[locusjag]

This is post #3 for me on this thread - the 1st was on the decimation of the wonderful An-225 in this war; the 2nd was a note warning against taking the US/NATO's word at face value.

I just realized that this war is going to change our lives in unimaginable ways. In the short term alone, Germany looks set to suffer from high energy prices after they decided to forego Russian natural gas. Netherlands has decided to continue with gas extraction, despite the risks involved (increased geological instability, tremors etc.). A multitude of other EU nations will similarly be undergoing a lot of pains economically, mostly over costlier alternative energy sources. With any pain that is felt by European nations, the global economy is bound to take a hit.

Most Western airlines are forced to fly longer routes, since there are reciprocal no-fly zones nowadays. The entire aviation and tourism/hospitality industry is going to be strained. On a global scale, folks that are employed in these sectors are going to be looking at a harsh immediate future.

With direct consequences for India's security, China is going to double up on Siberian gas supply, which means Russia will get further indebted to China to that extent. There's every chance Russia will be willing to sell out India's interests at China's behest, just as the USSR did to China before the 1965 war. Russia will covertly or overtly tilt towards Pakistan. A compromised and pliant friend is more dangerous than a formidable enemy!

There's also the problem of spares for the IAF and gas turbines in bulk for our Navy's vessels - which are procured from Russia and Ukraine and may likely not be available to our forces whenever needed. Moreover, if China twists Russia's hand, they may not supply to our forces at all in our hour of need.

So when (and not if) China takes over Taiwan in the next few years, expect some action on India's Eastern frontiers as well since our armed forces may probably be compromised in their battle-readiness. Xi's aim is to make-china-great-again (MCGA); the internet is full of Chinese trolls who're cooing for a new "1000 year celestial empire" (much like Hitler's 1000 year Reich), by recreating China's glorious past. And this glorious past being clamored for by China includes several of India's territories in the North East!

My own takeaways, without taking an alarmist stance -
1) Need to look at diversifying my investments sufficiently. Tough times may lie ahead! 25% Gold, 25% real estate, 25% equity and 25% debt...maybe?
2) Need to give a thought to a likely near future when there's either a global recession or even a full-blown conflict in the subcontinent; is it risky to be planning for getting into a long-drawn home loan right now?

[iTNerd]

Originally Posted by TROOPER

Still no response or outrage for the violence carried out by the Ukrainians.

Since this is 2022, don't be selective with your outrage. People are dying on both sides.

I'm not going to drag this, because I wish to be neutral. And I'm not going to sit giving disclaimers because some people feel holier than thou just because they are taking the side of the west.

There's enough evidence on Twitter for the right, and enough on Telegram for the left. As a neutral, I follow both. No one's been a saint, before, on or after 24th February.

If I missed your posts on crimes against Russians by Ukrainians, you have my deepest apology and of course, my outrage! Any crimes and attrocities towards unarmed civilians in war or peace is condemnable, be the victims be Ukrainians or ethnic Russians. War is cruel and people inadvertently get killed, but that does not mean the deeds of the perpetrators, be it the Azuv ultra nationalist militias or the Russian units should go uncriticized or unpunished depending on which side you root for.

When you have a man incharge of a nation for far too long by nooks and crooks, he tends to behave and act like a god ultimately destroying his nation and taking along with it vast number of innocent lives and history is judged of it, be the likes of Napolean, Hitler, Saddam, Gaddafi etc, their fate of violent demise is sealed!

[deetee]

Originally Posted by locusjag

My own takeaways, without taking an alarmist stance -
1) Need to look at diversifying my investments sufficiently. Tough times may lie ahead! 25% Gold, 25% real estate, 25% equity and 25% debt...maybe?
2) Need to give a thought to a likely near future when there's either a global recession or even a full-blown conflict in the subcontinent; is it risky to be planning for getting into a long-drawn home loan right now?

My own gut feeling is that the world will not enter a full scale world war. For the direct reason that no single country can afford a full blown lengthy war in these times. Worst case, a few countries will be drawn by choice or by accident into consequences of present conflicts. But most countries might refrain simply because they cannot afford the war. And by the time these conflicts become widespread, we may see global economy tumbling due to various triggers happening across the world. China may try a jab at Taiwan but may not show direct aggression at India. Russia is already draining itself now, China is aware of the consequences of a modern war. India has so far maintained neutral status and it will continue to do so unless some one knocks at our borders with guns. We can sustain within our borders no matter what happens across the world. Our economy by nature itself is not so fragile as west or china. Ofcourse, it may tumble along with global recession but it will not collapse into a sink hole. This Ukraine war will go into history books as the beginning of new age in various domains.

For starters, here is an EU nation going public that it has no concerns with Ruble payments:

[SnS_12]

Originally Posted by locusjag

is it risky to be planning for getting into a long-drawn home loan right now?

Now is the time to hold on to cash and sit tight. If the US markets crash our stock markets will crash too and you will have a buying opportunity both in stock and real estate just like we had in 2008 as everything will be more affordable from the current levels at least.

P.s - If you plan to invest in gold then buy physical gold and not paper gold as you may face similar issues like nickel traders are facing with high demand.

[AltoLXI]

Treatment of refugees. Some are more equal than others...

[Aloneatma]

Hungary decides to break away from EU and wants to pay for Russian gas in rubles. USA is buying fertilizers from Russia (allegedly) in rubles hence those sanctions aren't mentioned anywhere. While Europe is weakening itself US is covering it's backside. Ukraine is paying a massive price for falling prey to the charm of the US. All these war crimes only distract the international community while the very powerful and influential arms lobby in the US is filling it's coffers.

Super powers thrive in throttling nations that have the potential to challenge it's dominance. Even post cold war Russia threatened the US, ergo NATO membership was augmented on a regular basis.

If USA wants it can stop this senseless war and stay away from Russia. But no. Its image has already taken a beating in the international community. USA hopes that somehow Russia will succumb to all the pressure and the US will claim it's hero status. Its not that simple. Complications have only increased and polarisation is happening. USA has failed as the only super power to take leadership and resolve critical international issues. Au contraire, it's the USA which has fomented seeds of discord within nations and exploited their weakness in order to preserve it's superpower status. Looks like American superheroes exist only in the Avengers franchise.

[NH08]

Originally Posted by Aloneatma

Hungary decides to break away from EU and wants to pay for Russian gas in rubles. USA is buying fertilizers from Russia (allegedly) in rubles hence those sanction

Cracks are developing. Not only gas, Hungary is getting nuclear fuel also from Russia.

Hungary received the first shipment of nuclear fuel for its Paks nuclear plant from Russia by air on Wednesday, after the war in Ukraine made shipping by rail impossible, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Thursday. Szijjarto reiterated that Hungary rejected any sanctions on Russian oil and gas, adding that imposing any sanctions on activities related to nuclear energy was also a "red line" for Hungary.

Source

[Foxbat]

These war crimes by Ukrainians are so wide spread that now even Main stream Western Media(NYTimes) is reporting it:



Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/04...raine-executed


It seems they are completely insane to commit these crimes and then record and share it to the world. Amazing how these "impartial" and "free" news outlets use the words "Appears to show" even when the execution of prisoners is clearly shown on the videos. However for Russians they are guilty without any proof.

“These are not even humans,” a Ukrainian soldier says in the video as he walks among the wrecked vehicles, adding that two Russian lieutenants had been taken prisoner.

The Ukrainian soldiers are identifiable by their flag patches and blue arm bands and repeat “glory to Ukraine” multiple times.

No difference from the Nazis of WWII, even the badges worn by some of the Ukrainian military units are the same.

[Aloneatma]

The west is aiding Ukraine win the war of perception. But at what cost? Western media specialize in the art of obfuscation. If you can't convince... Confuse. The USA is an expert in covert media and information warfare and now with most of the social media under its purview Russia doesn't stand a chance.

[TROOPER]

Originally Posted by NH08

Cracks are developing. Not only gas, Hungary is getting nuclear fuel also from Russia.

Why Hungary? Last I read even US is importing uranium from Russia as I type this.


Here's a video, I came across on Twitter. Ukrainian soldiers, beating civilians, in broad daylight. Pulling them out of cars and tying them up. Hope even this is considered as human rights abuse.

https://twitter.com/TheCynicalHun/st...DhRWkV9pA&s=19

I don't post what Russian soldiers do, cause I guess that's easily available everywhere.

Edit: someone has replied to the tweet saying that these are Russian soldiers, but one guy shooting the video, if you check his arm, at the 6 sec mark, the Ukrainian flag is clearly visible.

[JithinR]

Drone video which shows Russian troops firing at civilians going along a highway.

All the cars turn around but the white one stops after turning around. The husband gets out and walks away from the Russian troops with his hands held up and is promptly murdered by the Russians.

He had his 6 year old kid and family friend inside who fortunately escaped.

Don't know what happened to his wife. I assume that he actually stopped the vehicle since she was shot and didn't want his kid to face the same fate.

https://youtu.be/PAyl2XiWZyo

Edit: if some kid visits this thread in the future they might actually think that Ukraine was the one that illegally invaded Russia. If I think about it, looking at how Soviet Union loved to rewrite history I wouldn't be surprised if future Russian kids are thought about the time Ukraine invaded Russia.

[TROOPER]

If some kid visits this thread in the future, he/she would realize that there's always two sides to a story. Not blindly believe the one written by a bunch of hypocrites of the MSM.

There would be all the links to how the EU continued buying gas from Russia, the US buying uranium and fertilizers and what not, well more than one month into Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

She would read some really informative posts by unbiased BHPians about geopolitics, the atrocities carried out by Russia and the double standards of the west.

All I hope and pray the kid doesn't have to end up reading, is the current situation spiralling out of control and something even more unimaginable happening.

[Poitive]

If seen in a narrow sense, this post might be seen as OT; if in a wider sense, not really. I will be a bit less precise to convey broad sense in this post. Especially in the beginning some of it might be too basic - please bear with me.

How do we form opinions?

It has a lot do with:

• The information we are are exposed to.
• The framework we internally use in our minds and hearts to interpret and draw conclusions from the above.
• This in turn is much influenced by our "biases". In a sense, a bias in another is what doesn't align with our own "neutral" framework and sense of being "right".
• Where does our sense of neutral and right come from? It is usually deeply connected to formation of our views based on our surroundings at different points in life - early years, crises in our lives, and sudden revelations, forming an important part.

Where do we get our information from?

Old days (well, only about a decade or so ago):

A dominant part has been newspapers and TV channels. There have been few choices. Media sources being roughly divided based on what would sell for a section of their viewers (and their source of funding, but will not go into that). Roughly divided into Left, Right, and Centre - each market catered too. What we got was filtered by editors and we got selected information with accompanying information leading to encouraging some views and discouraging others.

Based on their bent/bias/framework, people usually relied on their 'favourite' news sources, thereby reinforcing their semi-formed views to more firm ones. This was a slowish process.

More Recently (past decade or so):

What changed?

• Social media arrives on the scene.
• Accompanied with huge storage capacity and immense computing potential. Ever increasing.
• Analytics of population being a lot more viable.

This clearly is of use for politicians and holders of power. To influence the views of large masses is vital in a democracy, but also in a relatively autocratic regime (to reduce chances and costs of avoiding an uprising)

Some thoughts on how Social Media functions

How does one use this new power or not being restricted to a few news media outlets, and having a way to disseminate a million views, coupled with ever increasing and more powerful analytics? Think like a power holder - a politician or a wealthy influential businessman or a part of that system.

For influence to work, the views need to be palatable to people of varying viewpoints. In the old days, one could have 3 (or a bit more) broad classifications of left, right, centre. Now a huge number is possible, so the 'market' is divided into many more 'nuanced' sets of views. Most active users of social media would find some people who resonate with them and their views. The ones which resonate are shared or 'liked'. Others who have similar views too share and like your shares. There is a sense of reward when that happens. Much info is available on this topic (link)

Now, once we start getting that reward by acknowledgement (words, shares, likes etc) we tend to do more of that. Gradually, this also leads to views which are more away from the 'neutral/centre' as they tend to get more rewards.

The above gradually polarises people. They tend to get 'rewarded' for harder and triumphant views. A sense of camaraderie and one of being 'on the same side' tends to develop in groups of people. Almost like a loosely held team. Once teams come up, the primitive part of our brain attaches a sense of win-loss and things become combative. The evolved part of our brain handles this with much sophistication and often excellent disguise, but beyond the surface, there often is such a phenomenon playing in my rough and only semi-certain opinion.

All this increases engagement and time spent on social media, hence advertisement and revenue - the prime business objective of the social media company.

Social Media Thoughts - Part 2: Business of Reinforcement

From a business perspective, to increase engagement, besides 'conflicts' as described above, it also helps to give more of what the user is likely to spend time on.

So, say if you spend a lot of time on conspiracy theories on YouTube (especially if signed in), you would see more related videos. It would often work towards reinforcing those views. Now, this idea isn't restricted to any particular topic like conspiracy theories or YouTube. It could be about views favouring anything. It could be for just about anything - political extremes (any side), countries, a certain kind of food/diet, history, and so on. It also works across most platforms. Eg Twitter will suggest accounts to follow, and Facebook will suggest pages and groups based on this - thereby increasing the bias in the material we expose ourselves to.

In other words, there is a natural tendency to make some views we gently have become harder with time. Further dealt with in the next section.

Social Media Thoughts and More - Part 3: About Ourselves

What also happens is that once we publicly declare our views and points of view, our sense of pride often gets attached to it. Withdrawing from it feels a bit like a 'loss', and we (consciously or sub-consciously) tend to stick to our guns. New thoughts and (near?) evidence becomes difficult to accommodate in our view of the world and situations around us.

The above affects the information we expose ourselves to. The new SM customised 'reality' we all tend to live in (in varying degrees), further encourages reinforcement of older views. If a different set of views comes our way, we often find another (typically SM promoted) view which debunks it.

The 'fight' carries on.

Social Media Thoughts - Part 4: Power Centres

Again, think in terms of big holders of power. They would use this power to influence people to change viability of things they wish to do. The viability is influenced by what people from relevant sections think - votes, social unrest etc.

All sides indulge in some sort of propaganda. It simply increases in times when the stakes are high, as they are in a conflict/war. It would be natural for them to invest in individuals, companies, and groups which pose a individuals to promote views and stories which favour them and show the opponent in poor light.

It seems logical to me that like before, they too would cater to people with varying tastes and degrees of acceptance of their propaganda, and sets of views will be presented by different groups with badges of authority attached to them. It is also interesting to note how new accounts come up in phases such as now, and also how people who had a moderate backing for other topics start commenting on politics - nuanced influencing of the one moderately off the centre to more off the centre. All this can be done in a pretty sophisticated manner to seem neutral. Let us not miss the power analytics combined with psychology brings.

While the reader finds what they read as objective and logical (and it might well be) it is often a selection of facts - facts chosen to present a narrative suitable to a centre of power who is invested in the game.

The 'fight' carries on.
It need not.

One does not need to end up as a pawn in the game of power centres.

Concluding Remarks

The thoughts I shared above were very general and based on what I see on social media all the time - with strangers on Twitter forming groups to thumb the other down, to well known ones from institutions they spent good years enjoying together getting into battles on WhatsApp groups. In comparison to those, this thread has largely been extremely mature (kudos to the team and mods). The moment we feel we might be going down the 'fight' path, please pause a moment to consider the points made above.

Edit: How this related to the Impact of the Russia-Ukraine war?
Coupled with social media usage, I hope would not end up polarising society even more than it already is.

[Foxbat]

Originally Posted by JithinR

Drone video which shows Russian troops firing at civilians going along a highway.

All the cars turn around but the white one stops after turning around. The husband gets out and walks away from the Russian troops with his hands held up and is promptly murdered by the Russians.

Edit: if some kid visits this thread in the future they might actually think that Ukraine was the one that illegally invaded Russia. If I think about it, looking at how Soviet Union loved to rewrite history I wouldn't be surprised if future Russian kids are thought about the time Ukraine invaded Russia.

Blackwater (Fancy name of US Mercenaries operating in Iraq, not even American soldiers) shot dead 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007. Not one was punished for this daylight murder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7sJitp1ZUk

If some kid reads most sources on the Internet about the Iraqi invasion and total destruction of a nation this is probably what they will find:



Source: https://www.westarctica.wiki/index.p..._Iraqi_Freedom

According to U.S. President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, the coalition aimed "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people." Others place a much greater emphasis on the impact of the September 11 attacks, on the role this played in changing U.S. strategic calculations, and the rise of the freedom agenda. According to Blair, the trigger was Iraq's failure to take a "final opportunity" to disarm itself of alleged nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that U.S. and British officials called an immediate and intolerable threat to world peace.

More than a 1 Million Iraqis died as a result of this invasion based on a lie of "WMDs". Guess how many war criminals were prosecuted for this? How many cases in the International Court of Justice at the Hague?

[deetee]

Originally Posted by JithinR

The husband gets out and walks away from the Russian troops with his hands held up and is promptly murdered by the Russians.

He had his 6 year old kid and family friend inside who fortunately escaped.

Don't know what happened to his wife. I assume that he actually stopped the vehicle since she was shot and didn't want his kid to face the same fate.

The video does show that civilians are fired upon. The man was killed but then why didn't they shoot remaining occupants? The kid and other adult in car didn't escape but were moved away by Russians themselves,why didn't the Russians shoot at them if they were cold blooded murderers. There is no evidence of wife traveling in car , so speculating that death is not viable.
The firing on civilians may have been because due to martial law after which most able men were drafted into the Ukrainian army. So any person who is capable of holding a weapon is potential soldier and as such is enemy to Russian troops. May be after a few incidents of civilians fighting them with weapons, they started shooting at any adult who is capable of fighting. So, while there is no denying that common people were killed, while Ukraine under martial law, those common people can be considered as soldiers in Russian perspective. I would say the Ukrainian government also has some blood on their hands.

EDIT: even in that video, the drone operator himself says that he is civilian who took up drone surveillance to protect his country. There are lot of photos online where Ukraine civilians were posing with guns and claiming they are fighting in the war. If a Russian soldier was attacked multiple times by civilian looking Ukrainians, then they may instinctively shoot down any adult citizens on suspicion. In the above video, I think the kid and old looking relative were helped out of the car without being fired for this reason.