Russian combat effectiveness seems to have plunged. They're using reconstituted regiments now, forming new units out of ones cut down far from dull strength. Conservative US estimates are 5-6,000 KIA, which would mean an additional 10,000-15,000+ wounded.

This is borne out by the recruitment drive in Syria, consideration of using unreliable Belarusian forces, and use of Chechen irregulars and mercenaries like the Wagner Group as frontal assault units for their main effort on Kyiv. Also the abandonment of Kharkiv. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Speaking at a meeting of Russia's security council, Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu claimed that some 16,000 fighters from the Middle East were ready to join the battle. President Vladimir V. Putin ordered the Russian Defense Ministry to help thousands of volunteers from the Middle East join the war in Ukraine.

Well Putin expressly talked about antisemitism too in denouncing the Ukrainian government. — neomac

Do you know how genocidal the war in Checnya was? — ssu

Many Russians fear that marshal law will be implemented, which Putin has denied. Just like he denied that he had any intention to attack. — ssu

Putin is a Stalinist not a Nazi. They are different but still forms of fascism.

Nazi is more or less distinguished by the idea of a superior race.

The term ‘Neo Nazi’ is often used are a pejorative term to smear fervent patriots and more right leaning policies. — I like sushi

Putin clearly favours the opposite extreme rather than holding a far right nazi view. It is no secret that the Russian’s HATE Nazis due to the conflict in WW2 with Germany. — I like sushi

Indeed, we are seeing the consolidation of authoritarianism and the retreat and retrenchment of "Western values" ... not some sort of pyrrhic victory for those values.

For example, what did the West do for the rest of the world, in particularly economically, during the pandemic? Basically nada, and it's a fools errand to expect loyalty and honour in return for none. — boethius

As I said, war seems entirely justifiable if the neo-Nazi element is above some critical threshold. It is definitely, from my point of view, uncomfortable amount of neo-Nazi elements to easily argue against his justification. So, that doesn't make me happy, nor the EU doing absolutely nothing about it. — boethius

What does Belarus have against Ukraine anyway?
At least I'm not aware of any threats or some such (except maybe Putin has threatened Lukashenko). — jorndoe

It won't interest anyone outside of the small circle of opera lovers, but... Never mind nukes. Anna Netrebko, very big-name Russian diva, just got kicked out of the Metropolitan Opera in New York for her continuing loyalty to Putin--probably permanently. A joint project with the Bolshoi was also dropped. — Bitter Crank

Incidentally ssu, in previous episodes Aimen Dean dismisses the inside job conspiracy theory about the Russian apartment bombings, and he's a person who knows a lot about the North Caucasian jihad. — jamalrob

With Russia, the levels are the following:

1. CONSTANT
2. ELEVATED
3. MILITARY DANGER
4. FULL

Now Putin is at 2. Or something like that. — ssu

President Putin continues to escalate – putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, threatening to invade Finland and Sweden.

I haven't heard that from the Russians. That I would put in the "hyping fear" category. — ssu

Oh, and when exactly did Russia start "bombing and annexing their country"? Was is before or after the government was overthrown by a US backed coup? — Isaac

US-backed... — Isaac

...put Neo-Nazis... — Isaac

...in power in Ukraine — Isaac

And lastly, that part of history really hasn't anything to do with the current government of Ukraine, so what is the connection to this thread? Or is it just a side mention? — ssu

Brave citizens fighting for their lives. — Amity

Yes. Brave, brave neo-nazis... — Isaac

Why do you think US is interested in back a few Neo-Nazis of Ukraine? — javi2541997

Now it seems taking Kiev may require door to door fighting. The whole argument of being liberators from Western oppression goes to shit when you are facing a strong insurgency as you try to move in, and it is unclear at this point if taking Kiev would even get them the capitulation they want. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The reality isn't hard to find here. Ukrainian people are united and putting up a brave defence against an aggressor. The Hungarian Uprising comes to my mind. — ssu

One wonders if this kind of issue could cause the Russian army to become more aggressive. There's still no clear goal set for this war, that I've heard. Some say that they want to overthrow Ukraine's president.

Maybe. — Manuel

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on the Ukrainian army to overthrow the government whose leaders he described as "terrorists" and "a gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis." — The Moscow Times

One wonders if this kind of issue could cause the Russian army to become more aggressive. — Manuel

One way to guarantee you don't understand what's going on is to dismiss the protagonist as "mad". — Baden

I agree that just saying "he's mad" is intellectually lazy and boring. — ssu

During the pandemic, analysts had noticed a change in Mr. Putin — a man who isolated himself in a bubble of social distancing without parallel among Western leaders. In isolation, he appeared to become more aggrieved and more emotional, and increasingly spoke about his mission in stark historical terms. His public remarks descended ever deeper into distorted historiography as he spoke of the need to right perceived historical wrongs suffered by Russia over the centuries at the hands of the West.

NOS4A2 shows up with the sole aim of spreading an utterly baseless "genocide" narrative. Show one iota of evidence for this or we can just presume you're up to your old tricks of spreading Russian propaganda again. — Baden

For any that don't know, that's Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the anti-Semitic Svoboda party, later installed into power by the US. — Isaac

In the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election he received 1.16% of the vote. In the October 2014 parliamentary election Tyahnybok was again first on the election list of his party; since the party came 0,29% short to overcome the 5% threshold to win seats on the nationwide list he was not re-elected into parliament. — Wikipedia

Well, as I discussed with StreetlightX earlier, there indeed still is this neonazi party in the Ukrainian Parliament. With ONE SEAT. And it is NOT IN THE GOVERNMENT. Zelenskyi's party was formed in 2018 and he was elected President of Ukraine in 2019, beating incumbent president Petro Poroshenko with nearly 73% of the vote to Poroshenko's 25%. So I guess Ukrainians weren't so enthuastic about Poroshenko. — ssu

Zelenskiy said NATO membership was a remote “dream.”

A possible diplomatic path out of the Ukraine crisis came into sharper focus on Wednesday when a minister in the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine floated the possibility of a referendum that could keep his country from joining NATO.

Why don't we understand everything? — Srap Tasmaner

One concern perhaps relevant to this discussion is to remember that this is what we're doing: it's all too easy to think that by naming what we don't yet understand, we do understand it. Thus we use words like "energy" and "matter" and "force" as if they mean something. We can show how we use those terms in our theories, and thus how they connect up to things we consider explained and understood, but there's some lingering suspicion that we don't really understand our explanations. (If some of our variables are still unbound, the logician might remind us, we don't yet have a proposition -- only something like a proposition generator.) — Srap Tasmaner

we have no way of establishing that our research tools (our own minds) are in good working order (there's no standard we could possibly reach for) — Srap Tasmaner

This I've read now from many various references. When Russia occupied the Crimea in 2014, the lack of a logistics tail fooled Western observers (and they were then focused hunting terrorists anyway). Now the arrival of that logistical tail, field hospitals, ammo depots etc. sends a message. — ssu

I also happen to think the Crimea annexation was a reaction to Western meddling in the internal affairs of Ukraine when it refused to bend over and get anally shafted by the IMF. — Benkei

Kazuo Ishiguro – The Buried Knight — Snakes Alive

Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy — Pantagruel

It’s from “There’s are No Such Things as Ordinary Objects” in the bookThe Nature of Ordinary Objects — Ignoredreddituser

Waving an invasion banner visible to spy satellites is a flamboyant message of some kind, especially when your real opponent knows you have logistical challenges wrt your target. — frank

And costly. Put into the field over 100 000+ troops and then have them there for months is expensive. Usually armed forces don't do it. — ssu

I’ve been teaching myself metaphysics, it’s been pretty challenging since I don’t really have anyway to get feedback. I was wondering if you guys have an ideas how to reply to an argument Steven French makes below. It seems like a combination of the grounding problem and overdetermination to me, but I’m not sure if I’m on the right track or how to reply to it. Everything below is an excerpt from his paper. — Ignoredreddituser

[quote] ... [/quote]

SophistiCat, I read a lot of what you post and generally find it both well-informed and level-headed, but as long as I’ve been reading you, you have remained, shall we say, unimpressed by such expressions of wonder and bafflement. For you, if there’s a theory that works, all strangeness of the phenomena accounted for is banished, and no strangeness attaches to a theory that is successful. I’m exaggerating, I suppose, but have I mistaken your attitude? — Srap Tasmaner

It's studying what the classics - up till Newton - and a bit beyond him, took to be a fact about the world, that we could understand it. We can't. — Manuel

It's the simple view that there are things we can know and things we cannot, given that we are natural creatures. Not in this essay, but in a different one, he distinguishes between "problems" and "mysteries", problems are those questions we can ask and (hopefully) answer. "Mysteries" are those we can ask and not answer, such as say, free will or how is it possible for matter to think? Then there are questions we can't even ask, because we don't know how to phrase them.

This would give an "updated" view on the intuitive aspect:

https://cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/COMPLETE-REPORT-Goswami-Childrens-Cognitive-Development-and-Learning.pdf

Particularly "naive physics" p.6. — Manuel

The 17th century scientific revolution was a reaction to Aristotelean physics, which postulated occult forces that no longer made sense. But of course, Aristotle was taken very seriously and was considered by many to be among the greatest of thinkers, no doubt about that. Aristotle was likely highlighting other aspects of our innate "folk psychology", putting emphasis on different aspects of the world, which were not satisfactory for many of the 17th century figures. — Manuel

I'd only quibble that I don't think physicists have intuitions about how gravity works, they have intuitions about how theories about gravity work and how they can relate to other phenomena in the world. The intuition would be on the theory side. — Manuel

The main topic of the essay, as I read it, is that we've lowered the standards of science, we no longer seek to understand the world, but seek theories about aspects of the world. That's a big lowering of standards of explanation. — Manuel

As for your last question, I think, in the end, the point is going to be person dependent. For me, it's quite crazy that we understand so little and that the world exists at all, it's baffling to me. There's no reason to expect any species to evolve having a capacity to ask and answer questions about the world at all, there's no obvious benefit to doing these things. — Manuel

Russia could have prevented NATO far more successfully by simply NOT DOING ANYTHING AGGRESSIVE. — ssu

What's quite ironic in all of this - these so called "naturalists" and "empiricists" - who look at say, Hume, with much admiration, is that they don't read him, or they read him badly, not only with regard to mysteries, but regarding "innate ideas". — Manuel

I mean, it’s not interesting to me, insofar as I agree with this approach to philosophy and see people who disagree with the main points to be very mistaken. However, if I had to attack it, I don’t see any alternative to people who currently ridicule “mysteriansim”, like Dennett or the Churchlands. — Manuel

You certainly are welcome to keep posting here — T Clark

This thread illuminates what it is to be a philosopher in modern times — jgill

This article in Foreign Policy from a few days ago makes the same points:

Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis — jamalrob

The two main candidates were neck and neck in the first-round vote held on 31 October 2004

The Ukraine is a nation split right down the middle in terms of the views and cultural make up of the people. Crimea is/was basically made up of Russian speaking pro Russian people and the eastern half of Ukraine is basically the same.

If they just let people vote maybe the war would finally end. Instead it has been another ongoing proxy war between Russia and US. — I like sushi

There is plenty of sense in Russia’s view that the US has been steadily encroaching on Russian territory. — I like sushi