Alex_Krycek

Considering how integral sorties are to Russia's campaign, it's hard to see how a no fly zone wouldn't be seen as a declaration of war, considering it would necessitate expelling the Russian aircraft using force.

It's only insane to the sane. For everyone's sake, I hope Putin still is. ------ Good analysis here also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXKSM8lpqKM

Baloney. A tyrant's hunger is never satiated.

Glad to see the Snake Island troops may yet be alive. Would have been a reckless move by their commander if he decided to go out in a blaze of glory. Escape / evasion would have been the right COA.

Only because they step out of line one at a time. Impossible to quell such non-violent opposition when the entire population does it simultaneously (and is willing to die for it).

It would quickly turn into a war of attrition, Russia's Vietnam. Ukranian civilians holding AK-47s might make for sensational television, but in reality horrific loss of life will ensue if these people actually see combat. They'll be absolutely slaughtered. I hope that doesn't happen. Putin would likely drag it out for years regardless of the civilian casualties, using each Russian casualty as justification for an exponential increase in force. A better route that Zelensky might have chosen for his people might have been that of collective Non-Violent resistance, nationwide civil disobedience.

I expect the message to Zelensky will be: "Kyiv is surrounded; give up now while you still can." The Russians would have an interested in avoiding this battle too, since fighting from the outskirts of Kyiv to the center will be block by block, house by house - and they will likely lose a lot of troops.

Has any negotiation been agreed? The last I saw, Zelensky rejected the idea of a negotiation taking place in Belarus, saying any other country would be acceptable.

Putin orders nuclear deterrence forces on high alert Sigh...

Possible escalation point: (involving overt conflict between NATO member state (Turkey) and Russia. Obviously depends how much Russia cares about this maritime route. Zelenskiy claims Turkey will ban Russian warships from Black Sea Turkey will stop warships passing through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits, which connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

Summary: Putin is a failed leader presiding over a dysfunctional society. The rising success of former Soviet countries such as Estonia and Ukraine underscore Russia's shortcomings and would eventually lead to internal change. Thus, Russia's neighbors must be subjugated.

Maddow articulates here how I see Russia. 100% nails it.

"Madman Strategy" - the same moniker used to describe Trump when he was supposedly playing 5-D Backgammon of whatever. The world gives people like this too much credit. Putin is an obsolete remnant of an obsolete system, a country calcified with corruption, unable to rejuvenate itself organically due to a lack of democratic processes. It's a country in slow decay whose only avenue for growth is to reach out for the unattainable pipe dreams of past imperial glory.

More like "full on George W. Bush".

My theory: any areas the Russians attempt to permanently "liberate" will have already been judged to have a population sufficiently in favor of a Russian presence. They will expand Luhansk and Dontesk only so far as these territories can be held indefinitely. Or they'll steamroll the entire country and make it a puppet regime for the next 100 years; that's another possibility.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defence minister: (24/02/22) "There are thrusts taking place. They are quite close to the city of Kherson now. The situation is really critical there. They are also trying to surround Kharkiv. It seems like Kharkiv at the moment is the main target. They also try to get to Kyiv using one battlefield group. The group went from Belarus and it was stopped. There’s quite a bad road [to Kyiv]. It was strange that they sent such a small group on such a road. Clearly it was miscalculation on their side for the moment. There were some Russian losses and on our side. Ukrainian armed forces are fighting quite seriously. There is no panic. There are attempts to resist and in many directions it’s working out." ------- A miscalculation, or a diversion to keep Ukrainian forces from concentrating in the East? Surely if Russia planned to take Kiev, they would do so. There would be no "miscalculation".

What are you watching right now? I watched Downfall: The Case Against Boeing on Netflix. Great documentary about how Boeing abandoned their robust safety culture after a takeover from McDonnell Douglas, in which the main pursuit became short term profits over all else. Tragically, this infestation of greed and corruption at Boeing lead to the two tragic Lion Air and Ethiopian Air crashes due to the deeply flawed MCAS system. A good documentary for those who perhaps followed the story intermittently as it broke, but want a comprehensive summary of the extent to which Boeing defrauded the FAA and misled the public, with some direct accounts from Boeing employees, pilots, victim's families, and Congress persons.

https://www.edx.org/new/search is a great resource also. Courses range from free, to low cost, to more expensive certificate programs.

Trump must be sizing up these new separatist republics as possible hotel markets.

Germany halts Nord Stream 2 approval over Russian recognition of Ukraine ‘republics’Chancellor Olaf Scholz suspends gas pipeline over ‘grave breach’ of international law

I've been following this conflict for several months now, before it became a headline crisis. While I have believed from the beginning that a real conflict was probably going to materialize, I also do not believe that seizing the entirety of Ukraine is Putin's current goal. The conflict with Ukraine looks like classic incrementalism - or "salami tactics", taking territory slice by slice. Now that these two separatist areas (Luhansk and Donetsk) have been annexed, I think we will see no further advances by Russian forces at this time. Further, I believe that the US knows this and has essentially agreed with Russia since their bilateral talks in January (which didn't include Ukraine) that this annexation would be tolerated in order to avoid a full scale war. Of course, this would never be officially stated. I believe the Russian forces stationed in Belarus, ominously north of Kiev, are there to merely intimidate Ukraine and NATO into not interfering while this annexation takes place. They are the "backup" in case Ukraine or NATO tries to stop the seizure of this eastern territory; they're not there with the primary goal of invading the entire country. It's a classic strategy of "scare you with a bigger threat so you accept a smaller sacrifice". In the coming weeks I expect we'll see the Russian "peacekeepers" control this section of territory but not advance any further. This will allow Russia to officially link up the separatist areas with Crimea (previously seized in 2014) and continue their expansion into the Black Sea. Although the new independent republics will never be officially recognized, Ukrainian forces will pull back and respect this new de facto boundary. (Red lines denote where Russian peacekeepers will actually be stationed) Russia's stategy to recognize two "independent states": Dontesk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic rather than subsume these territories into Russia mirrors the annexation of other friendly satellite states such as South Ossetia (2008) and Abkhazia, both of which Russia took from Georgia. Over the long term this approach counters the "Soviet Sphere" narrative while accomplishing the exact same objectives.

For me, how one answers this question depends on one's individual worldview. One can construct marvelously elaborate arguments as to why free will does not exist, and marvelously elaborate arguments as to why it does. In the end both views are subjective projections. I consider free will as probabilistic based on the relationship between environmental conditioning/external forces and the strength of the individual actor and their manifested capacity for independent action. In other words, both the environment and the individual have a role in determining an outcome that is not always definitive.

Yes, there are multiple variable at play. Women tend to naturally be more Agreeable if considering the OCEAN framework. Agreeable people won't get the same results in a salary negotiation as non-agreeable people (e.g. accepting the first low ball offer, or not pushing for a raise or developing other options to leverage their position). If we're considering the pay gap between professions, interestingly this is widest in the most egalitarian societies (such as Norway) where, given the choice, women statistically choose professions that are lower paying such as nursing, teaching, etc, or they don't work at all and choose to stay home and raise their children instead. And yes, I used the work choose, since the evil Patriarchy didn't force them to enter professions against their will.

Well, when a woman works her entire life to compete at a high level in a particular sport, and is then made immediately irrelevant by a trans athlete such as Lia Thomas, a white person claiming to be the next Jackie Robinson (yes, that was actually said by this person), I think it's understandable. https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/592822-sixteen-penn-swimmers-say-transgender-athlete Cite data here please.

Interesting and balanced talk between Lex Fridman and Gary Nolan on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTCc2-1tbBQ Premiered February 7th, 2022