Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

March 25, 2022
3:59 PM EDT
Last Updated 14 hours ago
Putin says Russian culture being 'cancelled' like J.K. Rowling
By Conor Humphries
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/pu ... 022-03-25/

Biden Reverses Campaign Pledge, Opens Door for Nuclear Strike as a Deterrent
Those itching for a winnable nuclear war are cheering today as Biden put that option back on the table.
MISH16 HOURS AGO
https://mishtalk.com/economics/biden-re ... -deterrent

Tom Mazanec wrote: Sat Mar 26, 2022 6:08 am March 25, 2022
3:59 PM EDT
Last Updated 14 hours ago
Putin says Russian culture being 'cancelled' like J.K. Rowling
By Conor Humphries
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/pu ... 022-03-25/

Rowling on Friday distanced herself from Putin’s comments by sharing an article about the jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Twitter. “Critiques of western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics,” the British author wrote, adding the hashtag #IStandWithUkraine.

What does Russia's strategic shift mean for the further course of the war in Ukraine? | DW News
3,769 viewsMar 26, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6qJudDRseg

The latest from Tom Cooper. I think he talking with some members of the “Secret Squirrel Association” with this post.

Let's title this one, 'Plan E'...
Began writing the following yesterday, primarily to address the question, ‘are the Russian armed forces underperforming – and why?’
This morning, I have a feeling this write-up was ‘overrun by developments’ – though also confirmed to the last dot and comma, and that by nobody less than the latest press conference of the Keystone Cops in Moscow of the last evening. Namely, they have announced that ‘now’ the RFA is to concentrate on the situation in eastern Ukraine.
***
The answer is my favourite: ‘yesno’.
Keep in mind that everything a military force does is what its political masters equip, train, and order it to do. If orders of political masters are realistic, the military force is – usually – successful. If not, then not. In this regards there’s next to no difference between democracies and dictatorships – except that in democracies the politicians might be more likely to listen to the advice of their generals. In a dictatorship not only are generals unlikely to properly advise the dictator (for the fear of being ‘removed’), but even the best intelligence service cannot supply a correct assessment of the situation.
In the case of the RFA in Ukraine, matter of fact is that there is only one person determining its military objectives: that is the Fool in Kremlin. Therefore, Putin is the primary culprit for the failure and underperformance of the RFA. He is the secondary culprit, too, for it was his responsibility to take care the RFA to be properly equipped and trained, indeed: reformed and re-armed, the last 20 years. Fact is: it wasn’t, because Putin’s mafia-styled regime is as corrupt and as incompetent as it is. Indeed, Putin’s regime sacked even its own members the moment they began complaining about corruption. Unsurprisingly, the Russian Armed Forces simply couldn’t perform as expected.
Why is all of this important? Because Putin started this war to avoid accountability for all of his own failures of the last 22 years. Not because of ‘NATO’s expansion’ or whatever other kind of nonsense. The aim was to sack Ukraine and thus prevent it from joining the NATO and then the EU; prevent Ukraine from developing democracy and thus having a 'negative' (for Putin) influence upon Russia.
But, I’m digressing… Point is this: Putin ordered Ukraine to be overrun within three days. For this task, Shoygu deployed about 70% of available VDV- and Spetsnaz units, more than half of the Rosgvardia and a brigade of Kadyrov’s Chechens. The VDV and the Spetsnaz are the ‘elite’ of the RFA: definitely best-paid, supposedly best armed- and trained units, too. Rosgvardia and Chechens are comparable to a combination of Waffen-SS, Hitlerjugend, IRGC, and Gestapo: incompetent on military plan, but well-armed and more trusted by Putin than the RFA (so much so, Rosgvardia is nowadays responsible for protection of all the strategically important installations in Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine, including nuclear facilities).
Plan A
Putin’s Plan A was to overrun Ukraine within three days: to kill or capture – i.e. topple – the government and implement a regime change. That plan failed: we do not yet know exactly how and why: it could be it failed the moment the VDV lost the Hostomel Airport to the 4th Rapid Intervention Brigade, and/or the Chechens were hacked to pieces while driving into downtown Kyiv, on the first day of the war. But, there is no clear evidence in this regards, and it's going to be some time before we know for sure.
Plan B
As is obvious by now, Putin had no Plan B. He was (and remains) so obsessed with his illusions about the weakness of democracy and collapse of the West, that he could not imagine any other outcome but a quick victory. When that plan failed, he ordered the RFA to improvise the Plan B. This resulted in a dissipation of effort and utmost chaos: instead of running a ‘victory parade while liberating Ukraine’, the RFA rushed to simultaneously assault Kyiv from north-west and east, to take Mariupol, to take Kharkiv, and to reach Odessa and connect with Transnistria. Based on another illusion (‘Ukrainians are too weak to resist’), the Plan B fell apart in a matter of 2-3 days, too.
Plan C
Undaunted, Putin ordered the RFA into Plan C: besiege Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, and Mykolaiv. Force them into submission by wholesale destruction of Ukraine, through murdering civilians, making their life miserable....Still based on unrealistic expectations, this plan failed, too: it only resulted in catastrophic losses of RFA units that attempted to effect all these sieges in too many places at once.
Plan D
Then, around 10-14 March, Putin ordered the RFA to go for the Plan D: secure Ukraine east of Dnepr. The RFA was still improvising and lacked troops for this: the most it managed was an advance from Kherson up the western bank of the river, while simultaneously pushing for Zaporozhye. The first prong run out of steam, until colliding with Ukrainian defences south of Kryvyi Rih, the second was ambushed and de-facto destroyed south-east of Zaporozhye.
Plan E
Now we have clear evidence that Putin ordered the RFA into the Plan E: surround the Ukrainian forces along the LOC in Donbas, and secure Mariupol. The fate of that plan is going to be decided somewhere within triangle Izium-Vuhledar-Zaporozhye, and then by
a) the ability of the RFA to deploy a superior force and punch through into the back of the Ukrainian forces along the LOC, while
b) preventing another massive loss.
Conclusion: the RFA didn't under-perform, but was given unrealistic objectives. Each of objectives was outside of its reach, and thus insufficient forces, support, and supplies were assigned for the task in question. As a result, so far, all the objectives remained outside its reach.
Now, why should anybody care about all of my rambling here?
Pay attention at the following fact: Putin is all the time downsizing his aim. From 'all of Ukraine’, 'collapse of the West' and 'destruction of democracy', via ‘Ukraine east of Dnepr’.... he's now down to 'just the LOC'.
This is about the only 'good' development in this war by now

** 26-Mar-2022 World View: Democracy vs Dictatorship

utahbob wrote: Sat Mar 26, 2022 1:36 pm > The latest from Tom Cooper. ...

> Keep in mind that everything a military force does is what its
> political masters equip, train, and order it to do. If orders of
> political masters are realistic, the military force is – usually –
> successful. If not, then not. In this regards there’s next to no
> difference between democracies and dictatorships – except that in
> democracies the politicians might be more likely to listen to the
> advice of their generals. In a dictatorship not only are generals
> unlikely to properly advise the dictator (for the fear of being
> ‘removed’), but even the best intelligence service cannot supply a
> correct assessment of the situation.

> In the case of the RFA in Ukraine, matter of fact is that there is
> only one person determining its military objectives: that is the
> Fool in Kremlin.

This is one of the best examples I've seen why a democracy is superior
to a dictatorship.

For years we've been listening to crap like this from Justin Trudeau:

> "The Liberal leader was asked which nation he admired
> most. He responded: "There's a level of admiration I actually have
> for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to
> turn their economy around on a dime."

And we know what a Nazi Trudeau is, after his handling of the peaceful
truckers' strike in Ottawa last month.

The example I always point to is Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward and
Cultural Revolution, which killed tens of millions of innocent Chinese
needlessly, and destroyed and devastated China's economy for decades.
Anyone who objected to Mao's disastrous orders was executed or jailed.
Mao even closed the national statistical bureau, which was reporting
on the devastating results. When a dictator makes a bad decision,
anyone who objects can be killed, jailed or tortured.

And this is how stupid Trudeau is: Mao's dictatorship so thoroughly
destroyed China's economy that it didn't recover for decades. A
democracy would have stopped Mao as soon as problems arose, but that
was impossible in a dictatorship. How can so-called "liberals" like
Trudeau be such disastrous idiots and Fascists?

Tom Cooper's report illustrates the same thing in Russia today. Putin
is making all the decisions, and every decision is a disaster, because
anyone who objects is "removed," as Cooper explains in detail.

I'm really dreading China's inevitable attack on Taiwan, Japan and the
US, but one reason that I'm a teeny-tiny more sanguine than I would be
otherwise is that I suspect that China under Xi Jinping is just as
incompetent as China under Mao or Russia under Putin (or Stalin).
Unfortunately, it's still true that China will cause untold
devastation to China and the world.

Unfortunately, the Democrats are trying to push the United States in
the same directions as the Fascists in Canada, Russia and China, by
censoring and punishing any political opposition, by allowing blacks
and Asians to be murdered in the streets, with the pertrators not
punished, and by adopting disastrous socialist policies that are
starving America and Europe of energy, leading to high prices that
fund Ruasia's invasion of Ukraine.

-- Justin Trudeau's 'foolish' China remarks spark anger
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ ... -1.2421351
(Canadian Broadcasting, 9-Nov-2013)

Update: Let's not forget Biden's Afghanistan disaster, which came
about because he ignored the advice of his generals, which means that
Biden is as fully fascist idiot as Trudeau and Putin.

UKRAINE Published March 26, 2022 12:58pm EDT
Explosions rock Lviv in western Ukraine, amid speculation Russia is changing strategy
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lviv-u ... peculation

Putin on brink of major RETREAT in Kyiv – Russia to 'scale back' invasion
VLADIMIR PUTIN is on the brink of retreat after Russia announced a scaled-back invasion.
By FRANCESCA EDWARDS, TARA FAIR, SEAN MELEADY
04:24, Sat, Mar 26, 2022 | UPDATED: 06:17, Sat, Mar 26, 2022
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/15 ... r-3-latest

Spotify Says It Will Suspend Service in Russia
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/spoti ... d/1062942/

Ukraine Changes the Face of War Forever
Every fried Russian tank and dead soldier drives home the point that superpowers can no longer dominate simply because they have more troops and weapons.
NICK GILLESPIE AND REGAN TAYLOR | 3.25.2022 3:30 PM
https://reason.com/video/2022/03/25/ukr ... r-forever/

The Kremlin might control the TV and Internet (to an extent), but it does not control short wave radio broadcasts. The idea that the Russians can jam the frequencies at will is not true. I listened to a lot of short wave radio stations while in the ex-USSR and it was easy to hear what was really happening in the outside world. Russia is a vast place. it's impossible to block everything.

Russians know what is happening in Ukraine---> and they support it overwhelmingly. Such an unpleasant truth. How despicable most Russians really are. Another Putin figure will rise in the future. Russia will not be a democracy as long as ethnic Russians dominate. Russia is a land of Czars and dictators. That's it. Maybe when the Chechens and Georgians, the Latvians, the Buryats, the ethnic minorities with different mentalities take over, it will be better. But it will not be a good place as long as Russians control Russia. The mentality of a people must be considered.

Moscow is a relatively liberal city that hates Putin, but that is not Russia.

After Putin is destroyed, everyone in Russia will say, "I never supported Putin!"

Russians blow with the wind. The majority of Russians support brute force only.

The fascists of the future will call themselves anti fascists.
-Winston Churchill

— Biden to Russia: 'Don't even think about moving' on 'inch of NATO territory' -AFP

But does President Biden really mean it?

Russia has used half of its missiles and is down to dumb bombs for its fighter jets. They are also said to be running out of every kind of ammo except for...nuclear weapons.

Navigator, do you still consider NATO to be hollowed out? Do you sti believe Russia will take Europe all the way to Spain?

These are sincere questions

— US General Glen VanHerck, who, during a Thursday's hearing in front of the US Senate, claimed Russia had its largest espionage base in Mexican territory .