All Things Russia & Ukraine

[cradleandshoot]

So offending is quite alright....well, depending on who is doing the offending, of course.
You sound like a perfect human being. Welcome to club, I am too.

Nobody on this planet is perfect. I can admit to being wrong. There is nothing wrong with being wrong. No shame in it. Also, nothing wrong with a difference in OPINION. You ever see me claim my comments aren’t offensive? Legitimate question.

No one has said there's anything wrong with being wrong, no one has said there's any shame in being wrong either, nor has anyone said there's anything wrong with a difference of OPINION.
Your question, no. Why would there be a need to claim the clearly obvious intent?

And that’s my issue in OS, it’s been historically so often unclear but skewing heavily, massively, in one direction only to hear “that’s not what I was saying or those aren’t my words I only posted them while quoting someone else’s in response while providing no context” as to make confidence in anything he’s putting out very low. Hence I used the term bad faith discourse wayyyy back on this and continue to pound for transparency. Otherwise he’s just Fatty with some service time.

You do know that if you read Fatty's posts that he is also former military. His opinions about Reagan and the suicide bombings of the Marine barracks in Beirut if memory serves me correctly is that his allegiance is as a marine who served in some capacity. I guess you didn't know that though did you?? That is the mistake people make when they don't pay attention to detail. FTR, OS has much more going for him than your derogatory comment about him having "some service time" His record as a decorated naval aviator is beyond reproach.

decorated?
I'm going to assume that's true, though I'm not sure what you mean by that or how you would know...but ok.

Flynn certainly was "decorated"...doesn't mean he ain't a fascist, bigoted nut job....dangerously so because of the credibility given to him and claimed by him because of his "decorated" service.

For the record, I'm not saying Salty is Flynn.

I have read plenty of posts from OS over the years on this and our other forum. He never boasts or talks much about what honors he has earned. I bet over a couple of cold ones he would have quite a few interesting stories to tell. I'm guessing if asked nicely he would share that information. To my knowledge no one on this forum has ever inquired about his career as a naval aviator. I do know he passed E and E training having the ability to succeed there is no small feat. I don't know if he ever spent any time in a makeshift POW camp. Also something that is not a lot of fun. I've been there and done that and never even got a Tee shirt.

How many times do people have to explain that one can separate and respect the service, a point in time, and take issue with either current behavior or anything a person is or does outside that service? Why are you so incapable of understanding this simple simple concept?

Tell me about Timothy McVeigh. You should defend his honor every day u Tim you die because he served clearly. Nothing he ever did otherwise matters.

IMO a little bit of context here would be appropriate. Your not trying to compare OS to McVeigh are you? McVeigh was screwed up in the head before he served. I served with a number of soldiers whose elevator did not go all the way up to the top. I had a good friend who wound up in the army because his only other option was jail. That was not uncommon in the 70s in the US army that needed all the warm bodies it could find. There is a huge gap between an enlisted soldier just in off the street and a naval aviator who went to the naval academy to earn his wings. IMO the vast majority of criticism leveled at OS is mean spirited and vindictive in nature. The reason why is simple, his opinions are based on his experience serving this country. He has the audacity to stand by what he believes and does not kowtow to the incessant non- stop harassment he is subjected to on a daily basis. That speaks volumes to me to his integrity. The man unselfishly uses his free time to rescue dogs, foster them and find them new forever homes. My wife and I know several people who run pet rescue operations. To do so takes dedication to a cause that not too many other people on this forum possess. That type of dedication includes having an unselfish nature to help these dogs that nobody else wants. I'm guessing you have a similar dedication to a cause beyond making money that is important to you.

http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/per ... -fall.html

Jean-Baptist Clamence has become a judge-penitent and offers his services to selected visitors to his office, the bar Mexico City, on the quays in Amsterdam. The clients don’t come to the Mexico City to seek his services, he trusts himself upon those selected.

But what is a judge-penitent? This is complex, even purposely a bit unclear, a bit contradictory. Being a judge-penitent involves both content and form. It seems some sort of amalgamation of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, Nietzsche’s Overman, and Heidegger and Sartre’s “authentic” man.

The entire book is first person narrative and Clamence is the sole speaker. The book is one long five day monologue to his latest…. – latest what? Victim? Client? Student? Penitent? Consoled? Initiate? It will depend more on outcome than process.

As judge-penitent Clamence first tells his own story, his life story, selected to explain several things – his quest for meaning; the process of his life crisis; his ascent or decent (choose what you will) from everyday life into the role of judge-penitent.

Clamence was a criminal lawyer and a good one. He tended to choose clients whom he had good reason to believe were guilty of murder. He then used his considerable skill and the constraints of law, to get the murders off, to set them free.

He was by most human standards a great success – wealthy, well-respected (if viewed as a bit odd), cultured, a known gourmet and man phenomenally successful among women of all sorts and classes.

Then he began to hear the laughter – voices clearly laughing some sort of cynical laughter, yet no one could be seen near him. He began to create this laugher of questioning even in his own inner being.

A decisive act occurred one night in Paris when he was walking across a bridge. After passing a woman he heard her jump into the Seine, and while he hesitated and thought about it, he kept walking. He even avoided reading the newspapers for several days after to keep from knowing the outcome.

The mysterious laughter, his guilt over the woman brought him to question his whole life.

The central thing he learned seemed to be that unlike the law or football or tennis, life itself had no rules and thus pure innocence made no sense.

To stop the laughter and guilt he first had to embrace this world of freedom. This made him a judge of and for himself, but this was not enough. To give his life meaning and silence and peace, he had to become a judge-penitent for others and he set himself up at the Mexico City.

I found the book to be brilliantly crafted. A significant part of the philosophical message of the novel is that human knowledge of both the meaning of life and the nature of “the good” are beyond any exact human knowledge. Rather, the intellect is likely, on Clamence/Camus’s view, to be contradictory, uncertain, fraught with risk of error. It is seen as difficulty and likely to produce the mechanics of escape into certainty on the part of us mere humans.

Clamence is a living model of this. His early years were a serious attempt to live a life of clear meaning and absolute rules. But in mid-life he began to have the doubts of both ontological and moral skepticism. His choices mirror the anxiety predicted in the theory he later propounded, and his acts are often contradictory and puzzling – actually suggesting a coherence toward his skepticism.

In Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of this novel he believed it was Camus’s best, he argues that Clamence is, in fact, Camus, and the novel is what I’ve described above and Camus’s personal “confession” to the world of who he is and what his work is about.

I don’t have any evaluation of Sartre’s thesis. But it does seem at least consistent with what we know of Camus’s quest for personal authenticity and his drive to share that view with others.

Along the way in the novel are several positions, views and insights which struck me as particularly interesting or rich and I shall comments on several below.

For Clamence the human has two dominant drives:

Toward things of the mind.
Toward passion, especially sex.
Together they adequately describe humanity.

“It always seemed to me that our fellow citizens had two passions: ideas and fornication…. A single sentence will suffice for moderns man: he fornicated and read the paper.”

I was much taken with an image Clamence uses on how society quietly, steadily and relentlessly steals human individual freedom. He likens this process to the tiny “nibbles” of one pariah fish takes of a victim.

“You have heard, of course, of those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil that attack the unwary swimmer by thousands and with swift little nibbles clean him up in a few minutes, leaving only an immaculate skeleton? Well, that's what their organization is. "Do you want a good clean life? Like everybody else?" You say yes, of course. How can one say no? "O.K. You'll be cleaned up. Here's a job, a family, and organized leisure activities." And the little teeth attack the flesh, right down to the bone. But I am unjust. I shouldn't say their organization. It is ours, after all: it's a question of which will clean up the other.”

Part of the role of the judge-penitent is to challenge his target people to change their lives toward what Existentialists would call authenticity. Part of that would be to be more honest concerning interpersonal relations with others. Clamence argues that while human have formally barred slavery (at least in the west), what we have in effect done is to alter its form, coating it with some icing which hides the substance of the cake beneath.

He even acknowledges that having slavery but not calling it that – even denying it and congratulating ourselves for this advance is “useful.” It has two consequences:

It soothes the consciousness of the slave “owner.”
The illusion of non-slavery often, even usually, internalized by the slaves themselves, gives them at least some sense of (false) hope.
“Just between us, slavery, preferably with a smile, is inevitable then. But we must not admit it. Isn't it better that whoever cannot do without having slaves should call them free men? For the principle to begin with, and, secondly, not to drive them to despair. We owe them that compensation, don't we? In that way, they will continue to smile and we shall maintain our good conscience.”

Sartre has claimed that this novel is a brilliant phenomenology of human being and especially a real “confessional” of Camus. The passage below if worth considering in this regard:

“However that may be, after prolonged research on myself, I brought out the fundamental duplicity of the human being. Then I realized, as a result of delving in my memory, that modesty helped me to shine, humility to conquer, and virtue to oppress. I used to wage war by peaceful means and eventually used to achieve, through disinterested means, everything I desired. For instance, I never complained that my birthday was overlooked; people were even surprised, with a touch of admiration, by my discretion on this subject. But the reason for my disinterestedness was even more discreet: I longed to be forgotten in order to be able to complain to myself. Several days before the famous date (which I knew very well) I was on the alert, eager to let nothing slip that might arouse the attention and memory of those on whose lapse I was counting (didn't I once go so far as to contemplate falsifying a friend's calendar?). Once my solitude was thoroughly proved, I could surrender to the charms of a virile self-pity.”

I close these note with three pages from near the end of the book in which a critical thesis – and a tension – is resolved.

The experience of guilt, arrived at via the judge-penitent role and guidance, is the path to freedom and authenticity.

At the same time there is for me the puzzle. Since someone else, the judge-penitent leads others to this clarity of being, does the person arrive at his or her own freedom, or does the person become the slave of Clamence/Camus/The Existentialists?

I’ve wrestled with this issue for all 36 years of my own teaching philosophy. I would never describe myself as much of either a judge or penitent (in any public world, even in teaching) but I was certainly both of those in my own heart. Like Clamence, I wanted to challenge others and rather than “setting up shop” in the Mexico City or as a parish priest, I chose the venue of the university classroom, and perhaps even now in retirement, this cyber-space of my web page. But what does the judge-penitent inspire or produce? Freedom and authenticity in the other or the subtle slavery of which Clamence speaks?

Camus’s challenging passage is below:

No excuses ever, for anyone; that's my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing. Everything is simply totted up, and then: "It comes to so much. You are an evildoer, a satyr, a congenital liar, a homosexual, an artist, etc." Just like that. Just as flatly. In philosophy as in politics, I am for any theory that refuses to grant man innocence and for any practice that treats him as guilty. You see in me, tres cher, an enlightened advocate of slavery.

Without slavery, as a matter of fact, there is no definitive solution. I very soon realized that. Once upon a time, I was always talking of freedom: At breakfast I use to spread it on my toast, I used to chew it all day long, and in company my breath was delightfully redolent of freedom. With that key word I would bludgeon whoever contradicted me; I made it serve my desires and my power. I used to whisper it in bed in the ear of my sleeping mates and it helped me to drop them. I would slip it… Tchk! Tchk! I am getting excited and losing all sense of proportion. After all, I did on occasion make a more disinterested use of freedom and even – just imagine my naiveté -- defended it two or three times without of course going so far as to die for it, but nevertheless taking a few risks. I must be forgiven such rash acts; I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know that freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne. Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties designed to make you lick your chops. Oh, no! It’s a choice, on the contrary and a long-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting. No champagne No friends raising their glasses as they look at your affectionately. Alone in a forbidding room, alone in the prisoner's box before the judges, and alone to decide in face of oneself or in the face others' judgment. At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that's why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you're down with a fever, or are distressed, or love nobody.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence, one must choose a master, God, before being out of style. Besides, the word has lost its meaning; it’s not worth the risk of shocking anyone.

FTR, I must be really stupid. I have absolutely no idea what your post is suppose to mean. When you start getting into writings from existentialist authors you have lost me. I read The Stranger by Camus when I was 19. There were not the proper drugs available at that point in my life to understand or even want to understand what Camus was trying to say. I did understand 100% what Dr John Valby was preaching to the yutes of America at the time...

I applaud you reading The Stranger at any point in life and only wish you tried that hard now.

I also read Walden Pond and The Catcher in the Rye. They were both far and away the most boring books I read in high school. I've read a great deal of John Steinbeck who is my favorite author of all time. The last book of Steinbeck I read was Travels with Charlie about 15 years ago. I wish I could read more than I do. The last book I read is when I was in jury duty. It was the Divinci Code. The book was better than the movie.

[MDlaxfan76]

So, we should expect that water to be cut off again, as long as Russia holds Crimea illegally.

Yes, I meant the Ukrainians crossing the river may be better off crossing elsewhere, not directly through Kherson, then encircling the eastern side of the city...Russians would need to leave entirely in that event.

On the other hand, destruction of the dam may be in the offing.

The whole thing is so self-destructive and wasteful.

I'm not sure the Ukrainians are looking to cross the river any time soon.
They have a chance to trap Russian forces on the N & W sides on the river.
Then, in their spring counter-offensive, they can come out of the Donbas, pushing the Russians SW down the land bridge, back into Crimea.

That sounds likely, but never know...they may push a bit faster if things are crumbling and they have a window of momentum...but the weather would make it harder, I'd think.

I continue to think that precision targeting supply lines, command centers, and artillery etc...can do a lot to break the military conscripts' morale.

I wouldn't want to be a Russian soldier in Ukraine during the long winter...

[Kismet]

I also read Walden Pond and The Catcher in the Rye. They were both far and away the most boring books I read in high school. I've read a great deal of John Steinbeck who is my favorite author of all time. The last book of Steinbeck I read was Travels with Charlie about 15 years ago. I wish I could read more than I do. The last book I read is when I was in jury duty. It was the Divinci Code. The book was better than the movie.

How did you miss Dostoevsky's The Idiot

[cradleandshoot]

I also read Walden Pond and The Catcher in the Rye. They were both far and away the most boring books I read in high school. I've read a great deal of John Steinbeck who is my favorite author of all time. The last book of Steinbeck I read was Travels with Charlie about 15 years ago. I wish I could read more than I do. The last book I read is when I was in jury duty. It was the Divinci Code. The book was better than the movie.

How did you miss Dostoevsky's The Idiot

I'll leave that to you.

[Farfromgeneva]

I also read Walden Pond and The Catcher in the Rye. They were both far and away the most boring books I read in high school. I've read a great deal of John Steinbeck who is my favorite author of all time. The last book of Steinbeck I read was Travels with Charlie about 15 years ago. I wish I could read more than I do. The last book I read is when I was in jury duty. It was the Divinci Code. The book was better than the movie.

How did you miss Dostoevsky's The Idiot

I’m more of a “gambler” guy. For better or worse…both personally and professionally

[DocBarrister]

Putin may have delusions of grandeur, but I suspect he is beginning to understand that he is actually losing the war in Ukraine.

Putin has used weapons of mass destruction (e.g., chemical weapons in Syria) and he is clearly trying to lay the groundwork for using some sort of nuclear or radiation weapon in Ukraine. High ranking Russian officials have actually been calling their NATO counterparts to try and sell the lie that Ukraine may employ a “dirty bomb”. The stupidity of the Russian leadership is truly difficult to understand.

A retired U.S. admiral outlines a reasonable plan if Russia uses a nuclear or radiation weapon.

https://time.com/6225138/putin-nuclear- ... should-do/

These are dangerous times with much uncertainty.

However, if Putin does employ such a weapon in Ukraine, the U.S., NATO, and the EU must seriously consider their options for eliminating Putin from this world. Anyone who uses a nuclear or radiation weapon in Ukraine cannot be allowed to remain in power.

DocBarrister

[Carroll81]

So, we should expect that water to be cut off again, as long as Russia holds Crimea illegally.

Yes, I meant the Ukrainians crossing the river may be better off crossing elsewhere, not directly through Kherson, then encircling the eastern side of the city...Russians would need to leave entirely in that event.

On the other hand, destruction of the dam may be in the offing.

The whole thing is so self-destructive and wasteful.

I'm not sure the Ukrainians are looking to cross the river any time soon.
They have a chance to trap Russian forces on the N & W sides on the river.
Then, in their spring counter-offensive, they can come out of the Donbas, pushing the Russians SW down the land bridge, back into Crimea.

That sounds likely, but never know...they may push a bit faster if things are crumbling and they have a window of momentum...but the weather would make it harder, I'd think.

I continue to think that precision targeting supply lines, command centers, and artillery etc...can do a lot to break the military conscripts' morale.

I wouldn't want to be a Russian soldier in Ukraine during the long winter...

My question would be, can they wait until the Spring, even if military strategy says they should? I am not sure the political support (US and EU) will be there in 5-6 months. Could it force their hand?

[DocBarrister]

Looks like the Europeans have done a remarkable job increasing their reserves of natural gas.

London
CNN Business
—
Europe has more natural gas than it knows what to do with. So much, in fact, that spot prices briefly went negative earlier this week.

For months, officials have warned of an energy crisis this winter as Russia — once the region’s biggest supplier of natural gas — slashed supplies in retaliation for sanctions Europe imposed over its invasion of Ukraine.

Now, EU gas storage facilities are close to full, tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) are lining up at ports, unable to unload their cargoes, and prices are tumbling.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/energy/e ... index.html

Looks like another miscalculation by the murderous and incompetent Putin.

DocBarrister

[Farfromgeneva]

So, we should expect that water to be cut off again, as long as Russia holds Crimea illegally.

Yes, I meant the Ukrainians crossing the river may be better off crossing elsewhere, not directly through Kherson, then encircling the eastern side of the city...Russians would need to leave entirely in that event.

On the other hand, destruction of the dam may be in the offing.

The whole thing is so self-destructive and wasteful.

I'm not sure the Ukrainians are looking to cross the river any time soon.
They have a chance to trap Russian forces on the N & W sides on the river.
Then, in their spring counter-offensive, they can come out of the Donbas, pushing the Russians SW down the land bridge, back into Crimea.

That sounds likely, but never know...they may push a bit faster if things are crumbling and they have a window of momentum...but the weather would make it harder, I'd think.

I continue to think that precision targeting supply lines, command centers, and artillery etc...can do a lot to break the military conscripts' morale.

I wouldn't want to be a Russian soldier in Ukraine during the long winter...

My question would be, can they wait until the Spring, even if military strategy says they should? I am not sure the political support (US and EU) will be there in 5-6 months. Could it force their hand?

Got some winter travel plans?

[MDlaxfan76]

So, we should expect that water to be cut off again, as long as Russia holds Crimea illegally.

Yes, I meant the Ukrainians crossing the river may be better off crossing elsewhere, not directly through Kherson, then encircling the eastern side of the city...Russians would need to leave entirely in that event.

On the other hand, destruction of the dam may be in the offing.

The whole thing is so self-destructive and wasteful.

I'm not sure the Ukrainians are looking to cross the river any time soon.
They have a chance to trap Russian forces on the N & W sides on the river.
Then, in their spring counter-offensive, they can come out of the Donbas, pushing the Russians SW down the land bridge, back into Crimea.

That sounds likely, but never know...they may push a bit faster if things are crumbling and they have a window of momentum...but the weather would make it harder, I'd think.

I continue to think that precision targeting supply lines, command centers, and artillery etc...can do a lot to break the military conscripts' morale.

I wouldn't want to be a Russian soldier in Ukraine during the long winter...

My question would be, can they wait until the Spring, even if military strategy says they should? I am not sure the political support (US and EU) will be there in 5-6 months. Could it force their hand?

If the election goes badly, I wouldn't be surprised if Biden goes to the current Congress to lock in more support for 2023. Right now, support is strongly bi-partisan. Let the "Freedom Caucus" wail.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/energy/e ... index.html

[Seacoaster(1)]

https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1585319139832479757

[old salt]

From Defense One in today's D brief

Developing: "The global energy crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine is causing profound and long-lasting changes," the International Energy Agency announced in a new report published Thursday after IEA chief Fatih Birol spoke this week at an event in Singapore. "Energy markets and policies have changed as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, not just for the time being, but for decades to come," the IEA's new report says. That's because "Russia's actions have turned a rapid economic recovery from the pandemic—which strained all manner of global supply chains, including energy—into full‐blown energy turmoil." The subsequent "crisis has stoked inflationary pressures and created a looming risk of recession," according to the IEA.

Action: Russia's "curtailments of natural gas supply to Europe and European sanctions on imports of oil and coal from Russia are severing one of the main arteries of global energy trade," the report says.

Reaction: Faced with rising prices around the world, "Some [governments] are seeking to increase or diversify oil and gas supplies, and many are looking to accelerate structural changes," the agency notes, flagging recent climate-conscious legislation passed in the U.S. and the EU, in addition to goals declared and changes recently implemented across Japan, Korea, India, and China.

That's why Russia's "invasion of Ukraine is prompting a wholesale reorientation of global energy trade, leaving it with a much-diminished position," according to the report, which predicts a decline in Russia's share of internationally traded energy—from 20% in 2021 to 13% in 2030, "while the shares of both the United States and the Middle East rise" in that same period.

Looking more closely to the future, "the winter of 2023-24 could be even tougher" than the upcoming cold season for Europe and much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. "But in the longer term, one of the effects of Russia's recent actions is that the era of rapid growth in gas demand draws to a close," IEA predicts. In the meantime, protecting global supply chains for "volatile critical minerals" will be paramount in the two decades to come.

[old salt]

Rebuilding Ukraine {from behind the WSJ paywall}

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-pr ... 1666698245

Ukraine Presses West for Billions in Economic, Military Aid After Russian Attacks on Infrastructure
Zelensky says Ukraine has urgent need to rebuild housing, schools and power plants

By Bojan Pancevski, Laurence Norman, and Lindsay Wise, Oct. 25, 2022

Western leaders meeting in Berlin said the effort to rebuild Ukraine would take generations, as Kyiv stepped up its requests for economic and military support and fissures began to emerge in Washington’s long-solid backing for Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly pressed Western political and business leaders gathering in Berlin on Tuesday for more funding to rebuild his country, as Russian attacks have left Ukraine struggling to produce enough electricity as winter draws near.

In Washington, a group of 30 House Democrats on Tuesday retracted a letter they had sent to President Biden urging him to seek direct talks with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, following intense backlash within the Democratic Party and disavowals from some signatories. Republican leaders in the House have already signaled they might pull back on Ukraine aid if they win the House majority in November, as most analysts predict.

As Russia suffers losses in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has made veiled threats to use nuclear weapons—a scenario that security experts still deem unlikely. WSJ looks at satellite images and documents to understand how the process of launching a strike would work.

Speaking by video link at the opening of the Conference on the Recovery, Reconstruction and Modernisation of Ukraine in Berlin, Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine had an urgent need to rebuild housing, schools and power plants, and couldn’t wait.

“Russia destroys everything,” he said.

The conference is convening at a moment when Ukraine is in greater need of economic help than perhaps at any moment since Russia began its invasion in February. In recent weeks, Moscow has hammered Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, leaving much of the country with only intermittent electricity as winter approaches. More than a third of Ukraine’s electric stations have been hit, Ukrainian officials said.

Speaking at the conference in Berlin, Denys Shmyhal, the Ukrainian prime minister, said the war had wiped out at least 35% of the country’s economy. He called on the West to provide an immediate economic relief package of $17 billion. He also asked for $1.5 billion in economic aid a month from the European Commission next year, and another $1.5 billion a month from the U.S.

Mr. Zelensky’s economic adviser Alexander Rodnyansky, who attended the Berlin conference, asked the German government to provide €500 million a month, equivalent to about $494 million, for 2023 to help keep the Ukrainian state afloat.

The demands for economic aid come at a delicate time for Western leaders. Russia’s decision to cut the flow of natural gas to Europe has plunged the region into an energy crisis that is fueling inflation as well as protests across the continent. Germany has unleashed hundreds of billions in subsidies to cushion the blow for consumers and businesses, but other European countries lack the financial firepower to spend at a similar scale.

Europe has seen little ebbing of political support for Ukraine despite rising protests across the bloc over living costs and high inflation, but its assistance has consistently lagged behind the U.S.

EU Seeks Quick Deal on Energy Price Interventions
The EU is promising monthly support of $1.5 billion a month for Ukraine in 2023 but has failed to chalk up a third of the $9 billion it promised Ukraine in May. The bloc has also recently added another $500 million to its plan for reimbursing member states for weapons deliveries to Ukraine, taking the total to $3.1 billion.

France and Germany have both announced new military support for Ukraine in the past two weeks, especially for air defense, with Germany delivering its IRIS-T air defense system to Kyiv. Britain, which is going through a period of political turbulence, remains easily the biggest contributor of economic and military assistance for Ukraine among European states.

Still, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany, U.S. assistance to Ukraine has continued to outstrip Europe’s.

“The U.S. is now committing nearly twice as much as all EU countries and institutions combined,” said Christoph Trebesch, research center director at Kiel Institute. “This is a meager showing for the bigger European countries, especially since many of their pledges are arriving in Ukraine with long delays.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Berlin conference’s host, said the rebuilding of Ukraine would be a task for generations to come. A close aide to Mr. Scholz said it would take decades to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and economy once the war ends.

“This amounts to no less than the creation of a new Marshall Plan for the 21st century,” Mr. Scholz said, referring to the large aid package that the U.S. provided to help to rebuild Germany and Europe after World War II.

“This can only be achieved by the entire global community, which is now lending its support to Ukraine.”

In a report last month, the European Commission, the Ukrainian government and the World Bank said that the current cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine amounted to $349 billion and was likely to grow in the coming months.

European officials are also concerned about corruption and inefficiencies in the Ukrainian economy that could potentially lessen the impact of foreign aid.

“The EU is looking at this at scale,” a European diplomat said of the request for budget support to Kyiv. “However, there’s an underlying question about how much to tackle or get the Ukrainians to tackle the structural reforms that have long been needed in the Ukrainian economy and the extent to which that can be done when you’ve got a war economy.”

EU officials have said in recent months that they hope to drive reforms in Ukraine and reconstruction through the yearslong process of Ukraine seeking EU membership. The bloc accepted Ukraine as a candidate member in June and the accession process requires sweeping changes in economic policy, judicial independence and state administration.

Since Russia’s invasion in February, the U.S. has provided $8.5 billion in budget support to Kyiv, which the Ukrainian government is using to pay salaries, meet pension obligations and maintain hospitals.

Meanwhile, the House Democrats’ reversal on direct talks with Russia showed the sensitivity of the issue on Capitol Hill, where Congress has approved more than $65 billion in aid for Kyiv since the Russian invasion, and Mr. Biden and party leaders have said that any peace talks or terms of a cease-fire should be driven by Ukraine’s government.

The letter had created a controversy within the party, as it appeared to raise questions about whether progressive Democrats remained on board with current administration policy.

House Republican leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who likely would be House speaker if Republicans take control of the chamber, said last Tuesday that Congress wouldn’t “write a blank check to Ukraine” under GOP leadership. Mr. McCarthy’s remarks reflected unease over Ukraine spending among some rank-and-file Republican lawmakers and their political base.

Congressional aides say Republicans are more inclined to support military aid to Ukraine than economic or humanitarian aid, which has the potential to raise questions domestically about whether the Ukrainians are using the funds for their intended purposes.

“It’s always a bigger ask—they’re just fundamentally less inclined to support any of that,” one aide said.

Last week, Mr. Zelensky met with a delegation of U.S. lawmakers, who said that in addition to his usual requests for weapons, he also pressed for economic support. One member of the delegation, Rep. Jim Himes (D., Conn.), said Mr. Zelensky told them that Ukraine is running a monthly deficit of $5 billion.

“President Zelensky actually made a real point about the economic situation, and the need for direct economic aid,” Mr. Himes said. “That money would go to pay salaries of soldiers and keep the government afloat.”

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, chairman of the management board of NPC Ukrenergo, which runs Ukraine’s long-distance electricity-transmission system, said thousands of repair workers are fanning out across Ukraine’s power grid and operators are imposing blackouts to prevent the system from collapsing under a Russian bombardment.

Mr. Kudrytskyi said workers can return damaged substations to basic functionality within a few days if they have the right spare parts and the damage isn’t extensive. Full restoration, however, can take months. Ukraine is drawing down on its own supplies of equipment, he said, and needs fresh supplies from the West.

“It’s much easier for Russians just to strike with missiles than for us to restore,” Mr. Kudrytskyi said. “The most needed and effective countermeasures would be to get additional air-defense systems from the Western countries to protect civilian infrastructure and to prevent humanitarian catastrophe,” he added.

[DocBarrister]

The United States and its allies have frozen over $330 billion in Russian assets. All of that should be given to Ukraine to purchase weapons and to rebuild. Criminal scumbag nations like Russia do not deserve to get their frozen assets back.

In the 100 days since it was founded, a US-backed global task force has blocked and frozen more than $330 billion in assets belonging to sanctioned Russians and the country's central bank, it announced on Wednesday.

The assets blocked or frozen include more than $30 billion worth of assets belonging to sanctioned Russians and over $300 billion worth of assets held by the central bank, according to a joint statement from the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs (REPO) taskforce.

https://www.businessinsider.com/repo-gl ... 2022-6?amp

DocBarrister

[Kismet]

60 years ago today, this man stopped the Cuban missile crisis from going nuclear
Why a Soviet submarine officer might be “the most important person in modern history.”

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022 ... uclear-war

I had never heard this story before - this was the REAL crisis inside the Cuba Missile episode in 1962 - a fascinating albeit scary story about how nuclear Armageddon was averted by a critically thinking Russian naval officer Captain Vasili Arkhipov who decided not agree to fire a 10 kiloton nuclear torpedo at USS Randolph aircraft carrier in the Atlantic near Cuba. He convinced the sub’s top officers that the depth charges were indeed meant to signal B-59 to surface there was no other way for the US ships to communicate with the Soviet sub — and that launching the nuclear torpedo would be a fatal mistake. The sub returned to the surface, headed away from Cuba, and steamed back toward the Soviet Union.

[Seacoaster(1)]

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/1 ... ess-future

“What is next? Is there life after Putin? How does he go and who replaces him?” Such are the questions that weigh heavily these days on the minds of the Russian elite, its bureaucrats and businessmen, as they observe the Ukrainian army advancing, talented people fleeing Russia and the West refusing to back down in the face of Vladimir Putin’s energy and nuclear blackmail. “There is a lot of swearing and angry talk in Moscow restaurants and kitchens,” one member of the elite says. “Everyone has realised that Putin has blundered and is losing.”

[Farfromgeneva]

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/1 ... ess-future

“What is next? Is there life after Putin? How does he go and who replaces him?” Such are the questions that weigh heavily these days on the minds of the Russian elite, its bureaucrats and businessmen, as they observe the Ukrainian army advancing, talented people fleeing Russia and the West refusing to back down in the face of Vladimir Putin’s energy and nuclear blackmail. “There is a lot of swearing and angry talk in Moscow restaurants and kitchens,” one member of the elite says. “Everyone has realised that Putin has blundered and is losing.”

This is a very good question and I suspect the answer isn't dope..

[DocBarrister]

Russia’s 11th Army Corps once defended Kaliningrad, the tiny sliver of Russian land between Lithuania and Poland.

Then it got sent to Ukraine, where the Ukrainians promptly slaughtered them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2 ... 1228623375

DocBarrister

[a fan]

From Defense One in today's D brief

..........That's why Russia's "invasion of Ukraine is prompting a wholesale reorientation of global energy trade, leaving it with a much-diminished position," according to the report, which predicts a decline in Russia's share of internationally traded energy—from 20% in 2021 to 13% in 2030, "while the shares of both the United States and the Middle East rise" in that same period..............

I seem to remember telling you that pipelines have two ends. You made fun of me for it.

Remember our exchange that you were flunking the grad school seminar because you couldn't name a single downside to Putin's stupidity? Remember how I told you Putin was checkers masquerading as chess?