Virtual ghost
Complex paradigm
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- Jun 6, 2008
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Pictures released by independent satellite firm Planet Labs showed three near-identical craters that had precisely struck buildings at Russia’s Saki air base. The base, on the southwest coast of Crimea had suffered extensive fire damage with the burnt-out husks of at least eight destroyed warplanes clearly visible.
Russia has denied aircraft were damaged and said explosions seen at the base on Tuesday were accidental.
“Officially, we are not confirming or denying anything; there are numerous scenarios for what might have happened... bearing in mind that there were several epicenters of explosions at exactly the same time,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters in a message.
Exactly how the attack was carried out remains a mystery. Some Ukrainian officials have been quoted suggesting it may have been sabotage by infiltrators. But the near identical impact craters and simultaneous explosions appear to indicate it was hit by a volley of new long-range weapons, capable of evading Russian defenses.
The base is well beyond the range of advanced rockets that Western countries acknowledge sending to Ukraine so far, but within the range of more powerful versions that Kyiv has sought. Ukraine also has its own surface-to-ship missiles which could theoretically be used to hit targets on land.
Regarding morals in this war.
Ukraine is in the right because they got invaded. Rus is wrong because they attacked a sovereign neighbor unprovoked.
Besides that I don't see much difference. Meaning I don't expect there to be a moral difference in the way these two countries prosecute the war.
I expect Ukr to kill prisoners, torture, and rape at generally the same rates as the Rus forces. I don't accept the argument that the people making up the Russian forces are any less inherently moral than the people making up the Ukr forces.
The moral difference between UKR and RUS is strategic and not personal. IE Rus is evil for invading, not because the Russian people are inherently more evil than Ukr people.
I expect this is a confusing point to make for those whose only understanding of the conflict is emotional. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys doesn't work nearly as well when you aren't fighting ISIS or Al Qaeda. There the good guys are the one who aren't burning people in cages or throwing gays off the roof.
In Ukr there is no such personal moral clarity. Hence the push to limit any news coming out that paints Ukr in a bad light.
Most people just care about who the bad guy is, not what the strategic thinking is. And to get most people to go along with sending THEIR tax dollars to a fight across the world for longer than five seconds, they need to be invested not in the strategic value of involvement, but in the emotional value of those are the bad guys we need to fight.
Showing a picture of a crying child is more politically effective than arguing we need to fund Ukr to maintain Nuclear detente. This fact frustrates me more about politics than anything else.
Regarding morals in this war.
Ukraine is in the right because they got invaded. Rus is wrong because they attacked a sovereign neighbor unprovoked.
....
In Ukr there is no such personal moral clarity. Hence the push to limit any news coming out that paints Ukr in a bad light.
Most people just care about who the bad guy is, not what the strategic thinking is. And to get most people to go along with sending THEIR tax dollars to a fight across the world for longer than five seconds, they need to be invested not in the strategic value of involvement, but in the emotional value of those are the bad guys we need to fight.
Showing a picture of a crying child is more politically effective than arguing we need to fund Ukr to maintain Nuclear detente. This fact frustrates me more about politics than anything else.
I wasn't aware we had as many as six Eurofighter jets that could actually fly
Nah, the real question is if they have any ammo to take it with them on the trip.
Germany to miss 2 percent NATO defense spending target: think tank
But this is also from today. I just don't get it: US is mad about this for years, quite decent chunk of EU is unhappy with this, while democracies at the Pacific roll their eyes regarding this. Germany has GDP of about 4 400 billion $ but they will miss the target for 20 billion and it will not guarantee that it will meet the target on every year. I mean is this all bad reputation really worth those few billion ? Especially since Germany like to paint itself as a very serious country and you can just invest into your own defense industry that is fairly developed in technical sense. I just don't get it.
It's a complex issue.
Look, my mother will celebrate her 75th birthday this fall. She was born in a big city that had been heavily bombed by the allied forces and people were still on post-war foodstamps and food rationing when she was a baby. Despite all the minor crises the country (and she) has gone through since then, she has known nothing but peace, prosperity, stability and safety all her life. During the cold war "the Russian" was "standing at the door" and there was serious anxiety over nuclear escalation, but after the fall of the Berlin wall the defense budget has dropped year after year for a long time. I think I once mentioned that I had to write an essay at school in the late 90s about whether or not NATO had become obsolete because, well, Francis Fukuyama and all that.
That prosperity was build on several questionable grounds, one of them being salaries of German workers rising very slowly which gave German businesses a competitive advantage. Another one was heavily focusing on exports to questionable business partners (read: China). And a third one was the socalled "peace dividend" - money that isn't funneled into the military can be used elsewhere. I have seen former military barracks turned into hotels or residential districts.
Politically and culturally Germany has long seen itself as a broker between Russia and the US. Despite criticism of the Putin government, Germans tended to have a positive image of Russia as a culturally rich country and the Russian people in general.
For decades there was a strong belief that trade and mutual dependence make friends and open armed conflict betwen nations was a thing of the past ... or at least something that only happens in third world countries, not in our neighborhood.
I view military as a necessary evil, nothing to be proud of and idealize (like they do in America) but still necessary. Many Germans to this day maintain antimilitary reflexes that were developed not just as a lesson learned from WW2 but also as a deescalation strategy during the cold war.
And since I just watched a documentary on the history of the pipeline:
When the whole debate over Nord Stream 2 broke out I have to admit that I too was convinced that the main reason the US government was pressuring Germany and even levelling sanctions on the country was that they simply wanted to force us to buy their LNG instead. It was like Coca-Cola warning you not to drink Pepsi because that stuff is unhealthy and you should rather buy theirs! It felt like bullying for thinly veiled selfish reasons (especially coming from someone like Trump!). Gas was and is needed as a bridge technology and a economically and ecologically a direct import from Russia made more sense than shipping LNG around.