Huge pro-EU rally grips Ukraine

[Skybird]

Wer von Politik vernünftige Entscheidungen erwartet, hat nicht begriffen, daß der Wille zur Macht stärker ist als alle Vernunft. - Roland Baader, deutscher Freiheitsdenker

He who expects reasonable decisions from politics, has not realised that the will to power is stronger than all reason. - Roland Baader, German thinker on liberty

That is true for Russia. But also true for America - and the European nations, too.

We must get rid of the global political caste - but it will give mankind a hell of a fight, openly and in the hidden, depending on what is needed. We still live by the political principles of the medieval and ancient times. We just have given them other names.

It is depressing how reliably man is repeating history and falls for empty catchphrases concealing that fact. Every whore knows that if she has her man by his balls he will do whatever she wants him to do, and every politician knows that if he bribes the crowd with paper-money and appeals to lower sentiments and pathetic emotions, the mass will follow and obey.

Infantility and servility are the two best labels to describe modern Western societies by. And some others beyond the West, too.

Will man succeed in a possible revolt against politics and politicians? Chancves are so low that I dare to rule it out. Once a dog - always a dog.

[August]

You speak of revolting against politics like it is a real person instead of the natural human function it is, one as old as the urge to live in groups. You get "rid of the global political caste" it will be replaced instantly, and by something far far more oppressive if human history is to be considered.

[Skybird]

The political systems there are, no matter whether republican, monarchic or totalitarian, are NOT natural and representative for human's social nature, but a perverseness of it. They are always oppressive, always exploitative, always parasitical, always anti-social, always elitist. And in the end: always feudal. Even in socialism there always seem to be a feudal elite.

The opposite of governments and parties - is freedom, local self-organsiation, and self-responsibility.

This even more true when considering that all politics nowadays, no matter their name, and all state structures - are deeply socialist. National governments are manifestations of organised crime.

Parties are not for liberty or freedom, but to prevent them. Else they would and could not exist. Politicians are not for freedom or liberty, if people were free, politicians would not be needed. Free people must be prevented, since parties and politicians live by the people like a mosquito lives by the blood of the victims it stings.

Politics is antisocial, and parasitical. Because the strongest drive in politics and politicians is the uncompromised and ultimate will for power. And the voting cattle on the streets - can choose whether to enter the same slaughterhouse through the left, middle or right gate, once inside they can chose their slaughterer depending on whose knife's shine they like best. Choosing is great!

Still most people do not want it any different. Okay. Everything runs in always repeating cycles it seems, and neither historical experience nor reason seems to be able to break that pattern up. So be it. Intentions and illusions will not save people once the consequences of these knock at their doors. And I am cold-blooded enough by now not to feel any pity for them then.

Von Mises once wrote, near the end of his life, that once, when he began, he hoped to make a difference, to help starting a change - but that he had to realise over his life that instead he had become a historian just recording the events and phases of the general decline and fall. All his predictions meanwhile have come true, but still Kassandra is hated as much as before. In no way I will compare myself with the genius of this man, but I understand exactly how he felt when he said that. By the end of his life he even admitted that his life-long defence of democracy - was a mistake, that he had hopelessly overestimated it.

Compared to him, most contemporary social philosophers and "economists" are buffoons with inflationary egos who are as incapable as they are clueless.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The opposite of governments and parties - is freedom, local self-organsiation, and self-responsibility.

No the opposite of governments and parties is anarchy, ruthless, violent and pervasive. You would destroy a flawed but working political system for the rule of the barbarian horde.

Humans naturally organize into groups. Your local self rule communities idea is just one of many flavors of that but it's appeal to you ignores the fact that groups are not stable. They will splinter and merge and quickly become widely disparate in size and power. Even if somehow your utopia were to come to be created it would never last, certainly not as long as the democracies you are so eager to tear down have lasted. It would soon fall prey to the first horde of barbarians who realize they can take what you have by force and you can't stop them.

But we digress from the thread topic...

[ikalugin]

Ukraine does not retain any nuclear stocks.

@oberon.

Then we have similar idea, I suggest using both air assaults (to create containment line) and air drops (to seize the Dnepr crossings) with mechanized link up.

As to the morale, Oberon, the issue here is that Ukrainian media tells the Ukrainian population that Ukraine is at war with Russian invaders. Morever - that Russia suffers heavy losses and is loosing the war sort of. Hence if Russia actually does invade in mass this would lead to shock, not to rise of patriotism.

To the political side of things - even though I am somewhat reluctant to discuss this (as the topic is controversial) - in my opinion the full scale invasion would already mean that there is no possibility for a diplomatic compromise. Which is the sentiment by the way at this moment in Moscow, or so it appears.

[Oberon]

Indeed, Ukraine handed the nukes back over to Russia in 1991 with the Budapest memorandum...which seems to have been torn up and thrown in the dustbin. I suppose it's possible they might have hidden one or two away for a rainy day (although one would hope that Russia knew how many nukes went into Ukraine and how many came out) but I think they'd probably use them locally rather than strike direct at Russia, otherwise the only habitable place left in the Ukraine would be Pripyat.

ikalugin your plan makes sense, the Dneiper would make a good stop line and a natural barrier against Ukrainian attacks, seizing the crossings and denying their use makes logical sense. Speed is the essence, and one thing we have learnt over the past decade is that the Russian army can move damn fast when it wants to, damn fast. With that kind of mobility I do ponder if NATO forces would have been able to have retreated fast enough to set up secondary defence lines...but that's a rumination for another day.

I think the average Ukrainian would be smart enough to know that the force correlation between the Ukrainian army and the Russian army is way out of kilter in favour of Moscow, so any attempts by Ukrainian media to pull a 'Comical Ali' would be met with scorn rather than belief I'd wager.
I think that Russian forces will meet a colder reception the further west from the border they go. Initial contacts will probably welcome them with open arms, but by the time you get to Kharkov, there's probably going to be a need to put in martial law. Likewise threat of force to Kiev might or might not be enough to produce surrender. The government of Ukraine, such as it is, might relocate westwards to Lvov and try to run things from there. We've seen in many wars in history that taking or threatening the capital of a nation is not always a key to victory. Napoleon comes to mind. However, it would make tactical sense to try to draw Ukrainian forces into a defence against a fake attack aimed at Kiev, thus making the progress of the 1st CAA easier.
You think that Moscow believes that there is no room for a diplomatic compromise? That's unsettling news indeed, I think it's likely we've gone too far down the route of hardline politics that force is perhaps the only option left to the parties involved.

The question is, what would Russia do if what was left of Ukraine (western Ukraine) applied successfully to NATO? Thinking about it...since such a thing would be an almost guaranteed result of Russia invading eastern Ukraine, then that corridor to Transdneister makes a lot more sense in retrospect, otherwise it would be cut off by NATO forces.

I'm going to close on another question...where do you think Belarus is heading? It's, in my opinion anyway, the next domino that might fall, and relations between Minsk and Moscow, whilst not as bad as those between Kiev and Moscow, have hardly been brilliant in recent years. Do you think that Belarus would be sufficiently cowed by intervention in eastern Ukraine to move back towards Moscow, or is there a chance that the events that have taken place in Ukraine could repeat themselves in Belarus? It is a rather authoritarian state after all, an uprising there is entirely possible.

[ikalugin]

As far as I am aware average people do believe the image they get from Ukrainian media - it I'd the "big lie" concept and it works... as far as Russia does not make it true and come in force.

This is why at the same time I propose special forces attacks and air drops. A historical parallel would he the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

Yes, I assume that Ukraine would be partitioned in that case, possibly by pre 1939 borders.

The issue with diplomatic part of things is that (at least from Russian perspective):
- Ukrainian loyalists did not abide by Minsk agreements and at this moment de facto sent those down into the bin (economical blockade law, artillery fires, deployment of long range artillery ect).
- there are no clear cut conditions for removal of sanctions, nor are there any clear cut mechanisms for the same.
- should Donbas conflict be regulated to the Western liking, we would then be pushed on Crimean matter and then on pure internal politics, is there is no middle ground, we are De facto provided with ultimatum - for complete surrender.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

No the opposite of governments and parties is anarchy, ruthless, violent and pervasive. You would destroy a flawed but working political system for the rule of the barbarian horde.

All what the state claims to own and be legitimated to possess and to rule over, comes from stealing , blakcmailing and robbery - all and everything. All common good is loot the state has plundered and robbed from legitimate owners whose private property it has been before. Therefore all argument claiming the state acts on behalf of a common interest or a common good, is argument of a bandit dfdending his heap of loot and his claim to abuse those he has turned into subordinates to himself by blackmailing and violence. In the end paper money also only has been implkemented to allow the elite at the top to celebrate its parties and to bribe the ordinary people with cocaisonal "presents" that the poeople nevertheless diretcly or indirectly have to pay for themselves, by devaluation of money and distorted price indices. Politics therfore never can run and function without inflation (Latin: inflare: to expand, to increase) of the amount of circulating currency units (printing notes), and inflation always causes a distortion of the price indices as well as a general increase of prices (hidden or openly). That modern economists mistake inflation for increasing prices and thus attribute the causal reaosns for the one to the other, shows how disastrously deep Keynesian madness is rooting in modern economics -and state theory.

But do not be mistaken: all this is rules and mechnaism by whoich organsied crime tries to give itself a legitimate appearance and tries to stay afloat for some longer time.

The opposite to this, is not chaos or anarchy, but the rejection of politics and politicians, the rejection of robbers, plunderers and blackmailers. The claim that you make, that not obeying our masters' word anymore who abuse us all to make their living, is often made by people who do not want people to be free and independent, since that would mean that the basis for celebrating the symbols and the pomp of the national and political mass would crumble, like their would no more pomptous mass to be seen in chru7ches if peopel would not believe catholic dogma anymore. The power of the few - needs the blindness (not to see through) and weakness (not to be able to defend themselves against or to escape from the stae'S exploitation) of the many. And all instittuioons, from poublic education to social securityx system, serve this purpose. Not to mention that all and every instance of society are state-controlled, state-regulated, and overlooked by the state. A state that, as I said, is a criminal and egoist and ruthless exploiter and abuser. It even kills its people (when declaring wars that people would not have declared, or enforcing the draft).

The state is a totally immoral construction. And thus cannot be argued to be the source of moral standards.

The absence of this, simply means the absence of this. Originally, the word anarchy meant nothing else but this.

Compare Chapter 24 The Moral Status in Relations to the State, in Rothbard: The Ethics of Liberty. and I would say that all too often states are a tool of big disorder being imposed on a natural order of things - a natural order that from poltiicans' POV has the big disadvantage that it needs no politicians and does not provide a basis for them to run their impostures.

You are right, though, in that man as a zoon politicon tends to forum communities. That in itselkf is nothing wrong. Dangerous it becomes if these communities allow elites to form up to command them, even worse when thes eelites are allowed heritable priviliges and powers, and elites preserving their powers due to tradition and habit (like the big political family dynasties in your country, for example, which are nothing else but a revival of monarchic traditions). Career politicians live by the belief of having the right to be privileged and being paid for all their life by the people onto whom they impose themselves with the described ruthless and criminal tactics.

Bow your knee to all this Mafia show, if you feel like wanting to donate your life and mind for nothing more than this. But in my life I stand up against it, and remain a little bit less guilty that way, even if I cannot change the world, for the highest authorities I report to are no kings and no politicians and no imagined deities, but my conscience and reason. When I judge your claim by the state of things in the world, the decline of Western civilization and its ever accelerating fall, and the amount of chaos and instability your ways have brought into the world, I hardly can find your claim convincing.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

As far as I am aware average people do believe the image they get from Ukrainian media - it I'd the "big lie" concept and it works... as far as Russia does not make it true and come in force.

true, there is propaganda on both sides, but the "Big Lie" these days is all coming from the Russian side. The Ukrainian version of events has turned out to be on the whole accurate.

There is so much evidence of Russian involvement now that it is hard to keep track of it all. For example, video of Russian tanks moving into Donetsk on november 10th:



If you look carefully, you will see the tanks have markings on the side (H-22-00) which are used by the Russian railway system:

The issue with diplomatic part of things is that (at least from Russian perspective):
- Ukrainian loyalists did not abide by Minsk agreements and at this moment de facto sent those down into the bin (economical blockade law, artillery fires, deployment of long range artillery ect).

Actually, most of the violations are coming from the Russians which are sending more troops into Ukraine and have been pushing/attacking out, especially around the Donetsk airport.

- there are no clear cut conditions for removal of sanctions, nor are there any clear cut mechanisms for the same.

Sanctions will not be looked at until the Russians show they are serious about resolving the situation. If anything, it looks like the economic pressure will get worse. For example, there are reports that the Saudis, at the behest of the U.S., are flooding the market with Oil to drive the price down and put more pressure on the Russian economy.

- should Donbas conflict be regulated to the Western liking, we would then be pushed on Crimean matter and then on pure internal politics, is there is no middle ground, we are De facto provided with ultimatum - for complete surrender.

Is that really the Russian viewpoint? seems very paranoid.

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

true, there is propaganda on both sides, but the "Big Lie" these days is all coming from the Russian side. The Ukrainian version of events has turned out to be on the whole accurate.

There is so much evidence of Russian involvement now that it is hard to keep track of it all. For example, video of Russian tanks moving into Donetsk on november 10th:



If you look carefully, you will see the tanks have markings on the side (H-22-00) which are used by the Russian railway system:








Actually, most of the violations are coming from the Russians which are sending more troops into Ukraine and have been pushing/attacking out, especially around the Donetsk airport.



Sanctions will not be looked at until the Russians show they are serious about resolving the situation. If anything, it looks like the economic pressure will get worse. For example, there are reports that the Saudis, at the behest of the U.S., are flooding the market with Oil to drive the price down and put more pressure on the Russian economy.




Is that really the Russian viewpoint? seems very paranoid.

I do not deny that Russia supplies volunteers and equipment to Ukranian separatists. However do you have any direct evidence about regular Russian Armed Forces participating in that conflict on substantial scale, as you appear to claim?

So Ukranian loyalists do not bombard Donetsk (and other areas, Donetsk currently has water problems which make heating difficult), they did not commence offensive operations or pass the economical blockade legislation, they did not take out long range artillery from the storage? Ok. What Russia is doing at the moment is maintaining status quo in the region, no more no less.

As I said - there are no clear conditions and thus Russia is not capable of fulfilling them. Hence there is no possibility of ending the sanctions, regardless of Russian action or inaction.

This is not paranoia - this is what current Western (particularly US) rhetoric is about. Do you want me to provide example of such rhetoric?

[Dowly]

The H2200 is a oversize marking.

Maybe ikalugin can check the russian wiki and translate the relevant bits?
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93...B7%D0%BA%D0%B8

[ikalugin]

Sure:
- first symbol (N in this case) is that the cargo is oversized.
- second (in this case 2) - that the lower part of the cargo is within the second degree of being over sized (they are numbered from 1-6).
- third is the same but for the the object being oversized width wise.

Other dimensions are not oversized (zeroes).

This applies only to flat top carriages though. Increased level of supervision is required when oversized cargoe is transported. Not sure how this was useful - but I hope it helps.

[MH]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Sure:
- first symbol (N in this case) is that the cargo is oversized.
- second (in this case 2) - that the lower part of the cargo is within the second degree of being over sized (they are numbered from 1-6).
- third is the same but for the the object being oversized width wise.

Other dimensions are not oversized (zeroes).

This applies only to flat top carriages though.

It would be interesting to know who operates this equipment.
Although I suppose a some of separatists did the mandatory service in their time , probably very few are can operate those things and even less few are minimally competent at the task.
I don't suppose Russians unload the equipment and leave.
This would require some volunteers on leave from Russian army.

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by MH

It would be interesting to know who operates this equipment.
Although I suppose a some of separatists did the mandatory service in their time , probably very few are can operate those things and even less few are minimally competent at the task.
I don't suppose Russians unload the equipment and leave.
This would require some volunteers on leave from Russian army.

Considering that Russian Army at the moment uses conscription - I think there is enough of people with relevant military profession available (in fact there would be thousands of conscripts every year who just finished their service in tank unit or sub unit), especially considering that Separatists are fairly open about them looking for volunteers (in fact I think they have a fairly decent infrastructure for that in Rostov I think).

That said I think that even though there are no regular troops in Donbas, it is quite possible that they may have regular army instructors (and more so volunteers with relevant skills), which provide required training (and it doesn't take long to learn how to operate a Soviet pattern tank).

What is more interesting is how neither side was capable of mobilising significant amount of population behind it's cause - though Separatists do have it easier due to their territory being bombarded and promoting their cause with refugees in Russia.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by August

Well I think they will take eastern Ukraine and I believe the west will let them get away with it.

Their always formidable propaganda machine has managed to muddy up the waters sufficiently that a fair number of people in the west now believe them over their own governments, their own news media not to mention the last 160 years of almost non stop Russian expansionism.

Where do you find 'em, August ?
I just had to stumble upon that one, I tell you, my good fellow !
Thanks for the laugh, Sir.

By the way : that list is for you personally, Sir, so that you'll have the opportunity to sit around the hearth reading (if you ever happen to buy some books related to the subject) and so learning a little bit more about your own history, during the long autumn and winter evenings to come...


US ingerence/interventionism through military attack, sabotage and agitation since the end of the second world war.

• China : 1945-1946

• Syria : 1949

• Korea : 1950 - 1953

• China : 1950-1953

• Iran : 1953

• Guatemala : 1954

• Tibet : 1955-1970

• Indonesia : 1958

• Cuba : 1959

• Democratic republic of Congo : 1960-1965

• Iraq : 1960-1963

• Dominican republic : 1961

• Vietnam : 1961-1973

• Brazil : 1964

• Belgian Congo : 1964

• Guatemala : 1964

• Laos : 1964-1973

• Dominican republic : 1965-1966

• Peru : 1965

• Greece : 1965

• Guatemala : 1967-1969

• Cambodia : 1969-1970

• Chile : 1970-1973

• Argentina : 1976

• Turkey : 1980

• Poland : 1980-1981

• El Salvador : 1981-1992

• Nicaragua : 1981-1990

• Cambodia : 1980-1995

• Angola : 1980

• Lebanon : 1982-1984

• Granada : 1983-1984

• Philippines : 1986

• Libya : 1986

• Iran : 1987-1988

• Libya : 1989

• Panama : 1989-1990

• Iraq : 1991

• Koweit : 1991

• Somalia : 1992-1994

• Iraq : 1992-1996

• Bosnia : 1995

• Iran : 1998

• Sudan : 1998

• Afghanistan : 1998

• Yugoslavia-Serbia : 1999

• Afghanistan : 2001

• Iraq : 2002-2003

• Somalia : 2006-2007

• Iran : 2005

• Libya : 2011