Russian lies and hypocrisy were plastered all over Central and Eastern Europe in the form of military bases and puppet states, which were violently forced to adopt Communism against their own will. And this happened on a continuous basis for decades, long after WW2 had finished. And now, we're expected to believe Russian lies that they are not present in Ukraine? "But it's not possible. If Russia attacked, Ukraine would be completely destroyed within 24 hours. Therefore, the Russians are not there." Don't insult everyone's intelligence!  |
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Reposting for Nemo. He obviously forgot to reply. It's understandable that when someone has no answer, they conveniently act offended in order to avoid responsibility. Typical. Well, back on ignore with you, I guess...
What difference does it make when you ignore my questions regardless: Do you also deny that the Russians continued to occupy places like Poland and East Germany with military bases as recently as the 1980s? Well, do you deny it? Do ya? Who were the military bases defending? If not Moscow, then who? Warsaw? World War 2 had been over for decades, so why did the Russian soldiers still refuse to go home? And what kind of Voodoo black magic occurred in the 1989 era that former USSR satellite states, which truly loved Moscow, somehow turned to the evil West and everyone had their brains suddenly washed? A warlord of the pen, maybe. They do say that pen is mightier than a sword. Thanks for a laugh. Though I don't exactly see where I was posturing as a warlord... Well, back on ignore with you, I guess... No, you are an ignorant cretin with an internet connection, who embarrasses your own country on a daily basis. Congratulations! Answer my question, fucker. |
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Well, back on ignore with you, I guess...
What difference does it make when you ignore my questions regardless: Do you also deny that the Russians continued to occupy places like Poland and East Germany with military bases as recently as the 1980s? Well, do you deny it? Do ya? Who were the military bases defending? If not Moscow, then who? Warsaw? World War 2 had been over for decades, so why did the Russian soldiers still refuse to go home? And what kind of Voodoo black magic occurred in the 1989 era that former USSR satellite states, which truly loved Moscow, somehow turned to the evil West and everyone had their brains suddenly washed? A warlord of the pen, maybe. They do say that pen is mightier than a sword. Thanks for a laugh. Though I don't exactly see where I was posturing as a warlord... Well, back on ignore with you, I guess... No, you are an ignorant cretin with an internet connection, who embarrasses your own country on a daily basis. Congratulations! |
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Forward reply: Yes, yes. Now that the Russians have won, they can proudly withdraw their victorious forces and stop killing people.
It's hard to withdraw something that wasn't there to begin with. Ukrainian army can stop killing people of Ukraine/Novorossia because said people managed to defend themselves. blablahblah, you still remind me of those Germans in 1940s that screamed about bad Russians who would not stop defending themselves in the face of glorious German army. I didn't realise you were old enough to remember the Nazis. Shouldn't you be wise enough to stop being such a warrior at your ripe old age of 80-something? You brave warlord! Do you also deny that the Russians continued to occupy places like Poland and East Germany with military bases as recently as the 1980s? Europe should be thankful for the Russian generosity in their efforts. Oh sorry, that was the USSR, a different ethnicity! Of course, the Russians hold zero responsibility for the actions of their cruel Communist oppressors.  I wonder when the Russians will change their name again to something like "the United Federation of Eurasian Democratic People's Republics". Of course, this new species will also claim zero responsibility for the past such as Putin or any other former Russian oppressors. It's hard to withdraw something that wasn't there to begin with. Don't they at least want their white trucks back? |
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Yes, yes. Now that the Russians have won, they can proudly withdraw their victorious forces and stop killing people.
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Circle jerk http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=circle+jerk3.) When a bunch of blowhards - usually politicians - get together for a debate but usually end up agreeing with each other's viewpoints to the point of redundancy, stroking each other's egos as if they were extensions of their genitals (ergo, the mastubatory insinuation). Basically, it's what happens when the choir preaches to itself. |
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To Understand Putin, Read OrwellAnyone who wants to understand the current Russian position on Ukraine would do well to begin with George Orwell’s classic, 1984. The connections go deeper than the adjective “Orwellian”: the structure and the wisdom of the book are guides, often frighteningly precise ones, to current events. The easiest way to begin, in light of the now entirely open Russian invasion of Ukraine, is with “War is Peace,” one of the slogans of the imagined empire in Orwell’s tale. After all, every attempt thus far at negotiation and cease-fire has been accompanied by a Russian escalation, to the point where we can be certain that this is not a coincidence. If Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with other leaders, we must simply expect that this is cover for the latest outrage, as with the entrance of Russian troops, armor and artillery during the recent talks in Minsk. But we need to dig a bit deeper into the plot for the three concepts needed to understand this very strange war, in which Putin has radicalized Russian politics, destroyed a European peace order, challenged Europeans’ assumptions about their entire future — and even threatened nuclear war. Every reason proffered to explain a war that is pointless to the point of nihilism is obviously bogus or self-contradictory or both. To grasp this horrible event in which people are killing and dying for no discernible reason, we need to remember some key concepts from Orwell: Eurasia, doublethink and learning to love Big Brother. In Orwell’s 1984, one of the world powers is called Eurasia. Interestingly enough, Eurasia is the name of Russia’s major foreign policy doctrine. In Orwell’s dystopia, Eurasia is a repressive, warmongering state that “comprises the whole of the northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait.” In Russian foreign policy, Eurasia is a plan for the integration of all the lands from—you guessed it—Portugal to the Bering Strait. Orwell’s Eurasia practices “neo-Bolshevism”; Russia’s leading Eurasian theorist once called himself a “national Bolshevik.” This man, the influential Alexander Dugin, has long advocated that the Ukrainian state be destroyed, and has very recently proposed that Russia exterminate Ukrainians. Orwell can help us understand what is happening to us as if we make a good-faith effort to use Russian media official sources to try to understand the world. Russian propaganda about Ukraine is today’s doublethink: it requires that people, as Orwell put it, “hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing both of them.” Russian propaganda daily pounds out two sides to every story, both of which are false, and each of which contradicts the other. Consider the propositions in italics below, all of which should by now, after eight months of repetition, sound familiar. One the one hand, Russia must invade Ukraine because the Ukrainian state is repressive. (In fact, Ukraine is a democracy with free expression and is in every respect a freer country than Russia.) On the other hand, Russia must intervene because the Ukrainian state does not exist. (In fact, it is just as functional as the Russian state, except in the problematic spheres of war, intelligence and propaganda.) On the one hand, Russia must invade Ukraine because Russians in Ukraine are forced to speak the Ukrainian language. (This is not the case: Russians in Ukraine are far more at liberty to speak as they please than are Russians in Russia. Most speakers of Russian in Ukraine are not actually Russian, in any case, any more than Americans who speak English are English.) On the other, there is no Ukrainian language. (There is. It has a proud literary tradition and is spoken by tens of millions of people.) On the one hand, Ukrainians are all nationalists. (In fact, the Ukrainian far right polled at 2 percent in the last presidential elections, far less than in any other European country you care to name.) On the other hand, there is no Ukrainian nation. (In fact, opinion polls always show the contrary, even in the regions now under Russian occupation. Millions of Ukrainians were willing to take risks for their nation in the recent revolution, and thousands of volunteers have chosen to risk their lives on the front lines—far more than can be said of most people in the United States and elsewhere who regard themselves as patriots.) Feeling dizzy yet? One more time: Russia is making war to save the world from fascism. (In fact, it is in Russia where the far right it exerts dictatorial power, the head of state enunciates a Hitlerian doctrine of invading another country to protect ethnic brethren. Russia’s political allies are Europe’s far right parties, including the fascists and neo-Nazis.) Meanwhile: fascism is good. (In Russia, Hitler is now being rehabilitated as a statesman, the Jews are being blamed for the Holocaust, gays are presented as an international conspiracy, Russian Nazis march on May Day and Russian Nazis in Ukraine are presented as heroes.) Russian propaganda provides both sides of the story. We assume that the truth is in between. But no truth lies between propositions that are individually false and mutually contradictory. There is only insanity—or, as Orwell calls it, learning to love Big Brother, the novel’s distant, impersonal totalitarian leader. In 1984, one learns to love Big Brother by sacrificing the thing that one loves the most. In Ukraine, this would be statehood, as Putin has just demanded by endorsing the partition of the country and the formation of a Novorossiya (New Russia) in its southeast; in Europe, this would be peaceful integration, the achievement that Putin threatens; for all of us, reason. All too often, we try to guess what is in Putin’s mind. We try to dwell in the mind of Big Brother rather than in the world of discoverable facts. But, fundamentally, who really cares what is in Putin’s mind? Does anyone really know, including Putin himself? Even if we did know what was in Putin’s mind today, is that a reliable guide to what will be in his mind tomorrow? And what chance would we have of defending freedom and decency if we begin from the brain of one individual? This is, after all, a man who intervenes in children’s cartoons and presides over television programs that raise the question of his possible divinity. At the end of 1984, a member of Big Brother’s regime, in the midst of carrying out torture, makes a certain admission: “power is not a means, it is an end.” Whatever is in Putin’s mind, whatever he says and does, all he is really defending is his own power, something that will come to an end before very long in any event. Oppression in Russia, war in Ukraine and the destabilization of the West are grotesquely high prices to pay for one man’s preferences. Rather then beginning from these, rather than staring into the troubled eyes of the doublethinker, we had better think instead about what we value and what we can do to protect it. If Ukraine becomes Novorossiya, Europe becomes Eurasia, and the West collapses, it will not be because if Russia’s physical strength, but because of our mental weakness. Timothy Snyder is Housum professor of History at Yale University and the author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/to-understand-putin-read-orwell-110551_Page2.html Indeed, and the parallels don't end there. Here are a few more: Constant attempts to rewrite history. These days, obviously nobody bothers to make amendments to archived newspaper articles, but the Internet is a rich playground where inconvenient truths can simply be deleted with minimal evidence that they ever existed in the first place. Strict state control over the media to enable the above, including potentially all *.ru websites. Dissidents can easily be accused of having more than 3000 visitors. Blocking dissident websites -- similar to banned books. Past allies suddenly become enemies and vice versa, for no particular reason. Former USSR member states are now sworn enemies? Former government workers mysteriously become self-destructive alcoholics. You should probably start a new thread on this, and invite people to find other similarities. Otherwise, it will all get buried underneath more mountains of propaganda. They're not even bothering to respond to any posts, they just keep posting new stuff, ignoring everything that was previously written. |
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drunkard Yeltsin
 What should you do if you wish to become a genuine president? - Use machine guns to kill more than 3000 parliament supporters when democratically elected parliament tries to impeach you for violation of constitution.
- Force adoption of hyper-presidential constitution, force the MPs to surrender by shelling the parliament building.
- Grant a non-revocable and lifetime legislative immunity to himself.
So BBC is right, Putin and Medvedev are dictators who are increasingly restrict human rights while Yeltsin was truly democratic & liberal indeed... I even think it's safe to bet that blablahblah and other members of Yeltsin's fan club would be happy to have him as their president. I don't doubt it, but I have to ask you, are you sure that usage of machine gun against the crowd doesn't violate any human rights? Careful with the smear campaign! Putin hasn't finished being president yet. Do some research on past dictators, then come back here and tell us why Putin's high popularity is different this time. |
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Putler, you said? Certainly gave me a good laugh.  Well, Putler said he could occupy Kiev in 2 weeks and I believe he is right (maybe 3-4 weeks because of logistics issues). Putin underestimated himself. If Russia invades Ukraine (for real), then everything will be over in 24 hours. There will be only two major battles. The battle of Kiev and the battle of Lvov. The first one will be fought in the morning and the second one in the afternoon. The regular Ukrainian forces will surrender even before the invasion begins. Only the right sector loonies will offer themselves as cannon fodder. So, even if Russia only sends right sector loonies, they will still defeat Ukraine within 24 hours? You must be really proud! |
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One last attempt to explain it to Armstrong... (I grow weary of repeating myself)... ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Centralized tally is the antithesis of bottom-up voting; decapitation of figureheads notwithstandingFrom: AnonyMint Date: Tue, September 2, 2014 1:06 am To: Armstrong Economics -------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/09/01/global-warming-being-exposed-as-a-fraud/Global Warming has been a fantastic excuse to raise taxes and now regulate cow farting in Europe. How about eliminating all the hot air created by worthless government programs? If we eliminated career politicians and voted from our laptops on every initiative, think of all the limousines that would not be driving them around and special plane flights for their vacations. So Martin Armstrong wants to replace the bureaucrats with a centralized computer for tallying votes on top-down issues thus inherently controlled by the power of the global elite. Sure the global elite will give this Pyrrhic victory to Armstrong and all the "end the corruption" idealistic fools. But just like the outcome of the French Revolution, the figureheads are changed but the systemic power vacuum of democracy remained. I don't know why Armstrong can't understand this. Is his IQ too low or is he is just stubbornly invested in his incorrect idea? It's what the "Resource Based Economy" crowd keep pushing with their A.I. computer that centrally allocates resources. Come on, you don't need to be Sir Roger Penrose to see where they're going with this. For example: Epic breakthroughs where programs start passing the Turing test. Notice how they're usually dressed-up with a nice GUI or artificial face and voice for user-friendliness? Then, "hey why don't we use, that is *ask* these amazing artificial intelligences how to allocate some local resources the most fairly?" ... |
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This is all part of the energy war, and Russia trying to use its energy dominance in an attempt to control Europe. With the prospect of Russia "renegotiating" gas deals every winter, a "20 year plan" for building nuclear plants just isn't fast enough.
Seriously? Do you need to mention Russia in every single post of yours? Nope. Read above. We were discussing about the EU proposal to ban toasters and kettles. What Russia has to do with this? They're the suppliers of the gas that has a large effect on electricity cost. Aren't we allowed to discuss the real reasons behind the push for better efficiency? |
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A simple step can stop all this BS. Replace carbon-di-oxide emitting thermal power plants with nuclear power plants. This can reduce a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. Also, wind-power and solar-power are good options.
I will not favor solar power, as it is too expensive even now. But nuclear power is a wonderful option. However, the waste disposal is still quite a bit problematic. If we can invent some new method to re-use the nuclear waste, then nuclear energy will be a very attractive option. Wind power is also a wonderful option. But it cannot be implemented everywhere. This is all part of the energy war, and Russia trying to use its energy dominance in an attempt to control Europe. With the prospect of Russia "renegotiating" gas deals every winter, a "20 year plan" for building nuclear plants just isn't fast enough. |
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Because the quality of the product will be sacrificed along with the power consumption.....
How about replacing single phase transformers with 3 phase transformers in residential areas; increasing the power output of existing electrical devices while simultaneously decreasing the amperage, and reducing the total cost of power for everybody...
+1 Residential areas do have 3 phases. But normally only one phase is installed in the home because it's just not necessary to have more. Extremely power hungry devices like on-demand water heaters, air conditioners, or car chargers likely have their own 3-phase wiring. Comparing vacuum cleaners to those high-power devices is nonsense. Maybe Americans should first get 240VAC. Then we can talk. |
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The previous campaign to push incandescent light bulbs out of the market and replace them with energy saving ones was succesfull and no one was affected by it in a negative way. I can't see why you find this proposal to be unreasonable.
There are some different, more subtle issues there, as the battle against "planned obsolescence" is an ongoing one. Fluorescent tubes have a naturally very long life span of many years, but manufacturers try to cut it short with extremely shitty electronics that are designed to fail within 5000 hours. Even my computer's PSU is better than that, and it has far more interdependent parts. Unscrupulous manufacturers also try to increase overall production throughput by making the devices non-modular, so people throw out CCFLs that are 95% 'good' but happen to have one burnt-out component that's locked under the non-serviceable moulded plastic. The theory seems to be that recycling legislation will force the costs back onto manufacturers, encouraging them to produce better quality but I'm not convinced. It seems like a bad alternative to leasing. As broken lights (or vacuum cleaners) are shuffled between consumers and producers, a constant trickle of toxic waste falls out of the loop and fills the dumping grounds and/or wildlife areas. Meanwhile, transport, shipping, sales and other middlemen industries make a tidy profit. It's surely worthwhile for larger items, but 1~3 euro trinkets are likely to be disposed of together with inorganic waste, despite the scare of mercury pollution. Out of sight, out of mind. By fixing one problem, they've created another and have subtly shifted the energy consumption elsewhere, so in my opinion getting rid of incandescent bulbs was not a clean fix. |
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Just because someone in Brussels brought this up as an idea doesn't mean that everyone here in Europe is nuts. If you think about it, it's not that of a bad idea. The biggest electronic device you have at your home is most likely your oven. It uses around 5000 watts, isn't it weird that a hand held device like a hair dryer consumes half of that? That's inefficiency at it's best. The previous campaign to push incandescent light bulbs out of the market and replace them with energy saving ones was succesfull and no one was affected by it in a negative way. I can't see why you find this proposal to be unreasonable.
2400W for a hair dryer is understandable since it's just a heater. But complacency stifles development. The dryers could have a jet-like bypass that recirculates most of the hot air. But the vacuum cleaners have turned to complete shit. Our family's 1800W one is quite obviously weaker than the old 1200W we had many years ago. The piping is the same diameter, and it's a similar kind of soft flexible plastic that cannot physically maintain lower pressure without deforming and coiling up. If it wasn't for the forced-air cooling, the motor's electrical rating would probably be only about 400W, maximum. The motors are simply inefficient and grossly overloaded, so they have to waste even more power for self-cooling. Even in the 1990s the designs were already so bad, that if the suction was blocked, the machine would either have a warning light or automatically activate some kind of bypass to keep the cold air flowing so the motor wouldn't burn itself out, even though a blocked vacuum cleaner is operating at minimum load! Even engineers tend to forget about all the sh*t that goes on inside household appliances. Thank goodness we have capitalist Americans who can lead the way and wipe out the competition with better efficiency and better everything! |
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..
As for the little girl, this is something that will traumatize her for the rest of her life, and most definitely affect her mental well being.
I think the social reaction often makes these sorts of things worse, like a kind of reverse ostracism. Similar things can be seen with rape cases, where some women suffer mental anguish for years despite getting lots of care, while others shrug it off and are able to move on a lot better. Ironically, the victims seem to suffer more if they live in an advanced Western environment where rape is culturally less acceptable, as opposed to the victims in areas where women have less/no rights. Putting it very crudely and insensitively to deliver the message: most of the suffering seems to be as result of social conditioning/brainwashing to maintain cultural expectations, and that conditioning is strongly reinforced after the event. Of course I don't disagree with maintaining good standards, but we should also be aware of side-effects. As Lisa Simpson would say: "I don't want your pity!" However, the Americans will probably serendipitously shrug off yet another gun accident, and the girl will make new friends with several of her classmates, who have also shot various family members and pets. |
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I had a debate with someone on this. My position was that it was needless interference and that market forces could sort it out. But it turns out there are some reasonable arguments from the protectionist side. Recapping: Free market As people use more electricity, especially for things like recharging their battery-powered cars (just wait until that one hits ), electricity prices will naturally increase to cover infrastructure upgrades and lock-in. 'Dumb' consumers will be pruned away as they learn to spend their money more wisely. The devices are basically harmless and there exist less extreme methods of discouraging people from using them if it's such a big deal. Protectionism, Socialism-lite A large part of the electricity infrastructure is not part of the market. It's controlled by governments and monopoly providers, and continuity of supply is a big social obligation. For something that big, markets are too laggy to be able to maintain a stable system, while still giving people complete freedom to use whatever electrical devices that they want. The 'price' indicator is too slow and crude to be able to provide all of the information that consumers need, such as: whether everyone else's electricity usage has also increased, upcoming maintenance costs, or upcoming problems with fuel supplies. So I kind-of lost that debate. And it reminded me of an argument I made one time, that old industries usually seem to stagnate. They become concerned with things like consolidating their market position and eliminating competitors rather than innovating. Vacuum cleaners seem to fit into that category. They're all the same old plastic crap, and producers keep putting shittier and shittier motors into them, just so that their model has bigger numbers in the showroom. |
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Otherwise what was the point in changing one regime for another?
Majority of ukrainian citizens doesn't care about logic too much. 1991-1994-2005-2010-2014... It's a kind of tradition already, something like new year or easter... So, this new regime will be overthrown just as usual. Sometimes I wish Siberia would hurry up and run out of gas and all of those other natural resources that the ungrateful Russians don't deserve. Of course, I also wish that on the US and the Middle East, but dreams are free. |
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Getting the plutonium necessary to construct a nuke is *much* easier to get than uranium. Building the nuke, however, is insanely complicated.
Access to uranium = very hard; construction = very easy
Access to plutonium = fairly easy; construction = insanely hard
Hmm, I would say that access to plutonium is also insanely hard, as it implies that you already have a local nuclear reactor and reprocessing facilities. The hard part about getting uranium is probably just the logistics of disguising your mining operation as a desalination plant, or some other type of metal mine. And then exporting the semi-manufactured product to a reputable-sounding customer. |
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What is insanity here? Is it subjective?
Yep. It's one of the world's worst-kept secrets, along with the idea that nobody rules the world, and that gods don't count. There's basically constant anarchy on the global scene. Just look around. Oh, I'm sure there are hundreds of secret societies and think-tanks in addition to the public governments and large corporate entities. Everyone is trying to influence everyone else. In this sense, the "insane" label is an extreme way of saying to someone else, "hey! You are doing things too differently and I don't like it." I'm sure it's possible to have a constructive dialogue, even if it starts with name-calling, but it requires good will and openness from all sides.  |
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