Jordan Peterson does a masterful job here of dismantling the faux morality of the green movement and the Ukraine war, as well as leaving Piers Wanker Morgan speechless
Sorry, the ‘John Connor explains the T-1000 Terminator to Sarah Connor’ narrative applies here………
bloke in spain
I somehow doubt it.
I derive this from the way I see the world. I see the world as being made of individuals. All seeking to maximise what they perceive as their own personal advantage. So there are no such things as governments, political parties, corporations or all the rest of it. All you’re actually seeing is the result of individuals’ perceived personal advantages coinciding.
So the whole green thing (& global warming) starts as an idea. And individuals latch on to it because they see personal advantage in doing so. So the individuals with the power now are the ones derived & continue to derive personal advantage from the paradigm. So there’s two ways direction could be changed. Either the individuals in power get replaced by individuals see personal advantage in changing direction. Or the ones currently in power see greater advantage in doing so. It’s a big ask because so many, from the politicians right down to the activists, have so much invested in the current paradigm. Do you have any ideas how this might come about? I don’t. Short of an absolute collapse. Best you’ll get is some empty words & business as usual. You really see someone who’s risen by backing windmills saying “Sorry. I made a mistake there. I’ll resign my well paid seat on the committee & go home & do some gardening.”
Ottokring
Short of an absolute collapse.
Not far to go, now…
Sam Vara
Can we heat our homes and survive the winter without concreting over what remains of our beautiful countryside, importing millions of uncivilised migrants, and violating the unbought grace of life?
Starfish
@samvara
Yep, we can do what we have done for centuries until very recently
The green hysteria is collapsing in the face of empirical facts not wishful thinking and pixie dust
I fear Addolff and BiS are correct, but suddenly the September sunshine is a little brighter, even if only for a while…
Bloke in the Fourth Reich
Bis, we old cynics think everyone is just working in their own personal interests. You forget how ideological and idealistic youngsters can be. You may have been yourself, I certainly was.
The youngsters observation that they personally don’t own much if anything while the big old fat cats do now has two outlets. The traditional one, socialism (everyone is equal so old worker must give young not worker free stuff) is a clearly self interested one. The green ideology (everyone must be brought down to my level to save the planet) is different here in that it openly acknowledges that a current standard of living be allocated only to a caste, clique, Inner Party, and a few favoured ones (recent immigrants fleeing climate chaos), while you vill eat ze bugs.
The collision with reality is coming but they will hold fast to the ideology. And it is far from certain that reality will prevail.
bloke in spain
I’ve never been ideological and idealistic in my life. Apart from a passing belief there was a perfect mug out there to fleece.
bloke in spain
Ideological and idealistic are poses one assumes in the pursuit of getting laid. Everybody knows that. Getting them to admit it is another thing.
bloke in spain
Seriously though, I’m convinced self interest explains pretty well everything. But what people believe is to their personal advantage is a deep & complicated subject. It’s what they perceive, not what others perceive. How they think the world sees them is possibly the most important area. Amazing what people will do in that direction.
Addolff
BiS, I do small somethings to help others. Little things – random acts of kindness. I don’t want a medal, don’t expect any return, don’t care how it will be perceived by others, feel seriously uncomfortable when people say nice things about what i’ve done, I just think it’s a nice thing to do.
If that’s ‘self interest’ because it makes me feel good, so be it. I’m not sure we all think the same way you do.
RichardT
BiS said:
“what people believe is to their personal advantage is a deep & complicated subject. How they think the world sees them is possibly the most important area”
I agree, certainly one of the most interesting areas of personal advantage. Perceived status and so on: explains why people keep going to university despite almost all courses having negative financial value.
But I think the status / perception thing mostly takes us back to your earlier comment:
“Ideological and idealistic are poses one assumes in the pursuit of getting laid.”
Bloke on M4
BIS,
“Do you have any ideas how this might come about? I don’t. Short of an absolute collapse. Best you’ll get is some empty words & business as usual. You really see someone who’s risen by backing windmills saying “Sorry. I made a mistake there. I’ll resign my well paid seat on the committee & go home & do some gardening.””
All of these things are based on a nub of goodness (green: it’s good to have clean air, nhs: it’s good that people are cured of sickness) and then people’s credulousness is exploited, it becomes normalised, and at a certain point it accelerates because of how many people just go with the crowd and not be a heretic. If you get yourself informed about eco stuff and start arguing with the average person, they don’t have a clue. They’ve just gone along with it all.
And what finally kills the idea isn’t people changing their minds but reality hitting or seeing a better alternative. Which destroys the credibility. The power and money depends on a thing being credible to the public and once that credibility is shot, the power and money is gone.
I can see this with the BBC, with the NHS. The NHS queues are forcing a lot of people to go private, and a lot of those people are going to see how good private medicine is. Many won’t want to go back. More people start using it, more the credibility of the NHS will be eroded.
Thank You Marshal
I agree with you Addolff.
I would go a bit further and add that thanking people for a little act of kindness is cool too.
The Blood Donation Service does this well – 5 days later they send you a text saying something like ‘thank you for helping save a life, your donation has gone to Aintree NHS Trust’.
Obviously you only donated for the free tea and biscuits and to save on heating for an hour.
PJF
Jordan Peterson does a masterful job here of dismantling the faux morality of the green movement and the Ukraine war . . .
Peterson’s position on the Ukraine matter is particularly inconsistent with his output about standing up to bullies and discovering who we are in those sorts of situations – which has been a major part of his output and is the foundation of his celebrity.
Giving way to Putin for basic pragmatism is perfectly rational (in the short term), but it does rather put who you are on display. And Peterson has shown himself. Wearing sharp suits and name dropping writers and philosophers might still work for some, but I doubt I’m alone in no longer taking his waffle seriously. When challenged on the consequences of appeasement, he literally hand waived and avoided the question. Avoiding the question and avoiding the consequences are not the same.
Jim
“Either the individuals in power get replaced by individuals see personal advantage in changing direction. Or the ones currently in power see greater advantage in doing so. It’s a big ask because so many, from the politicians right down to the activists, have so much invested in the current paradigm. Do you have any ideas how this might come about? I don’t. Short of an absolute collapse. Best you’ll get is some empty words & business as usual. You really see someone who’s risen by backing windmills saying “Sorry. I made a mistake there. I’ll resign my well paid seat on the committee & go home & do some gardening.””
Exactly. We are run by people who have all (regardless of party) agreed with (and implemented when in power) Policy X. Now that in the real world Policy X is causing all sorts of problems, they won’t even acknowledge that Policy X is to blame, so there’s zero chance they are going to suddenly reverse it and go in another direction entirely. If anything they will double down – ‘All our current problems are caused by not doing enough Policy X, we must redouble our efforts and implement it harder and faster!’. Its the ‘Socialism is not to blame for our woes, we need more socialism!’ attitude. The entire political and administrative class have spent the last 20 years telling us how things are and should be, now they are getting their way and its proving to be a disaster they aren’t going to admit they were wrong all along.
bloke in spain
I’d say Peterson is right about the war. Given the Russians’ feelings about Rodina & Putin’s political hold over the country, it’s difficult to see how he can lose. Not be successful in his war aims maybe. But as Peterson said, Ukraine as a bombed out wasteland isn’t a win for Ukraine or NATO.
Of course Putin’s power is another thing. I can’t believe Russia’s military will be overly keen if Putin wants to escalate to tactical nukes. Ukraine, itself was a nuclear state. OK, when the USSR collapsed the missiles were based there went back to Russia. Or did all the warheads? The USSR was falling to bits. We’ve seen what a corrupt, poorly run organisation the Russian military is by it’s performance. What if a couple got lost in the paperwork? The ones in Ukraine were the tacticals. The ICBM’s were much further east. A tactical nuke device you can pick up & put in the boot of your car. You don’t need a missile to deliver one. The most effective way to get a nuke to its target has always been DHL. So how sure are Russia’s military that Ukraine hasn’t got one? Not necessarily Zelensky, but some of Ukraine’s own home grown nutters. You want to take that chance & maybe lose a Russian city or two?
bloke in spain
The entire political and administrative class have spent the last 20 years telling us how things are and should be, now they are getting their way and its proving to be a disaster they aren’t going to admit they were wrong all along.
It’s not a case of admitting they were wrong. People have a remarkable ability to rationalise the irrational when their interests are at stake. These people have fed long & richly at the various troughs. Getting to be career generations of them now. They don’t want their food pails taken away. They won’t perceive it as being to their personal advantage.
Flubber
“Peterson’s position on the Ukraine matter is particularly inconsistent with his output about standing up to bullies”
The Ukinazis killed 14,000 civilians in the Donbass between 2014-2022.
Then Zelenskyy announced he was going to send the army into the Donbass having previously advised all the ethnic Russians to leave for Russia.
Its Putin who is standing up to bullies.
And you should read wider than the MSM, else you end up looking like a mushroom.
Chester
I think we all know *why* the Ukranians were bombing the Donbas.
The 14,000 is straight out the Kremlin handbook though. The Ukranians have consistently shelled for military advantage. If they’d killed that many civilians, there is no way the militias (many actually Russian regulars, of course) would have survived.
Why should it not be the breakaway states that surrender? How is it that them resorting to weapons first is acceptable if you abhor the violence.
It was very light compared to what Russia did to the equivalent movement in Chechnya. Now *that* is killing civilians properly. Why is Putin allowed to flatten separatist states, but Ukraine has to roll over and let them be stolen?
And in this war we see it again. Russia will bomb cities just for the sake of it. That, apparently does not bother you.
So spare me your fake concerns for the Donbas. You didn’t care about them at the time, and you don’t care now.
Flubber
“So spare me your fake concerns for the Donbas”
Fuck you wanker
Bongo
The separatist republics of LPR and DPR are not the aggressors here, Chester.
They also had no say in the anti-minority language legislation of 2018 which among other things forbade over-9 education being in Russian.
Nor did they have any say on the later insistences from Kyiv that no film and tv production on UA soil could be in Russian or Hungarian. It applied to other languages but those are the ones that mattered.
Nor did the LPR/DPR have a say in the Zelenskyy decision to ban Russian language TV in 2021 (sure Sputnik, RT etc may be propaganda channels but a liberal democracy that wants to join EU should be able to live with that schit).
So no surprise that big fraction of the majority ethnic Russian towns (that’s RU as first language in this context) gave up quite easily in Feb/Mar 2022, or didn’t resist at all.
There’s a route out of this, but those who insist that Crimea is Ukrainian are not the navigators you want Obi Wan Chester.
bloke in spain
I’d be inclined to agree with Chester on this. Ukraine’s original borders were those of the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR. From what I’ve heard from ethnic Russian Ukrainians, they were content with the arrangement. The separatists were supported & armed out of Russia. This all seems in line with Putin’s long known desire to recover what were USSR states into a reborn Greater Russia. He’s written books on the subject. If he’d taken Ukraine the Baltic States were next on the list & they also have ethnic Russian minorities. Russia’s hardy the injured party in this.
jgh
Which Ukrainian Soviet Republic? Khrushchev annexed Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. How about the pre-1939 Ukrainian Soviet Republic before they annexed eastern Poland?
PJF
Which Ukrainian Soviet Republic?
The only relevant borders are those of 1994; those are the ones recognised in the “security assurances” of the Budapest Memorandum, wherein Ukraine gave up its nuclear warheads in exchange for Peace in Our Time™.
The biggest and most obvious lesson from all this is:
Never.fucking.give.up.your.nuclear.warheads
The secondary lesson is that there are always consequences to not living up to your responsibilities, even woolly ones. Since we’ve declined to seriously assure Ukraine’s territory, maybe the thing to do is supply them with some battlefield tactical nukes. Not the 2500 they had at the start (and that weren’t under the control of Yeltsin’s suitcase like the strategics) but, what, fifty?
Boganboy
‘Never.fucking.give.up.your.nuclear.warheads’
Well, I certainly agree with you there, PJF. But as for Ukraine I’m, as BiS points out, a what’s-in-it- for-me sort of bloke. So I must admit I’d have treated the mess as the West did those in Georgia and Chechnya, and tried to ignore it. Indeed I’d never have supported that Maidan revolution in the first place.
Of course, sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. You only find out later.
Addolff
What is the point of all those fireworks if you don’t have the matches to light the blue touchpaper?
I used to believe Ukraine gave them up as a goodwill gesture.
Then I the read the facts: The Ukies gave up their nukies because the codes were in Moscow and they didn’t have the money to pay for the maintenance / decommissioning.
Simples
Look, it’s simple, you put a gas powered fan in front of the windmill farm to power them when it’s not windy. Everyone is happy.
rhoda klapp
I can’t see why not having the codes would stop you making a bang given time and work.
AND, the point of small nations having nukes is not that you can destroy a bigger opponent but that you might trigger a bigger conflict involving lots of other peoples’ nukes. That’s why we bought polaris/trident, because if we launch in extremis, it looks like a US strike to the target nation and triggers a general exchange. Stops the US dropping us in it. It is not to frighten the enemy, it is to keep our ally on side. Entirely my own theory, never seen it suggested elsewhere.
PJF
Of course, sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. You only find out later.
Yup, when Japan invaded China, hardly anyone in the wider world gave a shit. Didn’t take long before they were bombing Australia. It’s surprising how fast it can all come close to home.
PJF
I can’t see why not having the codes would stop you making a bang given time and work.
Exactly. The “codes” thing is absolute bollocks. It was put out by Ukrainian leadership to sell the sellout to the people.
The thousands of tactical nukes wouldn’t have had launch codes anyway; once they’re out of the armouries they’re ready to go.
Boganboy
Well PJF, had Oz gone to war with the Japs when they invaded China, they’d certainly have bombarded Oz a lot sooner.
Of course, had the whole Empire gone for the Japs – though I’m sure the Brits would have told the Aussies to stop their nonsense – the only way would have been unrestricted submarine warfare. Torpedoing Yank ships without warning would have led to war against a combination of the US and Japan. The Empire would have been decisively defeated.
But then, according to Churchill, he pointed out to Roosevelt that Chiang Kai-shek needed a bit of help. So the Yanks and the Brits placed an embargo on exports, especially oil, to the Japs. Which led to Pearl Harbour and the US entry into WW2. Although if I’d been Adolf I’d have sent Ribbentrop on the Graf Zeppelin to the US and asked Roosevelt to mediate a peace agreement between Britain and Germany. The terms offered after Dunkirk would have done.
The sweetener would have been the German, Italian and such of the French fleet as could be mobilised being sent to help against the Japs. Along with the Afrika Korps, and such of the Italians who were available. The important point would have been for Ribbentrop to make sure these terms were well publicised in the American newspapers. But no doubt he’d have had plenty of gold from all those teeth extracted in the death camps.
I doubt that a Nazi-US pact would have been negotiated. But I’d say there was an excellent chance that the US wouldn’t have entered the war against Germany.
But the US fought the Pacific War, and defeated the Japs. And Mao went and snuggled up to the Soviets, who’d occupied Manchuria in the last days of the war. With their help, he defeated Chiang and conquered China.
I dunno who’d have won if the Japs and Chinese’d been left alone to fight it out. But I’d argue that fighting the Pacific War to make sure that Mao rather than Hirohito ruled China was much like fighting to ensure that Satan rather than the Devil ruled Hell.
That’s why I like nukes. With enough of them, one can turn the whole world into a desert of radioactive glass. No people, no world, no problems!!
bloke in spain
Yeah I thought about the codes thing while making my post, PJF. The realised it really didn’t matter. The only thing Ukraine need is the weapons grade fissile material. Ukraine has a competent nuclear industry. but refining from reactor to weapons grade is likely beyond it. And it occurred that it wasn’t the missiles, or the warheads had to go back to Russia but the fissile core. And there could be weapons sitting in the Russian inventory now. They’d look complete. Run a geiger counter over them you’d get the right clicks. You could probably do more sophisticated tests they’d pass. But the cores are dummies. Inert material with a layer of fissile plated on them. Ukraine would be quite capable of making the explosive lenses & their detonating systems to make the originals go bang.
Grikath
@BiS Interesting… That likely explains the Big Bangs the Ukies made in the Krim.. Their “Special Weapon”..
Very good chance those were the ignitor packs for the old nukes. You do need a bit of a Bang to slap those cores together hard enough to be efficient, after all….
bloke in spain
No. The explosive lenses would be tucked away in a missile in a storage rack in Russia. That’s the point. If the inventory says one missile, nuke, tactical & there’s one missile, nuke, tactical to count, everyone’s happy. You’d have to completely dismantle it to find it won’t go big bang/nuclear only small bang conventional.
If someone in Ukraine didn’t think of this at the time, they were a bit slow.
bloke in spain
And just a thought. If you were a Russian responsible for the inventory & you found one you’d signed for was a dud, what would you do? Hardly career enhancing.
One can only hope.
Jordan Peterson does a masterful job here of dismantling the faux morality of the green movement and the Ukraine war, as well as leaving Piers Wanker Morgan speechless
https://youtu.be/BnxxELn00gk
Three cheers for the death of green Toryism
Hip, Hip Hurrah; Hip, Hip Hurrah; Hip, Hip Hurrah
Long may it remain dead
Damn, it’s not true
“This could mean [unreliable] large onshore wind projects bypass local planning rules if they are designated as nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIP), in line with other major energy developments”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2022/09/23/onshore-wind-planning-restrictions-set-axe-unlock-potential/
Sorry, the ‘John Connor explains the T-1000 Terminator to Sarah Connor’ narrative applies here………
I somehow doubt it.
I derive this from the way I see the world. I see the world as being made of individuals. All seeking to maximise what they perceive as their own personal advantage. So there are no such things as governments, political parties, corporations or all the rest of it. All you’re actually seeing is the result of individuals’ perceived personal advantages coinciding.
So the whole green thing (& global warming) starts as an idea. And individuals latch on to it because they see personal advantage in doing so. So the individuals with the power now are the ones derived & continue to derive personal advantage from the paradigm. So there’s two ways direction could be changed. Either the individuals in power get replaced by individuals see personal advantage in changing direction. Or the ones currently in power see greater advantage in doing so. It’s a big ask because so many, from the politicians right down to the activists, have so much invested in the current paradigm. Do you have any ideas how this might come about? I don’t. Short of an absolute collapse. Best you’ll get is some empty words & business as usual. You really see someone who’s risen by backing windmills saying “Sorry. I made a mistake there. I’ll resign my well paid seat on the committee & go home & do some gardening.”
Short of an absolute collapse.
Not far to go, now…
Can we heat our homes and survive the winter without concreting over what remains of our beautiful countryside, importing millions of uncivilised migrants, and violating the unbought grace of life?
@samvara
Yep, we can do what we have done for centuries until very recently
The green hysteria is collapsing in the face of empirical facts not wishful thinking and pixie dust
I fear Addolff and BiS are correct, but suddenly the September sunshine is a little brighter, even if only for a while…
Bis, we old cynics think everyone is just working in their own personal interests. You forget how ideological and idealistic youngsters can be. You may have been yourself, I certainly was.
The youngsters observation that they personally don’t own much if anything while the big old fat cats do now has two outlets. The traditional one, socialism (everyone is equal so old worker must give young not worker free stuff) is a clearly self interested one. The green ideology (everyone must be brought down to my level to save the planet) is different here in that it openly acknowledges that a current standard of living be allocated only to a caste, clique, Inner Party, and a few favoured ones (recent immigrants fleeing climate chaos), while you vill eat ze bugs.
The collision with reality is coming but they will hold fast to the ideology. And it is far from certain that reality will prevail.
I’ve never been ideological and idealistic in my life. Apart from a passing belief there was a perfect mug out there to fleece.
Ideological and idealistic are poses one assumes in the pursuit of getting laid. Everybody knows that. Getting them to admit it is another thing.
Seriously though, I’m convinced self interest explains pretty well everything. But what people believe is to their personal advantage is a deep & complicated subject. It’s what they perceive, not what others perceive. How they think the world sees them is possibly the most important area. Amazing what people will do in that direction.
BiS, I do small somethings to help others. Little things – random acts of kindness. I don’t want a medal, don’t expect any return, don’t care how it will be perceived by others, feel seriously uncomfortable when people say nice things about what i’ve done, I just think it’s a nice thing to do.
If that’s ‘self interest’ because it makes me feel good, so be it. I’m not sure we all think the same way you do.
BiS said:
“what people believe is to their personal advantage is a deep & complicated subject. How they think the world sees them is possibly the most important area”
I agree, certainly one of the most interesting areas of personal advantage. Perceived status and so on: explains why people keep going to university despite almost all courses having negative financial value.
But I think the status / perception thing mostly takes us back to your earlier comment:
“Ideological and idealistic are poses one assumes in the pursuit of getting laid.”
BIS,
“Do you have any ideas how this might come about? I don’t. Short of an absolute collapse. Best you’ll get is some empty words & business as usual. You really see someone who’s risen by backing windmills saying “Sorry. I made a mistake there. I’ll resign my well paid seat on the committee & go home & do some gardening.””
All of these things are based on a nub of goodness (green: it’s good to have clean air, nhs: it’s good that people are cured of sickness) and then people’s credulousness is exploited, it becomes normalised, and at a certain point it accelerates because of how many people just go with the crowd and not be a heretic. If you get yourself informed about eco stuff and start arguing with the average person, they don’t have a clue. They’ve just gone along with it all.
And what finally kills the idea isn’t people changing their minds but reality hitting or seeing a better alternative. Which destroys the credibility. The power and money depends on a thing being credible to the public and once that credibility is shot, the power and money is gone.
I can see this with the BBC, with the NHS. The NHS queues are forcing a lot of people to go private, and a lot of those people are going to see how good private medicine is. Many won’t want to go back. More people start using it, more the credibility of the NHS will be eroded.
I agree with you Addolff.
I would go a bit further and add that thanking people for a little act of kindness is cool too.
The Blood Donation Service does this well – 5 days later they send you a text saying something like ‘thank you for helping save a life, your donation has gone to Aintree NHS Trust’.
Obviously you only donated for the free tea and biscuits and to save on heating for an hour.
Jordan Peterson does a masterful job here of dismantling the faux morality of the green movement and the Ukraine war . . .
Peterson’s position on the Ukraine matter is particularly inconsistent with his output about standing up to bullies and discovering who we are in those sorts of situations – which has been a major part of his output and is the foundation of his celebrity.
Giving way to Putin for basic pragmatism is perfectly rational (in the short term), but it does rather put who you are on display. And Peterson has shown himself. Wearing sharp suits and name dropping writers and philosophers might still work for some, but I doubt I’m alone in no longer taking his waffle seriously. When challenged on the consequences of appeasement, he literally hand waived and avoided the question. Avoiding the question and avoiding the consequences are not the same.
“Either the individuals in power get replaced by individuals see personal advantage in changing direction. Or the ones currently in power see greater advantage in doing so. It’s a big ask because so many, from the politicians right down to the activists, have so much invested in the current paradigm. Do you have any ideas how this might come about? I don’t. Short of an absolute collapse. Best you’ll get is some empty words & business as usual. You really see someone who’s risen by backing windmills saying “Sorry. I made a mistake there. I’ll resign my well paid seat on the committee & go home & do some gardening.””
Exactly. We are run by people who have all (regardless of party) agreed with (and implemented when in power) Policy X. Now that in the real world Policy X is causing all sorts of problems, they won’t even acknowledge that Policy X is to blame, so there’s zero chance they are going to suddenly reverse it and go in another direction entirely. If anything they will double down – ‘All our current problems are caused by not doing enough Policy X, we must redouble our efforts and implement it harder and faster!’. Its the ‘Socialism is not to blame for our woes, we need more socialism!’ attitude. The entire political and administrative class have spent the last 20 years telling us how things are and should be, now they are getting their way and its proving to be a disaster they aren’t going to admit they were wrong all along.
I’d say Peterson is right about the war. Given the Russians’ feelings about Rodina & Putin’s political hold over the country, it’s difficult to see how he can lose. Not be successful in his war aims maybe. But as Peterson said, Ukraine as a bombed out wasteland isn’t a win for Ukraine or NATO.
Of course Putin’s power is another thing. I can’t believe Russia’s military will be overly keen if Putin wants to escalate to tactical nukes. Ukraine, itself was a nuclear state. OK, when the USSR collapsed the missiles were based there went back to Russia. Or did all the warheads? The USSR was falling to bits. We’ve seen what a corrupt, poorly run organisation the Russian military is by it’s performance. What if a couple got lost in the paperwork? The ones in Ukraine were the tacticals. The ICBM’s were much further east. A tactical nuke device you can pick up & put in the boot of your car. You don’t need a missile to deliver one. The most effective way to get a nuke to its target has always been DHL. So how sure are Russia’s military that Ukraine hasn’t got one? Not necessarily Zelensky, but some of Ukraine’s own home grown nutters. You want to take that chance & maybe lose a Russian city or two?
The entire political and administrative class have spent the last 20 years telling us how things are and should be, now they are getting their way and its proving to be a disaster they aren’t going to admit they were wrong all along.
It’s not a case of admitting they were wrong. People have a remarkable ability to rationalise the irrational when their interests are at stake. These people have fed long & richly at the various troughs. Getting to be career generations of them now. They don’t want their food pails taken away. They won’t perceive it as being to their personal advantage.
“Peterson’s position on the Ukraine matter is particularly inconsistent with his output about standing up to bullies”
The Ukinazis killed 14,000 civilians in the Donbass between 2014-2022.
Then Zelenskyy announced he was going to send the army into the Donbass having previously advised all the ethnic Russians to leave for Russia.
Its Putin who is standing up to bullies.
And you should read wider than the MSM, else you end up looking like a mushroom.
I think we all know *why* the Ukranians were bombing the Donbas.
The 14,000 is straight out the Kremlin handbook though. The Ukranians have consistently shelled for military advantage. If they’d killed that many civilians, there is no way the militias (many actually Russian regulars, of course) would have survived.
Why should it not be the breakaway states that surrender? How is it that them resorting to weapons first is acceptable if you abhor the violence.
It was very light compared to what Russia did to the equivalent movement in Chechnya. Now *that* is killing civilians properly. Why is Putin allowed to flatten separatist states, but Ukraine has to roll over and let them be stolen?
And in this war we see it again. Russia will bomb cities just for the sake of it. That, apparently does not bother you.
So spare me your fake concerns for the Donbas. You didn’t care about them at the time, and you don’t care now.
“So spare me your fake concerns for the Donbas”
Fuck you wanker
The separatist republics of LPR and DPR are not the aggressors here, Chester.
They also had no say in the anti-minority language legislation of 2018 which among other things forbade over-9 education being in Russian.
Nor did they have any say on the later insistences from Kyiv that no film and tv production on UA soil could be in Russian or Hungarian. It applied to other languages but those are the ones that mattered.
Nor did the LPR/DPR have a say in the Zelenskyy decision to ban Russian language TV in 2021 (sure Sputnik, RT etc may be propaganda channels but a liberal democracy that wants to join EU should be able to live with that schit).
So no surprise that big fraction of the majority ethnic Russian towns (that’s RU as first language in this context) gave up quite easily in Feb/Mar 2022, or didn’t resist at all.
There’s a route out of this, but those who insist that Crimea is Ukrainian are not the navigators you want Obi Wan Chester.
I’d be inclined to agree with Chester on this. Ukraine’s original borders were those of the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR. From what I’ve heard from ethnic Russian Ukrainians, they were content with the arrangement. The separatists were supported & armed out of Russia. This all seems in line with Putin’s long known desire to recover what were USSR states into a reborn Greater Russia. He’s written books on the subject. If he’d taken Ukraine the Baltic States were next on the list & they also have ethnic Russian minorities. Russia’s hardy the injured party in this.
Which Ukrainian Soviet Republic? Khrushchev annexed Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. How about the pre-1939 Ukrainian Soviet Republic before they annexed eastern Poland?
Which Ukrainian Soviet Republic?
The only relevant borders are those of 1994; those are the ones recognised in the “security assurances” of the Budapest Memorandum, wherein Ukraine gave up its nuclear warheads in exchange for Peace in Our Time™.
The biggest and most obvious lesson from all this is:
Never.fucking.give.up.your.nuclear.warheads
The secondary lesson is that there are always consequences to not living up to your responsibilities, even woolly ones. Since we’ve declined to seriously assure Ukraine’s territory, maybe the thing to do is supply them with some battlefield tactical nukes. Not the 2500 they had at the start (and that weren’t under the control of Yeltsin’s suitcase like the strategics) but, what, fifty?
‘Never.fucking.give.up.your.nuclear.warheads’
Well, I certainly agree with you there, PJF. But as for Ukraine I’m, as BiS points out, a what’s-in-it- for-me sort of bloke. So I must admit I’d have treated the mess as the West did those in Georgia and Chechnya, and tried to ignore it. Indeed I’d never have supported that Maidan revolution in the first place.
Of course, sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. You only find out later.
What is the point of all those fireworks if you don’t have the matches to light the blue touchpaper?
I used to believe Ukraine gave them up as a goodwill gesture.
Then I the read the facts: The Ukies gave up their nukies because the codes were in Moscow and they didn’t have the money to pay for the maintenance / decommissioning.
Look, it’s simple, you put a gas powered fan in front of the windmill farm to power them when it’s not windy. Everyone is happy.
I can’t see why not having the codes would stop you making a bang given time and work.
AND, the point of small nations having nukes is not that you can destroy a bigger opponent but that you might trigger a bigger conflict involving lots of other peoples’ nukes. That’s why we bought polaris/trident, because if we launch in extremis, it looks like a US strike to the target nation and triggers a general exchange. Stops the US dropping us in it. It is not to frighten the enemy, it is to keep our ally on side. Entirely my own theory, never seen it suggested elsewhere.
Of course, sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. You only find out later.
Yup, when Japan invaded China, hardly anyone in the wider world gave a shit. Didn’t take long before they were bombing Australia. It’s surprising how fast it can all come close to home.
I can’t see why not having the codes would stop you making a bang given time and work.
Exactly. The “codes” thing is absolute bollocks. It was put out by Ukrainian leadership to sell the sellout to the people.
The thousands of tactical nukes wouldn’t have had launch codes anyway; once they’re out of the armouries they’re ready to go.
Well PJF, had Oz gone to war with the Japs when they invaded China, they’d certainly have bombarded Oz a lot sooner.
Of course, had the whole Empire gone for the Japs – though I’m sure the Brits would have told the Aussies to stop their nonsense – the only way would have been unrestricted submarine warfare. Torpedoing Yank ships without warning would have led to war against a combination of the US and Japan. The Empire would have been decisively defeated.
But then, according to Churchill, he pointed out to Roosevelt that Chiang Kai-shek needed a bit of help. So the Yanks and the Brits placed an embargo on exports, especially oil, to the Japs. Which led to Pearl Harbour and the US entry into WW2. Although if I’d been Adolf I’d have sent Ribbentrop on the Graf Zeppelin to the US and asked Roosevelt to mediate a peace agreement between Britain and Germany. The terms offered after Dunkirk would have done.
The sweetener would have been the German, Italian and such of the French fleet as could be mobilised being sent to help against the Japs. Along with the Afrika Korps, and such of the Italians who were available. The important point would have been for Ribbentrop to make sure these terms were well publicised in the American newspapers. But no doubt he’d have had plenty of gold from all those teeth extracted in the death camps.
I doubt that a Nazi-US pact would have been negotiated. But I’d say there was an excellent chance that the US wouldn’t have entered the war against Germany.
But the US fought the Pacific War, and defeated the Japs. And Mao went and snuggled up to the Soviets, who’d occupied Manchuria in the last days of the war. With their help, he defeated Chiang and conquered China.
I dunno who’d have won if the Japs and Chinese’d been left alone to fight it out. But I’d argue that fighting the Pacific War to make sure that Mao rather than Hirohito ruled China was much like fighting to ensure that Satan rather than the Devil ruled Hell.
That’s why I like nukes. With enough of them, one can turn the whole world into a desert of radioactive glass. No people, no world, no problems!!
Yeah I thought about the codes thing while making my post, PJF. The realised it really didn’t matter. The only thing Ukraine need is the weapons grade fissile material. Ukraine has a competent nuclear industry. but refining from reactor to weapons grade is likely beyond it. And it occurred that it wasn’t the missiles, or the warheads had to go back to Russia but the fissile core. And there could be weapons sitting in the Russian inventory now. They’d look complete. Run a geiger counter over them you’d get the right clicks. You could probably do more sophisticated tests they’d pass. But the cores are dummies. Inert material with a layer of fissile plated on them. Ukraine would be quite capable of making the explosive lenses & their detonating systems to make the originals go bang.
@BiS Interesting… That likely explains the Big Bangs the Ukies made in the Krim.. Their “Special Weapon”..
Very good chance those were the ignitor packs for the old nukes. You do need a bit of a Bang to slap those cores together hard enough to be efficient, after all….
No. The explosive lenses would be tucked away in a missile in a storage rack in Russia. That’s the point. If the inventory says one missile, nuke, tactical & there’s one missile, nuke, tactical to count, everyone’s happy. You’d have to completely dismantle it to find it won’t go big bang/nuclear only small bang conventional.
If someone in Ukraine didn’t think of this at the time, they were a bit slow.
And just a thought. If you were a Russian responsible for the inventory & you found one you’d signed for was a dud, what would you do? Hardly career enhancing.