The war still has majority support. All Russian men are in the reserves and can be called up at any time. Everyone knows this. The actual conscripts cannot be used outside of Russia.
The conscripts are in the army no matter what, serving in Russia.
The last call-up of reserves focused on men with an average 4-6 years service and on top of that had combat experience. They almost called up professional soldiers.
Next call-up once again will probably emphasize more years of service (more than minimum) and combat experience. Don't a lot of men re-up for a couple of years, then leave? Or do four or six years, then leave? Military service is often a way station in Russia, right? Not a career. These guys come and go. They're all contract soldiers. They either re-up or they don't.
What is the point of asking to submit a question if you never answer? If you want to do cherry picking that's fine, but I won't bother to submit a question to you again. If you said you'd answer questions of the paid subscribers, answer, otherwise, what's the point.
What question? I checked the questions thread and you didn't have a question. As for Angelina, hers was most definitely answered as #7 in mailbag Part 1, which anyone can check for themselves by seeing her original question in the original mailbag questions thread.
Just for the record, reading your work is like sitting down at a banquet and being filled to a bellyache before the Main Meal is set. It often takes me a few days to digest your work, sometimes an entire week. I do have other requirements for my life.
In “Ukraine Bloody War: The Great Plundering” I feel compelled to compliment Simplicius' always brilliant, detailed work with my own take—a zoomed-out look at the colossal pillage by the Biden's criminal regime. In their criminal corruption lies the greatest danger for our future.
Italy did conquer Ethiopia in a brilliant military operation during only seven months, greatly disappointing Chamberlain who thought they would be bogged down 30 years. After our army entered Addis Abeba and the war was ended, the King of Italy was proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia. The territories were lost only because the USA were on the other side of Italy in WW2.
That's true, though I don't really count it because it's roughly during WW2 era and past the real age of colonialism. And since Italy only held control for a *relatively* very short time then got booted out and had to pay major reparations, in my book it doesn't quite count since they didn't really colonize the country to the degree that was done during the 'scramble for Africa' age.
Mussolini's five-year control of Ethiopia is simply considered an occupation on par with Nazi German occupation of Poland and France. As Ethiopia was full fledged member of League of Nations, what Italy did from 1936 to 1941 is not colonization at all, but unwarranted attack on fellow sovereign state
The only thing Mussolini did was cart off the obelisk of Axxum. Give me a break. You'd be lucky to find 10 people in Ethiopia today who can speak Italian. Unlike, say, in Eritrea or Somalia.
Regarding the last question, and why Russia has been unable [it seems] to create a quicker victory, I would point to many of my comments here and elsewhere.
The facts are not completely clear but it is certain that the UAF had a much larger military than the RF [when mobilised] in terms of troops committed in theatre. In Feb 22 the UAF had c 250K regular troops and c 450K mobilisable reserves, plus another 100K of armed paramilitaries. A further 100K almost immediately volunteered from civilian life and there have been on-going waves of mobilisation. It is certainly the case that many more than 1 million men have passed through the ranks of the UAF even if at no stage it could boast an establishment of that figure. The UAF has nearly 100 combat brigades of whom over 80 are manouvre units.
Russia (and its various allies etc) probably started the SMO with less than 250K men, half of who maybe RF regulars.
Numbers of this magnitude help explain why the UAF has been able to sustain what most here believe are high losses and in excess of those of the RF. There has been much lively debate on the levels of losses but I personally think the UAF has [on average] sufferred c 1,000 per day so by now c 600,000 of who a disproportionate number have been permenantly lost as opposed to wounded and returned to the fighting. I'd put Russian losses at a fraction of this but maybe 150,000 overall. If RF losses have been this sort of number (ie c 40,000 dead, the rest WIA) then it helps explain why the "missing reserves" are not being used. They have been - simply as replacements.
The Ukraine had 8 years to train and also to create fortifications. It has benefited from western ISR, financial support, "volunteers" and of course huge arms shipments and not so clandestine assistance with planning from NATO "advisors". Alas it has had motivated troops, strong on Nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment - at times tending towards ouright Nazi views amongst key units and personnel.
Rather than poor plucky little Ukraine, Ukraine had one of the largest armed forces in the world in Feb 22 and has been actively supported by the most powerful military alliance in the world. So Russia has in fact done pretty well to demolish this military behemoth with a much smaller force, using firepower not flesh and blood. However the UAF will take a lot of killing and I am uncertain as to whether it is as close to collapse as many (eg Ritter, MacGregor) believe. Shoigu [I think] said recently he expects the SMO to end in 2025.
Anyway, it is likely on my figures and analysis that the RF is still out numbered in manpower terms and hence an offensive against fortified lines - even with a much reduced and less effective UAF - might prove too risky. The UAF is still obliging by making dumb attacks though the onset of the Raputitsa will probably further slow down the pace of operations. I expect Russia to keep up the pressure in the winter.
At some point the UAF will collapse or simply lose its ability to continue - a combination of losses, lack of ammo and equipment and failing morale. When that point arrives we will know it. We don't seem to be there yet.
"In Feb 22 the UAF had c 250K regular troops and c 450K mobilisable reserves, plus another 100K of armed paramilitaries."
Those were not "in theater" at the start of the war. Ukraine had only around 150,000 at the contact line. Russia came in with 80-120,000 plus 35-50,000 Donbass militia plus Wagner plus Volunteer Battalions or probably around 175-200,000 men. The feint at Kiev kept Ukraine from reinforcing the Donbass until the March-April negotiations were over and Russia removed its forces. This "Russia was out-numbered 3:1" myth is nonsense.
Those 100 brigades you talk about were probably at a 3,000 or less strength rather than 4-5,000, so the total was probably 300,000, not 500,000. And again, at the start, only half or less were at the contact line.
Later, of course, once Ukraine mobilized fully, then Russia was more or less out-numbered in terms of total forces - until the fall mobilization. Now Russia has the 370,000 from the fall mobilization, plus another 200,000-odd from their regular conscription drives, and expect to have at least 420,000 by Christmas. Yes, Russia does have 500-750,000 troops available. How large the front line combat force is I have no idea because I don't what the logistical tail is.
But the same applies to Ukraine, as I've argued repeatedly. Ukraine may have had a million or even two million men throughout the course of the war, but they have lost at least half a million irretrievable losses and probably closer to one million. So even if they had two million men available over the course of the war, they have no more than a million now, and the vast majority of those are the logistical tail supplemented by civilians and the forces at the front are untrained, poorly led, poorly equipped, have little to no armor left and little artillery.
The Russians have probably lost less than 100,000 people overall. With 400-500,000 new soldiers, they don't need to worry about "replacements". In addition, 97% of their wounded return to duty, so in reality of that 100-150,000 you claim, the only ones that really count are the possible 50,000 dead.
You keep arguing about "bean-counting people", and I keep pointing out that more people only means more dead people, not more combat or operational effectiveness.
And what we actually SEE on the battlefield is a complete loss of operational effectiveness and an almost complete loss of combat effectiveness, with that Ukrainian General admitting that they can only do "attacks" with squads - not even platoons or companies, let along battalions or brigades.
Ukraine has nothing left. They're finished. They won't last beyond Christmas - unless Russia lets them.
I've debunked your posts to me about these points repeatedly, without your being able to refute these points I've made before, but you keep repeating the same notions. Thus I am forced to label you a concern troll.
Well Richard, If you regard me as a concern troll it generally means that someone disagrees with you. Please feel free to run me down as much as you like. Am I bovvered??
Thank you for your ongoing hard work and insights.
Respectfully, I think that the BRICS grouping already has a little more power than you give it credit for.
This is because the group controls so many key commodities that are in high demand globally. It therefore has the power to control access to & distribution of those conmodities.
For example, it can trade commodities with other BRICS members on favourable terms/discounted prices, vis a vis non-members. BRICS nations in this way gain access to key commodities they need, at a lower price than non-BRICS nations. Conversely non-members get hit with very high prices, if they get access to the commodities they need at all.
BRICS also has the power to damage non-BRICS economies that rely on exporting commodities. A classic example is Australia - its economy relies on its exports of commodities to China. If China was to substitute that trade entirely or to even replace / reduce select Australian imports with BRICS imports of the same commodity, it would have an immediate and very significant impact on the Australian economy.
Actually, for countries like Australia it's potentially a double whammy - there's a risk that nations wanting to join BRICS might decide to replace the commodities they buy from Australia, with the commodities of BRICS nations instead. A good example is Indonesia, a major purchaser of Australian wheat.
I note that there is already a massive potential for Russia to enter new markets (eg S E Asia) via BRICS. Ditto, Brazil. In fact, I think Russia may have already started approaching non-BRICS nations aspiring to be members, with trade proposals.
So while I agree that a currency would definitely turbocharge the BRICS grouping, I don't agree that BRICS right now is as powerless as you describe. It will be interesting to see what happens.
It's a good point and should be more widely known. Australia's biggest export earner is iron ore and the largest share of that is sold to China. After Australian and China, the biggest producers are Russia and Brazil. So that's 3/5ths of BRICS right there. Australia can try to diversify their markets away from China but there just isn't anyone buying as much as China, not even close. Australia can restrict Chinese capital from being invested in its strategic industries, but then that capital will just go over to their BRICS competitors, Australia will get a reduced market share, China gets more iron and steel at a lower price with the added advantage of a more vertically integrated supply chain.
New Zealand maybe in a similar position with their dairy exports, China is the largest portion of their biggest export commodity, but of course ice cream and cheese are luxuries for the Chinese not strategic necessities like iron and steel.
Both those nations may want to see the USA remain hegemon in the Pacific, but it would be damned difficult for them to accept a 30~40% cut in income in perpetuity to make it happen. And that is 2/5ths of your 5 Eyes right there.
Australian regime are abject cowards and US toadies. They have spit, and continue to do so, in the face of their biggest trading partner. Just in wine sales alone, 2 billion was lost a few years ago due to insulting the Chinese govt. at the behest of Uncle Sam.
If WW III starts for real Australia will be isolated from the world by the Chinese navy and air force.
The Alubuga would indeed be a game changer, back in the '80's all our comms gear and offensive systems inside armor in Germany was so damn heavy due to EMP shielding. From looking at what I see now a weapon like that could change the war in days. Sending any enemy back to pre-1850's would be slaughter.
I don't understand what is so game changing about it. US already has CHAMP payloads for JASSMs, which have effectively the same purpose.
The only potential difference is the power. CHAMP seems to be really weak in principle and has multiple "shots" per sortie (I doubt it would be able stop anything more shielded than a personal car tho), whereas Alabuga seems to have quoted range of its EMP at 3,500m, which means it needs to be quite a lot more powerful and is presumed to be a not really small EPFCG (yeah, they're really called flux generators) with a single shot.
I wouldn't put too much hope in them. A properly trained army can continue to fight anyway. While it has a huge potential to disturb C4ISR and vehicle sensors, and EMP will not stop a tank or a soldier. And even a relatively small troop concentration would need a lot of EMP firepower to be covered reliably.
Maybe it force the fight back into the 1960's, but it would not stop it.
Air force could be in a lot of trouble though, as airbases would be relatively easy targets.
Response to Simplicius "Subscriber Mailbag Answers - 9/29/23 [Part 3]":
" It’s typically poor minorities from the American south that join the military at this point."
Go back to the Iraq war in 1993. Read the obituaries from the papers of that period. Almost every single dead US soldier has a Spanish surname. They were recruiting Mexican-Americans who wanted a green card by the thousands. It was extremely noticeable both in obituaries and in interviews with soldiers at the front.
It's the same way the Russians started the SMO by relying on the Donbass militias, Wagner, the Volunteer Battalions, the Chechens and the Rosqvardia - spare the real soldiers for use when and where they're really needed. It's a cold-blooded, but smart decision. Of course, in the case of the US it was simply racist.
As for Russia in western Ukraine, yes, they will take it. They need a Military District there to counter the West's Aegis Ashore threats as well as conventional land threats. Russia has been threatened repeatedly by wars with the West and they're going to make sure - by building Military Districts from the Black Sea to the Arctic - that it never happens again. This is the whole purpose of the SMO, assuming Russia can't cause NATO to self-destruct - and the Russians are smart enough not to assume that will work, so they constructed the SMO to have Parts A and B.
Part A was Putin's and Lavrov's plan:, scare Kiev into negotiating and then becoming neutral and de-militarized and then negotiate with NATO over the Aergis Ashore facilities. That was a "kick the can down the road" plan. The Russian General Staff undoubtedly told them, "Boss, that ain't good enough. We still need a Plan B in case Plan A doesn't work." Plan B is take Ukraine off the board completely, including taking over the whole country, removing the Kiev regime, and setting up those MDs. This solves a LOT of Russia's problems: it1) protects Donbass, 2) eliminates the Nazis, 3) eliminates NATO involvement in Ukraine (no rump state bullshit), and 4) enables direct countering of NATO in Poland and Romania.
Well, they tried Plan A, and of course it failed. By summer, I'm sure Putin decided Plan B was inevitable. That's when the decision to mobilize was made. I don't think Putin will ever be convinced to go back to Plan A. If he does, well, he's an idiot. And I don't see Putin as an idiot.
I agree about the unlikelihood of an insurgency. First, because a Military District is a lot tougher target than some "peacekeepers". Second, because Ukraine tried that at the behest of the CIA from the late 40's to the early 1950's and lost 200,000 Ukrainians doing it. Third, because as you say, Russia has seen Chechnya and Syria, been there, done that and know how to do it now. Fourth, because most of the nationalists in western Ukraine will be tracked down, detained and deported once the Russian police and intelligence services flood into western Ukraine after the military locks down the Polish and Romanian borders. Fifth, because trying a rural insurgency in this age of drones and thermal imaging will get you killed, and trying an urban insurgency will get you...Chechens and Wagner. And sixth because Ukrainians are "Europeans" - they aren't a tribal society where babies are born with AK-47s in their cribs and get RPG-7s as high school graduation gifts, like Iraq and Afghanistan. :-)
As for artillery shells, hell, that's easy. Just assume the Russians are going to make SURE they have enough if they have to buy ten million more from North Korea. Russia has the money and North Korea could use the money. Or Russia can put the money into more factories. It's a non-issue. Same with the tanks - they have more than enough mothballed to bulldoze Ukraine, upgraded or not. If Macgregor is right, they have 1,500 ready to go right now while Ukraine has what?
As a young socialist in the Labour Party, I was told, 'the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi'. It's horrifying how many Ukraine soldiers are Dying in this war on behalf of Western Elites. But the small consolation is that a small %age are Nazis, and they are getting eliminated for ever.
In question 43 you mention Russia capturing Crimea, Odessa..
What makes you think Russia will go for Odessa?
The reason I am asking is that Russia pretends to be respecting the UN charter, and the SMO is to help the Donbass oblasts. One may agree or disagree, but at least there is an argument and a reasoning showing that the SMO is a lawful entreprise.
There is however no such argument to be made for going to Odessa, and taking Odessa - whatever its justification from an historical or strategical point of view - is just an invasion like US and NATO likes to do, and takes away a (big) part of the clout Russia currently has with countries 'of the jungle'.
Things may change in the future, but I was curious to know why you mention now that Russia could take Odessa.
Because, once all the Nazis are dead, the people of Odessa will welcome Russia with open arms, hold a referendum, and join the federation ASAP. I've been to Odessa many times before the war, and let me tell you, it's a Russian city through and through. Google "Odessa Trade Unions fire 2014" for more.
I can think of three reasons for taking Odessa: (i) it's a historically Russian city that would be receptive to Russian rule; (ii) it cuts off Ukraine from the Black Sea, making it a far less useful instrument/player geopolitically; and (iii) it bridges the gap to Transnistria, thereby eliminating a major pressure point for Russia by connecting it to Russian territory and making it far more easily defendable. I've been saying since last year that this war won't end until the Russians take Odessa, but that seems to be a minority position.
That's three good reasons, but none matches an article in the UN chart. So Russia would just become an invader like those they complain about.
If, as Sam hypothises, the people of the Odessa oblast would declare independence and would want to join the Russian Federation, that would be another situation. But I am no longer convinced that those pro-Russians survived the Trade Unions building fire and aftermath. They are probably all dead, or fled elsewhere.
You're right, of course, about the UN Charter, and Putin does seem to prefer to color within the lines of international law. But does it matter?
The West - which makes a mockery of the Charter by drumming up "weapons of mass destruction" to lay the groundwork for their military interventions - already considers Russia an invader in Ukraine, even in Crimea, so IMO Russia doesn't really gain anything via-a-vis the West in exchange for observing Charter formalities.
Might it impact how the Global South views Russia? Maybe, but how much? The countries in the middle - India, Kazakhstan, Turkey, e.g. - are all very pragmatic about their relationships with the major powers, which implies to me that they don't trust assurances from any country except as far as mutual benefit carries them.
We're nearing the stage of "all's fair in love and war" civilizational conflict. Getting hung up on international law - a nebulous concept in the most tranquil of times - would seem to be a mistake.
They could go in based on persecution of the local Russian speakers. They go in, removed the Ukrainian government and hold a plebiscite. They can go to Russia or stay in Ukraine. If they vote to go to Russia, it's all kosher as the US allows self-determination of peoples.
Actually, everything what Russia is doing is legal according to international law. One of the main principles of international law is right of people to self-determination. And NATO according exactly to this principle separated Kosovo from Serbia. If they think Russian Invasion to Ukraine is illegal than they must return Kosovo to Serbia. All Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia mostly populated by ethnic Russians. Legal referendums were held there and peoples decided to join Russia. Odessa also populated mostly by Russians and native citizens of Odessa often says that Odessa is Russian city. So there will be no problems with annexing of Odessa. But returning to international law, there is another one of the main principles, which is principle of territorial integrity and it seems it may contradict the right of people to self-determination. But the principle of territorial integrity cannot be applied to countries that do not respect the rights of ethnic minorities and discriminate them. And this is exactly what Ukraine is doing since 2014. They are discriminate ethnic Russians and Russian language. So anyone who saying that Russian invasion and annexation of Ukrainian territories is illegal simply don't know international laws.
About Question #35: Just to add a little to what @simplicius76 has already said. Ethiopia has always held a fascination for Russia and that dates all the way back to early 1700s when Peter the Great adopted and treated as his own son a freed black slave called Abram Petrovich Gannibal.
This adopted African son of Czar Peter would take on a military career, train as an officer in a French Military Engineering School and eventual rise to the rank of General-In-Chief in the Imperial Russian Army and so would his own son too, Ivan Gannibal who was a commander in one of the Russo-Ottoman Wars of the 1700s . More importantly, Gannibal is the maternal great-grandfather of Alexander Puskhin, one of Russia's most revered poet.
The key thing to understand is that most Russians thought Gannibal was of ETHIOPIAN descent, but modern research shows this not to be case as I wrote several months ago:
Russians helped Ethiopia to repel two Italian invasions partly because of the fascination with Gannibal-Pushkin apparent "family connections" to the African country and partly because it was a fellow Orthodox Christian nation.
Modern day Ethiopia is friendly both to the West and to Russia. This is a legacy of the fact that Western nations (UK, USA) did help the country during a devastating famine that occurred in the middle of Ethiopian Civil War (1974-1991), which killed 1.5 million people.
Like in many cases in Africa, the civil war was trigged by a military coup in September 1974, which led to the dissolution of the 704-year-old Ethiopian Empire and its replacement with a Marxist-Leninist state. Disaffected Marxist renegades picked up arms and fought soldiers of that Marxist state.
Many of the current ruling elites of Ethiopia today were once Marxist rebels. After the civil war ended in 1991, and USSR collapsed, and Eritrea was allowed to break away, the Ethiopian rebels who seized national power, jettisoned their Marxist beliefs and began to follow market economics.
These rebels-turned-national leaders formed close bonds with the Western world that provided loads of food to feed the starving during the famines of the 1980s. Boris Yeltsin's Russia was too preoccupied with its own problems to even pick up the diplomatic ties that the Soviets had with various African states.
The current conflict in Ethiopia---which AU mediators have managed to freeze--is simply a fall out of change in the configuration of power in the country. The Marxist rebels that came to power were led by ethnic Tigray people. Long time leader of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, who died in 2012, was ethnic Tigray.
Despite being an ethnic minority, Tigrays have been running the country since 1991 through the formerly marxist Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
Retired Lieutenant-Colonel Abiy Ahmed Ali is from the ethnic Oromo majority of Ethiopia, which had not been in power for ages. He rode to power through the Tigray-dominated EPRDF. As an elected Prime Minister, he relied on Tigrays who also formed the backbone of the post-1991 Ethiopian Armed Forces.
And then he did something that the Tigrays will consider to be a betrayal. He dissolved the EPRDF dominated by Tigrays and distanced himself from its "ethnic federalism" policy, which stipulates that autonomous provinces must be created based on territories inhabited by each of Ethiopia's ethnic groups. Problem is that certain territories are not 100% inhabited by one ethno-linguistic group so that has led to many problems.
Without going into too much details, the Tigrays refused to join the new Prosperity Party, which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali formed and that caused the Tigray War (2020-2022). The collective West has always had good relations with EPRDF, especially when it was controlled by the now deceased Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The Tigray ruling elites ran EPRDF, therefore the US backed them.
For Russia and China, it was quite simple. They supported the Ethiopian state. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali represents that state. End of story.
"the Ethiopian rebels who seized national power, jettisoned their Marxist beliefs and began to follow market economics"
Not really. It was a hard Left system, communist in all but name, up until very recently. As is Eritrea.
"the formerly marxist Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)"
Not formerly.
"He dissolved the EPRDF dominated by Tigrays and distanced himself from its "ethnic federalism" policy, which stipulates that autonomous provinces must be created based on territories inhabited by each of Ethiopia's ethnic groups. Problem is that certain territories are not 100% inhabited by one ethnolinguistic group so that has led to many problems."
Actually it was a damned good idea of local autonomy for ethnic groups.
Thank you, sir. I spring from the Nigerian Federation, which is at the fringes of the Sahel Belt. Niger Republic shares a very long border with Nigeria.
You say you are well-known. Definitely, you can't be the British actor named Robert Lindsay
I'm the notorious blogger. Yes that shirt and possibly your phenotype do not look very Sahelian. I don't have the greatest feelings about your country, but you seem like a very good man. And the North is a lot less corrupt than the South due to Islam. Even Achebe says Nigeria has...problems...let's put it that way. Achebe is a great man. Didn't like his article about Conrad though but whatever. He needs to get the Nobel some day.
Not true. For most of Nigeria's history, the national government has been run by military dictators, nearly all of which were Northern Muslims.
Nigeria's notoriety for corruption can be squarely laid at the door of various military dictatorships, nearly all of which were run by Northern Muslims.
The most corrupt dictator in Nigerian history is General Sani Abacha who ran the country from 1993 to his death in 1998. He was a Northern Muslim.
The second most corrupt dictator in Nigerian history is General Ibrahim Babangida who ran the country from 1985 to 1993. He is also a Northern Muslim.
Achebe, who is actually a maternal relative, did not ascribe corruption to one part of the country or the other.
Whatever feelings you have for Nigeria are yours and yours alone. You are entitled to feel whatever. After all, millions of people worldwide do not have great feelings for your own country either
It's long, but it'll answer most of your questions. In a nutshell, "the West" generally supported/supports the Abiy government (elected in 2019) and wants a stable Ethiopia, but there's a hardcore "swamp monster" faction of the US State Dept (as well as a few out-and-out lunatics in Belgium) who prefer the TPLF, for several reasons: long-standing ties to the TPLF and because the TPLF are perceived as "dictators we can trust" in the classical American strategy. Also, the TPLF are just really really good at social media propaganda whereas the Abiy government is kinda clumsy at it (sort of like Ukraine's CIPRO versus the stodgy Russian MoD).
Secondarily, the psychopath Dr. Tedros (responsible himself for at least 10k dead children in Ethiopia), current head of the WHO, is a former TPLF official and virulently hates the Ethiopian government. Tedros, of course, is a golden boy because of Covid, so he's bulletproof. The West literally had to change the rules to re-elect Tedros as S-G of the WHO because ordinarily, your country of citizenship had to sponsor you but Addis Ababa fucking hates him, so it was Britain and America who finagled things to get Tedros re-elected.
1b) Ethiopia is the second-most populous black African nation on the planet and has a booming economy. It's also home to a lot of prestigious institutions like the African Union and AfDB (and Ethiopia will be a BRICS member next year). Yet most Westerners are still mired in images from the 80s of Ethiopia as a poor, starving nation. In reality, the capital has a huge metro system and has factories making cars (not counting the future deal with Lada), building the world's largest HPP (called the GERD), etc. In other words, there is a SERIOUS mismatch between how Ethiopia is perceived by Westerners and reality on the ground.
Ethiopia state TV has both a website and channel on Youtube with news in English - I recommend anyone interested should check it out:
2) The only real shortage most Russians are facing now is in car parts and second-hand cars. For a variety of reasons, Russia imported most of its car parts from abroad prior to the SMO. However, that's being ameliorated at the moment, and China's really stepped up its export of (especially used) cars to Russia.
3) As for Putin's popularity, all one needs to do is check the "approval rating" of literally any Western leader in the pro-Ukrainian camp. Biden? Trudeau? Sunak? Macron? Scholz? Even Kishida = they are ALL far less than 50%. Even the smaller countries like Lithuania or Moldova or Estonia and Romania have deeply unpopular leaders. Long story short = the so-called "dictators" (Lukashenko, Putin, Petro, Bukele, et al) and are GENUINELY representing their countries while the West is autocratic as hell.
4) If Milei wins the election as president of Argentina, he's going to completely ditch the peso and straight up switch to the American dollar. I don't know why this isn't better known as he's been completely open about it. And even if there is ever a BRICS currency, it will be like the OP said, for cross-border settlements, not day-to-day currency for regular folks.
5) In the 1980s, life sucked in Russia (and everywhere else in the Soviet Union), and everyone dreamed of "the good life, like in the West" with blue jeans and hamburgers. Then it arrived, and wasn't so good, but it's taken a while for a lot of Russians to cotton onto the fact that life in Russia COULD be as good as or better than the West (what an American would call "imposter syndrome.") What can I say? Propaganda is powerful stuff. The SMO has really opened a lot of people's eyes in Russia.
6) Doesn't get much traction in the Western news, but the USA (as well as Britain and Germany) are losing ground big-time around the world. The PM of the Solomon Islands just refused to meet Biden, Germany is about to enact MAJOR budget cuts for the first time in forever, and Sweden, which is run by the most hardcore "woke" folks of all time, just announced it's both cutting its climate change budget AND increasing CO2 emissions next year. The UK meanwhile has cut its foreign aid budget to almost zero (in order to host refugees in-country), meaning a hell of a lot of Commonwealth countries are getting no aid at all anymore. Barbados already ditched the monarchy and Jamaica is likely to do so as well, soon. Canada, as well, is imploding mostly over the cost of living crisis (and the Nazigate thing, plus the discovery that all those "graves" of murdered natives are fake), and Australians are dancing in the street over the resignation of Dan Andrews plus the fact that the "Voice" referendum (the darling project of the Albense gov't) is almost certainly going to fail.
In other words, the "battlefield" isn't just going on in Ukraine. The West is losing across nearly every other ideological "field of battle" against a rising tide of countries sick and tired of being dictated to (or bribed with aid money/military dominance). And let's not forget that the economies of Europe are imploding as we speak.
7) Anyone who thinks "the Jews" are a monolithic group is an idiot. There are the Ashkenazi ("white" jews) versus the Sephardim ("African/Arab" jews), the "European" Jews vs the Russian/Soviet Jews, and the religious versus the agnostic Jews. And even amidst the religious Jews, there are huge divisions between the Orthodox and the Chasid/Hasid, with many Hasid being OPENLY anti-Zionist. Inside Israel, there are also "strong state" supporters versus "federalization" supporters, which led to massive street protests in recent months.
Put three Jews in a room, and you'll get three different opinions on literally any topic. Shit, and that's not even counting the (American) Black Jews, the Samaritans, the "Jews for Jesus" camp, and the American Jews who loathe the ADL (like Laura Loomer).
"Anyone who thinks "the Jews" are a monolithic group is an idiot. There are the Ashkenazi ("white" jews) versus the Sephardim ("African/Arab" jews), the "European" Jews vs the Russian/Soviet Jews, and the religious versus the agnostic Jews. And even amidst the religious Jews, there are huge divisions between the Orthodox and the Chasid/Hasid, with many Hasid being OPENLY anti-Zionist. Inside Israel, there are also "strong state" supporters versus "federalization" supporters, which led to massive street protests in recent months."
n.b. the single largest Hasidic court, the Satmar Hassidim, aka "Kiryas Joel" believe Israel to be literally satanic and they refuse to have anything to do with it or to set foot in it.
Yes, but whoever made such claims? Who, except from idiots, trolls that pretend to be antisemites and followers of Nazi-ideologies, ever blamed "the" Jews. Most people write and talk about big Jewish owned banking cartels, that by the way dominate most so called national banks. Additionally many if not most MSM and filmproductions not only in Hollywood are in the hand of Jews, I don'treally have to mention it, most anyone is aware of it, no? And of course Jewish politicians playing important roles in US politics (and that of other countries) plus in international organizations.
On the other hand it's obvious that these, let's call them elite Jews, aren't a monolithic block. So what? Even if several clans are partly concurring, partly collaborating with each other, the simplified version of Jewish power and influence is still valid. If we'd talk about every topic on a scientific level all the time, we all had to match Methuselah's longevity and we still would only ever discuss and never live.
I'm not obsessed with this topic and not knowing every detail in my opinion doesn't take away from the mosaic formed by the obvious.
I hate to trash your people, but obsessive and conspiratorial antisemitism was quite popular in your neck of the woods and in Eastern Europe 80 years ago. The answer is "lots of people." There is a similar and pretty brutal form of antisemitism wrapped up in anti-Zionism in the Arab World now. There's also quite a bit of antisemitism in Russia. Further, some Salafist Muslims are vicious antisemites.
As a matter of fact, Jews do not run the banks anymore in the West. A little thing called WW2 happened and took care of that "problem."
The media isn't majority Jewish anymore. Maybe 41%, if that. Hollywood is a lot more Jewish but a lot of other groups have broken in recently, Italians in particular.
The Jews don't agree on a single damned thing other than Israel and antisemitism. Outside of that, they don't agree on a thing. Sure they have the US government by the balls on Middle East foreign policy, but it's a consensual act as most US Gentiles are strong Israel supporters.
Some big money Jews throw their weight around and act like dicks. Some big money Gentiles do the same. I'd rather be ruled by rich Jews than by rich Gentiles as the former are fairly liberal for rich people.
Ashkenazi: European Jews mostly from northern and eastern Europe, less so from Scandinavia. There were many in Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and France.
Sephardic: Mediterranean Jews - Spanish, Portuguese, Hispanic, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Albanian, and Jews of the Caucasus. Quite a few of these were hidden Jews or crypto Jews who claimed to be Catholic but practiced their religion in secret. They tended to be pretty moderate and assimilated as Jews go for some reason. In part there were never very many of them in those countries.
Mizrachi: Jews of all of the Arab lands and east, but there are very few to none from Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Mauritania, to zero or near zero from Mauritania, Sudan and Jordan. There were quite a few in all of the other Arab countries, and there are even some in Saudi Arabia! They were also in Iran, China, Afghanistan, India, and Uzbekistan.
Most Hasidics in Israel, the US, and elsewhere are absolutely Zionists. There are 50,000 anti-Zionist Hasidic Jews in Israel though. Hasidics ARE Orthodox Jews last time I checked. Perhaps they might be seen as ultra-Orthodox. The real divide with the Jews is secular/Reform versus Orthodox. They pretty much hate each other.
European Jews and Russian Jews are the same thing. The big divide was between "Westies," mostly from Germany, wealthy and sophisticated, and "Easties," East European and Russian Jews seen as superstitious, backwards, stupid, poor, fanatatical, rude, crude, and less civilized or country bumpkins at best. The Westies really looked down on the Easties. This was a big thing in Europe and the US before WW2.
"Inside Israel, there are also "strong state" supporters versus "federalization" supporters, which led to massive street protests in recent months."
Yep but strong staters are all Orthodox authoritarians, and federalists are all secular/Reform democrats.
Among Westies, apparently Spanish Jews saw themselves as more cultured than German Jews, and there are a divisions and differentiations among Easties as well.
Portuguese Jews too? What about French Jews? I don't believe there have ever been many Jews in the Netherlands, Belgium. I imagine the UK Jews stayed out of it, right? Brits always see themselves as apart from the Continent.
I don't know about these divisions among the Easties.
"Australians are dancing in the street over the resignation of Dan Andrews"
A small correction Sam; Australians in the state of Victoria are 'dancing in the street over the resignation of Dan Andrews', as he was the Premier of that state. And AlbaNAZI is the Prime Minister of the Australian regime.
Petro is absolutely not a dictator in any way, shape, or form.
Don't know about Bukule.
Lukashenko runs for office every few years. Pre-election polls always give him 70-80%. He runs a modified Soviet economy with some capitalism, sort of like China. Works pretty well. The opposition are Nazis just like in Ukraine, and they love the West. They are radical neoliberals on economics (sort of like US Republicans), and in that part of the world or in most of the world for that matter, majorities reject that system in favor of some variety of socialism, be it only social democracy. They want to completely privatize the economy and that would cause a massive economic shock like the catastrophes in Ukraine and Russia in the 1990's.
So many people would be thrown out of work.
Lukashenko saw what happened with shock therapy in Ukraine and Russia (in Russia alone it killed 10-15 million), and he halted his and rolled it back. They've had state dominated economy ever since, and it works pretty well somehow.
Lukashenko works for his people, polls them constantly, and tries to give them what they want. The opposition are young, well-off urbanites. They are "rich young snotty brats" and everyone else, mostly working class urbanites and rural folks, hates them. Yeah, they want to join the "Golden West."
People run against Lukashenko every time. Any one of them could win. The votes are counted fairly. He always wins by 70-80%, which closely matches the pre-election polls.
Imagine that you are playing Monopoly. All the players but one start with $1,500, but one player is the bank with an almost unlimited supply of money. Who is going to win?
In the words of Charles Dickens: "Control the cash box and you control the World" (A Christmas Carol).
And the words of Nathan Rothschild: "I care not who sits on the throne of the Empire on which the sun never sets, he who controls the money supply controls the Empire. And I control the money supply."
The Central Banking Cartel has it's generals and lieutenants, in the form of the Committee of 300 (the former shareholders of the East India Company; the "Empire within an Empire which gained all of the plunder from India, China etc), the WEF, Freemasons etc.
They control most of the world, including the UK, US, Israel, China and India. They used Britain to plunder and control the world, then the US. Under the new multipolar system their power base will be coordinated through a number of countries, with the main focus being China.
As far as private clinics, in my Russian city they are only for specialties: blood work beyond what the public hospitals offer (e.g. Israeli, American, etc. screenings that aren't in the approved list for the public system), infertility, cosmetic surgery, etc. There is a "western" private general hospital but it catered mostly to foreigners and had a pay-for-service / western insurance model. Dentist offices are now almost all private. They provide the required services on the public plan (mostly pulling teeth I think) and normal dental care for pay.
Primary care is done in-home. There are no general hospitals, and hospitals are much smaller than their U.S. counterparts. There is a maternity hospital on my street, and a cardiac care hospital not far away that specializes in heart surgeries and rehabilitation. If you are sick, you call to a facility based on where you live. We have a lot more ambulances than U.S. cities. They are crewed with a physician. Response times are reasonable. For example, if your child is sick, they'll ask you their temperature when you call in (and people know to do so beforehand). If it is a high temperature, a GP will visit you in your home within usually four to six hours. Emergency situations have responses similar to other western countries.
Russian people as a whole are better informed about first response care than Americans in my experience. Everyone has classes in school on how to do CPR, how to recognize different medical problems, and what to do.
Russian hospitals are more holistic than western ones I think. I had a friend who had a stroke and required an operation here. I also had a family member who had a heart operation in the U.S., and visited them in the hospital there. The Russian hospital recovery room was organized for visiting. There was a tea pot and cups, and chairs to sit on during visits. There were a lot of house plants at the end of the hallway in the window. There is an effort to make recovery areas feel like home. The U.S. hospital was very sterile. The idea of a house plant in the patient room hallways there is inconceivable to me.
On quality and paying for service, there's one thing about corruption in Russia that I think westerners do not understand. It is always possible to do something by the normal way. By that I mean for example, some years ago I was smoking a cigarette too close to the entrance of a metro (underground subway train) station. You must be at least 20 meters or something from the entrance. The station officer came and told me that, and ordered me to come into the police station inside. There was a fine for the offense. I gave my passport. The normal way to pay is that the fine (about $100) is recorded against your passport number. If you ignore it, you will eventually have problems: when you try and renew your passport, when you try and go through passport control, etc. The officer also offered a "quick" way: pay the same fine in cash, and it wouldn't be recorded. Is it corruption? Theoretically, no, the officer could apply the payment in the system (there is a unified payment system for utility bills, speeding fines, and everything else). All corruption in Russia is generally like this (the normal way is possible).
And so it is with medical care. There are lots of extras you can pay for if you need a procedure done, but you don't need to pay any extra. Examples are a single room for recovery, perhaps lots of other things. The general idea is that people do pay for operations as "extras". A friend of mine's grandmother needed serious and extensive surgery last year, and my friend paid some thousands of dollars (USD) extra for the care. But the grandmother would have gotten adequate care without it. Part of it is that everybody knows that doctors and nurses are seriously underpaid in the public health system, and so people generally offer money in order to make sure their care is as attentive as possible.
But there are several surgeons and doctors in my circle of people close to me. I know a young man who is in medical school now. They are no different than physicians in the west. The paid "extras" are just part of the system that has evolved to make it a career that's solidly middle / upper-middle class financially. It is a weird American thing to think that doctors should be paid in the top 1% - there are lots of smart people in Russia, being a doctor doesn't seem like a unicorn kind of thing like the Americans take it to be. There are lots of doctors, too (Americans restrict their supply of physicians artificially to keep pay high). A doctor expects to make the same as an engineer or any other professional with comparable education (and an American physician with a Bachelors in Social Science before entering medical school doesn't really have "8 years of higher education").
Teachers are the same. You don't have to pay anything for your kids to get an education. But people know that teachers are underpaid. So they typically make it up in different ways by supporting whatever "extras" the teachers offer. For some, it's organizing a two week math camp in the summer. For others, it's after-school tutoring. For some, it's a literary club and fees to "rent" books that are reused by the teacher year to year. It's not the best system, but it's organic and it works. And the government isn't spending $2 trillion USD a year that it doesn't have, nearly guaranteeing the eventuality of hyperinflation and societal collapse.
I think as time goes on, its becoming more and more clear what is really going on
The neocon wing in the US releasing ads that this is a "free" war against Russia, more or less confirms what everyone else already knew. The other half of it is that the sanctions have created a captive market for American minerals and hydrocarbons to European customers (and others). The 2% GDP growth that the US is enjoying at the moment is in no small amount being driven by weapons orders and export volumes to the EU/UK which were otherwise bought for 80% less from Russia. Its no surprise the EU is clearly in a recession, but the US (on paper) seems to defy it.
Unfortunately, the leadership class in the major EU countries - the UK, Germany, France, and so on - are totally captured by the trifecta of climatism, anti-Russian sentiment, and atlantacism/globalism. In fact I don't think I've ever seen the political leadership of an entire population bloc so united despite being diametrically opposed to their own subject's interests.
"The only other very ‘exotic’ weapon I know of was Project Excalibur that used an x-ray laser for ballistic missile defense, but it was likewise very unwieldy. It required a nuclear bomb to detonate in space which would shoot ‘x-ray lasers’ in every direction, destroying a potential ICBM in flight. But such a thing is not really targetable towards specific ground targets."
There were also shaped nuclear charges back in the day, so a combination of them + a bomb-pumped x-ray laser could be better. David Weber uses the idea in his Honor Harrington books, but I don't know that such tech has been tried IRL.
The really big issue with lasers though is efficiency - and the related problem of waste heat. Let's say you want a laser with the muzzle energy of an AR-15 is perhaps 1,800 Joules (yes, I know kinetic energy + momentum does not damage something the same way a laser will but let's keep it simple)... you'll be lucky to have even 20% efficiency with modern lasers, which means 7.2kJ dumped into the body of your laser rifle or whatever. That's 2 kWh, or half an hour of electric oven use. That's just for one shot, remember. It's actually easier to have such weapons in atmosphere because you can air-cool it - it's far harder in space as you need a big array of radiators. At least when firing in an atmosphere you can use different types of laser that are less affected by the air - you can't switch laser type to handwave away the laws of thermodynamics though. (This also doesn't get into the issue of weather: rain, snow, and so on will enormously degrade laser efficacy.)
I suspect that most Russians support the war, as long as they or their kids aren't conscripted and the war doesn't inconvenience them too much.
The war still has majority support. All Russian men are in the reserves and can be called up at any time. Everyone knows this. The actual conscripts cannot be used outside of Russia.
But those men are not likely to be called.
The conscripts are in the army no matter what, serving in Russia.
The last call-up of reserves focused on men with an average 4-6 years service and on top of that had combat experience. They almost called up professional soldiers.
The point is that the average frustrated Russian isn't likely to be called.
Next call-up once again will probably emphasize more years of service (more than minimum) and combat experience. Don't a lot of men re-up for a couple of years, then leave? Or do four or six years, then leave? Military service is often a way station in Russia, right? Not a career. These guys come and go. They're all contract soldiers. They either re-up or they don't.
What is the point of asking to submit a question if you never answer? If you want to do cherry picking that's fine, but I won't bother to submit a question to you again. If you said you'd answer questions of the paid subscribers, answer, otherwise, what's the point.
What question? I checked the questions thread and you didn't have a question. As for Angelina, hers was most definitely answered as #7 in mailbag Part 1, which anyone can check for themselves by seeing her original question in the original mailbag questions thread.
My records show your question was answered as #7 in [Part 1] https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/subscriber-mailbag-answers-91823 . Did you miss it?
My apologies - looks like I missed your reply. Sorry.
Just for the record, reading your work is like sitting down at a banquet and being filled to a bellyache before the Main Meal is set. It often takes me a few days to digest your work, sometimes an entire week. I do have other requirements for my life.
But, great, honest work.
If only the World produced Diplomats.
Mebe try a bag of frozen peas?
"Mebe" crawl back under the rock from which you emerged?
Not a chance. I’ll be on top of that rock watching you pouting in the muck!! Good luck with the swelling....
Esq.? LOL - more like a bottomfeeder
Correction and my apologies to Simplicius and other readers. It looks like I missed the reply in travels - it was indeed under # 7. Sorry!!!
In “Ukraine Bloody War: The Great Plundering” I feel compelled to compliment Simplicius' always brilliant, detailed work with my own take—a zoomed-out look at the colossal pillage by the Biden's criminal regime. In their criminal corruption lies the greatest danger for our future.
https://trygvewighdal.substack.com/p/ukraine-bloody-war-the-great-plundering
Italy did conquer Ethiopia in a brilliant military operation during only seven months, greatly disappointing Chamberlain who thought they would be bogged down 30 years. After our army entered Addis Abeba and the war was ended, the King of Italy was proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia. The territories were lost only because the USA were on the other side of Italy in WW2.
That's true, though I don't really count it because it's roughly during WW2 era and past the real age of colonialism. And since Italy only held control for a *relatively* very short time then got booted out and had to pay major reparations, in my book it doesn't quite count since they didn't really colonize the country to the degree that was done during the 'scramble for Africa' age.
Agreed: It ain't what you took; it's what you keep.
Mussolini's five-year control of Ethiopia is simply considered an occupation on par with Nazi German occupation of Poland and France. As Ethiopia was full fledged member of League of Nations, what Italy did from 1936 to 1941 is not colonization at all, but unwarranted attack on fellow sovereign state
The only thing Mussolini did was cart off the obelisk of Axxum. Give me a break. You'd be lucky to find 10 people in Ethiopia today who can speak Italian. Unlike, say, in Eritrea or Somalia.
Italy and "brilliant military operation" do not belong in the same sentence.
Regarding the last question, and why Russia has been unable [it seems] to create a quicker victory, I would point to many of my comments here and elsewhere.
The facts are not completely clear but it is certain that the UAF had a much larger military than the RF [when mobilised] in terms of troops committed in theatre. In Feb 22 the UAF had c 250K regular troops and c 450K mobilisable reserves, plus another 100K of armed paramilitaries. A further 100K almost immediately volunteered from civilian life and there have been on-going waves of mobilisation. It is certainly the case that many more than 1 million men have passed through the ranks of the UAF even if at no stage it could boast an establishment of that figure. The UAF has nearly 100 combat brigades of whom over 80 are manouvre units.
Russia (and its various allies etc) probably started the SMO with less than 250K men, half of who maybe RF regulars.
Numbers of this magnitude help explain why the UAF has been able to sustain what most here believe are high losses and in excess of those of the RF. There has been much lively debate on the levels of losses but I personally think the UAF has [on average] sufferred c 1,000 per day so by now c 600,000 of who a disproportionate number have been permenantly lost as opposed to wounded and returned to the fighting. I'd put Russian losses at a fraction of this but maybe 150,000 overall. If RF losses have been this sort of number (ie c 40,000 dead, the rest WIA) then it helps explain why the "missing reserves" are not being used. They have been - simply as replacements.
The Ukraine had 8 years to train and also to create fortifications. It has benefited from western ISR, financial support, "volunteers" and of course huge arms shipments and not so clandestine assistance with planning from NATO "advisors". Alas it has had motivated troops, strong on Nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment - at times tending towards ouright Nazi views amongst key units and personnel.
Rather than poor plucky little Ukraine, Ukraine had one of the largest armed forces in the world in Feb 22 and has been actively supported by the most powerful military alliance in the world. So Russia has in fact done pretty well to demolish this military behemoth with a much smaller force, using firepower not flesh and blood. However the UAF will take a lot of killing and I am uncertain as to whether it is as close to collapse as many (eg Ritter, MacGregor) believe. Shoigu [I think] said recently he expects the SMO to end in 2025.
Anyway, it is likely on my figures and analysis that the RF is still out numbered in manpower terms and hence an offensive against fortified lines - even with a much reduced and less effective UAF - might prove too risky. The UAF is still obliging by making dumb attacks though the onset of the Raputitsa will probably further slow down the pace of operations. I expect Russia to keep up the pressure in the winter.
At some point the UAF will collapse or simply lose its ability to continue - a combination of losses, lack of ammo and equipment and failing morale. When that point arrives we will know it. We don't seem to be there yet.
"In Feb 22 the UAF had c 250K regular troops and c 450K mobilisable reserves, plus another 100K of armed paramilitaries."
Those were not "in theater" at the start of the war. Ukraine had only around 150,000 at the contact line. Russia came in with 80-120,000 plus 35-50,000 Donbass militia plus Wagner plus Volunteer Battalions or probably around 175-200,000 men. The feint at Kiev kept Ukraine from reinforcing the Donbass until the March-April negotiations were over and Russia removed its forces. This "Russia was out-numbered 3:1" myth is nonsense.
Those 100 brigades you talk about were probably at a 3,000 or less strength rather than 4-5,000, so the total was probably 300,000, not 500,000. And again, at the start, only half or less were at the contact line.
Later, of course, once Ukraine mobilized fully, then Russia was more or less out-numbered in terms of total forces - until the fall mobilization. Now Russia has the 370,000 from the fall mobilization, plus another 200,000-odd from their regular conscription drives, and expect to have at least 420,000 by Christmas. Yes, Russia does have 500-750,000 troops available. How large the front line combat force is I have no idea because I don't what the logistical tail is.
But the same applies to Ukraine, as I've argued repeatedly. Ukraine may have had a million or even two million men throughout the course of the war, but they have lost at least half a million irretrievable losses and probably closer to one million. So even if they had two million men available over the course of the war, they have no more than a million now, and the vast majority of those are the logistical tail supplemented by civilians and the forces at the front are untrained, poorly led, poorly equipped, have little to no armor left and little artillery.
The Russians have probably lost less than 100,000 people overall. With 400-500,000 new soldiers, they don't need to worry about "replacements". In addition, 97% of their wounded return to duty, so in reality of that 100-150,000 you claim, the only ones that really count are the possible 50,000 dead.
You keep arguing about "bean-counting people", and I keep pointing out that more people only means more dead people, not more combat or operational effectiveness.
And what we actually SEE on the battlefield is a complete loss of operational effectiveness and an almost complete loss of combat effectiveness, with that Ukrainian General admitting that they can only do "attacks" with squads - not even platoons or companies, let along battalions or brigades.
Ukraine has nothing left. They're finished. They won't last beyond Christmas - unless Russia lets them.
I've debunked your posts to me about these points repeatedly, without your being able to refute these points I've made before, but you keep repeating the same notions. Thus I am forced to label you a concern troll.
Well Richard, If you regard me as a concern troll it generally means that someone disagrees with you. Please feel free to run me down as much as you like. Am I bovvered??
Not on his thread, but you will be on mine.
No worries, I will unsubscribe so you don't have the problem of people disagreeing with you. :-)
Thanks!
Thank you for your ongoing hard work and insights.
Respectfully, I think that the BRICS grouping already has a little more power than you give it credit for.
This is because the group controls so many key commodities that are in high demand globally. It therefore has the power to control access to & distribution of those conmodities.
For example, it can trade commodities with other BRICS members on favourable terms/discounted prices, vis a vis non-members. BRICS nations in this way gain access to key commodities they need, at a lower price than non-BRICS nations. Conversely non-members get hit with very high prices, if they get access to the commodities they need at all.
BRICS also has the power to damage non-BRICS economies that rely on exporting commodities. A classic example is Australia - its economy relies on its exports of commodities to China. If China was to substitute that trade entirely or to even replace / reduce select Australian imports with BRICS imports of the same commodity, it would have an immediate and very significant impact on the Australian economy.
Actually, for countries like Australia it's potentially a double whammy - there's a risk that nations wanting to join BRICS might decide to replace the commodities they buy from Australia, with the commodities of BRICS nations instead. A good example is Indonesia, a major purchaser of Australian wheat.
I note that there is already a massive potential for Russia to enter new markets (eg S E Asia) via BRICS. Ditto, Brazil. In fact, I think Russia may have already started approaching non-BRICS nations aspiring to be members, with trade proposals.
So while I agree that a currency would definitely turbocharge the BRICS grouping, I don't agree that BRICS right now is as powerless as you describe. It will be interesting to see what happens.
It's a good point and should be more widely known. Australia's biggest export earner is iron ore and the largest share of that is sold to China. After Australian and China, the biggest producers are Russia and Brazil. So that's 3/5ths of BRICS right there. Australia can try to diversify their markets away from China but there just isn't anyone buying as much as China, not even close. Australia can restrict Chinese capital from being invested in its strategic industries, but then that capital will just go over to their BRICS competitors, Australia will get a reduced market share, China gets more iron and steel at a lower price with the added advantage of a more vertically integrated supply chain.
New Zealand maybe in a similar position with their dairy exports, China is the largest portion of their biggest export commodity, but of course ice cream and cheese are luxuries for the Chinese not strategic necessities like iron and steel.
Both those nations may want to see the USA remain hegemon in the Pacific, but it would be damned difficult for them to accept a 30~40% cut in income in perpetuity to make it happen. And that is 2/5ths of your 5 Eyes right there.
Australian regime are abject cowards and US toadies. They have spit, and continue to do so, in the face of their biggest trading partner. Just in wine sales alone, 2 billion was lost a few years ago due to insulting the Chinese govt. at the behest of Uncle Sam.
If WW III starts for real Australia will be isolated from the world by the Chinese navy and air force.
The Alubuga would indeed be a game changer, back in the '80's all our comms gear and offensive systems inside armor in Germany was so damn heavy due to EMP shielding. From looking at what I see now a weapon like that could change the war in days. Sending any enemy back to pre-1850's would be slaughter.
I don't understand what is so game changing about it. US already has CHAMP payloads for JASSMs, which have effectively the same purpose.
The only potential difference is the power. CHAMP seems to be really weak in principle and has multiple "shots" per sortie (I doubt it would be able stop anything more shielded than a personal car tho), whereas Alabuga seems to have quoted range of its EMP at 3,500m, which means it needs to be quite a lot more powerful and is presumed to be a not really small EPFCG (yeah, they're really called flux generators) with a single shot.
Real actual targeted EMP deployable weapon systems (without actual nukes being employed) are the golden fleece of modern warfare.
I wouldn't put too much hope in them. A properly trained army can continue to fight anyway. While it has a huge potential to disturb C4ISR and vehicle sensors, and EMP will not stop a tank or a soldier. And even a relatively small troop concentration would need a lot of EMP firepower to be covered reliably.
Maybe it force the fight back into the 1960's, but it would not stop it.
Air force could be in a lot of trouble though, as airbases would be relatively easy targets.
Response to Simplicius "Subscriber Mailbag Answers - 9/29/23 [Part 3]":
" It’s typically poor minorities from the American south that join the military at this point."
Go back to the Iraq war in 1993. Read the obituaries from the papers of that period. Almost every single dead US soldier has a Spanish surname. They were recruiting Mexican-Americans who wanted a green card by the thousands. It was extremely noticeable both in obituaries and in interviews with soldiers at the front.
It's the same way the Russians started the SMO by relying on the Donbass militias, Wagner, the Volunteer Battalions, the Chechens and the Rosqvardia - spare the real soldiers for use when and where they're really needed. It's a cold-blooded, but smart decision. Of course, in the case of the US it was simply racist.
As for Russia in western Ukraine, yes, they will take it. They need a Military District there to counter the West's Aegis Ashore threats as well as conventional land threats. Russia has been threatened repeatedly by wars with the West and they're going to make sure - by building Military Districts from the Black Sea to the Arctic - that it never happens again. This is the whole purpose of the SMO, assuming Russia can't cause NATO to self-destruct - and the Russians are smart enough not to assume that will work, so they constructed the SMO to have Parts A and B.
Part A was Putin's and Lavrov's plan:, scare Kiev into negotiating and then becoming neutral and de-militarized and then negotiate with NATO over the Aergis Ashore facilities. That was a "kick the can down the road" plan. The Russian General Staff undoubtedly told them, "Boss, that ain't good enough. We still need a Plan B in case Plan A doesn't work." Plan B is take Ukraine off the board completely, including taking over the whole country, removing the Kiev regime, and setting up those MDs. This solves a LOT of Russia's problems: it1) protects Donbass, 2) eliminates the Nazis, 3) eliminates NATO involvement in Ukraine (no rump state bullshit), and 4) enables direct countering of NATO in Poland and Romania.
Well, they tried Plan A, and of course it failed. By summer, I'm sure Putin decided Plan B was inevitable. That's when the decision to mobilize was made. I don't think Putin will ever be convinced to go back to Plan A. If he does, well, he's an idiot. And I don't see Putin as an idiot.
I agree about the unlikelihood of an insurgency. First, because a Military District is a lot tougher target than some "peacekeepers". Second, because Ukraine tried that at the behest of the CIA from the late 40's to the early 1950's and lost 200,000 Ukrainians doing it. Third, because as you say, Russia has seen Chechnya and Syria, been there, done that and know how to do it now. Fourth, because most of the nationalists in western Ukraine will be tracked down, detained and deported once the Russian police and intelligence services flood into western Ukraine after the military locks down the Polish and Romanian borders. Fifth, because trying a rural insurgency in this age of drones and thermal imaging will get you killed, and trying an urban insurgency will get you...Chechens and Wagner. And sixth because Ukrainians are "Europeans" - they aren't a tribal society where babies are born with AK-47s in their cribs and get RPG-7s as high school graduation gifts, like Iraq and Afghanistan. :-)
As for artillery shells, hell, that's easy. Just assume the Russians are going to make SURE they have enough if they have to buy ten million more from North Korea. Russia has the money and North Korea could use the money. Or Russia can put the money into more factories. It's a non-issue. Same with the tanks - they have more than enough mothballed to bulldoze Ukraine, upgraded or not. If Macgregor is right, they have 1,500 ready to go right now while Ukraine has what?
As a young socialist in the Labour Party, I was told, 'the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi'. It's horrifying how many Ukraine soldiers are Dying in this war on behalf of Western Elites. But the small consolation is that a small %age are Nazis, and they are getting eliminated for ever.
In question 43 you mention Russia capturing Crimea, Odessa..
What makes you think Russia will go for Odessa?
The reason I am asking is that Russia pretends to be respecting the UN charter, and the SMO is to help the Donbass oblasts. One may agree or disagree, but at least there is an argument and a reasoning showing that the SMO is a lawful entreprise.
There is however no such argument to be made for going to Odessa, and taking Odessa - whatever its justification from an historical or strategical point of view - is just an invasion like US and NATO likes to do, and takes away a (big) part of the clout Russia currently has with countries 'of the jungle'.
Things may change in the future, but I was curious to know why you mention now that Russia could take Odessa.
Because, once all the Nazis are dead, the people of Odessa will welcome Russia with open arms, hold a referendum, and join the federation ASAP. I've been to Odessa many times before the war, and let me tell you, it's a Russian city through and through. Google "Odessa Trade Unions fire 2014" for more.
I can think of three reasons for taking Odessa: (i) it's a historically Russian city that would be receptive to Russian rule; (ii) it cuts off Ukraine from the Black Sea, making it a far less useful instrument/player geopolitically; and (iii) it bridges the gap to Transnistria, thereby eliminating a major pressure point for Russia by connecting it to Russian territory and making it far more easily defendable. I've been saying since last year that this war won't end until the Russians take Odessa, but that seems to be a minority position.
That's three good reasons, but none matches an article in the UN chart. So Russia would just become an invader like those they complain about.
If, as Sam hypothises, the people of the Odessa oblast would declare independence and would want to join the Russian Federation, that would be another situation. But I am no longer convinced that those pro-Russians survived the Trade Unions building fire and aftermath. They are probably all dead, or fled elsewhere.
You're right, of course, about the UN Charter, and Putin does seem to prefer to color within the lines of international law. But does it matter?
The West - which makes a mockery of the Charter by drumming up "weapons of mass destruction" to lay the groundwork for their military interventions - already considers Russia an invader in Ukraine, even in Crimea, so IMO Russia doesn't really gain anything via-a-vis the West in exchange for observing Charter formalities.
Might it impact how the Global South views Russia? Maybe, but how much? The countries in the middle - India, Kazakhstan, Turkey, e.g. - are all very pragmatic about their relationships with the major powers, which implies to me that they don't trust assurances from any country except as far as mutual benefit carries them.
We're nearing the stage of "all's fair in love and war" civilizational conflict. Getting hung up on international law - a nebulous concept in the most tranquil of times - would seem to be a mistake.
They could go in based on persecution of the local Russian speakers. They go in, removed the Ukrainian government and hold a plebiscite. They can go to Russia or stay in Ukraine. If they vote to go to Russia, it's all kosher as the US allows self-determination of peoples.
Actually, everything what Russia is doing is legal according to international law. One of the main principles of international law is right of people to self-determination. And NATO according exactly to this principle separated Kosovo from Serbia. If they think Russian Invasion to Ukraine is illegal than they must return Kosovo to Serbia. All Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia mostly populated by ethnic Russians. Legal referendums were held there and peoples decided to join Russia. Odessa also populated mostly by Russians and native citizens of Odessa often says that Odessa is Russian city. So there will be no problems with annexing of Odessa. But returning to international law, there is another one of the main principles, which is principle of territorial integrity and it seems it may contradict the right of people to self-determination. But the principle of territorial integrity cannot be applied to countries that do not respect the rights of ethnic minorities and discriminate them. And this is exactly what Ukraine is doing since 2014. They are discriminate ethnic Russians and Russian language. So anyone who saying that Russian invasion and annexation of Ukrainian territories is illegal simply don't know international laws.
About Question #35: Just to add a little to what @simplicius76 has already said. Ethiopia has always held a fascination for Russia and that dates all the way back to early 1700s when Peter the Great adopted and treated as his own son a freed black slave called Abram Petrovich Gannibal.
This adopted African son of Czar Peter would take on a military career, train as an officer in a French Military Engineering School and eventual rise to the rank of General-In-Chief in the Imperial Russian Army and so would his own son too, Ivan Gannibal who was a commander in one of the Russo-Ottoman Wars of the 1700s . More importantly, Gannibal is the maternal great-grandfather of Alexander Puskhin, one of Russia's most revered poet.
The key thing to understand is that most Russians thought Gannibal was of ETHIOPIAN descent, but modern research shows this not to be case as I wrote several months ago:
https://sharpfocusafrica.substack.com/p/the-afro-russian-army-general-abram
Russians helped Ethiopia to repel two Italian invasions partly because of the fascination with Gannibal-Pushkin apparent "family connections" to the African country and partly because it was a fellow Orthodox Christian nation.
Modern day Ethiopia is friendly both to the West and to Russia. This is a legacy of the fact that Western nations (UK, USA) did help the country during a devastating famine that occurred in the middle of Ethiopian Civil War (1974-1991), which killed 1.5 million people.
Like in many cases in Africa, the civil war was trigged by a military coup in September 1974, which led to the dissolution of the 704-year-old Ethiopian Empire and its replacement with a Marxist-Leninist state. Disaffected Marxist renegades picked up arms and fought soldiers of that Marxist state.
Many of the current ruling elites of Ethiopia today were once Marxist rebels. After the civil war ended in 1991, and USSR collapsed, and Eritrea was allowed to break away, the Ethiopian rebels who seized national power, jettisoned their Marxist beliefs and began to follow market economics.
These rebels-turned-national leaders formed close bonds with the Western world that provided loads of food to feed the starving during the famines of the 1980s. Boris Yeltsin's Russia was too preoccupied with its own problems to even pick up the diplomatic ties that the Soviets had with various African states.
The current conflict in Ethiopia---which AU mediators have managed to freeze--is simply a fall out of change in the configuration of power in the country. The Marxist rebels that came to power were led by ethnic Tigray people. Long time leader of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, who died in 2012, was ethnic Tigray.
Despite being an ethnic minority, Tigrays have been running the country since 1991 through the formerly marxist Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
Retired Lieutenant-Colonel Abiy Ahmed Ali is from the ethnic Oromo majority of Ethiopia, which had not been in power for ages. He rode to power through the Tigray-dominated EPRDF. As an elected Prime Minister, he relied on Tigrays who also formed the backbone of the post-1991 Ethiopian Armed Forces.
And then he did something that the Tigrays will consider to be a betrayal. He dissolved the EPRDF dominated by Tigrays and distanced himself from its "ethnic federalism" policy, which stipulates that autonomous provinces must be created based on territories inhabited by each of Ethiopia's ethnic groups. Problem is that certain territories are not 100% inhabited by one ethno-linguistic group so that has led to many problems.
Without going into too much details, the Tigrays refused to join the new Prosperity Party, which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali formed and that caused the Tigray War (2020-2022). The collective West has always had good relations with EPRDF, especially when it was controlled by the now deceased Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The Tigray ruling elites ran EPRDF, therefore the US backed them.
For Russia and China, it was quite simple. They supported the Ethiopian state. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali represents that state. End of story.
Gannibal was in fact the second black man to become a general in the Tsar's army.
"the Ethiopian rebels who seized national power, jettisoned their Marxist beliefs and began to follow market economics"
Not really. It was a hard Left system, communist in all but name, up until very recently. As is Eritrea.
"the formerly marxist Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)"
Not formerly.
"He dissolved the EPRDF dominated by Tigrays and distanced himself from its "ethnic federalism" policy, which stipulates that autonomous provinces must be created based on territories inhabited by each of Ethiopia's ethnic groups. Problem is that certain territories are not 100% inhabited by one ethnolinguistic group so that has led to many problems."
Actually it was a damned good idea of local autonomy for ethnic groups.
You are entitled to your opinion, Mr. Lindsay. Thanks for dropping by...
Do you know me LOL? I'm somewhat well-known.
No. YOU are entitled to MY opinion, Mr. Chima. J/k.
That is one damn fine blog you have there sir. Very knowledgeable and well-written. Are you from the Horn or the Sahel?
Thank you, sir. I spring from the Nigerian Federation, which is at the fringes of the Sahel Belt. Niger Republic shares a very long border with Nigeria.
You say you are well-known. Definitely, you can't be the British actor named Robert Lindsay
I'm the notorious blogger. Yes that shirt and possibly your phenotype do not look very Sahelian. I don't have the greatest feelings about your country, but you seem like a very good man. And the North is a lot less corrupt than the South due to Islam. Even Achebe says Nigeria has...problems...let's put it that way. Achebe is a great man. Didn't like his article about Conrad though but whatever. He needs to get the Nobel some day.
Not true. For most of Nigeria's history, the national government has been run by military dictators, nearly all of which were Northern Muslims.
Nigeria's notoriety for corruption can be squarely laid at the door of various military dictatorships, nearly all of which were run by Northern Muslims.
The most corrupt dictator in Nigerian history is General Sani Abacha who ran the country from 1993 to his death in 1998. He was a Northern Muslim.
The second most corrupt dictator in Nigerian history is General Ibrahim Babangida who ran the country from 1985 to 1993. He is also a Northern Muslim.
Achebe, who is actually a maternal relative, did not ascribe corruption to one part of the country or the other.
Whatever feelings you have for Nigeria are yours and yours alone. You are entitled to feel whatever. After all, millions of people worldwide do not have great feelings for your own country either
Thank you for yet another superb analysis and commentary. Truly, you are a peerless source for information about this war.
A couple of comments:
1) Anyone wanting to know more about the war in Ethiopia, should read this from a guy who actually lives there:
https://rsonderriis.substack.com/p/getting-ethiopia-dead-wrong
It's long, but it'll answer most of your questions. In a nutshell, "the West" generally supported/supports the Abiy government (elected in 2019) and wants a stable Ethiopia, but there's a hardcore "swamp monster" faction of the US State Dept (as well as a few out-and-out lunatics in Belgium) who prefer the TPLF, for several reasons: long-standing ties to the TPLF and because the TPLF are perceived as "dictators we can trust" in the classical American strategy. Also, the TPLF are just really really good at social media propaganda whereas the Abiy government is kinda clumsy at it (sort of like Ukraine's CIPRO versus the stodgy Russian MoD).
Secondarily, the psychopath Dr. Tedros (responsible himself for at least 10k dead children in Ethiopia), current head of the WHO, is a former TPLF official and virulently hates the Ethiopian government. Tedros, of course, is a golden boy because of Covid, so he's bulletproof. The West literally had to change the rules to re-elect Tedros as S-G of the WHO because ordinarily, your country of citizenship had to sponsor you but Addis Ababa fucking hates him, so it was Britain and America who finagled things to get Tedros re-elected.
1b) Ethiopia is the second-most populous black African nation on the planet and has a booming economy. It's also home to a lot of prestigious institutions like the African Union and AfDB (and Ethiopia will be a BRICS member next year). Yet most Westerners are still mired in images from the 80s of Ethiopia as a poor, starving nation. In reality, the capital has a huge metro system and has factories making cars (not counting the future deal with Lada), building the world's largest HPP (called the GERD), etc. In other words, there is a SERIOUS mismatch between how Ethiopia is perceived by Westerners and reality on the ground.
Ethiopia state TV has both a website and channel on Youtube with news in English - I recommend anyone interested should check it out:
https://www.ena.et/web/eng
2) The only real shortage most Russians are facing now is in car parts and second-hand cars. For a variety of reasons, Russia imported most of its car parts from abroad prior to the SMO. However, that's being ameliorated at the moment, and China's really stepped up its export of (especially used) cars to Russia.
3) As for Putin's popularity, all one needs to do is check the "approval rating" of literally any Western leader in the pro-Ukrainian camp. Biden? Trudeau? Sunak? Macron? Scholz? Even Kishida = they are ALL far less than 50%. Even the smaller countries like Lithuania or Moldova or Estonia and Romania have deeply unpopular leaders. Long story short = the so-called "dictators" (Lukashenko, Putin, Petro, Bukele, et al) and are GENUINELY representing their countries while the West is autocratic as hell.
4) If Milei wins the election as president of Argentina, he's going to completely ditch the peso and straight up switch to the American dollar. I don't know why this isn't better known as he's been completely open about it. And even if there is ever a BRICS currency, it will be like the OP said, for cross-border settlements, not day-to-day currency for regular folks.
https://www.aier.org/article/how-crazy-do-you-have-to-be-to-support-dollarization/
5) In the 1980s, life sucked in Russia (and everywhere else in the Soviet Union), and everyone dreamed of "the good life, like in the West" with blue jeans and hamburgers. Then it arrived, and wasn't so good, but it's taken a while for a lot of Russians to cotton onto the fact that life in Russia COULD be as good as or better than the West (what an American would call "imposter syndrome.") What can I say? Propaganda is powerful stuff. The SMO has really opened a lot of people's eyes in Russia.
6) Doesn't get much traction in the Western news, but the USA (as well as Britain and Germany) are losing ground big-time around the world. The PM of the Solomon Islands just refused to meet Biden, Germany is about to enact MAJOR budget cuts for the first time in forever, and Sweden, which is run by the most hardcore "woke" folks of all time, just announced it's both cutting its climate change budget AND increasing CO2 emissions next year. The UK meanwhile has cut its foreign aid budget to almost zero (in order to host refugees in-country), meaning a hell of a lot of Commonwealth countries are getting no aid at all anymore. Barbados already ditched the monarchy and Jamaica is likely to do so as well, soon. Canada, as well, is imploding mostly over the cost of living crisis (and the Nazigate thing, plus the discovery that all those "graves" of murdered natives are fake), and Australians are dancing in the street over the resignation of Dan Andrews plus the fact that the "Voice" referendum (the darling project of the Albense gov't) is almost certainly going to fail.
In other words, the "battlefield" isn't just going on in Ukraine. The West is losing across nearly every other ideological "field of battle" against a rising tide of countries sick and tired of being dictated to (or bribed with aid money/military dominance). And let's not forget that the economies of Europe are imploding as we speak.
7) Anyone who thinks "the Jews" are a monolithic group is an idiot. There are the Ashkenazi ("white" jews) versus the Sephardim ("African/Arab" jews), the "European" Jews vs the Russian/Soviet Jews, and the religious versus the agnostic Jews. And even amidst the religious Jews, there are huge divisions between the Orthodox and the Chasid/Hasid, with many Hasid being OPENLY anti-Zionist. Inside Israel, there are also "strong state" supporters versus "federalization" supporters, which led to massive street protests in recent months.
Put three Jews in a room, and you'll get three different opinions on literally any topic. Shit, and that's not even counting the (American) Black Jews, the Samaritans, the "Jews for Jesus" camp, and the American Jews who loathe the ADL (like Laura Loomer).
"Anyone who thinks "the Jews" are a monolithic group is an idiot. There are the Ashkenazi ("white" jews) versus the Sephardim ("African/Arab" jews), the "European" Jews vs the Russian/Soviet Jews, and the religious versus the agnostic Jews. And even amidst the religious Jews, there are huge divisions between the Orthodox and the Chasid/Hasid, with many Hasid being OPENLY anti-Zionist. Inside Israel, there are also "strong state" supporters versus "federalization" supporters, which led to massive street protests in recent months."
n.b. the single largest Hasidic court, the Satmar Hassidim, aka "Kiryas Joel" believe Israel to be literally satanic and they refuse to have anything to do with it or to set foot in it.
Yes, but whoever made such claims? Who, except from idiots, trolls that pretend to be antisemites and followers of Nazi-ideologies, ever blamed "the" Jews. Most people write and talk about big Jewish owned banking cartels, that by the way dominate most so called national banks. Additionally many if not most MSM and filmproductions not only in Hollywood are in the hand of Jews, I don'treally have to mention it, most anyone is aware of it, no? And of course Jewish politicians playing important roles in US politics (and that of other countries) plus in international organizations.
On the other hand it's obvious that these, let's call them elite Jews, aren't a monolithic block. So what? Even if several clans are partly concurring, partly collaborating with each other, the simplified version of Jewish power and influence is still valid. If we'd talk about every topic on a scientific level all the time, we all had to match Methuselah's longevity and we still would only ever discuss and never live.
I'm not obsessed with this topic and not knowing every detail in my opinion doesn't take away from the mosaic formed by the obvious.
Of course antisemitism is idiotic. That doesn't stop it from being a perennial obsession amongst the idiots.
"Yes, but whoever made such claims?"
I hate to trash your people, but obsessive and conspiratorial antisemitism was quite popular in your neck of the woods and in Eastern Europe 80 years ago. The answer is "lots of people." There is a similar and pretty brutal form of antisemitism wrapped up in anti-Zionism in the Arab World now. There's also quite a bit of antisemitism in Russia. Further, some Salafist Muslims are vicious antisemites.
As a matter of fact, Jews do not run the banks anymore in the West. A little thing called WW2 happened and took care of that "problem."
The media isn't majority Jewish anymore. Maybe 41%, if that. Hollywood is a lot more Jewish but a lot of other groups have broken in recently, Italians in particular.
The Jews don't agree on a single damned thing other than Israel and antisemitism. Outside of that, they don't agree on a thing. Sure they have the US government by the balls on Middle East foreign policy, but it's a consensual act as most US Gentiles are strong Israel supporters.
Some big money Jews throw their weight around and act like dicks. Some big money Gentiles do the same. I'd rather be ruled by rich Jews than by rich Gentiles as the former are fairly liberal for rich people.
Three.
Ashkenazi: European Jews mostly from northern and eastern Europe, less so from Scandinavia. There were many in Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and France.
Sephardic: Mediterranean Jews - Spanish, Portuguese, Hispanic, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Albanian, and Jews of the Caucasus. Quite a few of these were hidden Jews or crypto Jews who claimed to be Catholic but practiced their religion in secret. They tended to be pretty moderate and assimilated as Jews go for some reason. In part there were never very many of them in those countries.
Mizrachi: Jews of all of the Arab lands and east, but there are very few to none from Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Mauritania, to zero or near zero from Mauritania, Sudan and Jordan. There were quite a few in all of the other Arab countries, and there are even some in Saudi Arabia! They were also in Iran, China, Afghanistan, India, and Uzbekistan.
Most Hasidics in Israel, the US, and elsewhere are absolutely Zionists. There are 50,000 anti-Zionist Hasidic Jews in Israel though. Hasidics ARE Orthodox Jews last time I checked. Perhaps they might be seen as ultra-Orthodox. The real divide with the Jews is secular/Reform versus Orthodox. They pretty much hate each other.
European Jews and Russian Jews are the same thing. The big divide was between "Westies," mostly from Germany, wealthy and sophisticated, and "Easties," East European and Russian Jews seen as superstitious, backwards, stupid, poor, fanatatical, rude, crude, and less civilized or country bumpkins at best. The Westies really looked down on the Easties. This was a big thing in Europe and the US before WW2.
"Inside Israel, there are also "strong state" supporters versus "federalization" supporters, which led to massive street protests in recent months."
Yep but strong staters are all Orthodox authoritarians, and federalists are all secular/Reform democrats.
Among Westies, apparently Spanish Jews saw themselves as more cultured than German Jews, and there are a divisions and differentiations among Easties as well.
Thx for this. Never heard this before.
Portuguese Jews too? What about French Jews? I don't believe there have ever been many Jews in the Netherlands, Belgium. I imagine the UK Jews stayed out of it, right? Brits always see themselves as apart from the Continent.
I don't know about these divisions among the Easties.
Holland had a fair number of Jews, as the Dutch Republic embraced religious tolerance and took a practical approach in most matters.
England had its own history, but Edward III (I think) expelled the Jews and Cromwell reversed this.
I'm not sure where the Dutch and British Jews were on the Westie-Eastie thing though. French Jews may have followed the Spanish Jews.
"Australians are dancing in the street over the resignation of Dan Andrews"
A small correction Sam; Australians in the state of Victoria are 'dancing in the street over the resignation of Dan Andrews', as he was the Premier of that state. And AlbaNAZI is the Prime Minister of the Australian regime.
Both are acolytes of the WEF/WHO/Pentagon cabal.
Petro is absolutely not a dictator in any way, shape, or form.
Don't know about Bukule.
Lukashenko runs for office every few years. Pre-election polls always give him 70-80%. He runs a modified Soviet economy with some capitalism, sort of like China. Works pretty well. The opposition are Nazis just like in Ukraine, and they love the West. They are radical neoliberals on economics (sort of like US Republicans), and in that part of the world or in most of the world for that matter, majorities reject that system in favor of some variety of socialism, be it only social democracy. They want to completely privatize the economy and that would cause a massive economic shock like the catastrophes in Ukraine and Russia in the 1990's.
So many people would be thrown out of work.
Lukashenko saw what happened with shock therapy in Ukraine and Russia (in Russia alone it killed 10-15 million), and he halted his and rolled it back. They've had state dominated economy ever since, and it works pretty well somehow.
Lukashenko works for his people, polls them constantly, and tries to give them what they want. The opposition are young, well-off urbanites. They are "rich young snotty brats" and everyone else, mostly working class urbanites and rural folks, hates them. Yeah, they want to join the "Golden West."
People run against Lukashenko every time. Any one of them could win. The votes are counted fairly. He always wins by 70-80%, which closely matches the pre-election polls.
Imagine that you are playing Monopoly. All the players but one start with $1,500, but one player is the bank with an almost unlimited supply of money. Who is going to win?
In the words of Charles Dickens: "Control the cash box and you control the World" (A Christmas Carol).
And the words of Nathan Rothschild: "I care not who sits on the throne of the Empire on which the sun never sets, he who controls the money supply controls the Empire. And I control the money supply."
The Central Banking Cartel has it's generals and lieutenants, in the form of the Committee of 300 (the former shareholders of the East India Company; the "Empire within an Empire which gained all of the plunder from India, China etc), the WEF, Freemasons etc.
They control most of the world, including the UK, US, Israel, China and India. They used Britain to plunder and control the world, then the US. Under the new multipolar system their power base will be coordinated through a number of countries, with the main focus being China.
As far as private clinics, in my Russian city they are only for specialties: blood work beyond what the public hospitals offer (e.g. Israeli, American, etc. screenings that aren't in the approved list for the public system), infertility, cosmetic surgery, etc. There is a "western" private general hospital but it catered mostly to foreigners and had a pay-for-service / western insurance model. Dentist offices are now almost all private. They provide the required services on the public plan (mostly pulling teeth I think) and normal dental care for pay.
Primary care is done in-home. There are no general hospitals, and hospitals are much smaller than their U.S. counterparts. There is a maternity hospital on my street, and a cardiac care hospital not far away that specializes in heart surgeries and rehabilitation. If you are sick, you call to a facility based on where you live. We have a lot more ambulances than U.S. cities. They are crewed with a physician. Response times are reasonable. For example, if your child is sick, they'll ask you their temperature when you call in (and people know to do so beforehand). If it is a high temperature, a GP will visit you in your home within usually four to six hours. Emergency situations have responses similar to other western countries.
Russian people as a whole are better informed about first response care than Americans in my experience. Everyone has classes in school on how to do CPR, how to recognize different medical problems, and what to do.
Russian hospitals are more holistic than western ones I think. I had a friend who had a stroke and required an operation here. I also had a family member who had a heart operation in the U.S., and visited them in the hospital there. The Russian hospital recovery room was organized for visiting. There was a tea pot and cups, and chairs to sit on during visits. There were a lot of house plants at the end of the hallway in the window. There is an effort to make recovery areas feel like home. The U.S. hospital was very sterile. The idea of a house plant in the patient room hallways there is inconceivable to me.
On quality and paying for service, there's one thing about corruption in Russia that I think westerners do not understand. It is always possible to do something by the normal way. By that I mean for example, some years ago I was smoking a cigarette too close to the entrance of a metro (underground subway train) station. You must be at least 20 meters or something from the entrance. The station officer came and told me that, and ordered me to come into the police station inside. There was a fine for the offense. I gave my passport. The normal way to pay is that the fine (about $100) is recorded against your passport number. If you ignore it, you will eventually have problems: when you try and renew your passport, when you try and go through passport control, etc. The officer also offered a "quick" way: pay the same fine in cash, and it wouldn't be recorded. Is it corruption? Theoretically, no, the officer could apply the payment in the system (there is a unified payment system for utility bills, speeding fines, and everything else). All corruption in Russia is generally like this (the normal way is possible).
And so it is with medical care. There are lots of extras you can pay for if you need a procedure done, but you don't need to pay any extra. Examples are a single room for recovery, perhaps lots of other things. The general idea is that people do pay for operations as "extras". A friend of mine's grandmother needed serious and extensive surgery last year, and my friend paid some thousands of dollars (USD) extra for the care. But the grandmother would have gotten adequate care without it. Part of it is that everybody knows that doctors and nurses are seriously underpaid in the public health system, and so people generally offer money in order to make sure their care is as attentive as possible.
But there are several surgeons and doctors in my circle of people close to me. I know a young man who is in medical school now. They are no different than physicians in the west. The paid "extras" are just part of the system that has evolved to make it a career that's solidly middle / upper-middle class financially. It is a weird American thing to think that doctors should be paid in the top 1% - there are lots of smart people in Russia, being a doctor doesn't seem like a unicorn kind of thing like the Americans take it to be. There are lots of doctors, too (Americans restrict their supply of physicians artificially to keep pay high). A doctor expects to make the same as an engineer or any other professional with comparable education (and an American physician with a Bachelors in Social Science before entering medical school doesn't really have "8 years of higher education").
Teachers are the same. You don't have to pay anything for your kids to get an education. But people know that teachers are underpaid. So they typically make it up in different ways by supporting whatever "extras" the teachers offer. For some, it's organizing a two week math camp in the summer. For others, it's after-school tutoring. For some, it's a literary club and fees to "rent" books that are reused by the teacher year to year. It's not the best system, but it's organic and it works. And the government isn't spending $2 trillion USD a year that it doesn't have, nearly guaranteeing the eventuality of hyperinflation and societal collapse.
I think as time goes on, its becoming more and more clear what is really going on
The neocon wing in the US releasing ads that this is a "free" war against Russia, more or less confirms what everyone else already knew. The other half of it is that the sanctions have created a captive market for American minerals and hydrocarbons to European customers (and others). The 2% GDP growth that the US is enjoying at the moment is in no small amount being driven by weapons orders and export volumes to the EU/UK which were otherwise bought for 80% less from Russia. Its no surprise the EU is clearly in a recession, but the US (on paper) seems to defy it.
Unfortunately, the leadership class in the major EU countries - the UK, Germany, France, and so on - are totally captured by the trifecta of climatism, anti-Russian sentiment, and atlantacism/globalism. In fact I don't think I've ever seen the political leadership of an entire population bloc so united despite being diametrically opposed to their own subject's interests.
"The only other very ‘exotic’ weapon I know of was Project Excalibur that used an x-ray laser for ballistic missile defense, but it was likewise very unwieldy. It required a nuclear bomb to detonate in space which would shoot ‘x-ray lasers’ in every direction, destroying a potential ICBM in flight. But such a thing is not really targetable towards specific ground targets."
There were also shaped nuclear charges back in the day, so a combination of them + a bomb-pumped x-ray laser could be better. David Weber uses the idea in his Honor Harrington books, but I don't know that such tech has been tried IRL.
The really big issue with lasers though is efficiency - and the related problem of waste heat. Let's say you want a laser with the muzzle energy of an AR-15 is perhaps 1,800 Joules (yes, I know kinetic energy + momentum does not damage something the same way a laser will but let's keep it simple)... you'll be lucky to have even 20% efficiency with modern lasers, which means 7.2kJ dumped into the body of your laser rifle or whatever. That's 2 kWh, or half an hour of electric oven use. That's just for one shot, remember. It's actually easier to have such weapons in atmosphere because you can air-cool it - it's far harder in space as you need a big array of radiators. At least when firing in an atmosphere you can use different types of laser that are less affected by the air - you can't switch laser type to handwave away the laws of thermodynamics though. (This also doesn't get into the issue of weather: rain, snow, and so on will enormously degrade laser efficacy.)