we should have been focusing on building alliances with countries like India and China, who Russia actually cares about, — Baden

In the real world, India and China are bitter rivals, locked in an arm race and occasionally fighting each other at the border. You cannot build an alliance where both of them would be happily sitting. There is also no clear way you can align India or China squarely in one camp within a new cold war, because during the old cold war, both China and India have been the (competing) leaders of the non-aligned movement, the G77, with a staunch anti-imperialist position. They are not going to suddenly change their mind and align themselves with the US.

Moreover, to say that "Russia cares for India or China" is meaningless. Russia is not a person. States have only interests and no friends. As for Russians, they couldn't care less about Indians.

Welcome to the cold and foggy world of geopolitics. It's a bit different from Pollyanna. "Non-western" states are not better, or more ethical than "western" ones. There's no innocence in poverty.

Anyhow, I think we should all ask ourselves the simple question, 'Will delivering an additional $20 billion of weapons into that region end well?' — Baden

I must say, it's a big number, a massive crank up as compared to what's already been sent (which is already a lot). According to the BBC, as of 21 April, "more than $3bn in military aid has been sent [by the US] to Ukraine since Russia invaded on 24 February."

What weapons has the US given Ukraine - and how much do they help?
By Bernd Debusmann Jr
BBC News
18 March 2022
Updated 21 April 2022
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60774098

Maybe Biden is asking for $20 Bl in order to get 10?

No# of dead Ukranians: who cares? — StreetlightX

But you care very much for them, don't you?

Protect yourself.

. It was disgusting as hell. — javi2541997

Twitter is a pile of crap, getting crappier.


Darío (Mexico)

a BAC of at least 1.6 while doing it — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's about average in this part of the world I reckon... :-)

In an ex-USSR country, I once shared a frugal meal with a team of wheat harvesters, in the shadow of their combine harvester. And they were all washing it down with decent amounts of vodka of course, but the driver of the combine was drinking medical grade alcohol. He was taking very small sips in series of three, like once a minute, making a grimace each time... The bottle said 90%. They showed to me, laughing; me dutifully opening my widest occidental eyes. Then he climbed back on his exotic-looking* monster of a machine.


* Unlike, say, Japanese cars, Soviet designs for cars, planes and tractors etc. look very much like they come from another civilisation.

Ukrainian farmers are regularly filmed using their tractors to capture Russian military equipment all over the country. In the new game Ukrainian fArmy, you can play one of the scariest players on the Ukrainian battlefield: the tractor driver. Fight against the weather and "high precision" artillery strikes and capture as many Russian tanks, trucks and artillery as you can.

Russia can use nuclear weapons to easily win battles. That is not a dream. — boethius

It is a dream because so far it has never ever happened. The USSR had nukes, and could have nuked Afghanistan to dust (or to more dust than habitual). Yet they didn't. They chose to withdraw instead, when they realized that they couldn't win. And the Russians will most probably do the same in Ukraine: lose a lot of blood and money, and then go home.

The sooner the better.

In the meantime, do get all excited about your nuclear fancies, by all means, if that brings you solace. The rest of us don't need to worry about it.

Gold, not 'gold'. — Isaac

My point is that, if there was no referent to the word 'gold', the word would not be used very often. Words are symbolic, they code for something else than themselves.

escapism from what? — boethius

From the current situation, where Russians forces have no easy way out, and are set to get pummeled for weeks on end. You are dreaming of a possible way out of this mess, and towards victory for Moscow. It will not happen, it's only a wet dream of yours.

There is an element called 'gold'. Otherwise, the word would be useless.

Not all bishops are made of wood, though.


Argentinian bishop sentenced to prison for sexual abuse despite pope’s defense
Fri 4 Mar 2022

A court in Argentina has sentenced a Roman Catholic bishop to four and a half years in prison for sexual abuse of two former seminarians in a major blow to Pope Francis, who had initially defended the bishop.

Gustavo Zanchetta, 57, was convicted on Friday of “simple, continued and aggravated sexual abuse”, with his offense aggravated by his role as a religious minster.

A court in the north-western town of Orán, where Zanchetta, 57, was bishop from 2013 to 2017, ordered his immediate detention.

We-intentionality is different to I-intentionality. — Banno

I get that. There needs to be an agreement about our intentions, for them to be considered 'common'.

For us to intend to visit the Taj Mahal together is something different. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collective-intentionality/

Yes, but we could agree to visit the Taj Mahal together, in which case it seems that my intention and yours have coalesced into a collective intention. And then, if you change your (individual) mind, or I change my (individual) mind, this would affect the collective intention.

There could be nuances. Let's say that Nancy and Bob are in an organized trip to India, and Bob gets romantically interested in Nancy but not vice versa. Nancy really wants to visit the Taj Mahal. Bob doesn't really care for Mogol architecture but wants to spend time with Nancy, so he proposes that they see it together and she agrees. Do they share a collective intention?

Briefly and dogmatically, Searle contends that
We-intentions do not reduce to I-intentions; they are basic, — Banno

Interesting thread and posts, thanks.

Does Searle develop arguments for this point above? It seems debatable. For instance, if one of the teams doesn't want to play the other one, there's no collective intention to play. So it seems that individual intentions can aggregate into collective ones.

It's the unconscious comfort of thinking that it couldn't possibility happen. — Manuel

Fear doesn't reduce danger. Whether we worry about it or not will not change anything, and certainly not the odds of it happening. Which are very low, I think.

It's just a form of escapism from the resident FSB influencer here, i.e. @boethius. Nothing more.

Lavrov is not referring to the possible use of tactical nukes because that would signal a loss of confidence in the methods already being employed to defeat Ukraine which are going swimmingly by his account. — Paine

Good point.

Right now, this could be mere barking. But there's no way to see this conflict without putting nuclear weapons very high in the list of concerns. If this was a war between two non-nuclear countries, it would be hard to imagine it would get nearly a 5th of the coverage it currently gets. — Manuel

And yet, nuclear powers have lost wars against seemingly weaker enemies before -- e.g. the US in Korea and Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan -- without ever resorting to nuclear weapons.

the world can demand them to remove their stupid leaders, dismantle nukes, and only then they will give them transactions for their minerals — Christoffer

I don't know, seems to me it's not the way the world works. For one, 'the world' doesn't act as one, in a coordinated manner. For two, the world is addicted to oil and there will always be buyers for it. E g. the Chinese will buy Russian oil, at a discount. Other folks too, including in the West, if the price is right.

What my crystal ball tells me is that nobody is immortal, and thus there will be a time after Mr Putin. This would IMO be a good time to reassess the relationship between NATO/EU and Russia.

I see little opening for Russia to be anything other than a new North Korea, even if the war ends. — Christoffer

A North Korea with vast oil reserves, though. It makes an important difference. It's also a much larger country than NK, and can't be isolated the same way as small NK. My take is that Russia will remain an important country in this world no matter what happens.

I agree. The Russians are looking for an escape from the mess they created, and this talk of WW3 is a form of 'nuclear escapism'.

and he is not the suicidal type.
— Olivier5

That's up for debate though... never doubt a lunatic. — Christoffer

We shall see... IMO, all these talks about nukes are just more blah blah, designed to scare opponents and placate supporters. The latter are growing nervous with the string of humiliations suffered by their heros on the battlefield.

Evidence some Ukrainian women raped before being killed, say doctors
Forensic specialists carrying out autopsies north of Kyiv say they ‘still have hundreds of bodies to examine’

Lorenzo Tondo and Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv
Mon 25 Apr 2022 07.13 EDT

Forensic doctors carrying out postmortem examinations on bodies in mass graves north of Kyiv say they have found evidence some women were raped before being killed by Russian forces.

“We already have a few cases which suggest that these women had been raped before being shot to death,” said Vladyslav Perovskyi, a Ukrainian forensic doctor who with a team of coroners has carried out dozens of autopsies on residents from Bucha, Irpin and Borodianka who died during Russia’s month-long occupation of the area.

“We can’t give more details as my colleagues are still collecting the data and we still have hundreds of bodies to examine,” he said.

Perovskyi’s team has been examining about 15 bodies a day, many of them mutilated. “There are many burnt bodies, and heavily disfigured bodies that are just impossible to identify,” he said. “The face could be smashed into pieces, you can’t put it back together, sometimes there’s no head at all.”

In other news:

Ukrainian Astronomers Discover ‘Exocomets’ around Another Star
By Briley Lewis on April 14, 2022

Astronomers from the Main Astronomical Observatory (MAO) of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv recently published a discovery of five new exocomets—comets orbiting a star other than the sun—in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, using data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). They also independently confirmed a handful of exocomets that were previously detected by other researchers.

There is no precedent for it, that is true. But there is also no precedent to use tactical nukes. If Russia uses them, it will create a precedent, which others will follow. And the first one following will be Ukraine.

Putin can't casually drop nukes over Ukraine and expect no retaliation to happen. That's I suspect why he doesn't drop them, and will IMO never drop them. He knows there would be consequences, and he is not the suicidal type.

Ukraine is being destroyed? In which version of reality is that happening? The Vladimir Chronicles?

Determinism is not at all necessary, nor even desirable.

There are limits on just what weapons the US will give to Ukraine. — ssu

They would support retaliation, I think, if it comes to that. And the US is not the only player. Europe cannot tolerate a nuclear terrorist state at its doorstep. Ukraine also has the capacity to build their own nukes, given a year or two.

All it needs to do is donate a few missiles to Ukraine.
— Olivier5

Fantasy. — boethius

Six months ago, it was a fantasy that Ukraine would ever get Javelins. Now they have thousands. And one month ago, it was a fantasy that Ukraine would ever get heavy artillery from NATO. Now the Canadians and US are giving them dozens of M777 Howitzers.

If the Russians nuke Kyiv, you can bet the Ukrainians are going to nuke Moscow.

Unlikely.

Russia using nuclear weapons against a non-NATO country would be a big escalation but probability is pretty low it would lead to a strategic nuclear exchange. There is no rational for striking Russian and risk strategic exchange. — boethius

The rationale would be to get rid of a nuclear terrorist state. And NATO does not even need to launch. All it needs to do is donate a few missiles to Ukraine.

There's something rotten in Putinistan...


On 25 February, the day after the Russian invasion, the deputy director of Gazprom, Alexander Tyulyakov, was found hanged in the garage of his home near St. Petersburg.

On February 28, Ukrainian-born Russian oil and gas tycoon Mikhail Watford was found dead at his home in Surrey, UK, "in unexplained circumstances".

On March 24, billionaire Vasily Melnikov —who reportedly worked for the medical firm MedStom—was reported dead in the bathroom of his apartment in Nizhny Novgorod, along with his wife and two sons, all stabbed to death.

On April 18, the former vice president of Gazprombank, Vladislav Avaev, was found dead in his apartment in Moscow, along with his wife and daughter. The apartment was locked from the inside and a pistol was found in Avaev's hands.

On April 19, Sergey Protosenya, former vice president of gas giant Novatek, was found hanged in the garden of his villa in Lloret del Mar. His wife and daughter were found in their bed, their bodies covered with stab wounds.

If the Russians use tactical nuclear weapons during this conflict then the precedence is set and they can simply do so in any other regional conflict for easy victory ... and even easier intimidation. — boethius

Moscow and Saint Petersburg would get nuked in return. You don't want that.

Bear-sucking clowns: "In between two lies, I so want to ask ridiculous questions forever, even though Google could easily answer them."

A friend who worked with them extensively told me it could be really quickly, two weeks of drills or even a bit less if they are working with experienced teams. That jives with DoD messaging of "about a week." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for the detailed and informative answer.

The conclusions we read here are straight off social media. — Isaac

This place is a social media, so anything you read here, is by definition straight off social media...

Something tells me we're not the only ones.

Way to go, Antonio.


UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will travel to Russia on Tuesday for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin since February 24, before heading to Ukraine two days later to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The United Nations accused the Russian army on Friday of actions "amounting to war crimes" in Ukraine.

The M777 — Count Timothy von Icarus

When do you estimate these could be operational? From what I read they would effectively tip the balance in favor of Ukraine.

I'm clearly not an idiot — Isaac

That made me chuckle. You're a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.