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 Post subject: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 10:16 pm 
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And other light comedies.

The point has been made that Germany and Japan both benefited from the other destabilizing the system back in the 1930s, even if they weren't what you might call best buddies. Today, though publicly they haven't been supportive of Russia's move into Ukraine, China has certainly been helped by Putin's attacks on the current system (as well as those of his allies, the Trump wing of the GOP). I can't help but wonder if they're not seriously considering upping the stakes in the South China Sea or vis Taiwan in the near future; especially if Putin doesn't get burned by his current gambit. Ah, the joys of war; apparently we've missed them.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:32 am 
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weremensh wrote:
Ah, the joys of war; apparently we've missed them.


But they won't miss us, especially if they get a second shot.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2022 7:22 am 
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And they're off. Russia has invaded Ukraine. That promises to be really ugly; and given who's involved I suspect we're looking at another planned occupation akin to that of the Nazis or Stalinists. And of course the Ukrainian mobilization has barely begun; so it's basically a come as you are war unless things go rather badly for the Russians. This bodes.

Meanwhile, here at home, the bulk of the GOP and their media are basically standing with the reactionary aggressor. Well, they're the folks who'd rather live in 1939 than 2022 anyway; but still, what a shock.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2022 10:51 pm 
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The GOP's been bought and paid for by the Russians for a while now. I am not sure why Tucker Carlson's band of cosplay nazis think Russia is whiter than Ukraine, but ok. I keep reading predictions of a long ugly insurgency in Ukraine that will slowly wear Putin down. And that the Russian army, for all its might, is drunk, Covid ridden, and unmotivated. But I don't know how much that matters. This is far outside of my wheelhouse. But I know a megalomaniac when I see one. Putin's spent most of his adult life dreaming of the restoration of the Russian Empire.

As for what China's going to get up to while Europe's distracted, I am legally prohibited from expressing opinions on that matter. The empire already came for me.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2022 5:38 pm 
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Given that, it's wonderful to hear from you!

Wait, how do we know you're the REAL Passiflora???

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2022 12:55 am 
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A provocateur would have commented about China. It's her. Which is good, because I was wondering how she was getting on.

That said: Germany has gone back into the business of helping to kill Russian soldiers for the first time since 1945. As of today they're shipping arms to Ukraine, and allowing their old arms in other people's hands to go to Ukraine. This probably isn't a diplomatic high water for the Putin regime, though Zelensky's thrilled.

Edit: I looked up the numbers, and Germany has just added 80% of Ukraine's 2020 GDP to their military budget. Win at significant cost or lose, Russia has just made their position rather worse.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2022 4:11 am 
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My blood pressure has been up about thirty points since this war began.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2022 6:46 am 
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I'm not sure where the hell this new avatar has come from, but I guess it's not bad.

Anyway, I was rather amused when I read yesterday that ex-prime minister Abe of Japan had called for Japan to reconsider hosting American nuclear weapons. Though the current prime minister dismissed the idea, within hours China was striking a more negative tone to Putin's invasion. You'd think the folks in Beijing had noticed what happened in the Bundestag a couple of days ago or something.

At this rate, I'm idly wondering if I'll read that Monaco has closed it's casinos to Russians.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2022 7:08 pm 
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It looks like the Ukrainian Air Force is about to find 23 used Mig-29s, courtesy of the Polish Air force. Mind you, it's not pure charity on their part; they've already swapped most of them for F-16s, and now the Americans are offering to simply give them F-16s in exchange for the old fighters. Which is a pretty serious bargain from the Polish point of view. Though since it would more or less double Ukraine's fighter wing, the Russians may find it less appealing. We shall see.

Hmm...that icon is back...sneaky thing.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2022 11:03 am 
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Here in the US, there's a bipartisan demand that we stop importing oil from Russia. You can probably hold your breath until one half of that bipartisan pretends they never said it, and that the resulting increase in oil product costs is entirely the doing of the other half.

One reads that a lot of the feedstocks for fertizers come from Putinland; and so the cost of artificial fertilizers will go up a good deal soon. I wonder if the folks gratuitously wasting vast quantities of said fertilizer on their fields every year will finally look to be more efficient in using it now.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2022 3:37 pm 
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The Polish government has agreed to give those MIGs to Ukraine, by flying them to an American air base in Germany. What comes next so far as the MIGs are concerned is still not quite clear.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:49 pm 
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China's sending baby formula to Russia (according to China, anyway). Apparently they've never forgiven the Russians for the unequal treaties. But I suppose it's worth noting that China has 8 times the people and the economy of Russia; if Xi gives anything significant to Putin, then Putin pretty much gets to be Mussolini to Xi's Hitler from that point on.

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2022 3:52 am 
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Baby formula? From China? That sounds like some kind of a joke.

Poland and the US still seem to be faffing about with those planes. The Ukrainians seem to be doing all right with those Turkish drones though. How did so many experts manage to miss how bad the Russian army is at armying?

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2022 4:23 pm 
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Most of the experts (as opposed to the war porn crowd) had noted that Russia would have a lot of trouble doing exactly what it's trying to do; invade a large country, with a significant military of its own, that was prepared to stand and fight. The trivial number of trucks the Russian army had was not particularly hidden, and the inevitable logistical headaches it would lead to was fairly easy to predict. And clearly Putin understood that as well; his plan called for the army to do little more than occupy land in a victory march, while Kiev got siezed by special forces and a new government was installed.

So that being the case, I guess no one really considered just how much all of the other known or suspected problems that the army of a kleptocracy, with third rate NCOs and largely untrained draftees manning most units, would have in exactly the sort of unprovoked offensive war that would magnify all of their shortcomings. Because what kind of an idiot in the Kremlin would get his army into exactly that kind of war?

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 Post subject: Re: Diplomatic Order
 Post Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2022 6:02 am 
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It looks to me like the Russian military leadership decided to position their actually functional units in the south where they had what they considered to be genuine strategic objectives and gambled the capture of Kiev on the Chechen special forces - who were rumoured to have been sold out by the FSB. That's what I'd do if I knew my army was dodgy and my dictator gave me batpoop insane orders to invade an entire country.

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