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Ukraine V

DonQuixote99 said:
Interesting. This tells of a design by a Cambridge student of a replacement window for war-damaged buildings, that can be cheaply and easily fabricated on-the-spot using simple building materials. Fills a big need for people trying to survive in Ukraine now. Insulates and admits light. Huge improvement over plywood.
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I was thinking that some clear double glazed plastic sheeting used for roofs for shed and lean to’s, tubes of sealant and a few screws. Presuming the surrounding frame has retained some integrity of course
 
DonQuixote99 said:
Yes, seems to me Eichmann's job--bureaucrat in charge of creating and managing a far-flung logistics and processing system--doubtless looked tedious and off-putting to more ambitious men. But he took it and kept at it and was successful at it. Doubt he ever had to stab anyone on his way up. He seems to have seen himself as a drudge doing a shit job for his country.
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I’ve been mulling over this Banality of Evil thing and came across this podcast from Martin Davidson, author of Mobilising Hate: The Story of Hitler's Final Solution.

Davidson references the Eichmann trial like Arendt, but comes to slightly different conclusions. He doesn’t like the use of the word ‘evil’ because it is so other worldly and monstrous that it allows people to say, ‘that is not me’, so, ‘I am not doing evil’. Which I suppose is where Anendt’s banality comes from.

But the big distinction that Davidson draws is around the ‘slippery slope’ thesis. Nazism was not just the consequence of declining circumstances, Hitler’s motivation from the very beginning was based on an ideological hatred rather than political opportunism. Hitler’s project was more pushing a stone up a hill than riding a slippery slope down.

And here is, it very much seems to me, the difference between Hitler and Putin. Putin is a political beast, not an ideological one, and maybe this is where the conflation of Putin with Nazism is misleading. Putin mobilising hatred for strategic and political reasons rather than any reasons of personal credo.
 
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I don't really know Putin's mind, of course, but he seems to me to be both a political animal and a person with a rather well-elaborated nationalist/racial ideology.
 
I see that the Russian government has seized the passports of senior officials. Hardly reflects confidence, and hopefully is an indication of the start of a wave of dissonance that will eventually reach the upper levels of the Russian government. These people cannot be blind to what Putin has done to their country, essentially made it a vassal state of China. As Nina Khruschevna remarked in an article a few days ago, Xi's recent visit to his "dear friend" was really to establish who's boss.
 
Russia's new foreign policy doctrine via Putin the other day:

1. Russia faces external threats.
2. The US is the main threat.
3. Russia is a "distinctive state-civilisation" (an upgrade for the Russian State) with a "unique historical mission."
4. Russia is "peaceful, open, and predictable."

A separate quote from Lavrov: " He [Putin] has three advisors. Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great."

Seems pretty clear what Putin is thinking about.
 
Kirk said:
Russia's new foreign policy doctrine via Putin the other day:

1. Russia faces external threats.
2. The US is the main threat.
3. Russia is a "distinctive state-civilisation" (an upgrade for the Russian State) with a "unique historical mission."
4. Russia is "peaceful, open, and predictable."

A separate quote from Lavrov: " He [Putin] has three advisors. Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great."

Seems pretty clear what Putin is thinking about.
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I think he will go down in Russian history as Vladimir the Stupid.
 
"Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova complained that her «adopted» Ukrainian child from Mariupol runs after her other children, shouting «I’ll eat you, you little Moskal» because that’s the way Ukrainian children are raised." (Twitter video).

Time to lock her up.
 
Hi all - an exciting update on our fundraiser for Ukraine: I've just been been sent a photo of four generators which volunteers purchased locally in Zaporizhzhia with the funds you kindly and very generously donated.

They also sent me a receipt which I'm not going to post here because it contains personal information, but let me know if you really need to see it and I'll email it to you.

The fundraiser is active, so you can still donate if you wish do to so.

Many thanks to you all!

 
ks.234 said:
Putin is a political beast, not an ideological one
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I get the impression from his speeches and comments that he is trying to go back to the old Soviet Russia or USSR and Ukraine is a foundation stone of Russian history and origins.

It might just be rhetoric to rally patriotism and nostalgia within Russia but I do get the impression he's an old school Soviet and there does seem to be growing affinity of people to being "soviet" rather than Russian.
 
vacuum_tubes said:
I get the impression from his speeches and comments that he is trying to go back to the old Soviet Russia or USSR and Ukraine is a foundation stone of Russian history and origins.

It might just be rhetoric to rally patriotism and nostalgia within Russia but I do get the impression he's an old school Soviet and there does seem to be growing affinity of people to being "soviet" rather than Russian.
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Yes, would agree with that, but rather than looking back to the soviet era through ideological spectacles, Putin seems to be being political in that he is seeing a certain popular nostalgia with the past. Not dissimilar to Trump in the US looking back with Make America Great *Again* and in the UK we have Brexit which was sold on old ideas of British Greatness much of both built on perceived success in WW2. The Soviet era seems to embody a similar idea of past strength built on a very particular reading of history. But present reality, like that of the US and the UK over the last few decades have been marked by extremes of wealth with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. In Russian this seems particularly marked with the extremes pushed even further. As an example the life expectancy of Russian men after the fall of the USSR dropped to around 60 years of age. It has now climbed to 70, but such memories will be fresh.

The problem is that when modern societies are pushed to extremes, as can be seen in Germany in 20’s, the US and the UK from the 80’s and now Russia in the 21st century, popular anger is directed outwards (onto foreigners or others) rather than inwards onto political leaders. The cause is the sort of nationalism that demands internal validation and external suspicion
 
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Nobody will be interested in peace talks until Ukraine has had a go with its counter offensive. If there is still a stalemate after the offensive, then peace talks have more chance.

Peace talks usually only succeed when both sides are exhausted. Ukraine clearly is not in that space yet.
 
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