but if this China led block that includes Russia, in whatever influence you want to assign them, is on the whole increasing in power, how is this good for the US?

Just repeating that US is good and Russia is bad doesn't resolve any of these questions.

First, power struggles do not need moral justification to make sense. And most certainly they do not need to be grounded on your understanding of “moral justification” (which I find questionable for reasons I argued a while ago). — neomac

In philosophy, which to remind you we're on a philosophy forum, any decision reflects the moral reasoning and values of the person making the decision.

If you're doing something to increase your wealth and power, such as building an empire, then empire building would be the justification for the action in such a moral system.

You are obviously a proponent of US foreign policy with regard to this Ukraine war, if your justification is that it's good for US empire then that's your justification.

To say "power struggles do not need moral justification to make sense" is to say they may not make sense for a moral system that is not about gaining as much power as possible, which is to be expected.

You seem to assume I'm asking you to justify things beyond your own justification for things, which is not what I'm asking. I'm asking for your justification, it's not more complicated than a power struggle and you happen to be on one side by virtue of birth, had you been born Russian you'd be on the other side, then you can simply state so.

Old tanks can destroy modern tanks if they have a modern ATGM. Actually, in a night engagement the edge might go to something like a T-55S with modern thermals over something like a base T-72 because it can identify the target first and larger ATGMs have good range, although you're still better off on a modern IFV that can do the same thing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, you can fire a modern ATGM from an older tank, or any vehicle, but the point of my analysis was to demonstrate these tanks are useful without any upgrades at all. Any upgrades can make them significantly more "survivable" as you just point about the:

the very survivable Merkava, — Count Timothy von Icarus

And so if these T-55 can be upgraded to "very survivable" it is just further advantage for Russia in having thousands of them.

However, my argument does not depend on any upgrades at all and so whatever upgrades the Russians add to these tanks just makes them even more useful.

What makes an old tank a death trap is when it doesn't have any of these upgrades. Then you're manually aiming, without thermals or any warning systems for laser designators, radar, etc. while opposing infantry has a host of guided weapons that can destroy your vehicle.

Any tanks, even a fully upgraded M1, the very survivable Merkava, the new Type 10, etc. is unlikely to survive a direct hit from a 152-155mm shell. Digging in just helps with indirect hits. — Count Timothy von Icarus

First, we don't exactly know what upgrades Russia is putting on these tanks.

Second, digging in also protects against direct fire. You can literally just build a bunker around your tank protecting also against direct fire.

On the cheap, tanks can be deployed in a defensive fixed position by just digging a ramp and so the tank can peak over the ramp and fire and then hide again. If these positions are on elevated terrain, makes it even harder to assault.

Tanks in fixed positions are vulnerable to both air power and artillery ... but if Ukraine has no advantage in either area then adding T-55's all over the front line makes it harder, not easier, to assault Russian lines.

Even if it was true that "digging in just helps with indirect hits" (which obviously is not true) if Ukraine's only recourse is direct fire with its own tanks, to take out T-62s or T-55s, they need to get relatively close and will be vulnerable to being destroyed, if not by return fire from these tanks, then everything else the Russians have that can destroy tanks.

Think it through, if you imagine an entrenched infantry position with machine guns, and missiles of various kinds, and mortars and supported by artillery in the rear, maybe some mine fields in front ... and then you add tanks, even older tanks, it makes it harder, not easier, to assault this position.

Think of these older tanks as armoured field guns.