Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Pariah]

I found this article helpful, especially the maps. 

 

Mapping and tracking Russia's invasion of Ukraine

[Cygnia]

 

[Tom Cowan]

56 minutes ago, Pariah said:

This unpleasant thought struck me earlier: After Ukraine, then where?

 

To say that there's no love lost between Russia and Finland is a massive understatement. Russia has occupied Finland before, so similar "It's historically a part of Russia" bull***t arguments could probably be made. And while Finland is a member of the EU, is is not a member of NATO.

 

Do we need to be worried about Finland?

and the state of Alaska

[TrickstaPriest]

https://news.yahoo.com/fox-news-tucker-carlson-asks-003841982.html

 

ie- Putin isn't dangerous - Biden/democrats are!  Thanks Tucker.  It'll go well along with the new GOP political ads.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM52rpkO39w

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jim-lamon-gun-ad_n_6206272ae4b0ccfb3e536c63

 

So when will AZ pass some laws like this so my nice, good-natured mexican friend can get shot?

 

https://abcnews.go.com/US/tennessee-bill-designate-gun-owners-law-enforcement/story?id=82757071

[DShomshak]

1 hour ago, Pariah said:

This unpleasant thought struck me earlier: After Ukraine, then where?

 

To say that there's no love lost between Russia and Finland is a massive understatement. Russia has occupied Finland before, so similar "It's historically a part of Russia" bull***t arguments could probably be made. And while Finland is a member of the EU, is is not a member of NATO.

 

Do we need to be worried about Finland?

Quite possibly. y morning paper had an Associated Press article about the Baltic states, whose leaders fully expect their countries to be next on Putin's list -- they actually did make it into the EU and NATO, and have large Russian minorities -- and the article noted that Finland also spent time subjugated by Russia. Poland, too.

 

Another article mentioned the likelihood that the assault from the Crimea and Black Sea navy will try seizing a land bridge between Crimea and the "Trans-Dniester Republic," andother Putin-created Russian exclave along the edge of Moldova -- another fomer Soviet possession.

 

Putin has said for years that he wanted to restore the old Russian/Soviet empire. It would be rash to assume that having started on direct conquest, he would stop halfway... unless he is stopped.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Pariah said:

This unpleasant thought struck me earlier: After Ukraine, then where?

 

To say that there's no love lost between Russia and Finland is a massive understatement. Russia has occupied Finland before, so similar "It's historically a part of Russia" bull***t arguments could probably be made. And while Finland is a member of the EU, is is not a member of NATO.

 

Do we need to be worried about Finland?

Yes. Russian sources have already mentioned moving on Finland and the Baltic states once Ukraine is subjugated.   I’m not one for domino theories but it may well apply here. 

[archer]

3 hours ago, Pariah said:

This unpleasant thought struck me earlier: After Ukraine, then where?

 

To say that there's no love lost between Russia and Finland is a massive understatement. Russia has occupied Finland before, so similar "It's historically a part of Russia" bull***t arguments could probably be made. And while Finland is a member of the EU, is is not a member of NATO.

 

Do we need to be worried about Finland?

 

Yeah, we need to be worried about Finland.

 

But Finland has already been in talks with NATO about becoming a member. And it along with Sweden has been included in major NATO discussions this week about the Ukraine situation.

 

So it's much further along the path toward NATO membership...and doesn't have a history of dithering over whether to be pro-West or pro-Russia like Ukraine had.

[unclevlad]

You guys are not doing my concern that WW III is starting any good.

 

My god, Carlson's a jackass.  Oh, the Democrats are overreacting!!  Like they're the only ones?  God, I loathe Fox News.  And if this DOES explode into something much larger...AND we actually make it through unscathed...then historical analysis will, IMO, point a BIG finger at the incendiary manipulations of, primarily, Fox News.
 

Ohhhhhh....and now the utterly hypocritical Carlson sinks even lower.

 

Thursday, he did a 180 after the invasion....well, more like a 135, apparently.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/02/25/tucker-carlson-russia-ukraine-putin/

 

Total slimeball.  

[Cygnia]

Elsewhere, in NZ, someone is wearing an actual tin foil hat...

 

Wellington protesters fear secret 'tech weapons' at Parliament

[archer]

Hi,

 

There's been a lot of conversation about banning Russia from the SWIFT financial system, so I've been engaging in a lot of conversations about the SWIFT financial system. Then having to recreate what I've already written because I can't easily find what I've already written repeatedly.

 

Anyway, I thought it'd help me to write up some basics of where we're at, for the moment, so I could have something to come back to in later conversations. And I thought it might be useful or interesting to people here rather than squirreling it away for my personal use in my email.

 

====

 

SWIFT is the system which banks use to communicate with each other about the financial transactions they're making between themselves. Before SWIFT, they made telephone calls or sent telexes which basically anyone could read so communications weren't secure.

 

Many countries are wanting to kick Russian banks off of the system because it'd make it more difficult, or at least slower, to conduct their business. When Iran was kicked off of SWIFT in 2012, it basically eliminated close to half of their transactions with foreign banks.

 

Of NATO countries, France, Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and the UK have come out in favor of removing Russian banks from the SWIFT financial system. France is the big surprise on that list since it's highly-dependent on Russian natural gas and had been talking like it'd be against the removal.

 

====

 

Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, US at the moment are against removing Russia from SWIFT.

 

Germany, Italy, Austria are highly-dependent on Russian natural gas and so need some way of paying Russian banks. 

 

Italian and Austrian banks being highly exposed with loans into Russia which might not be repaid if Russia were to retaliate when removed from SWIFT.

 

Hungary's strong-man-in-charge, despite his country being in NATO, has been a fairly reliable friend of Putin.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/anger-explodes-at-germany-italy-and-hungary-over-europe-s-failure-to-cut-russia-off-from-swift-payment-network/ar-AAUi8DM

 

====

 

Germany and the US are against removing Russia from SWIFT because they're looking at it this long and involved way...
 

The Bank of Russia began developing its own alternative to SWIFT in 2014, called the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS). As of 2021, SPFS was already handling up to one fifth of Russian’s payments messaging volume.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/swift-russia-ukraine-war/

 

 

The Russian system has its drawbacks.

Whereas SWIFT operates 24 hours a day, SPFS can send payment messages only during weekday working hours, Maria Shagina, a fellow at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Zurich, wrote earlier this year. SPFS also has shorter limits on the size of messages, she said. (But they'd likely upgrade their system if it became their primary way of receiving payments from foreign banks.)

 

China, whose economy is far larger than Russia's, is also developing an alternative to SWIFT. In 2015, Beijing launched the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) to help internationalize use of the Chinese currency, the yuan.

 

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-swift-nuclear-option/31601868.html

 

Russian banks could go back to phone calls and telex. But it's much more likely that they'd just insist on their European customers using their system or China's system.

 

Doing one would be a major benefit to Russia while doing the other would be a major benefit to China...because it would make that system a legitimate alternative to SWIFT for banks worldwide to use.

 

Both Russia and China have objected for decades about having to do oil/natural gas transactions in dollars rather than their own currencies. If Russia is dumped from SWIFT, it could likely get away with insisting that its customers buy rubles from the Russian central bank and then pay for oil in those. 

 

That would help stabilize the ruble which had dropped in value significantly when Putin announced his invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, it would tend to devalue the dollar since it would no longer be the international standard for energy trading.

 

And likely if Russia could get away with making their energy transactions in their national currency rather than the dollar, China could probably get away with it as well.

 

(Personally I don't get the economist's arguments that "trading in rubles" would stabilize the value of the ruble more than "Russia's central bank increasing its store of foreign currency". But they all seem to agree that actually using a country's currency is more stabilizing than having foreign reserves to back the value of it.)

 

So basically, Germany and the US are looking at the "next level" of the bad things which would happen after Russia is kicked out of SWIFT rather than focusing on the immediate bad things which would happen to the Russian economy as it made the adjustment.

 

That's the argument of "in SWIFT" or "out of SWIFT", which you aren't going to get from media sources because the people who write the articles don't understand it for the most part. And the few who do understand it are ordered to not write in that level of detail because it will supposedly "go over the audience's heads".  

 

====

 

Also worth noting, in 2019 then-Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated that removing Russia from SWIFT would be a declaration of war. Take that for what you will, Russian officials say a LOT of marginally crazy things which don't turn out to become actual government policy.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/putin-demands-nato-guarantees-not-193448779.html

 

[archer]

 

[Old Man]

Putin has threatened to attack Sweden and Finland if they join NATO, which sounds like the best possible way to get them to join NATO.

 

I also know at least one fearsome Swede who could probably repel any such attack singlehandedly, through sheer intellect and force of will.

[Chris Goodwin]

Lest we forget, it was the Finns that coined the term, "Molotov cocktail".  

[DShomshak]

14 hours ago, Old Man said:

Putin has threatened to attack Sweden and Finland if they join NATO, which sounds like the best possible way to get them to join NATO.

 

A few days ago on BBC or ATC -- I forget which, there

s been a lot to take in -- a former PM of Finland said the country could join NATO in a day if it and NATO were willing; Finland meets all the requirements. And he's advocated this for a long time.

 

 

14 hours ago, Old Man said:

I also know at least one fearsome Swede who could probably repel any such attack singlehandedly, through sheer intellect and force of will.

Anders Sandberg? I "met" him years ago when he contributed Mage: the Ascension fanwork on a White Wolf gaming forum, and he was sorking on his degree in computational neuroscience. He has that degree now and has appeared on programs about artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and similar topics because IRL he works on that sort of stuff IRL. Basically, he's developing the technology to cause the Singularity that replaces humanity. Very nice guy, or at least he was in his alt/games.white-wolf days, but a bit fearsome.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Old Man]

Did some reading this morning into why Ukraine hasn't fallen yet.  It appears the Russian plan expected the Ukrainians to panic and flee.  They do not have enough fuel or ammunition at the front to support continuous operations and they don't have enough to support operations for more than a week in any case.  Thus they have situations like helicopter squadrons that are only able to fly one attack per day--after that they have to wait for the trucks to go fetch more fuel and rockets.  And they did not have enough long range missiles to suppress the Ukrainian air force or air defenses at the outset of the conflict. 

 

Which is not to say that the situation isn't grim for Ukraine.  There are still a lot of Russians gradually bearing down on Kyiv, especially from the northeast.  And it is expected that they will begin targeting the civilian population in an effort to break the morale of the Ukrainian military.  But it's getting harder to see how this all works out to Putin's benefit.

[HeroGM]

23 hours ago, Pariah said:

This unpleasant thought struck me earlier: After Ukraine, then where?

 

To say that there's no love lost between Russia and Finland is a massive understatement. Russia has occupied Finland before, so similar "It's historically a part of Russia" bull***t arguments could probably be made. And while Finland is a member of the EU, is is not a member of NATO.

 

Do we need to be worried about Finland?

 

Poland or Romania. Putin, if his military leaders are art will reinforce the Ukraine borders and set up their supply chain. Romania and Poland next door and while Romania is next to the black sea (iirc) it has a larger border to attack, while Poland (the floor mat of Europe) has a smaller border (easier to defend?) will probably be next.

 

Putin wants the Iron Curtain back. He'll go to at least Germany.

[Lord Liaden]

14 hours ago, Old Man said:

Putin has threatened to attack Sweden and Finland if they join NATO, which sounds like the best possible way to get them to join NATO.

 

Recent provocative, hyperbolic statements and threats coming from Vladimir Putin, and his foreign affairs lapdog Sergey Lavrov, are atypical for Putin. He's normally measured and calculated in his public pronouncements. I'm starting to wonder if he's actually lost it and gone full-on megalomaniac.

 

[Cygnia]

44 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Recent provocative, hyperbolic statements and threats coming from Vladimir Putin, and his foreign affairs lapdog Sergey Lavrov, are atypical for Putin. He's normally measured and calculated in his public pronouncements. I'm starting to wonder if he's actually lost it and gone full-on megalomaniac.

 

My tongue is only partly in cheek when I wonder if perhaps he has the same brain-eating syphillis as Trump...

[archer]

4 hours ago, Old Man said:

Did some reading this morning into why Ukraine hasn't fallen yet.  It appears the Russian plan expected the Ukrainians to panic and flee.  They do not have enough fuel or ammunition at the front to support continuous operations and they don't have enough to support operations for more than a week in any case.  Thus they have situations like helicopter squadrons that are only able to fly one attack per day--after that they have to wait for the trucks to go fetch more fuel and rockets.  And they did not have enough long range missiles to suppress the Ukrainian air force or air defenses at the outset of the conflict. 

 

Which is not to say that the situation isn't grim for Ukraine.  There are still a lot of Russians gradually bearing down on Kyiv, especially from the northeast.  And it is expected that they will begin targeting the civilian population in an effort to break the morale of the Ukrainian military.  But it's getting harder to see how this all works out to Putin's benefit.

 

MSNBC this afternoon says that on Ukrainian social media that there's multiple images of Russian tanks which have been abandoned in place because they ran out of fuel.

[Trencher]

4 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Recent provocative, hyperbolic statements and threats coming from Vladimir Putin, and his foreign affairs lapdog Sergey Lavrov, are atypical for Putin. He's normally measured and calculated in his public pronouncements. I'm starting to wonder if he's actually lost it and gone full-on megalomaniac.

 

Remember he is an old communist not only one of them but KGB the worst of the worst. 

He is complaining about Ukraine removing Lenin statues and hyping up his followers by saying "we will show them what de-communistifying means"

Also Russia is out of swift both France and USA are in support of that. And Elon Musk is setting up starlink there to give Ukrainians internet. Meanwhile some Russian goverment sites are down.

[archer]

Ministry of Defense of Latvia

 

 

[archer]

Since I posted last on SWIFT, the US, Germany, and Hungary have openly come out in favor of banning the list of Russian banks which are currently on the sanctions list from access to SWIFT (not all Russian banks but at least the ones already on the sanctions list).

 

I haven't seen any official announcements from Italy or Austria but there are some media reports which state that all NATO nations are now in favor of that move.

 

 

edit: Italy is officially on the list.

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

This is a clear, pretty thorough breakdown of the military and political situation in and surrounding Ukraine as of Feb. 26. Almost no opinion, mainly objective fact.

 

 

[Ternaugh]

Quote

Our world is not going to be the same again because this war has no historical parallel. It is a raw, 18th-century-style land grab by a superpower — but in a 21st-century globalized world. This is the first war that will be covered on TikTok by super-empowered individuals armed only with smartphones, so acts of brutality will be documented and broadcast worldwide without any editors or filters. On the first day of the war, we saw invading Russian tank units unexpectedly being exposed by Google maps, because Google wanted to alert drivers that the Russian armor was causing traffic jams.

You have never seen this play before.

 

(Link below should be unlocked for non-subscribers)

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/opinion/putin-russia-ukraine.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DPDmwfiOMNAo6B_EGKfbd_Zt12xSmAX95IdaIsXvVzyOIZP1BoT0PghKq4r6k_And_r5OvDCRx1ojRXLs8_HjmZGDmJO4hzfjgthmIdWXrXaXA2Xd2cBIx9cQzfA78jicPk63VA6UijIkFqPQiBZF_QzgGYyiY7bK_W1glZoLwPlyL4RI2WupZRTjTgdWZjrsDew5VAl7BJ2httSd-sJgPfYNKY9usakIoa8H8gr4OC2Z3L4fPBpU5RITck7kCoqf70wyUjKV7uQr4KREkMPV9&smid=url-share

 

 

[archer]

You might remember this lady from the 2020 Belarus election. The supposed president there was running for his 6th term in office and arrested her husband who was his main political opponent.

 

She decided to run in her husband's place. After the election, she declared she got 60% of the vote and gathered a transition team to negotiate the transfer of power.

 

The president declared that he got 80% of the vote and she got only 10% then threw her transition team into jail.

 

There were widespread protests about the election results.

 

She went on Twitter today and declared herself to be the president of Belarus and for the current president to be a traitor for assisting the Russians in the invasion of Ukraine.

 

Don't know how this will turn out but since the Russian army actually left her country, she's at least in a much better spot than she would have been trying this a couple of weeks ago. And there's certainly more public sentiment against their president now since the images of the invasion of Ukraine have become public.