ronwagn + 6,290 January 11, 2022 1 minute ago, Andrei Moutchkine said: Which "Democratic Party leaders?" The consensus on the Russian side is that they've already tossed the more colorful fringe fractions under the bus and it is business as usual. As in actually picking up most activities just where Trump left them. From this you can possibly infer the general undesirability of a California-derived administration, perhaps? You are a very educated and smart man Andrei, I am shocked that you are so out of touch with the realities of the Democratic Party. I like to call them Demoncrats. Let me give you a list of their failures and horrible ideas which are all endorsed by our Bumbler in Chief. 1. Follows All of the far leftist logic and supports it with zeal until it fails. a. I will fix COVID when elected. That was then. Now he says COVID is the responsibility of the states, after he miserably fails to battle it and has more deaths under his administration than Trump had. He accepts the guidance of Fauci who changes his mind whenever he feels like it and does NOTHING of value during the entire epidemic. (Except making his favorite pharmaceutical companies filthy rich, which is of value to them). Fauci managed to stop all treatments other than those he approved of and were expensive. Fauci has with Biden's consent has killed many people because they were not allowed to get drugs that could be used to battle their illness as soon as it struck. Mask recommendations were only recently changed from cloth Good to Cloth Bad and during the meantime the good masks were not available at a price people could afford. 2. The worst withdrawl of American and allied forces from Afghanistan that could have been imagined. He left thousands of former allies behind, endangered most of the civilians and allies that did get away, and to top off the disaster he left billions of dollars of high grade weapons behind. He also left a fully functioning airbase behind. Now we face the spectacle of starving Afghans which were either unwilling or unable to defend themselves because ( I assume) they were never trained or given rifles and ammunition to defend themselves with. 3. Biden halted oil pipelines and has cut off natural gas leasing on most federal lands thus increasing prices and decreasing competition among oil companies who sell to the retail market. 4. He has continued to try to spend as much money as possible through congressional legislation and is currently trying to push through more spending by having the senate suspend the right of unfettered deliberation. 5. He has done his best to follow the Demoncrat policy of dividing up each of dozens of groups of Americans into sections in order to divide them: White, Brown, Black, Red, Yellow, LGBTQ, poor, middle class, rich, old, middle aged, young etc. He has and is trying to say that the January 6, 2021 protest at the Capitol was intended to be a violent insurrection and compared it to real disasters like 911 while he allowed his Vice President to compare it to Pearl Harbor. Anyone, with eyes to see, knows better. It was a peaceful assembly of protestors but The FBI, better named FIB, and their employees led all of the violent tendencies. He and the Demoncrats are shameless in going after those who were duped by the FBI and they have been badly treated even though there were mostly minor offenses. That will have to do for now, but I have many more criticism. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 11, 2022 21 hours ago, RichieRich216 said: The most important takeaway from all this is China is an open book known for stealing technology and making financial loans to Countries that can't pay it back. Still, I always think back to the history of DARPA and the technology and production of weapon systems that you only learn about a decade later. I refer to President Trump commenting about missiles and their incredible speed; I further look back at the subtle change of Boeing's Company logo that resembles a hypersonic missile and the logo circles around. I believe we are way further advanced in weapons than we will ever disclose. In the ’'80s and yes I'm up there in age I had a lifelong friend that joined the Air Force and was part of the nuclear weapons program, after a thorough and complete background check, he and the others in his class was received the highest level clearance, and he told him they we taken to an auditorium and dialed in on the United States most advanced weapon systems. Though he obviously could not elaborate, he started; he was stunned by the capabilities that the United States had in its arsenal. Several years later, he directed me to a discontinued weapon that could be used if a nato Country had a ground intrusion from the Russians. This weapon could be deployed by air, artillery, and mortars, and it would kill humans but leave the cities intact. If you are interested, do some research in modifying neutron weapons; and the program was ended because it was deemed inhumane. He retired but still must maintain the secrecy of the nature of what he was trained with. By the age of mid-’20s, he was getting grey-haired, much like what happens to former Presidents while in office or out of office. What you learn a decade later is that most of DARPA experiments were as idiotic as they seemed at the time. Ditto for their Russian equivalent. It would be quite beneficial for the Chinese if they refrain from copying most of the stuff. How do you know what a hypersonic weapon looks like, if they are so classified? The overwhelming majority of imagery of such weapons online appear to be CGI renders of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-51_Waverider for which there is likely some kind of CAD clip art. It was a dud and did not look like anything in the Boeing logo. No, you are as not advanced as it looks like, at least as far as hypersonic weapons are concerned. Which is odd, given that NASA had full access to the Soviet Kholod project, which did work. Here are the write-ups https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88580main_H-2243.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88431main_H-2115.pdf obtained from this insightful article https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/08/hypersonic-missiles-are-they-a-gamechanger-by-gordog.html The way I see it, it takes some amount of expertise in building fast supersonic weapons before you switch to hypersonic ones. US did no such thing. AFAIK, are all US air-breathing missiles strictly subsonic. There is a sorta-exception in the European https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(missile) now. My guess is that the Boeing logo shows the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 the system the Russians classify as most concern. Your stories of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb are old wives tales, not even up to Wikipedia state. Firstly, is a neutron bomb as described a fusion-grad device, that is on the larger size of conventional nuke. Secondly, there is a whole bunch of targets significantly more interesting targets then enemy personnel for such a device, notably the opponents fission reactors (will melt down or blow up, depending of fuel's enrichment grade) and fission nukes/primers. This suggests making the thing ever larger / preferably directed / based on emitting "neutron beams" instead. It is also now known that even the largest conventional explosions are capable of setting off a neutron-like artifact, which you can see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpwEZ_9VLD8 (skip about 2 mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgwZDGGO4RU This is an ammunition depot in Ukraine which had a dubious distinction of blowing up twice. You know, the bad bad Russians always happen to send their agents of sabotage when it is time to audit the inventories. Your Javelins are in best hands Watch for a strange "whiteout" temporarily overloading the phone's CCD sensors. And indeed, in unprotected form, those things are more sensitive then human eyes. I was too lazy to search for more, but sometimes you can see the "whiteout" effect arriving distinctly LATER than the sound wave. This looks very similar to so called "thermal neutrons" i.e. lowest energy ones. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_temperature#Neutron_energy_distribution_ranges Another well known incident is from a massive Houti stash Saudis blew up in Yemen https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2rzz85 (This gave rise to a persistent conspiracy of it being an Israeli nuke) Probably because it made such a tidy mushroom cloud. This particular footage was made by an advanced optical device which knew how to attenuate the image relative to the explosive event (everything else turns dark) 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 2 hours ago, ronwagn said: I was not taught the faults of American history until I took college history. Unfortunately world history is very rarely taught to students and is not required. Socialist professors and new teachers are taught to promote socialism and LGBTQ. Many disagree of course. I was taught the constitution and how our American government is supposed to work and on which principles. My step father was a communist with a long history back to northern Minnesota and the labor movement. He was a very secretive man and a bit paranoid. I knew what he wanted for America. What he called democratic socialism is, of course IMO, just a slippery slope into dictatorship of the crony industrialists, party leaders. etc. When I got out of the army, in which I spent 26 months in Germany, he let go with a fluid German. That is the first German I ever heard out of his mouth. He used to let out various communist talking points. Not unlike what our news services and "news" organizations do today. They call it liberal but it all heads toward election fraud, LGBTQ, Covid mandates, strong federal and state control. It would eventually lead to democratic socialism. I want nothing to do with such tyrannical control of people and their thoughts. I loved President Kennedy when I was young. When he was assassinated, I was in Germany. I always questioned who really was behind his death and still do. I believe that , as Eisenhower said, we are at risk from our military industrial complex. Yet I realize its importance. Without it we would be speaking Russian, which my step father was angry was not offered in high school. He was also angry that my elementary school had offered a class in Christianity. It had to be held outside of the school in a trailer anyway. Now it is not offered at all, to my knowledge. Our deep state government and most of the higher positions are dominated by liberals. One of the bad things Kennedy did was to get a bill passed to allow government jobs to be unionized. Now teachers have high incomes, in most areas, related to the average person. These teachers are far inferior to the teachers that made less money but were more dedicated. The education of the average American is now influenced most by liberal ideals and not by reading, writing, and arithmetic. Many cannot even read but are given high school diplomas. It has all become politicized and not for the benefit of the student. Americans are finally learning how faithless many of our teachers are. We are spending an exorbitant amount of money for very bad results. Our elected politicians, or many of them, become wealthy because of people who they give favors too. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Mitt Romney, etc. It is ridiculous to allow our congressmen and congresswomen to receive insider information that is illegal for everyone else. I will stop here, sorry for going on. Maybe it will help you understand " where I am coming from." Don't think that various obviously dubious ideologies propagated by US academia are actually socialist in European sense. In Europe, socialism won. What exactly are you objecting to? You are unlikely to find for example anybody in economics or business school supporting socialism. I actually took Econ 1 (Berkeley does not inflate the class indices, Econ 101 is an upper division class there) for some social science? requirement with this woman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Tyson who is as close as US economist comes to being a socialist. She was some important advisor of Clinton's at the time. When confronted on her position on socialism, she said that it may not be best for utmost economic efficiency, but may be better for safety and comfort of everybody involved. This corresponds exactly to the European sentiment, with a caveat that it may actually be best for economic efficiency too, once you account for all the externalities. For example, what good does additional income do to you if you have to spend it on living in a gated compound surrounded by a moat with real crocodiles to keep the less fortunate out. Silicon Valley would become a much more hospitable place if they managed as much as making every place reachable by some kind of commuter train / public transportation. Extending BART would do. In the last 20 years I don't live their anymore, they just about managed to extend it a couple of miles to reach SFO. Semi-revelation al already. See how supporting polite left-wing causes verbally and actually doing something about them are different thing. Well, maybe not to a Lutheran like yourself Interestingly enough, in Russia, is liberal also a swear word. Except that it stands for an exactly the opposite of socialism. Specifically extremely populist pro-West, right wing interpretation of laissez-faire "greed is good" capitalism which was very big in Russia just a few years back. If you want to check out the state-of-the-art of alternative Marxist economics, check out this guy https://smile.amazon.com/Crisis-capital-effectiveness-useless-solve-ebook/dp/B08KCC878V/ref=sr_1_1?crid=7IQRGDUD9ZDL&keywords=mikhail+khazin&qid=1641944494&sprefix=mikhail+khasin%2Caps%2C319&sr=8-1 (mileage on the quality of the English translation varies and there is also no paper edition yet) This guy is somewhat known in Russia for giving eerily correct prediction of various unpleasant events, even including 9/11 allegedly using his economic modeling alone. I paste the Amazon intro here Ever since the inception of capitalism in 16th century Europe, the capitalist system was plagued by the recurring crises, with each subsequent crisis being more severe than the predecessor. Can we call the current crisis "the mother of all crises"? And how did we end up with capitalism after almost 2,000 years of workshop economy in medieval Europe? Were there big scale manufacturing facilities during the times of the Roman Empire? Was it even possible to organize massive industrial production in ancient Roman Empire? Mikhail Khazin a renowned Russian economist will provide answers to all these questions in his first ever English language book Crisis of Capital Effectiveness. Mr. Khazin will also share his insights on the issue that has been the cornerstone of the Marxist philosophy - the finiteness of capitalism. Is capitalism finite? Is there a limit to its development? What comes next after globalization? Does the current crisis mean there will be no more globalism? And how did Trump become the US president? You will find all the answers inside this book. I didn't read his books, but I am often listening to his rants on YouTube and know what it is about. I also know enough Marx to see that it is not the classical Marxist crises he is talking about here. Marx' inevitable crises were the Crises of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overproduction also see https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/marx19.html I don't think this is that big of a deal anymore. Due to any actual big business today being not competitive at all, but a cozy close-knit cartel. Well, this viewpoint is not official Marxism, but you should be familiar with the classic Marxist view before poking holes at it. Could I also interest you in Max Weber view of socialism instead of Marx In essence predicting an appearance of professional apparatchiks in charge of everybody else's compliance? Sure happened in USSR, and now is happening to you. Note though, that all of this belong to a branch of economics known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy which is only tough at the most advanced Western schools to a very small group. At least beyond Adam Smith. Obviously, the fuckers became a nuisance for dissecting the ways Western governance actually works. Khasin claims that there is no new political economy being down outside of Russia, while all of Western economics is mostly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econometrics Apparently, it is appropriate for you as a closet libertarian to also reject the econometric approach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_econometrics#Austrian_School_critique You are a follower of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School right? This is all that US "libertarianism" got for an economic program, however pathetic. That particular criticism is obviously invalid. Sufficiently advanced number crunching is very well capable of extrapolating statistics of the past to the future trends, as evidenced by activities of Wall Street quants (statistical arbitrageurs) for example. This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics) is an example of liberalism that is a swear word in Russia. Originally the dogma of neo-liberal economics which is still very much with us, and now loosely any kind of pro-Western populism 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nsdp + 449 eh January 12, 2022 15 hours ago, Andrew Neopalimy said: SPFS + CIPS (or SPFS + CUP) = BRICS Pay You will not disable SWIFT, because incur huge losses and reduce confidence in the "main reserve currency of the world" to 0. You are tormented by driving planes with cash to Russia to pay for contracts on hydrocarbons, metals, wheat ... In addition, Russia has had an analogue of SWIFT since 2014. The SPFS (Financial Message Transfer System) of the Bank of Russia appeared in 2014. It was originally conceived as an alternative channel of interbank interaction in case the country is disconnected from SWIFT. Now SPFS accounts for about 20% of the total number of financial transactions within the Russian Federation. And NSPK Mir is an analogue of Visa and Mastercard payment systems. China since 2002 has its own national payment system in China UnionPay (CUP) and China International Payments System (CIPS) plus digital yuan .... And before the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, we will probably))) sign an agreement on the unification of the national payment systems SPFS-CIPS (or SPFS-CUP) into one. Subsequently, we will connect India and create BRICS Pay " No you don't understand the banking system very well. If a country is kicked out of the International Bank of Settlements no other country would be able to convert rubles to anything. Lot of bluster and no knowledge or how international money transfers work at eh security leveeles. I was up to my ass in alligators the last ten years I did work for the Federal Public Defender's Office in white collar crime. It is as easy as removing a country from the computer list in Switzerland and blocking the bank routing codes. The incoming SWIFT wire will be stopped at IBS and it never completes. Banks are routinely cust off from Swift. We have another dumbass who says no country has ever been kicked out of IBS apparently has never heard of Southern Rhodesia or Nicaragua. As for the credit card companies, they won't help you. The credit card companies cut off the Union of South Africa and Uganda(Idi Amin) both at one time. It is very obvious you know enough about international banking to display your ignorance at the criminal enforcement level. It is done all the time. Estonia: Danske Bank Money Laundering Probe Expands https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/11456-estonia-danske-bank-money-laundering-probe-expands You should start reading the Organized Crime and Corruption Report , you might accidentally learn something. 1 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
frankfurter + 562 ff January 12, 2022 13 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said: Hypothetical scenario. What if there was a way to take out all US/NATO carriers and nuclear subs with a single surgical strike. No need to attack the actual countries. Wouldn't that be a clear win, in theory? If your scenario could be achieved, the main battle may be won, but not the war. To end a war, the will to fight must end. If Germany and Japan, at the end of WW2, are examples, the will to fight will occur when complete destruction results. Japan 'leaders', in particular, successfully indoctrinated the Japanese to believe war was a better solution than negotiation; death to the last person standing was honour and surrender was unspeakable cowardice. Better to die as a free man, than to surrender as a slave. The USA goaded Japan into a war, via sanctions and blockade of critical oil supplies. Where do we see the stark similarities today? Which country levies sanctions upon others? Goads others into war? Prefers threat of war over negotiations? Cancels treaties and agreements at will? Indoctrinates its people to believe war can bring solutions? Steals gold reserves and blocks exchange of currencies? Blocks deliveries of oil? History does repeat. Currently, Amurcuns believe they are invincible and will prevent any attacks upon US soil. When have we heard of such boasts prior? The US war machine will end only when the Aumurcuns themselves choose to end it. History will hold true again. The question is what level of destruction to the US will end the will to fight? Will it be one city only; or the concurrent destruction of Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego; or more? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 6 minutes ago, frankfurter said: If your scenario could be achieved, the main battle may be won, but not the war. To end a war, the will to fight must end. If Germany and Japan, at the end of WW2, are examples, the will to fight will occur when complete destruction results. Japan 'leaders', in particular, successfully indoctrinated the Japanese to believe war was a better solution than negotiation; death to the last person standing was honour and surrender was unspeakable cowardice. Better to die as a free man, than to surrender as a slave. The USA goaded Japan into a war, via sanctions and blockade of critical oil supplies. Where do we see the stark similarities today? Which country levies sanctions upon others? Goads others into war? Prefers threat of war over negotiations? Cancels treaties and agreements at will? Indoctrinates its people to believe war can bring solutions? Steals gold reserves and blocks exchange of currencies? Blocks deliveries of oil? History does repeat. Currently, Amurcuns believe they are invincible and will prevent any attacks upon US soil. When have we heard of such boasts prior? The US war machine will end only when the Aumurcuns themselves choose to end it. History will hold true again. The question is what level of destruction to the US will end the will to fight? Will it be one city only; or the concurrent destruction of Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego; or more? How will they fight if they are stuck to their own continent without any warships and nobody is invading them? The Japanese' actual adherence to samurai spirit has been strongly overrated in US folklore. One million man Kwantung army surrendered to the Soviets in Manchuria with nary a suicidal banzai attack or attempt to cut their own belly up. I think the US troops who were seeing all these things simply had too much meth. Americans behave the same as every hegemonic Empire before them and will inevitably end up the same soon enough - on the scrapheap of history. Probably collapsing to internal stress, same as USSR before them. If you want to accelerate it, by all means. It's gonna have to be something less bloodthirsty than nuking of actual cities full of civilians. You are not going to find anybody in Russia interested in doing that just yet. American civilians are largely innocent - they don't notice how brainwashed they are and never experienced any war except in remote countries on TV populated by bad guys. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nsdp + 449 eh January 12, 2022 8 minutes ago, frankfurter said: If your scenario could be achieved, the main battle may be won, but not the war. To end a war, the will to fight must end. If Germany and Japan, at the end of WW2, are examples, the will to fight will occur when complete destruction results. Japan 'leaders', in particular, successfully indoctrinated the Japanese to believe war was a better solution than negotiation; death to the last person standing was honour and surrender was unspeakable cowardice. Better to die as a free man, than to surrender as a slave. The USA goaded Japan into a war, via sanctions and blockade of critical oil supplies. Where do we see the stark similarities today? Which country levies sanctions upon others? Goads others into war? Prefers threat of war over negotiations? Cancels treaties and agreements at will? Indoctrinates its people to believe war can bring solutions? Steals gold reserves and blocks exchange of currencies? Blocks deliveries of oil? History does repeat. Currently, Amurcuns believe they are invincible and will prevent any attacks upon US soil. When have we heard of such boasts prior? The US war machine will end only when the Aumurcuns themselves choose to end it. History will hold true again. The question is what level of destruction to the US will end the will to fight? Will it be one city only; or the concurrent destruction of Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego; or more? Frankfurter , your undereducated. It won't be just the US doing it. Secondly your education in nuclear and geophysics in grossly deficient. There are seven countries by my count that have sufficient nuclear weapons to put an end to all life one earth. Remember no life on land until the ozone layer was thick. enough to filter the Ultra violet light from the sun. It is the preCambrian Period. As to the Japanese I suggest you read about how the Japanese stopped the Mongols when Russia capitulated. The Samurai code goes back at least 1000 years 1 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nsdp + 449 eh January 12, 2022 4 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said: How will they fight if they are stuck to their own continent without any warships and nobody is invading them? The Japanese' actual adherence to samurai spirit has been strongly overrated in US folklore. One million man Kwantung army surrendered to the Soviets in Manchuria with nary a suicidal banzai attack or attempt to cut their own belly up. I think the US troops who were seeing all these things simply had too much meth. Americans behave the same as every hegemonic Empire before them and will inevitably end up the same soon enough - on the scrapheap of history. Probably collapsing to internal stress, same as USSR before them. If you want to accelerate it, by all means. It's gonna have to be something less bloodthirsty than nuking of actual cities full of civilians. You are not going to find anybody in Russia interested in doing that just yet. American civilians are largely innocent - they don't notice how brainwashed they are and never experienced any war except in remote countries on TV populated by bad guys. Pretty stupid statement when Prince Chichibu(Hirahito's brother) had to travel to Mukden and personally order the surrender on behalf of the Emperor. 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
frankfurter + 562 ff January 12, 2022 21 minutes ago, nsdp said: Frankfurter , your undereducated. It won't be just the US doing it. Secondly your education in nuclear and geophysics in grossly deficient. There are seven countries by my count that have sufficient nuclear weapons to put an end to all life one earth. Remember no life on land until the ozone layer was thick. enough to filter the Ultra violet light from the sun. It is the preCambrian Period. As to the Japanese I suggest you read about how the Japanese stopped the Mongols when Russia capitulated. The Samurai code goes back at least 1000 years respectfully, you have missed the point entirely. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
frankfurter + 562 ff January 12, 2022 27 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said: How will they fight if they are stuck to their own continent without any warships and nobody is invading them? The Japanese' actual adherence to samurai spirit has been strongly overrated in US folklore. One million man Kwantung army surrendered to the Soviets in Manchuria with nary a suicidal banzai attack or attempt to cut their own belly up. I think the US troops who were seeing all these things simply had too much meth. Americans behave the same as every hegemonic Empire before them and will inevitably end up the same soon enough - on the scrapheap of history. Probably collapsing to internal stress, same as USSR before them. If you want to accelerate it, by all means. It's gonna have to be something less bloodthirsty than nuking of actual cities full of civilians. You are not going to find anybody in Russia interested in doing that just yet. American civilians are largely innocent - they don't notice how brainwashed they are and never experienced any war except in remote countries on TV populated by bad guys. Which country has the 1st strike as the basis for its military doctrine? Where have we seen this prior? Why did the Soviets penetrate into Germany and not stop at the border? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 January 12, 2022 1 hour ago, Andrei Moutchkine said: Don't think that various obviously dubious ideologies propagated by US academia are actually socialist in European sense. In Europe, socialism won. What exactly are you objecting to? You are unlikely to find for example anybody in economics or business school supporting socialism. I actually took Econ 1 (Berkeley does not inflate the class indices, Econ 101 is an upper division class there) for some social science? requirement with this woman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Tyson who is as close as US economist comes to being a socialist. She was some important advisor of Clinton's at the time. When confronted on her position on socialism, she said that it may not be best for utmost economic efficiency, but may be better for safety and comfort of everybody involved. This corresponds exactly to the European sentiment, with a caveat that it may actually be best for economic efficiency too, once you account for all the externalities. For example, what good does additional income do to you if you have to spend it on living in a gated compound surrounded by a moat with real crocodiles to keep the less fortunate out. Silicon Valley would become a much more hospitable place if they managed as much as making every place reachable by some kind of commuter train / public transportation. Extending BART would do. In the last 20 years I don't live their anymore, they just about managed to extend it a couple of miles to reach SFO. Semi-revelation al already. See how supporting polite left-wing causes verbally and actually doing something about them are different thing. Well, maybe not to a Lutheran like yourself Interestingly enough, in Russia, is liberal also a swear word. Except that it stands for an exactly the opposite of socialism. Specifically extremely populist pro-West, right wing interpretation of laissez-faire "greed is good" capitalism which was very big in Russia just a few years back. If you want to check out the state-of-the-art of alternative Marxist economics, check out this guy https://smile.amazon.com/Crisis-capital-effectiveness-useless-solve-ebook/dp/B08KCC878V/ref=sr_1_1?crid=7IQRGDUD9ZDL&keywords=mikhail+khazin&qid=1641944494&sprefix=mikhail+khasin%2Caps%2C319&sr=8-1 (mileage on the quality of the English translation varies and there is also no paper edition yet) This guy is somewhat known in Russia for giving eerily correct prediction of various unpleasant events, even including 9/11 allegedly using his economic modeling alone. I paste the Amazon intro here Ever since the inception of capitalism in 16th century Europe, the capitalist system was plagued by the recurring crises, with each subsequent crisis being more severe than the predecessor. Can we call the current crisis "the mother of all crises"? And how did we end up with capitalism after almost 2,000 years of workshop economy in medieval Europe? Were there big scale manufacturing facilities during the times of the Roman Empire? Was it even possible to organize massive industrial production in ancient Roman Empire? Mikhail Khazin a renowned Russian economist will provide answers to all these questions in his first ever English language book Crisis of Capital Effectiveness. Mr. Khazin will also share his insights on the issue that has been the cornerstone of the Marxist philosophy - the finiteness of capitalism. Is capitalism finite? Is there a limit to its development? What comes next after globalization? Does the current crisis mean there will be no more globalism? And how did Trump become the US president? You will find all the answers inside this book. I didn't read his books, but I am often listening to his rants on YouTube and know what it is about. I also know enough Marx to see that it is not the classical Marxist crises he is talking about here. Marx' inevitable crises were the Crises of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overproduction also see https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/marx19.html I don't think this is that big of a deal anymore. Due to any actual big business today being not competitive at all, but a cozy close-knit cartel. Well, this viewpoint is not official Marxism, but you should be familiar with the classic Marxist view before poking holes at it. Could I also interest you in Max Weber view of socialism instead of Marx In essence predicting an appearance of professional apparatchiks in charge of everybody else's compliance? Sure happened in USSR, and now is happening to you. Note though, that all of this belong to a branch of economics known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy which is only tough at the most advanced Western schools to a very small group. At least beyond Adam Smith. Obviously, the fuckers became a nuisance for dissecting the ways Western governance actually works. Khasin claims that there is no new political economy being down outside of Russia, while all of Western economics is mostly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econometrics Apparently, it is appropriate for you as a closet libertarian to also reject the econometric approach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_econometrics#Austrian_School_critique You are a follower of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School right? This is all that US "libertarianism" got for an economic program, however pathetic. That particular criticism is obviously invalid. Sufficiently advanced number crunching is very well capable of extrapolating statistics of the past to the future trends, as evidenced by activities of Wall Street quants (statistical arbitrageurs) for example. This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics) is an example of liberalism that is a swear word in Russia. Originally the dogma of neo-liberal economics which is still very much with us, and now loosely any kind of pro-Western populism I am against Marxism in all of its forms and that of all of its followers. I am against crony capitalism at all levels but have to admit America has always had it and probably always will. Presently that cronyism has led to crazy liberal ideas to benefit the advertisers of products among the general public. That has also led them to oppose conservatism in any form but quite the opposite. The entire establishment is in favor of similar ideas. I am a fan of the Austrian school of economics but don't assume they have all of the good ideas because I do not know. I am not an economist either. I do believe that our labor movement may have benefited from some socialist ideas long ago when we were more of a laissez faire country. Today I think that those who propose it are trying to undermine our country in any way possible or are dupes of other socialists. They want to ignore the Constitution of the United States, especially the Bill of Rights. You, of course, deny the goals of the American Communist Party which including undermining our values in every way possible. Our Constitution can ONLY be changed by the agreement of the majority of states. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nsdp + 449 eh January 12, 2022 23 minutes ago, ronwagn said: I am against Marxism in all of its forms and that of all of its followers. I am against crony capitalism at all levels but have to admit America has always had it and probably always will. Presently that cronyism has led to crazy liberal ideas to benefit the advertisers of products among the general public. That has also led them to oppose conservatism in any form but quite the opposite. The entire establishment is in favor of similar ideas. I am a fan of the Austrian school of economics but don't assume they have all of the good ideas because I do not know. I am not an economist either. I do believe that our labor movement may have benefited from some socialist ideas long ago when we were more of a laissez faire country. Today I think that those who propose it are trying to undermine our country in any way possible or are dupes of other socialists. They want to ignore the Constitution of the United States, especially the Bill of Rights. You, of course, deny the goals of the American Communist Party which including undermining our values in every way possible. Our Constitution can ONLY be changed by the agreement of the majority of states. Ron , it takes 38 states not a majority. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 18 minutes ago, nsdp said: No you don't understand the banking system very well. If a country is kicked out of the International Bank of Settlements no other country would be able to convert rubles to anything. Lot of bluster and no knowledge or how international money transfers work at eh security leveeles. I was up to my ass in alligators the last ten years I did work for the Federal Public Defender's Office in white collar crime. It is as easy as removing a country from the computer list in Switzerland and blocking the bank routing codes. The incoming SWIFT wire will be stopped at IBS and it never completes. Banks are routinely cust off from Swift. We have another dumbass who says no country has ever been kicked out of IBS apparently has never heard of Southern Rhodesia or Nicaragua. As for the credit card companies, they won't help you. The credit card companies cut off the Union of South Africa and Uganda(Idi Amin) both at one time. It is very obvious you know enough about international banking to display your ignorance at the criminal enforcement level. It is done all the time. Estonia: Danske Bank Money Laundering Probe Expands https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/11456-estonia-danske-bank-money-laundering-probe-expands You should start reading the Organized Crime and Corruption Report , you might accidentally learn something. Irrelevant referrals to external authorities non-withstanding, I see no way for a country to be expelled from BIS, especially on criminal charges. Which only apply to individuals, not Central Banks which are the BIS membership. They don't have SWIFT wires and routing codes, are you nuts? You must be confusing them with some other organization? I cannot find any evidence of any country ever being expelled from BIS. In case of South Rhodesia, I reckon due to country being defunct? There is no legal basis whatsoever for banishing Nicaragua in either Swiss or international law. Only in US Podunk law, which de jure does not apply outside of US. If true, it's got to be some kind of bat-shit illegal stuff like expulsion of Iran from SWIFT. Which did more harm to SWIFT than to Iran in the long run. Individual banks maybe, not Central Banks or whole countries.. Are you confusing SWIFT with BIS? When American credit card companies trying to refuse card service in Crimea, the Russian government simply mandated all transactions to go through a domestic clearinghouse. There is also a domestic card acquiring network thanks to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(payment_system) Also accepted in a few other countries already. Squandered a great intelligence resource, as all Russian government employees have to use Mir by law now. Which ought to illustrate the difference between Russia and Uganda. The Chinese got their UnionPay, which is bigger that Visa and MC on its own. There are also payment infrastructures which are allegedly larger than card networks already, and most are firmly in Chinese or Russian hands. The best known example is the system of payments built into the GSM/UMTS phone networks to deal with prepaid cards (originally) In US, that'd be ApplePay. Which is also allegedly larger than Visa and MC by itself. I think only Huiwei has the overview over the entire protocol stack. At least on Windoze. (it is outright Byzantine in complexity) What do you link a story of an Estonian bank where some Russians were engaged in money laundering for? The Russian government is against money laundering, especially when it involves moving capital out of Russia. Got anything on Russian domestic banks? Same for the strange exchange of rubles argument. Are you sure that it is actually a punishment, considering that ruble to foreign currency exchange is mostly a service used by those taken capital OUT of country. The Russian government is commuted to IMF to not put any impediments into free flow of capital, otherwise they might. Would you like to help them? As far as paying for Russian exports, you don't have to pay in rubles. Something can be arranged, I am sure. Are you claiming that this BS will prevent Russia from exporting stuff? So, the big question is, what kind of legal foundation you propose for any of this stuff. US is constantly using the CAATSA act to sanction and un-sanction various Russian entities. None of this activity has any legal validity outside of US. Now, the US might be able to twist some arms here and there, but this got notthing to do with legality. De facto, you are the criminals then? Why do I need to read anything if I can look at the picture Wiki generates from some metadata as the files are being processed. See Countries with politicians, public officials, or close associates named in the leak Do you see Russia in there? I sure don't. Meanwhile, I do see USA though. Due to this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_Ross a whole US Secretary of Commerce under Trump. Like the guy in charge of actually sanctioning the allegedly corrupt Russians? See,your legal system is so rotten that it will completely desintegrate every time you are forced to do anything by the book. They probably did find some Russians engaged in nefarious financial activities, but those are the case for Russian law enforcement, not yours. Most likely, Russia gets quite a credible claim to repatriation of funds out of it. Which you are likely to stall for the time being, making yourself more and more irrelevant every step of the way. Dunno how closely you are willing to dig into the Latverian banks. Did you see the scoop on choice payments coming out of Ukraine to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemont_Seneca_Partners Which is Biden Jr, Heinz Kerry the 4th and some other guy who took the bullet for them for securities fraud in 2018. US also put the whisle-blower, the Ukrainian MP named https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrii_Derkach#U.S._sanctions see the choice article to see the current US administration covering Jr's ass an/or trying to recruit the Republicans. What happens come next Republican administration? I mean, accusing the guy who actually got a PhD in law from KGB's internal works law school of connections to Russian intelligence is something to behold, ain't it? Like they haven't seen him before. Correct me if I am wrong, but does the evidence of a financial crime obtained from foreign intelligence service make it any less of a crime? I didn't see anything wrong with the actual evidence on this case thus far. So, lets wait for this to ripen some more, shall we. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SUZNV + 1,197 January 12, 2022 (edited) 6 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said: Everything they told us about USSR turned out to be a lie. Everything they told us about the West turned out to be quite correct US was very much influenced by the French Revolution. It is all there, in the Federalist Papers for example. The Founding Fathers very much understood how democracy is the worst form of totalitarianism, no individual despot is capable of, by the virtue of removing all personal responsibility for the actions of the moral majority. The era of French Enlightenment appropriately started with the invention of the guillotine. It is amazing how little familiarity with their own scripture Americans really have, given all the moralizing about democracy and freedom they do on a given day. Sorry, what about Spartacus? I don't get it. It is very well possible to win against the US in a direct war, just not in the paradigm of the previous World Wars which involve invading and holding it. Sorry, your 45 points seem entirely invented by some US analyst. He got a few potentially right by a chance, but largely they are alien to Soviet/Russian logic. In general, any source which cites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism as a source is automagically not worthwhile further notice IMHO. It is a known propaganda piece that fails basic arithmetic. According to it, USSR killed something like a half of its citizens. One half was sitting in Gulag, and another half watching them. I am afraid the 1960-ies USSR was not remotely as slick. Only the early USSR was an equal to the West in propagandist appeal, due to the action of the Comintern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_International Which had talented Commie individuals from all over the world working for them. Stalin dissolved this organization to indicate to Allies that USSR is no longer exporting the Revolution. Grave mistake, IMHO. The West does not understand goodwill gestures. Yes, US is very integrative towards new migrants, but so was/is also USSR/Russia. This is what it takes to run a successful Empire. West Europeans are still terrible at that. Is Russia Mechanistic or Organic? You've got to explain it as a significantly old entity it actually is (over 1000 years) which also tends to naturally regrow the parts that it lost, even without any military conquest. US businesses take no risks on startups. The primary source of VC funds is a minuscule portion of the funds US pension funds manage. Small enough to be able to loose. All the insider stocks are typically rendered illiquid with options vesting for the first four years after IPO, while VCs and investment bankers jump ship. Not being able to keep with European welfare standards is also self-serving propaganda from economic liberals. Lets look at that, shall we? I live in Austria, which happens to be a country of near-US standard of living and a taxation schedule that is actually an exact copy of US. Every Austrian has a principal claim to so called Mindestsicherung (minimal security) From here https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/themen/soziales/armut/3/2/Seite.1693914.html we get that it equals 949 EUR for a single, 1.424 for a couple plus 171-256 EUR for each underage child. The only difference to real universal income is that you need to be able to wiggle out of really crappy jobs that pay almost as little the government will try to offer to you instead. The way everybody benefits that it is not possible to legally dock anybody's income to below this minimal sum, even with a valid court order. This is significantly better to the German model where you have to laboriously set up specially protected accounts to protect against valid legal claims and keep inventories of stuff you don't want taken away. This also represents some kind of modest, but real living income around here. For example, my rent on a 64 m^2 apartment is 382 EUR, down from 385 last year. (it's not really a rent, but government-subsidized semi-ownership of sorts) I remember paying $850/month in Berkeley, California of late 90-ties for a very similar apartment. (Back when the dollar was larger than euro. These days, the apartment probably costs some 3 grand to rent) The only remotely equatable option for total rejects I see in US is to enlist with the USMC, where you also earn like $1000 a month, enough to survive on a US government base, but nowhere else in US. US revolution should not be influenced of French Revolution as US revolution occurred first. Both defies the monolithic of Roman Catholic Church and came from Deism French & UK branches but US Revolution didn't support the concept of proletariat but individualism while French Revolution has another name as proletarian revolution which was the root of Marxism and later on Communism (and the French people are still proud of about this). In religion perspective US was a nation under god while French revolutions successor communism was atheism. Founding Fathers were rightly reject Democracy mob rules and chose Electoral College vote system which made US a republic and not a democracy country. This is another different between US and countries in Europe, although both are considered the West in other countries. During the Cold War, both sides have its own propaganda on enemy territories. 45 points was published in 1960s, not the book you linked publish in 1997, again the timeline is in the reverse. I didn't read the book you linked nor cited from it so I don't know what to say about it, but I don't trust propaganda books from both sides. The old schooled propaganda about Capitalism has little effect in the US, unlike in Europe, because US culture was from family values and the individualism and Deism or any religion that does not encourage jealousy or victimhood. USSR were great for immigrants in Communism bloc, the comradeship was pure back then. Not so much for the in the Empire time and later. Most of Israel are descendent of Jewish from Russia. After the cold war it is perfectly understandable because we Vietnamese people were smuggling too much in Eastern Europe, Russia and even Germany. I heard that illegal Vietnamese growing weeds in the UK as well. Ideology collapse and the renaissance of money first encourage greed and distrust among each other. However the Vietnamese in the US are merging quite well in the US, minimal discrimination compares to other countries. Sometime I have a feeling US people has higher tolerant towards immigrants than the immigrants among themselves. I wonder is it because individualism overshadow nationalism? I don't know where is the idea of "The primary source of VC funds is a minuscule portion of the funds US pension funds" came from. Pension fund are heavily regulated and state wise and not something invested in risky business but securities such as bonds. When the bonds yield in US drops, Cali pension fund came to China for higher bond yields which were risky enough. The concept of high risk high return is still relevant in private sector investment, which VCs are in and that is why people move to Silicon Valley for startup, because VCs are concentrated there. Funny that there is a movement move out of Cali when they are large enough. I cannot read Germain but from what I am regularly heard about Austria school of thought represent Conservative against Modern Monetary Theory represent Liberalism in the US. But the common Euro and ECB would make any individual country fiscal policy less effective for so it would be really hard to shine than the neighbors. What economy model and fiscal policy in Russia nowadays? Property tax? Retirement? Public Healthcare? Opportunities to rise from a poor family background? Russia from my understanding is historically a decentralized culture. Not with Communism though. IMHO the USSR collapsed because Communism Party in Russia chose to, not had to. What do majority of Russian think of Mikhail Gorbachev? --------------------- About the nuclear part It is too costly for Russia infrastructure to spread out efficiently which arguably make them vulnerable to nuclear as well. And US ships around the world will survive the nuke at it could be the only army that still function properly after the apocalypse. However these are all in theory. -------------------- I never said anything about removing belt and road. Kazakhstan as a country in the middle of China and Russia will have to bargain from 2 sides to gain the most benefit while China and Russia compete for their influences and resources. With the sanction of Russia and escalating trade war with China, Russia and China alliance is a kind of forced marriage. China has USD and Russia has oil. The trade in Yuan to get oil only under assumption that China economy will still on the way up and China can maintain the title of trading hub aka Russia short USD with Yuan. The only meaning of Yuan is because they can exchange to USD when they need to, same with Japanese Yen or Euro and that has the SWAP limit. ------------------------ I agree the bashing on the Austria school of economics in the US is invalid, however there is no sufficient data about how big is Eurodollar bubble compares to the debt bubble inside the US and no statistics currently available can predict how big it is in the shadow. Modern Monetary Theory, based on observation, not data, bet on Eurodollar bubble are much much bigger and grow much faster that will cause deflation force of USD in the long run, look at US long term bond yield, which give the Modern Monetary Theory the confident to spam on US public debt for liberal programs. If MMT works, why should US people pay tax? MMT bet on USD observation forced of deflation because of unknowing Eurodollar Bubble size and Austria school of economics bet on the US GDP vs money printing statistical numbers inside US, not taking into account as world reserve currency including Eurodollar Bubble because no reliable data. Both have pros and cons and whoever bet on the right side will benefit in the long run. Besides Eurodollar bubble, any inflation currency faster than the US will have the need to anchor their money on the USD to slow down inflation which make USD is more in demand. Just like Warren Buffett said: "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." In the short term the prices would be higher everywhere because of supply chain interruption, labor shortages, oil price increases and more governments stimulations but in the long run, I expect developing countries crash up like Turkey and developed countries crash down like Japan. I really wish I can have a crystal ball to view the future but we no longer live on free market economy. Edited January 12, 2022 by SUZNV 1 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 4 hours ago, ronwagn said: You are a very educated and smart man Andrei, I am shocked that you are so out of touch with the realities of the Democratic Party. I like to call them Demoncrats. Let me give you a list of their failures and horrible ideas which are all endorsed by our Bumbler in Chief. 1. Follows All of the far leftist logic and supports it with zeal until it fails. a. I will fix COVID when elected. That was then. Now he says COVID is the responsibility of the states, after he miserably fails to battle it and has more deaths under his administration than Trump had. He accepts the guidance of Fauci who changes his mind whenever he feels like it and does NOTHING of value during the entire epidemic. (Except making his favorite pharmaceutical companies filthy rich, which is of value to them). Fauci managed to stop all treatments other than those he approved of and were expensive. Fauci has with Biden's consent has killed many people because they were not allowed to get drugs that could be used to battle their illness as soon as it struck. Mask recommendations were only recently changed from cloth Good to Cloth Bad and during the meantime the good masks were not available at a price people could afford. 2. The worst withdrawl of American and allied forces from Afghanistan that could have been imagined. He left thousands of former allies behind, endangered most of the civilians and allies that did get away, and to top off the disaster he left billions of dollars of high grade weapons behind. He also left a fully functioning airbase behind. Now we face the spectacle of starving Afghans which were either unwilling or unable to defend themselves because ( I assume) they were never trained or given rifles and ammunition to defend themselves with. 3. Biden halted oil pipelines and has cut off natural gas leasing on most federal lands thus increasing prices and decreasing competition among oil companies who sell to the retail market. 4. He has continued to try to spend as much money as possible through congressional legislation and is currently trying to push through more spending by having the senate suspend the right of unfettered deliberation. 5. He has done his best to follow the Demoncrat policy of dividing up each of dozens of groups of Americans into sections in order to divide them: White, Brown, Black, Red, Yellow, LGBTQ, poor, middle class, rich, old, middle aged, young etc. He has and is trying to say that the January 6, 2021 protest at the Capitol was intended to be a violent insurrection and compared it to real disasters like 911 while he allowed his Vice President to compare it to Pearl Harbor. Anyone, with eyes to see, knows better. It was a peaceful assembly of protestors but The FBI, better named FIB, and their employees led all of the violent tendencies. He and the Demoncrats are shameless in going after those who were duped by the FBI and they have been badly treated even though there were mostly minor offenses. That will have to do for now, but I have many more criticism. What reality of Democratic party? They are not really leftist, but populist. There is no real ideology in signing up for whatever baloney gets them more votes. Fortunately for you, they are also the least likely to deliver anything they promise to electorate, so no harm done. I know full well that an individual voters have no influence on actual US policies whatsoever, only major corporate interests who pay their champions separately do, Every politician in the world promised to fix the Covid and failed. This is because the medical professionals like Fauci have positioned themselves as beyond reproach by the hoi polloi. In all actuality, is a weasel like Fauci only ever truthful in a triple-blinded context (he doesn't know he's on record and being peer-reviewed) It was a strike of genius from Trump to put him in charge of investigating the Chinese. Who, of course, had the bug escape from the lab. But it was Fauci who sponsored the "function gain" research with NSF grants, so he cannot rip the Chinese a new ass without ripping himself one too, now. Trump has interesting real priorities, it seems. It is not obvious masks do anything at all at this point, but you might as well wear one in case they do. If the vaccines worked as advertised, it'd be over by now, anyway. You don't have any real allies in Afghanistan left, as should be obvious by now. Afghan civilians prefer the Taliban administration to your by a huge margin, because they (being rational people) reckon that the most fundamental human right is the right to live. Because you kill random Afghan civilians you claim to protect. The Taliban only beat them up with sticks or break their TVs for not following some stupid rule. The airbase was free of charge, courtesy of USSR. Dunno what was up with all the other kit. That was weird, indeed. You should leave everywhere the same, but without dropping your kit like that. You won't be missed. The USSR's Afghans continued to fight for 4 more years with zero external support after USSR quit. I think we are considered one of the better historical administrations by now. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuravi (means Soviet. Is no longer a swear word, even when they say, "we ought to whack all the shuravi for old times' sake. Is possibly even a positive word in some quarters) My Russian sources claim that Biden issued some 35% more drilling licenses than Trump in his first year. The Keystone pipeline was a lemon. You don't really need Canadian bitumen. Trump simply wanted to milk Canadian subsidies for whatever free stuff and Biden had a mercy on them. I know nothing about no restriction on unfettered deliberations? You mean the right to read out the phone book till somebody drops dead? They probably want to shut up Ted Cruz, who is a fucking criminal. They'll print more money, don't worry. Just wait for AOC to chair the budget committee. As the Marxist old farts would say, the US ruling classes introduce those bogus divisions to hide the real one. There are the very rich, who keep getting richer. And everybody else, who's in trouble. That's conventional class struggle involving the actual majority of electorate, not some tiny small special interest group they can conveniently disappear from the public discourse anytime they feel like it. The January 6, 2021 is indeed, the sorriest excuse for a violent insurrection I've ever seen. I expect this to be rubbed in every time US tries to moralize about importance of enabling the citizen protests as their fundamental human right yadda yadda. A little closer to home, and Uncle Sam turns out to be such a shrinking violet of citizens peaceful protests. Compare to January 6, 2022 in Kazachstan. Have they even decided on which one is your side there, anyway? I mean, those fighting for democracy and freedom, of course, but which one is it? 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 January 12, 2022 3 hours ago, nsdp said: Ron , it takes 38 states not a majority. That is still a majority. 😊 Thanks for correcting me. I knew that on some level but haven't talked about it for a long time. Kinda tough for anyone to make bad changes isn't it. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ronwagn + 6,290 January 12, 2022 2 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said: What reality of Democratic party? They are not really leftist, but populist. There is no real ideology in signing up for whatever baloney gets them more votes. Fortunately for you, they are also the least likely to deliver anything they promise to electorate, so no harm done. I know full well that an individual voters have no influence on actual US policies whatsoever, only major corporate interests who pay their champions separately do, Every politician in the world promised to fix the Covid and failed. This is because the medical professionals like Fauci have positioned themselves as beyond reproach by the hoi polloi. In all actuality, is a weasel like Fauci only ever truthful in a triple-blinded context (he doesn't know he's on record and being peer-reviewed) It was a strike of genius from Trump to put him in charge of investigating the Chinese. Who, of course, had the bug escape from the lab. But it was Fauci who sponsored the "function gain" research with NSF grants, so he cannot rip the Chinese a new ass without ripping himself one too, now. Trump has interesting real priorities, it seems. It is not obvious masks do anything at all at this point, but you might as well wear one in case they do. If the vaccines worked as advertised, it'd be over by now, anyway. You don't have any real allies in Afghanistan left, as should be obvious by now. Afghan civilians prefer the Taliban administration to your by a huge margin, because they (being rational people) reckon that the most fundamental human right is the right to live. Because you kill random Afghan civilians you claim to protect. The Taliban only beat them up with sticks or break their TVs for not following some stupid rule. The airbase was free of charge, courtesy of USSR. Dunno what was up with all the other kit. That was weird, indeed. You should leave everywhere the same, but without dropping your kit like that. You won't be missed. The USSR's Afghans continued to fight for 4 more years with zero external support after USSR quit. I think we are considered one of the better historical administrations by now. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuravi (means Soviet. Is no longer a swear word, even when they say, "we ought to whack all the shuravi for old times' sake. Is possibly even a positive word in some quarters) My Russian sources claim that Biden issued some 35% more drilling licenses than Trump in his first year. The Keystone pipeline was a lemon. You don't really need Canadian bitumen. Trump simply wanted to milk Canadian subsidies for whatever free stuff and Biden had a mercy on them. I know nothing about no restriction on unfettered deliberations? You mean the right to read out the phone book till somebody drops dead? They probably want to shut up Ted Cruz, who is a fucking criminal. They'll print more money, don't worry. Just wait for AOC to chair the budget committee. As the Marxist old farts would say, the US ruling classes introduce those bogus divisions to hide the real one. There are the very rich, who keep getting richer. And everybody else, who's in trouble. That's conventional class struggle involving the actual majority of electorate, not some tiny small special interest group they can conveniently disappear from the public discourse anytime they feel like it. The January 6, 2021 is indeed, the sorriest excuse for a violent insurrection I've ever seen. I expect this to be rubbed in every time US tries to moralize about importance of enabling the citizen protests as their fundamental human right yadda yadda. A little closer to home, and Uncle Sam turns out to be such a shrinking violet of citizens peaceful protests. Compare to January 6, 2022 in Kazachstan. Have they even decided on which one is your side there, anyway? I mean, those fighting for democracy and freedom, of course, but which one is it? All I have heard is fighting over oil prices and that could happen to us easily if we were not allowed to be oil independent. That is also why Republicans are looking forward to November! 😊 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 1 hour ago, ronwagn said: I am against Marxism in all of its forms and that of all of its followers. I am against crony capitalism at all levels but have to admit America has always had it and probably always will. Presently that cronyism has led to crazy liberal ideas to benefit the advertisers of products among the general public. That has also led them to oppose conservatism in any form but quite the opposite. The entire establishment is in favor of similar ideas. I am a fan of the Austrian school of economics but don't assume they have all of the good ideas because I do not know. I am not an economist either. I do believe that our labor movement may have benefited from some socialist ideas long ago when we were more of a laissez faire country. Today I think that those who propose it are trying to undermine our country in any way possible or are dupes of other socialists. They want to ignore the Constitution of the United States, especially the Bill of Rights. You, of course, deny the goals of the American Communist Party which including undermining our values in every way possible. Our Constitution can ONLY be changed by the agreement of the majority of states. You are against Marxism because you don't know what it is. You have simply been conditioned to reflexively treat some kind of Marxism as the enemy. In all actuality is it an important economic theory that has been largely overhauled by now. In the same sense as Einstein has been with his famous quip of "most powerful force in the universe being continuously compounded interest" That was before the effective interest rates went negative, for example. Marxism is not a political formation, contrary to popular belief. The "Austrian school of economics" is not really. Give individuals more economic freedoms and they will succeeds amounts to having no economic program at all. Not like it hasn't been trying before. Usually leads to some unusually empowered individuals selling some others for organs and the like. You labor movement was destroyed before it started by the government letting the mob run it. Having said that, the best union rep I ever had was my personal agent and that was in US (he was with the Swiss temp staffing agency Adecco) You Constitution and Bill of Rights are trivial documents by today's standards. I am sure Uganda got an even prettier version these days. In theory. Look, ancient Iran had more 2.500 years ago https://www.youthforhumanrights.org/course/lesson/background-of-human-rights/the-background-of-human-rights.html Specifically, there is an explicit prohibition on owning people for slaves. Which was a source of significant disagreements with the Ancient Greeks, from whom most of our current information on the Persians comes. Alas, being the forefathers of the Western civilization as we know it, the Greeks were quite skillfull to preemptively blaming their worst failing on the others. Those are the same Persians we see attacking in human waves in "300" Fairly truthful to the Greek propagandist originals though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Cylinder#Human_rights (more extensive, but badly doctored by the Brits, who need an explanation why it is still in the British museum and not in Tehran) Fun fact - the old Cyrus is the only gentile the Old Testament has a favorable opinion on, on the account of freeing the Jews from Babylonian captivity and even offering to restore their precious Temple on his account. He ruled that his religion, Zoroastrianism, is more of a same than different to Judaism on the account of both being monotheistic. Obviously a great candidate for Jewish Messiah who already was. Again, there is no point in undermining a document which does nothing much, beyond having ceremonial significance. It's got nothing unusual with possible exception of the right to bear arms and using them to revolt against the government. (which I dare anyone to really try) Neither had the religious fruitcakes founding some of the states as their private not-Islamic caliphates any real intention to actually follow through with the freedom of religion thing. Goes without saying that none of it somehow magically not applying to blacks didn't disturb anyone at all for a very old time. Look at some iconic old Supreme Court cases, like say Dartmouth vs. Delaware. (Decided 2:1 in favor of Dartmouth on the account of them doing charitable work of teaching letters to savages, with dissenting opinion based on the claim that British King George was a bastard, therefore are all titles issued in his name bunk) What does have any of this BS have to do with the issue at hand, which is ex-post-facto (retroactive) application of the law. Mind you, ex-post-facto laws are expressly forbidden by the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 (not that it ever deterred Uncle Sam from making them once in a while, anyway) How could the Commies have underlined something which wasn't there anyway? Incidentally, the Soviet Constitution was, in theory, a lot more extensive than yours. With implementation debatable, as usual. Nonetheless, it granted all citizens the right to have a job. (When it turned out that some people simply don't want to work no matter what, they made it a crime to not work. A fairly petty one, in the practice though. The Soviet constitution also granted everyone a right to have a home. Which they kinda sorta followed through on, eventually. With the caveat of Soviet block housing being nothing much. Look at it now though. The rate of property ownership in Russia is higher than even in US (81% vs 65%) Certainly more than Western Europe. Like Germany got 51% The EU average is 70% but also thanks to former Eastern Block https://www.statista.com/statistics/246355/home-ownership-rate-in-europe/ Hungary and Croatia got 91% each, also obviously thanks to free apartment people inherited from the awfully oppressive Commie regimes. Those apartments were nothing much, but they were free. If it is an apartment in Bratsk, it probably still is nothing much. People who inherited a similar apartment at a swanky address in Moscow are fucking millionaires. Just for location's sake.A discredit old Soviet 1-bedroom appartment at a proper address is easily worth more than a 6-bedrom villa in Florida. Check out this funny chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_subjects_of_Russia_by_GDP_per_capita apparently, is Russian average closest to Romania or Costa Rico.The poorest region are where Papua New Guinea is (where most folks wear nothing but a penis gourd for cloth, if I remember right) Moscow corresponds to Czech Republic, while the 4 primary oil producing locales correspond to Luxenburg, Macau, UK and EU average respectively. 3 are fucking heck frozen over, but 4th is actually nice. (isle of Sakhalin, which is a lot like Japan) 2 thus bench above any US state or major city average. How would you like a crappy, but free apartment in Luxembourg? It is worth millions, no matter what. I know for a fact that the government of Moscow will eventually buy you out at book value. There are no "iconic" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka block housing left in Moscow at all. Invest in Kievan ones, while they are still around? https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2019/2/25/life-inside-a-kiev-khrushchyovka-soviet-architecture-in-ukraine My understanding of American Communist Party was that it was used as a grossly commercial proxy by USSR, running complicated business errands with great profit. Trying to undermine your precious values was just the cover story. Look at the founder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Browder And his grandson, still in the family's Russian trade as of 2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Browder the guy responsible for Magnitsky Act? Which I don't need to explain to you is vicious bullshit. Notably happening before there was Ukraine, but in 2012. So, it was about Russia starting to fight back ripping off. Or do you care to explain how do you run the world's most profitable hedge fund raking in 239% return in 1997 Moscow, in a country which was about to default and people made something like $5 a month? If you want the Constitution to be a living document, you may try to do like the Swiss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidgenossenschaft fame. That's 14th century. Of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swiss_Confederacy fame. Dunno if it was an inspiration, but they were also 13 cantons. Unlike you, they haven't declared much, but started making legal contracts with each other directly. Except of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfaffenbrief a document saying the "mullahs" got no say in lay affairs. Which is like separation of Church and state, way ahead of its time. Ever since, is a significant amount of important intergovernment work of the Reich (lately, the EU) outsourced to regular contracts in Switzerland. For example, is the very https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg not really, but a hint in the direction of Switzerld. Possibly explaining how somebody named Habsburg always won the elections for Holy Roman Emperor after a while? See that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg,_Switzerland It's never been a nobility title, cause Switzerland hasn't got any. The place has been under municipal administration for as long as anybody remembers. The suitable castle and coat-of-arms with a picture thereof are courtesy of local municipal administration in search of tourist attractions. Note that gradma Liz used a similar trick for her "Windsor" plot. The Castle of Windsor is a property originally purchased by William the Conqueror on the open real estate market and intended to be legacy free. Never been a feudal fief issued by some previous king, as far as anybody could tell. He actually had a second "poison pill" against dynastic takeover installed in Winchester, Cornwall, but that one is only open to dudes. Involves re-enacting the Arthurian legend, possibly pulling some kind of Excalibur from a stone. Austrian law prohibits the existence of nobility titles and Habsburgs explicitly, yet they do have one who's a parliamentary deputy. They didn't know what to do with him, following the argument that he's got no other name as (von) Austria or Habsburg (which was never a von) and no passport other than Spanish diplomatic one. I think they let him be called "Austria" which is the boring option. That makes him a markgrave in employ of Bavarian duke. Not really a royalty. Military administration in charge of frontier region, like Sheriff of Nottingham or Ukrainian hetman in employ of the Polish king. The important hereditary property would be the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Este which somehow belonged to the Emperor's bro, Franz-Ferdinand. Who is best known for getting himself whacked in Sarajevo causing the WWI. Possibly that was so important about him? Anyhow, the modern Austrian Constitution is also in the form of a contract, called Staatsvertrag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_State_Treaty largely with USSR. Austria commits to treating the Soviet war graves and gigantic ugly monument to the Soviet Liberator-Soldier nicely and commits to neutrality and watching over potential Nazi revival activities. Pretty much it. Or else. There has never been a more enthusiastic nation liberated by the Soviets. Because, if the Soviets liberated the Austrians, the Austrians are among the victims of Nazism. As opposed to Nazis as such. Which would put them into the same category as Germany and Japan. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Enemy_State_Clause Which de jure means that they have no sovereign right to integrity of their borders other states may claim. Logically, it is actually de jure legal for anybody to wage war on them and annex their pieces Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 22 minutes ago, ronwagn said: All I have heard is fighting over oil prices and that could happen to us easily if we were not allowed to be oil independent. That is also why Republicans are looking forward to November! 😊 Crude oil costs less than bottled water still. If you reckon it is getting expensive, you might try switching to a normally oversized American car instead of a V8 pickup truck you obviously must have? I mean, being a card-carrying red-blooded Republican and despoiler of all things Marxism. You must have one, right? Because what other vehicle comes with a proper rack, capable of properly storing a man's personal shotgun (for grizzlies), a collection of MAGA hats of any color as long as it is red (as fashionable as ever) and a few favorite essays by Romanian gypsy Wurmbrand (bound to look like Lutheran Study Bible Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 4 hours ago, ronwagn said: I am against Marxism in all of its forms and that of all of its followers. I am against crony capitalism at all levels but have to admit America has always had it and probably always will. Presently that cronyism has led to crazy liberal ideas to benefit the advertisers of products among the general public. That has also led them to oppose conservatism in any form but quite the opposite. The entire establishment is in favor of similar ideas. I am a fan of the Austrian school of economics but don't assume they have all of the good ideas because I do not know. I am not an economist either. I do believe that our labor movement may have benefited from some socialist ideas long ago when we were more of a laissez faire country. Today I think that those who propose it are trying to undermine our country in any way possible or are dupes of other socialists. They want to ignore the Constitution of the United States, especially the Bill of Rights. You, of course, deny the goals of the American Communist Party which including undermining our values in every way possible. Our Constitution can ONLY be changed by the agreement of the majority of states. Oh, forgot to ask. Do they oppose left conservatism? Which is what most Russians naturally are. In US, they invariably end up voting Republican. Despite not understanding jack about your precious Bill of Rights and not caring much. That is, they do not, for a second, believe in the primacy of individual freedoms over the communal ones that you profess. Which you really shouldn't, unless you've got some means to enforce them should you happen to be in minority? That appears to be against the democratic principles you also profess. Tell me the moral majority has no means of forcing you to do how they wish? See, how very arbitrary you local bijection into left and right is? Why does conservative have to be right-wing. Should you be a libertarian for real (as in polite relabeling of anarcho-capitalism), you are a right-wing radical, which is exactly opposite to the conservative of any kind. However, radically right is usually equated with Nazis. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rob Plant + 2,756 RP January 12, 2022 14 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said: I think that was war bonds. Last £1.9bln of them. WWI war bonds being paid off in 2015 strongly suggests some WWII are still out there? £21 bln is only a lot if specified as "in gold" (however much gold £21 bln would buy at the time of the borrowing) Same amount in future pounds isn't worth much, as a national government can always ensure an effective negative interest on its own currency. Actually, not really sure what your government did for WWII. It looks like they wisened up and started selling worthless stamps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Savings_Movement just like the Nazis did. Apparently, even shared a swastika logo initially. In that case, you are off the hook. If I were in UK, I would entrust all my money to an organization with most evocative name like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Widows of course. Until Nessie herself opens up shop, obviously nothing better around No its both wars WW1 + WW2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 5 hours ago, nsdp said: Frankfurter , your undereducated. It won't be just the US doing it. Secondly your education in nuclear and geophysics in grossly deficient. There are seven countries by my count that have sufficient nuclear weapons to put an end to all life one earth. Remember no life on land until the ozone layer was thick. enough to filter the Ultra violet light from the sun. It is the preCambrian Period. As to the Japanese I suggest you read about how the Japanese stopped the Mongols when Russia capitulated. The Samurai code goes back at least 1000 years This is, if they start blowing up nukes airburst Hiroshima style and there will be nuclear winter? That does not have to be, Doesn't even work so well outside of Japan. Check out the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor which was apparent half-a-megaton event. Yet, all it did is break a bunch of windows. Not convinced about the UV, Everything higher than blue tends to be diffused by the thick of the atmosphere .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_sky_radiation As in: Surprisingly, no more than a quarter of incoming radiated energy, so it is no big deal. It is fairly obvious that the UV/EUV radiation is what causes the formation of ozone in the first place https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29124687/ (Ultraviolet Light Induced Generation of Reactive Oxygen Species, of which ozone is a simplified view) This happens instantaneously anywhere where there is enough oxygen in the atmosphere. This also means that the only area where we see a significant failure of "ozone layer" to form is the well known "ozone hole" over the Antarctic is only there because the place is short in oxygen in general,. No oxygen, no ozone. And indeed, the Antarctic happens to be the most oxygen-deficient region on the planet. Because, where are the green shrubs? Incidentally, there is a related feature called the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex which is actually a gross misnomer being the opposite theof (it is an area of unusually stale,, cold and oxygen depleted air. More like the eye of the storm that the windy part vortex suggests) It is known to be related in its cycles to ozone depletion, but the official explanation Wiki gives is pretty bunk. Here is a better one. The layer of subfreezing air up North is actually very thin, maybe as little as <20m on a polar noon. The advanced Western climate scientists seem to be largely oblivious to that effect because they tend to get to the pole very rarely and when, then on foot or using dog sleds. They should take a ride on a swanky Russian icebreaker instead once in a while. Sometimes people do sunbathe on the top deck wearing only undies, while folks at the sea level are appropriately parka clad. So, there is a signficant difference in the size of the ice between the Poles. North got single digit meters, South - kilometers. Three orders of magnitude differential. Safe to say, which one is the more powerful cold sink Knowing this, it is easy to hypothesize the rest a) We are observing an effect of oxygen (just like any gas) having a different motiviy dependent on temperature, like a gs centrifuge sorting uranium isotopes? Cause O2 is is heavier than N2 by just one click. 14 vs 15 atomic weight. For molecular, make it at least twice, so it is a bit easier than sorting uranium (hexadecimal) isotopes even without the thermal aids. b) O2 is paramagnetic (affected/moved by magnetic fields) whereas N2 and O3 are not. There is, however, a whole bunch of oxy-, peroxy-, superoxy- and nitroxy- radicals simultaneously present which alternate between para- and dia- with every one atome change, so the real picture is more complicated Last, but not least, there are some local single celled organisms in Antarctic, after all, because it's got some land, not just ice. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Falls ah. Now they say they aren't. Basically, they suspected that there are native https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_algae there. Unlike green algae / cyanobacteria, they don't photosynthesize, but do something related to sulfur-iron cycle. That stuff is known to be broken in our current oceans, with red algae and weeds being nothing but a periodic nuisance to everybody else. Anyhow, they now found some means of having the same mechanism using minerals only. I quote from Wiki A puzzling observation is the coexistence of Fe2+ and SO2−4 ions under anoxic conditions. No sulfide anions (HS−) are found in the system. This suggests an intricate and poorly understood interaction between the sulfur and the iron biochemical cycles See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenton's_reagent It is the most powerful promoter of all kinds of oxygen radicals I've ever seen. Used in industrial de-incing (Removing colors, like bleaching on steroids. If you ever got any stained banknotes from a bank robbery, try this it might work Also destroys chlrorinate- and fluorinated- hydrocarbon solvents we heard so much about. Sucks to be the last polymath around. The reason they are so surprised is because iron reacts with sulfuric rather sluggishly under normal conditions, so they use overconcentrated version (oil of vitriol, H2SO4 pumped with HSO3 gas) or apply a good amount of heat. I suppose extra pressure would do too. (which is another way to make oversalinated sulfuric salts, as in dissolve more than normal of them) Low power version using red algae and fancy ferments would also work, if anybody ever bothered to study the annoying gakks. See, the inevitable conclusion that the "ozone depletion" scare is actually significantly bunk. Has nothing much to do with human activity. Is entirely natural byproduct of polar regions generally being very low on oxygen. And eating fluro-carbons for breakfast. Not that there is anybody interested in the old ozone hole anymore. Now that they've got CO2. One atmospheric/oceanic component entirely indifferent in its concentration to anything but pressure. (on the account of being the one regular component much heavier/denser than H2O in both vapor and liquid phase (but arbitrarily close to water ice in bulk density of the solid phase ("dry ice")) 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 6 hours ago, frankfurter said: Which country has the 1st strike as the basis for its military doctrine? Where have we seen this prior? Why did the Soviets penetrate into Germany and not stop at the border? So, they do. As if they were not going to try it if it wasn't in their official doctrine. They failed to do it so far, because the technical capability to implement it was never there and getting further out of reach every day. Most Americans have no idea how bloodthirsty their government/military really is. They are innocent bystanders in all that. It would be much desired to keep the civilians out of it. The Soviets penetrated into Germany because the Germans failed to surrender any earlier than this? Why didn't we also whack them all, just in case they relapse? The general idea was to get them to commit to neutrality, till NATO spoiled the mood by accepting them. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 11 minutes ago, Wombat One said: Don't worry, Biden answers to me What if you are out of it again? Is there a trusty Wombat Two backup? 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Andrei Moutchkine + 828 January 12, 2022 20 minutes ago, Wombat One said: And you think I am cray cray? YOU designed the "perfect win"?????? LMAO. I would like to say that you are as mad as a cut snake, but that would be a severe understatement. Has Russia developed some genetically modified mushroom that it feeds to the masses in order to keep them insane and vote for Putin?!? Very emotional, but not-informational. I understand you disappointment at not picking the side likely to win, but that's never been a very good guidance for picking friends anyway. You are supposed to pick the side that's got a commonality of their cause with your own, silly. Do you have any technical objections to the plan? I did not say I actually designed anything. I hypothesized how I would do it if anybody actually put me to the task, only to found out that everything I could think of was already there. Anything else? When was the last time you voted for anybody with a plan? 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
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